Who hadn’t? These were the years before iPhones and Facebook and Twitter, when the lingua franca of populist outrage was still twenty-four-hour cable news. After O. J., there was JonBenét. Monica Lewinsky fed the fix for a while. The 2000 election had turned out even better than Fox and CNN could have dreamed, with the ludicrous recount controversy and made-for-TV characters like the cartoonish Katherine Harris. Then came 9/11 and “shock and awe” and “Mission Accomplished.” But the public had wearied of the war in Iraq, which began as a patriotic movie with a happy ending but had turned out to be a depressingly long documentary series with no heroes or victories. The Benvenuto situation was a great way to give us all something else to argue about.

In 1996, Carrie Benvenuto suffered a catastrophic stroke. She was thirty-one years old, a dental hygienist in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, with a prescription for Xanax to treat periodic panic attacks and a serious drinking habit she had managed to hide from everyone who knew her, with the possible exception of her husband, Chris, who claimed ignorance but drank heavily himself.

When she came out of the initial coma, Carrie could not speak or respond in any way suggesting consciousness, but she could open her eyes and move her head. Her doctors determined that her brain function was nonexistent. After a year, her husband petitioned to have her feeding tube removed, in accordance with Florida law. Her parents, Bob and Marie Palacios, filed a motion of their own, insisting that Carrie be kept alive and signed over to their care.

The story should have ended there, but for one key complication: the Benvenuto and Palacios families were Catholic. The parents insisted that their daughter was still “alive”; that removing her feeding tube was tantamount to murder. The husband refused to relinquish responsibility for her care to the parents and would not agree to a divorce. He’d started dating again and wanted to remarry in the church. There was also the matter of a substantial life insurance policy that would pay out to the next of kin. Even after resolving medical bills, the husband would pocket close to half a million dollars.

The Palacios family did not seem much less craven than their estranged son-in-law. If he signed his wife’s care over to them, they’d become the policy’s beneficiaries. Furthermore, the right-to-life movement had been looking for a good cause to push back against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

“What’s your point, Marcus?” Goldberg asked.

“Baird is a doctor,” Marcus said. “I wonder what he thinks about it.”

“Who cares?” Goldberg replied.

“Lots of people,” Marcus said. “People who vote.”

Goldberg stroked his chin.

“Goddamn, kid,” he said. “You’re a fucking genius.”

“I don’t follow,” Arch said.