Fiction: The Last Consent by Joe Giordano

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Mornings, Marie awoke to snow or the threat to snow. Like prison walls, white drifts surrounded her tiny wood-slatted house in a small town east of Montreal. Drafty and heated by a Franklin stove, to keep pipes from bursting, she kept a drip going in the porcelain sink. She often wore her threadbare coat even in bed. She survived on the wood and groceries a neighbor brought. Survival, she thought, that’s what The Golden Years had become. She scoffed. Hanging on for what? Without children, the photos of her deceased husband were her company. She gazed at her 50^th wedding anniversary picture. Rene and she were smiling, still in love. After the experience of providing him hospice care, she stopped talking to God. Death was so final. Could she have done more? She shoved the bad memory aside. When she was gone, nobody would remember their names.

She sometimes forgot to take her pills, so she placed her medications where they were hard to miss. This morning, she didn’t bother. The doctor would arrive soon to assist her to die.

Fatal illness was no longer a requirement, and she made her decision to die after she found herself wandering outside and forgetting why. She shuddered at the thought that at some point her memory would be completely gone. The prospect of being shoveled like rubbish into an old-age-home gave her chills of foreboding. She imagined pea-green chipped painted walls and scuffed vinyl hallways, moaning as she sat in a wheelchair amidst a miasma of despair and the odor of bodily functions. She needed to act while she still had the capacity.

On the day she’d visited the doctor, the neighbor’s boy hadn’t shoveled her walk. Every joint in her body hurt as she trudged through knee-deep snow to the bus stop. She gasped after just a few steps, triggering a coughing fit, catching her breath before continuing.

At his office, the doctor gently questioned her before she asked him, “What was the point of prolonging mere existence?”

He gave her the forms to sign.

His nurse practitioner, Dolores, stood behind him. A big woman. Not at all jolly. Well, Marie thought, this was serious business.

On the day she was to receive the lethal injection, Marie sat on a floral armchair in darkness. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. Her stomach was queasy and her mind raced. Was she making the right decision? To steel her resolve, she remembered the pain of loneliness.

Unexpectedly, it was Dolores who arrived.

“The doctor had an emergency,” she said. “I’m qualified to help you.”

Marie didn’t immediately agree.

Dolores said, “The doctor won’t be able to see you until next week.”

Marie dreaded the mental anguish of further stewing.

“I suppose it’s all right,” she said.

 The nurse opened her medical bag and placed an IV needle, tubing, and a syringe on the table next to Marie. She also unraveled a long belt.

Marie’s eyes widened.

Dolores said, “I must restrain you. If you fall afterward, I won’t be able to lift you.”

Marie sighed as Dolores wrapped the belt around her arms, cinching it around the back of the chair.

“Too tight?” Dolores asked.

What does it matter? Marie thought and shook her head.

Dolores tapped for a vein in Marie’s right arm. “A little stick,” she said as she inserted the IV needle and taped it securely.

Marie’s mind wandered to happier days, and she gazed at Rene’s picture. What would he say about her decision? He clung to life, setting the brave example. While she breathed, his loving memory was alive.

“Stop,” Marie said.

“A little uneasiness is natural,” Dolores said while continuing with her preparations.

 Marie’s voice rose. “I don’t want to go through with it.”

            “I get a lot of last-minute nervous Nellies,” Dolores said as she inserted the syringe into the IV tube. “You made the correct decision.”

Marie shouted. “I’m withdrawing my consent.”

“No need to yell,” Dolores said as she pressed the syringe’s plunger, injecting the poison into Marie’s arm. “I’m the only one here.”

Joe Giordano’s stories have appeared in more than one hundred magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, and Shenandoah, and his collections, Stories and Places I Remember, The Mandylion, featuring Valentina Esposito, and Other Intriguing Tale, and The Valentina Esposito Mysteries s. His novels include, Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story, and the Anthony Provati thriller series: Appointment with ISIL, Drone Strike, and The Art of Revenge.   

Visit Joe’s website at https://joe-giordano.com/

If you would like to learn more about Joe, you can also find him on X here.