The Euthanist by Alex Dolan

Author:Alex Dolan [Dolan, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626815483
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

There’s an association for anything, if you have an interest. I’m sure if I were obsessed with bending pipe cleaners into miniature grasshopper sculptures, I could find enough like-minded folks out there to form our own club, maybe even an online magazine. For something like euthanasia, the United States has any number of organizations. I found Jeffrey Holt and Gifts of Deliverance largely because he was the most thoughtful. The most fearless. When I had the gumption, I attended a book signing when he came to San Francisco. He could have written me off as a kook, but he invited me to eat with him at an oyster bar.

Jeffrey Holt was a wizard at empathy. Hence, he was easy to talk to. I told him about my paramedic work and why it interested me in his organization. There’s an expression, “No one ever dies in an ambulance.” That’s because it takes a doctor to officially call a time of death, and there’s never a doctor riding with you in the rig. So even if your heart gives out in the ambulance, official records will state that you died at the hospital. I’d seen enough people suffering in the vehicle that I often considered the legal gray areas of death, and the morality of ending suffering for those who wanted it. Jeffrey had said, “You can’t judge this work based on my morality, but whether you think you’re doing the right thing by your patient.” I tried to keep this in mind as I rode next to a federal agent, remembering that the day’s visit wasn’t about Leland’s approval of my work, but bringing peace to the woman who requested it.

We drove in the junky blue car Jeffrey Holt had loaned me via some generous member of the Gifts of Deliverance network. No power windows on this baby. Leland had to roll his down so the wind could break over his sunglasses. He looked blissful in the breeze. He might as well have flopped his tongue around like Emmanuel, who was still at the Moons’ house.

It was a costume day. This time it was a blond Marilyn wig and a leopard-print dress. The faint smears of my parents’ ashes were applied just above my left and right breasts, thus undetectable in this outfit. Leland laughed when he saw me, but my costume made sense for Beatrix, a former model. She’d moved to the States from France in the 60s, and in vintage photos she might have been Brigitte Bardot’s cousin. My ensemble was an homage to her glory years. Leland, on the other hand, looked like Leland. He dressed in a black suit like an undertaker. Only he didn’t wear a tie that day.

We talked to fill time, but the conversation was uneasy. The two of us didn’t like each other. My sex offender profile was still out there for the world to see, and he seemed to enjoy lording the threat of incarceration over me. It was hard to like someone in that position.

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