Fighting for Dear Life (2 page)

Many people have told me they cannot understand why she had to die. They fear the judicial branch is unaccountable and out of control. They can't comprehend why Michael Schiavo paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure his wife's death—monies that should have been earmarked for her rehabilitation from a medical malpractice lawsuit. Others believe the Florida legislature, the U.S. Congress, and President George W. Bush had no business meddling in a ‘‘private'' family affair. This confusion and division is especially evident in the legal, medical, and other professional communities.

I believe the reason our country is wrestling with these questions is because, at some deeper level, we instinctively realize something profoundly wrong has happened. The Terri Schiavo case is to our generation what
Roe v. Wade
was to our parents' generation.

Life itself was on trial.

I believe if ‘‘We the People'' fail to stand for life in the wake of Terri's death, the intrinsic value of life for the infirm, the elderly, and the disabled will be severely diluted. Even the self-proclaimed atheist and well-known liberal journalist Nat Hentoff called the dehydration and starvation of Terri Schiavo ‘‘the longest public execution in American history,''
2
and he believes America has already lost her way.

There are some who say that our nation is simply unable or unwilling to appropriately face death as a culture. While I do agree that our nation is obsessed with youth and physical beauty, pro-euthanasia proponents claim that we are trying to run from death and avoid it at all costs. Their argument is that, although Terri wanted to die, her family and others simply did not want to face the ugly prospect of that fact. The Schindlers and I, and many millions of others who prayed that Terri's life might be spared, however, are not denying death's inevitability or suffering from some sense of cultural denial toward its prospect. I understand that modern medicine has the technology to keep a flatline corpse ‘‘alive'' indefinitely if so desired. It's entirely possible to keep the lungs working and the heart beating through machinery long after a person is dead. I'm not in favor of that. The Bible says there is ‘‘a time to be born, and a time to die'' (Ecclesiastes 3:2). Sadly, the notion that Terri was already ‘‘dead and gone'' was the most common misconception circulating about her.

We were not fighting against an inevitable or natural death; we were fighting against the
unnatural, premature death
of someone who did not deserve to die. There is a huge difference between fighting for legitimate life and being in denial when it's simply ‘‘someone's time to go.''

Quite simply, it was not Terri's time to go.

Second, I write because I was raised to love and respect America and the rule of law. When I was a child, my parents encouraged me to memorize the Pledge of Allegiance. They taught me about the faith of our forefathers who founded the United States with their sacrifice and blood. I came to believe America was the greatest, kindest, and most generous nation in the world. But when the Supreme Court refused to grant our final appeal to rescue Terri from death, I thought,
Dear Lord,
how, as a nation, have we reached this point?
For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed to be an American.

Here is what troubled me:

America has sent men and women overseas to fight the atrocities and human abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq. For decades we have had a rich history of opposing brutal dictators—Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Adolf Hitler, among others—for torturing and gassing to death their own people. Yet here at home on our soil, with the full blessing of our courts and under the alleged authority of American law, we were engaged in an equally barbaric act.

The third motivation for creating this eyewitness account flows from the tears of Mary Schindler, Terri's mother. There are some things law school cannot prepare you for. One such event was the afternoon Mary and I walked out of Terri's hospice room for what would be the last time Mary would see her daughter this side of heaven. Mary turned to me and said, ‘‘David, I'm no lawyer and I'm no doctor. But what I don't understand is why did they have to kill my little girl?''

That is
the
troubling moral dilemma.

When I first became involved with this case, Bob and Mary Schindler asked me to do anything that we could think of that was both legal and proper to save the life of their daughter. After Terri died, Bob and Mary asked me to tell what really happened—specifically the trial and error of this landmark case—so that many others would be spared from a similar fate.

I make no apology that, from my perspective, what happened to Terri was wrong. Very wrong. Maybe you agree. Then again, maybe you disagree, or the jury is still out in your mind. I believe if you will join me as I present my case, you will come to understand:

Why I fought for Terri.

