Give Me Autonomy and Give Me Death

It had rained while we were cocooned inside the medical tent, as it should have. Every now and then, dolor could be contagious. Sumaiya had cried. I cried. We had every reason to, the sky and its attending clouds let loose for a while. Emma, Mazen, and I walked to my car. The world around us was glazed with a sheen of rainwater.

“You’re not thinking of actually doing it?” Emma asked.

I couldn’t wait to get to lunch. I was suddenly ravenous. I could eat a horse, a camel.

“Of course I am,” I said. “She asked me. I must consider it. I’m surprised you think I shouldn’t.”

I shouldn’t have told Emma, but I couldn’t think of any believable lie when confronted. She’d been there, seen Sumaiya’s reaction and mine. I’d promised Sumaiya that I wouldn’t tell anybody, not her family, no one. I’d broken my promise already, with Emma, with Mazen, of course, and would do so once more with Francine when we talked.

“What do you mean?” she said. “I believe in the right to patient-driven euthanasia but only when the patient is capable of making the decision. Sumaiya isn’t. She just isn’t. She’s not thinking straight. She probably has encephalopathy, and she’s high on morphine to boot. I understand her wish, but she’s not able to give consent in her current state. How can we be sure what her wishes are?”

Mazen’s eyes lit up; his brow scrunched. I held my forefinger up to his face so he wouldn’t interrupt.

“Stop it, Emma,” I said. “Almost all euthanasia discussions are held when patients are high on pain medications. You know that. It’s the nature of the beast. I’m the one who has to consent. She asked for my help, and heavens, she was more than clear about why she wanted it. She had thought it through.”

“But—” Emma tried to say more, but I would have none of it. I held my forefinger up to her face as well.

A moment later, I was stomping more than walking on the muddy ground. I was moving and they were trying to catch up. My shoes squished with each step.

“She’s not a child, Emma,” I said. “She may not be educated, she may not have seen much of the world, but she was able to enunciate precisely what she wanted better than you or I would have.”

“What did she say?” Mazen asked. “What did she say exactly?”

Again, I held my forefinger up, but this time only to indicate that I needed a minute. I didn’t want to cry. When Sumaiya asked me, she began to weep, and I allowed myself to join her. Tears bathed my eyes. Her words hit me hard in the stomach, in the diaphragm. I could not stop myself from sobbing. I did not want a repeat. I needed to keep moving.

She’d said she wanted my help in ending her life. She was dying; it was a matter of time. She wanted to decide when that time was. Her family would move on only when she was gone, so it had to be done. She’d brought them all the way here. They now had to go on without her. She couldn’t wait for death to arrive naturally. She’d had enough with the not knowing, enough with the waiting. Ever since the war in Syria started, she’d had no control over her life or that of her family. God, Fate, bombs, the government, Assad, the disease, Daesh, little boys with machine guns and a few hairs sprouting on their faces that she could have removed with a good scrubbing, everything and everyone had more control over what happened to her. She’d had it. Enough. She wanted autonomy.

“That sounds clear to me,” Mazen said.

Emma took in a long breath, exhaled. “To me too,” Emma said. “But please don’t ask me to help you. I don’t think I could deal with it. I believe in the right to end one’s life, but I don’t want to be the one who does it.”

“I’ll help,” Mazen said.

“I’m grateful to both of you,” I said. “If I decide to, I’m able do it on my own.” I tried a joke to lift the mood. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” Neither of them found it funny.

Emma said she wouldn’t join us for lunch. She’d try to convince George to get back into bed.

“You’ve made the decision, haven’t you?” she said.

“I told Sumaiya I had to think about it,” I said.