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"Sachs!" Rhyme blurted, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. "It's taken me a year to find someone to help me."
"Maybe because it's wrong. Ever consider that? Why now, Rhyme? Right in the middle of the case?"
"If I have another attack and a stroke, I might lose all ability to communicate. I could be conscious for forty years and completely unable to move. And if I'm not brain-dead, nobody in the universe is going to pull the plug. At least now I'm still able to communicate my decisions."
"But why?" she blurted.
"Why not?" Rhyme answered. "Tell me. Why not?"
"Well . . ." It seemed as if the arguments against suicide were so obvious she was having trouble articulating them. "Because . . ."
"Because why, Sachs?"
"For one thing, it's cowardly."
Rhyme laughed. "Do you want to debate it, Sachs? Do you? Fair enough. 'Cowardly,' you say. That leads us to Sir Thomas Browne: 'When life is more terrible than death,
it's the truest valor to live.' Courage in the face of insurmountable adversity . . . A classic argument in favor of living. But if that's true then why anesthetize patients before surgery? Why sell aspirin? Why fix broken arms? Why is Prozac the most prescribed medicine in America? Sorry, but there's nothing intrinsically good about pain."
"But you're not in pain."
"And how do you define pain, Sachs? Maybe the absence of all feeling can be pain too."
"You can contribute so much. Look at all you know. All the forensics, all the history."
"The social-contribution argument. That's a popular one." He glanced at Berger but the medico remained silent. Rhyme saw his interest dip to the bone sitting on the table--the pale disk of spinal column. He picked it up, kneaded it in his cuffed hands. He was a former orthopedics man, Rhyme recalled.
He continued to Sachs, "But who says we should contribute anything to life? Besides, the corollary is I might contribute something bad. I might cause some harm too. To myself or someone else."
"That's what life is."
Rhyme smiled. "But I'm choosing death, not life."
Sachs looked uneasy as she thought hard. "It's just . . . death isn't natural. Life is."
"No? Freud'd disagree with you. He gave up on the pleasure principle and came to feel that there was another force--a non-erotic primary aggression, he called it. Working to unbind the connections we build in life. Our own destruction's a perfectly natural force. Everything dies; what's more natural than that?"
Again she worried a portion of her scalp.
"All right," she said. "Life's more of a challenge to you than most people. But I thought . . . everything I've seen about you tells me you're somebody who likes challenges."
"Challenges? Let me tell you about challenges. I was on a ventilator for a year. See the tracheostomy scar on my neck? Well, through positive-pressure breathing exercises--and the greatest willpower I could muster--I managed to get off the machine. In fact I've got lungs like nobody's business. They're as strong as yours. In a C4 quad that's one for the books, Sachs. It consumed my life for eight months. Do you understand what I'm saying? Eight months just to handle a basic animal function. I'm not talking about painting the Sistine Chapel or playing the violin. I'm talking about fucking breathing."
"But you could get better. Next year, they might find a cure."
"No. Not next year. Not in ten years."
"You don't know that. They must be doing research--"
"Sure they are. Want to know what? I'm an expert. Transplanting embryonic nerve tissue onto damaged tissue to promote axonal regeneration." These words tripped easily from his handsome lips. "No significant effect. Some doctors are chemically treating the affected areas to create an environment where cells can regenerate. No significant effect--not in advanced species. Lower forms of life show pretty good success. If I were a frog I'd be walking again. Well, hopping."
"So there are people working on it?" Sachs asked.
"Sure. But no one expects any breakthroughs for twenty, thirty years."
"If they were expected," she shot back, "then they wouldn't be breakthroughs, now would they?"
Rhyme laughed. She was good.