Why I'd do it again.

And why I'd fight for you too.

CHAPTER TWO

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Theresa Schiavo didn't have a written living will. She didn't
specify in writing what her wishes were, so we had to rely on
oral statements.

—G
EORGE
F
ELOS
, A
TTORNEY FOR
M
ICHAEL
S
CHIAVO
1

I
n the predawn hours of February 25, 1990, twenty-six-year-old Terri Schiavo collapsed while home alone with her husband. Deprived of oxygen for several minutes, Terri was rendered a brain-injured woman and later was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (known as PVS). More than fifteen years later the cause of her trauma remains unknown.

On many occasions, through watching news reports as a concerned citizen, before I even knew the Schindlers or their daughter, I had heard various descriptions of Terri and her condition.

However, some things defy description.

Take the Grand Canyon. There are simply no words, pictures, or movies that can capture the magnitude of this 277-mile long, five-thousand-foot-deep breach in the earth's crust. A postcard from the gift shop will never take your breath away. But to linger at the edge of the Grand Canyon's North Rim—there's nothing like it. It's life changing.

How about gazing upward at the impossibly massive arms of a six- hundred-year-old California Redwood . . . or swimming with the dolphins in the Florida Keys . . . or bringing a newborn baby home from the hospital? To comprehend and appreciate these things, you just have to experience them for yourself. Nothing else will do.

Here's the connection to Terri Schiavo.

As an eyewitness, I can attest that there was a tremendous volume of misinformation circulated by some in the media about Terri. While many in the media genuinely understood and sympathized with Terri's fight for life, in general, the American public was—and continues to be—misled as to the true nature of Terri's medical condition prior to her death. Why? I particularly fault many in the mainstream press for their lack of due diligence. Rather than digging deep to authenticate her status—rather than pushing to
see Terri for themselves
—most chose to rehash secondhand, unverified information.

Published reports said Terri was ‘‘in a coma'' . . . she was on ‘‘life support'' . . . she was a ‘‘vegetable'' . . . she was ‘‘brain-dead'' . . . she was ‘‘unresponsive'' . . . she was on ‘‘the verge of death'' . . . she needed a ‘‘respirator to breathe.'' What's more, virtually every statement by Michael Schiavo and his attorney George Felos reinforced these descriptions that we found—as you'll see—to be completely false.

I am convinced Terri's life never would have been snuffed out if what I saw with my own eyes had been reported by more of those in the press. Granted, the short visitor list enforced by Michael Schiavo and the court restricted access to Terri. That would be an obstacle for the press, no question. But they should have gone deeper, pushed harder.

In this case the public was often misled to arrive at some erroneous conclusions. Probably like you, I had initially carried with me a number of wrong assumptions based on what was available through the media.

When I went to see Terri for the first time in late 2004, I didn't really know what to expect. Was she pale? Was she stretched out in a bed, immobile, a living corpse? Would she respond to me? Would she even know I was there? Or, as some had suggested, were her parents the problem? Were the Schindlers delusional and unwilling to acknowledge that Terri was, in fact, comatose? I decided to prepare myself for the possibility that the Schindlers may have loved their daughter so much that they were imagining signs of vitality.

But Terri was not terminal—or comatose.

Not even close.

INSIDE WOODSIDE HOSPICE

As I will relate in the next chapter, I became involved with the Schindlers' case to save Terri in October 2003, but it was not until September 2004 that the Gibbs Law Firm officially became lead counsel for the family. Then it took another few months before I was added to Terri's official visitors list by Michael Schiavo, her court-appointed guardian.

On Christmas Eve, 2004, my legal colleague Barbara Weller and I traveled with Bob and Mary Schindler the short distance from our office to the hospice. Woodside Hospice is a sprawling, seventy-two-bed, one-story red brick complex nestled in the shadows of groomed hedges, flowering fuchsia bushes, and tall trees. Hand-painted birdhouses and wrought-iron benches accent the winding walking trails, creating an otherwise tranquil setting for the patients.

