The Breaking Point (Body Farm 9)

“Why? Why would whoever faked the death—Janus or his DIY dentist—put a bug in a reporter’s ear?”

“Good question, Doc. Figure that one out, and you’re nearly there.”

“You think Janus wanted to embarrass the Bureau?” As soon as I said it, I decided it was highly unlikely, given that the Bureau wouldn’t just be embarrassed; the Bureau would be gunning for vengeance. “Nah, not that,” I said. “Janus would know that the FBI would move heaven and earth to catch him if he’s humiliated y’all. Maybe he promised the dental assistant a big payoff, but stiffed the guy instead.”

“That could work,” he agreed. “Listen, I gotta go—I’m teaching a fresh batch of recruits at the Academy about one of your favorite topics today: bugs. ‘Trust the bugs,’ right? Keep the faith, Doc. It’ll get better.”

As I hung up, I couldn’t help wondering, Will it? How? And when?

AMONG THE MANY MEAN SURPRISES THAT ACCOMPANIED the Ultimate Mean Surprise—Kathleen’s death-sentence surprise—was the secretarial surprise: the mountain of insurance forms, financial forms, legal forms, and other forms of forms to be scaled. In a perverse corner of my mind, I imagined the grim reaper, twenty-first-century style, no longer mowing down mortals with a scythe, but simply burying them alive beneath truckloads of paper.

In the seven days since our telephone conference with Dr. Spitzer, Kathleen and I had come to an unspoken agreement, an uneasy détente. We distracted ourselves from the bigger issues of mortality and grief by focusing on what we began calling “the business of death and dying.” We dealt with the business—the bureaucracy—at the kitchen table, sorting papers into stacks and categories that sometimes covered every square inch, despite the fact that we’d added a leaf to the table. There was a certain amount of apt irony, Kathleen noted early on, in dealing with death at the kitchen table, where she had almost perished at the hands of Nick Satterfield years before. “Not with a bang, and not with a whimper,” she’d joked, “but with a notarized signature in triplicate.” At moments like that—moments of understated heroism—I admired the hell out of her and wondered how on earth I’d be able to bear losing her.

I was doing a surprisingly good job of not falling apart—even Kathleen commented on it—until she slid me an official-looking form headed with the logo of the Tennessee Department of Health and Environment. “What’s this?” I asked.

“An advance directive. It’s the state’s new version of a living will.” I felt a jolt of fear shoot through me as I scanned down the page. Near the top, directly beneath her own name, Kathleen had designated me as her “Agent”—the person authorized to make health-care decisions for her—but in a series of boxes beneath my name, she had systematically tied my hands, checking the “No” box beside every possible treatment option: No cardiopulmonary resuscitation. No defibrillation. No life support. No surgery, antibiotics, or transfusions. No tube feeding or IV fluids.

I stared at the form—its grim specifics, the litany of life-extending options she was refusing—and then looked up. She was watching me closely; it was all I could do to meet her gaze. “Looks like you’ve got your mind made up,” I said, trying to keep the pain—sadness and also self-pity—out of my voice. “Nothing here for me to do.”

“Yes, there is,” she said. “You make damn sure they abide by this. I’ve heard of too many cases where hospitals ignored these things—jump-starting people’s hearts, putting people on respirators or feeding tubes—even when the patients had living wills on file. If anything like that starts to happen, you fight tooth and nail to stop it, you hear me?” I nodded. “I need you to say it. Out loud. Promise me you won’t let them keep me alive.”

I felt tears running down my cheeks. “God, Kathleen.”

“Promise me.” Her voice was like steel.

“All right, dammit. I promise.” It was all I could do to choke out the words.

“Thank you.” She pulled a handful of paper napkins from the holder and passed them across to me.

I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, with a wet, honking blast.

“Nice,” she said. “It’s your table manners I’ll miss most in the afterlife.”

“Something to look forward to, while you’re waiting for me.” I gave another Gabriel-worthy trumpet blast, then flipped to the form’s second page. “So I just sign down here, as a witness?”

She shook her head. “You can’t.” She reached across and pointed at a block of fine print that excluded relatives, by blood or marriage, as witnesses. “I guess the powers that be want to make sure you’re not trying to get rid of me.”

“Good for them,” I said. I glanced up at the organ-donation section of the form and saw that she had specified only her corneas. I glanced up at her.

“My organs can’t be used,” she said. “They might give cancer to somebody else. The corneas are safe, though.”

I nodded. “Well, I know that’s important. Be a shame if you couldn’t donate those, after all your work to help people’s vision.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” she said. “I want to do more, if you’re willing.”

“Like what?”

“Well, it looks like we’re in pretty good financial shape, right?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call us rich, but yeah, looks like we’re not in any danger of going belly-up. Especially since you’re refusing expensive treatments like Band-Aids and aspirin.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” she said, but I caught a twinkle in her eye, and I managed a half smile. “That life-insurance policy we took out on me years ago, when Jeff was a baby?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he’s still listed as the beneficiary,” she went on. “Seems like he doesn’t need it now. His accounting practice is growing like crazy.”

“You want to change it so the boys are the beneficiaries? Set up college funds for them?”

“I want them to get half of it,” she said. “Twenty-five thousand apiece. Enough to help, but not enough to make them lazy.”

“Seems

Solomonic of you,” I said. “What about the rest?”

“I want to give it away, Bill. To charity. Do a little good on my way out.” She reached across and took my hand. “I want to give twenty-five thousand to my foundation, to hire a part-time director and fund-raiser. So Food for Sight can keep going—and start growing—instead of just limping along, or dying with me.”

Her generosity touched me; her foresight astonished me. I rubbed my thumb across the back of her hand. “Do you have any idea how much I admire you?”

“You’ve mentioned it once or twice.” She gave my hand another squeeze.

“That leaves another twenty-five thousand,” I said. “Who’s that for? UT?” She shook her head, so I guessed again, mentally reviewing her list of favorite causes. “League of Women Voters?” Another head shake. “Doctors Without Borders?”

“No. Airlift Relief International.”

I blinked. “Airlift Relief? Janus’s thing?”

“Yes.”

“But . . .”

“But what, Bill?”

“Well, for starters, he’s dead.”

“So? I hope people keep giving to my ‘thing’ after I’m dead.”

“But you’re not a drug trafficker, Kathleen.”

“Neither was he. I don’t believe it, Bill. I think he was set up.”

“You think he was framed? By the FBI? Come on, Kathleen.”

“Maybe not the FBI. Maybe somebody else—some other agency, or the real drug traffickers. I don’t know who. But I do know that a lot of poor people in Central and South America will die in disasters if people don’t step up and keep that outfit going.”

“I think we need to think about this some more,” I said.