The Greatest Evil by William X. Kienzle

Author:William X. Kienzle [Kienzle, William X.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Suspense
ISBN: 9780345426383
Google: EGo4CzLqUh4C
Amazon: 034542638X
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1998-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

18

During the prayers, Lucy gently closed her mother’s mouth. The eyes were already closed.

After the prayers, Father Koesler and Lucy stood. Vincent remained kneeling at the foot of the bed, clutching his mother’s ankles.

“Do you want to stay with her?” Koesler asked Lucy.

“I think we’d better find Tony,” she said.

It occurred to Koesler—and not for the first time—that of the three offspring, Lucy by far was the rock.

Vincent seemed in another land.

“We’re going to find Tony and be with him, Vinnie,” Koesler said. “Do you want to come?”

No response.

“Vinnie—” Lucy said sharply.

“No,” Koesler said. “Let’s leave him alone. He wants to be with your mother. Besides, the doctor should be here any minute.”

They found Tony standing in front of the darkened TV screen, hands thrust deep in his pockets. Wordless, they stood on either side of him for what seemed a much longer time than actually transpired.

“Damn Vinnie and damn his damn miracle!” Tony said bitterly.

“It’s not Vinnie’s fault,” Lucy said quietly.

“No? Whose idea was it not to try therapy?”

“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was originally,” Lucy shot back. “The point is once it was proposed, we all agreed to skip a treatment that stood almost no chance of being effective. All of us, that is, with the possible exception of you. You lost that vote. We couldn’t ask some hospital to give Ma one fifth of a radiation treatment because you wanted it and I and Vinnie and Father and Doc didn’t.”

“So, okay: You won.” Tony was almost snarling. “The point is, without therapy Ma lasted about a month. With treatments, she could have watched you and me graduate. She could’ve watched St. Vincent get ordained. Now she’s not going to be here at all. Now,” his voice rose, “she’ll miss everything.”

“This is no good, Tony,” Koesler said. “You can Monday-morning quarterback from either side. We agreed it would be better to skip radiation. Even your mother agreed.”

“What chance did she have of disagreeing? The vote was four to one before Ma could speak her piece.”

“Try and look at it this way, Tony: We tried going without treatment. We know now that had its expected result: She passed away. The only real surprise is that it happened earlier than we anticipated.

“Imagine,” Koesler continued, “that we had agreed to have the radiation treatments. We—the doctor, all of us—were quite sure they could not cure her—not with the cancer she had. But suppose we had gone with the radiation. We know she would have been pretty miserable and uncomfortable. Much more so than if she hadn’t gotten them. So then, when she inevitably died, we would’ve been second-guessing ourselves … wondering what her quality of life would’ve been like if she hadn’t had to undergo the treatment. Her quality of life was much better without than with.

“What is quite certain is that with or without, she had a terminal illness. But as I said: One could argue either side. No one could claim that each and every one of us didn’t want what all considered best for your mother.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.