To be candid, I fully expected Terri to be hooked up to a battery of tubes and monitors necessary to keep her alive. I've been in intensive care situations; I've known people who were teetering on the brink of death. Like the rest of the country (and the world), my mental picture had been shaped by the press, so I envisioned Terri in some kind of medically severe situation—you know, like an episode from a prime-time hospital drama with a doctor barking out orders to the nurses.

I was sorely mistaken. In fact, I was in for the shock of my life.

When we entered her room, I found Terri sitting in a recliner with a holiday blanket draped across her lap. She was dressed and washed, and her hair had been brushed. By all outward appearances, she could have been waiting for the morning paper to be delivered or her favorite radio program to begin. I almost gawked at the scene: Absolutely
nothing
was hooked up to her. No IV drip. No monitors. No ventilator. There was no indication whatsoever of any form of artificial life support in use. Even the feeding tube was unattached to the port in Terri's stomach since it wasn't lunchtime.

During our forty-five minute initial visit, it was clear Terri understood who the different people were in the room. Hands down, Mary was Terri's favorite. I'm convinced there's a bond between a mother and a child that is established at birth, one that lasts a lifetime. And in Terri's situation, even as a forty-one-year-old woman, I believe some of her strength and her will to live was derived from that mother-daughter bond. To watch the two of them interact was nothing short of incredible.

At the sound of her mother's voice, Terri squealed with delight, filling the air with a host of happy sounds. She had this excited animation about her that was part giggle and part sheer joy. In fact, Terri could move, and she almost jumped out of the chair. She was clearly animated and responsive, and very much alive. I was wishing some reporters could have been present to record the events of that day. If even one minute of this interchange had been seen by the public, there is no way Terri would have died. I saw an unmistakable inner light radiating from Terri as she and her mother ‘‘loved on'' each other. I am told by neurologists that people in PVS do not react to external stimuli in a purposeful manner with such human emotion.

Mary was the first one to hug Terri. She cradled Terri's face with her hands. With soft, slow strokes, Mary caressed Terri on the cheek. She kissed her daughter, and much to my surprise, Terri attempted to offer a sloppy kiss back. Now, Terri never could maneuver her lips completely, but she did her best to return the affection. Between kisses Mary said, ‘‘Merry Christmas, sweetheart. We're here to visit.''

Then it was Bob's turn to greet his daughter.

Interestingly, Terri responded very differently to her dad. Bob had developed this playful routine he'd go through with her each time they were together. I watched Bob announce, ‘‘Here comes the hug'' as he wrapped her in a bearlike embrace. Then Bob said, ‘‘You know what's coming next—the kiss!'' He moved in close for a smooch. Keep in mind that Bob sports a scratchy mustache. His chin was often unshaved too, which caused his facial hair to tickle Terri's face.

Over the years, as she did during our visit, Terri would scrunch up her whole face in preparation for the assault on her cheeks that she knew was coming with Bob's scratchy kiss. Her family called this Terri's ‘‘lemon face.'' With a giggle, she'd turn her head away as if toying with her dad. In the end, she'd laugh as his lips made contact with her cheek. She responded the exact same way every time to her father's auditory cues as he consistently initiated this playful routine.

After his kiss Mary said, ‘‘Terri, I brought with us some new friends I want you to meet. This is Mr. Gibbs. He's an attorney who is helping us help you.''

After Mary's brief introduction, I said, ‘‘Hi, Terri. It's so good to meet you. Merry Christmas!'' An interesting thing happened as I spoke. Terri's eyes widened like saucers as if to say, ‘‘What's that new sound I hear?'' I confess I have a very deep, resonant voice. Terri obviously picked up on it. Even though I was quickly convinced Terri could understand much more than the outside world had been led to believe, I decided to keep my interaction with her very simple.