May the Opposite of All This Be My Lot

I sat in one of the modest chairs in the waiting room of the small clinic, leaning forward and resting my hands on one knee. The room was well-lit, and the soft tones of the walls tried to whisper comforting words. Anxiety fluttered in my chest like a butterfly, and I needed only to look at my mother to see she felt the same way. Mother stood in the middle of the room, pacing anxiously while twirling her necklace in her rigid fingers. She stared at the wall. The room was very quiet, or it seemed that way, and the only sound I heard was the ticking of the small clock above my head. The empty silence of the room made the ticking clock seem very loud in contrast. Twick, twick, twick…again and again in agonizing monotony. Each twick of the clock supplemented the much faster pounding on the inside of my chest.
I heard the carpeted floor of the little clinic start to creak as footsteps came from down the hall. I knew that the footsteps were probably not those of one of the little nurses scurrying about like bees; the steps were too heavy and too measured to be anyone but the middle-aged, slow-walking doctor.  I opened my eyes and saw the doctor walking toward us in the waiting room. He rubbed his jaded face as he flipped through the papers on the clipboard the nurse had given him. He wore a really nice watch—a large, blue-faced Fossil. He extended an arm as he introduced himself to Mother. “I hope you have been well cared-for,” he said, shaking her limp hand. Mother nodded.
“We weren’t expecting to see you until tomorrow evening,” he went on. “I hope you weren’t expecting everything to be finished…”
“No, no,” Mother said weakly. The doctor looked at her, expecting her to say more, but she was staring off into an area somewhere behind him. She didn’t really look like she was in the talking mood, so I figured it was time for me to carry the conversation.
“We just wanted to be here for the procedure,” I explained. “We will still come back tomorrow, but we wanted to make sure he’s comfortable.” The doctor smiled. It was warm, yes—sort of—but rehearsed, almost routine. I figured that was to be expected. How many patients had he dealt with in the same situation as us? “Of course,” he said. “I assure you that everything will be taken care of.”
“We were hoping we could—if it’s not too much trouble, of course—we were hoping, uh…” I knew exactly why we had come to the clinic, why Mother had called me yesterday to tell me she wanted to, why she was staring at the wall and biting her lip. But Mother had wanted to come, not me, so I looked at her. “We were hoping we might be able, um, to...”
“Watch,” Mother finished, turning to the doctor and I. There were dark bags under her eyes from years of stress. Her hand was still curled to her neck, fingering the pearls my father had given her years before he got sick. “We were hoping we could watch the procedure.” While she said her initial word “watch” with surprising strength, she then returned to the same whispering, barely-audible tone she had used all morning.
“Of course,” the doctor said. “In fact, we have a small room next to the operating room just for that purpose. It has a Plexiglas window, so you can see everything from there. That’s not a problem at all.”
The doctor’s face, stoic and neutral—as it had been in my first meeting with him—seemed to have a hint of relief. I’m sure he was expecting us to come into the clinic as other families had, asking that he cancel the procedure. We’ve thought it through, they would tell him, and we don’t want you to do it. We want a full refund, they would say. The doctor would of course tell them, quite truthfully, that there was nothing he could do, that once the papers were signed and the patient was tagged, there was no turning back. I had known this from the beginning, since my first conversation with the doctor. Mother had not come, and after the second meeting, I tried to convince her, just as the doctor had convinced me, that this was the best treatment. I had done most of the talking, and Mother had done most of the nodding, and eventually she seemed to agree with me.
My conversation with the doctor had been short and direct. He walked into the room with his surgical mask on and a pair of goggles in his hand. He took off the mask, threw on his lab coat and apologized for being late—the procedure had taken longer than he’d expected. As he put his watch on his wrist, he asked me if I liked it and I told him I did, though I thought to myself it was a rather strange subject to discuss at the moment. He said it was a gift from his wife, and that he put it on to be reminded that he was much more than a doctor. “When I don’t wear it,” he said, “I’m just doing my job. When I put it on, I’m a husband and a father and a helpful member of society again. It’s just a little trinket, but it helps me deal with the…baggage of my work.” He told me that the procedure—yes the one he’d just finished, the one he was famous for and the only one he ever did—was the best thing we could do for my father. He told me that the Alzheimer’s was too advanced and too hindering. “You’ll be better off for it and he will too,” the doctor told me.
Mother was rubbing her fingers together, something she always did when she was nervous about something. “Can we…see him? You know—before you start?” The doctor nodded quickly. “You will see him through the Plexiglas window. As I said, you can see everything from there.” Mother’s grey head bowed slightly when he said this, her tight bun in the back pointing toward the ceiling. That’s not what she had meant.
“Oh,” the doctor said, noticing the look on Mother’s face, “I’m afraid that he’s already been injected with the anesthesia. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to speak with him before the procedure.” Mother sank into my arms. “Are you sure there is no way we can see him?” I asked, rubbing Mother’s arm. I knew the answer of course, but I thought Mother needed to hear that I was trying. The doctor shook his head. “There is nothing I can do.” Something about the way he said that bothered me. It was empty, almost flippant.
“I think it’s time,” the doctor said, glancing at his watch. “Beth here will lead you to your room. I’ll see you after the procedure.” The doctor turned and walked away. A nurse—Beth, apparently—stepped out from behind the office door. She had a kinder, more sympathetic face, a marked contrast to the doctor’s. She walked up beside Mother and grabbed her trembling hand. “Everything will be painless—I promise you. He won’t feel a thing.” I couldn’t see Mother’s face when the nurse said this, but it couldn’t have made her feel any better. But unlike the doctor, at least she was trying. “This way,” the nurse said patiently as she walked down the hallway.
I looked at Mother and smiled. It’s alright- we’re doing the right thing, it’s best this way, I whispered to her. She again tried to smile weakly but I could tell that she was in no mood to even try to look okay. She had been opposed to the procedure from the beginning, and I had done everything I could to convince her that it was the best thing we could do for him. She eventually gave in to the sense of it, the logic, but it was obvious—now more than ever—that she never really wanted to do it. Please, I thought inwardly, let us have done the right thing.
To this day, I still don’t remember walking down the hall. The world seemed to swirl past us as we walked into the room. There was a sign above the Plexiglas window, I recognized it as part of the Hippocratic Oath—one of the results of having a Pre-Med student as a roommate in college. It read: But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
The nurse grabbed my shoulder. “You may want to help your mother. She’s not doing well.” The nurse said this as if I didn’t already know how my mother was feeling, but I nodded in genuine appreciation. “I’ve taken care of your father since he’s been here,” she said. “He’s had a great attitude, especially for how sick he is. It’s a shame.” I understood at the time that she was trying to make me feel better, but I was wishing that she would stop. I just wanted to get this over with. I put my arm around Mother’s back as we watched the doctor walk into the patient’s room. His face was covered with a surgical mask, and he had goggles over his eyes and rubber gloves on his hands. Dad was in a bed in the middle of the room, wires sticking out from beneath his gown and a huge metal instrument strapped around the outside of his shaved head. His eyes were shut. I squeezed Mother’s shoulder. We did the right thing. This is what he would have wanted.
We watched motionless as the doctor euthanized my father. After it was over, he put the instrument down, took his bloody gloves off, and washed his hands. He put his watch on as he walked out of the room. At least it’s over, I thought as we walked to the car. I didn’t look at Mother.