“We’ve done another scan, and the bleeding which was apparent in her left hemisphere is now in the process of being reabsorbed. I think she’s going to be able to make a slow recovery to her previous condition.”

“Previous to what? This is grotesque! She’s in pain, do you hear me! She’s been suffering like a dog now for two and a half years. The manager of the aged care facility assured me you would be putting her under continuous deep sedation . . .”

“Listen, your mum . . .”

“Please! Stop saying mum as if I were some seven-year-old. I can’t stand it any more! Everybody has been talking to me about my mum since the start of this nightmare . . . One day I’d like somebody to explain to me this idiotic practice. You’re all doing it, so it must be what you’re all taught at college, right? What’s the idea? To infantilize people so that whatever happens they don’t suffocate mum with a cushion.”

I felt utterly outraged by this woman, this intermediary of death, knowing all the while that my indignation would crash headlong into a brick wall. And sure enough, she continued in exactly the same tone:

“Two days ago, your mum had problems swallowing; that’s no longer the case. If that had continued, we would have had to consider whether to insert a feeding tube. Artificial nutrition is a form of treatment and the law authorizes stopping treatments. Your mum has started eating again without any issues, so she has evidently not decided to die.”

“You don’t have the right to let people who have deteriorated to this point continue to live! She’s completely delirious, she’s blind, she’s utterly bedridden and since this most recent stroke, she has been living — and when I say living, I’m weighing my words carefully — she has been living in a completely terrified state twenty-four seven.”

“Your mum survived the camps . . .”

“And?”

“Our ethical duties require us to recognize our patients’ wishes to the extent we’re able, even if they themselves are not in a position to formulate those wishes expressly. I think that when you have survived such testing circumstances, it is inconceivable that you would give up the will to live. I myself would have opted for the feeding tube.”

“You don’t say. You would have opted . . . What do you know about what she thinks? Are you a member of one of those bullshit religious groups or something — the Society of Saint Pius X, is that it? And I just have to cop it?”

She gestured with her hand to indicate the matter was closed.

“We’re going to keep her here under observation for a few days to allow her to regain a degree of comfort, and if she continues to eat as she is now, she’ll return to the aged care facility.”

I was speechless.

Then she added in a glacial monotone: