A Life That Matters (11 page)

At first, I was numb. Then, quickly, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. I cried and cried as if the dam I had built inside me had broken and nothing could build it back again. I thought I would cry forever.

Pam and Teresa were crying, too. My family was beside me, and they must have been crying as well, but I was only conscious of Pam and Teresa. Pam said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll appeal, we’ll appeal.” That’s all she kept saying for a long time.

I hadn’t thought of an appeal. I thought that the judge had ordered the feeding tube removed, and that would be that. That Terri’s tube would be taken out that day. I mean, I was hysterical. Pam said, “It’s not going to happen today. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. Just settle down and don’t worry.” Then she tried to explain what the process would be, but I could understand none of it, not even that there was still hope.

Bobby was in almost as bad shape. “Before the fax came in, my anxiety was so profound I felt I was going to faint. When it did come, it was an absolute shock. I didn’t know what it meant. I mean, I did know, but I didn’t know the time frame. I didn’t know how long we had. I didn’t know if we had a week, a month, a year—I just didn’t know. And that’s what was most scary: I just didn’t know.”

Pam sat there and read Greer’s decision to us, but to this day, I’ve never read it myself. I’ve read sections of it, but never the whole thing. I can barely even look at a copy. When I see the date, I relive the day, and no one should be asked to do that.

After we had quieted a little—when I could breathe again without choking—Pam told us we’d have to look for attorneys better able to handle the appeal process. We were all relieved. Pam is a fine, sympathetic woman. Her newly established law practice was like that of a medical general practitioner, whereas what we needed now was a specialist, someone who specialized in euthanasia cases like Felos.

We left her office, incapable of further discussion or of making plans. Bobby and Steven stayed behind to handle the media so they could thank our supporters for us. But for me, the moment Judge Greer rendered his decision, the future became a black hole.

The day after the decision, we went with Bobby, his girlfriend Lori, Suzanne, and her six-year-old daughter, Alex—to whom we had promised the outing—to the Florida State Fair. I remember thinking,
How do you explain to a six-year-old that a judge ordered her aunt to be put to death?
Terri hadn’t committed any crime. Alex had visited her. She had seen her smile and laugh. She knew she was sick. I thought it best not to tell her anything, to let her enjoy herself at the fair.

I don’t remember anything about the fair itself, except that I was afraid I’d never make it through the day. My legs were weak, and a couple of times I thought I was going to faint. Bob remembers walking through the fair but, overwhelmed by thoughts of what had happened the day before, nothing else. I was trying not to think at all, to blank my brain to stop Pam’s voice, the memories of the trial, the visions of Terri, from creeping in. It didn’t work.

On that day, Bob got a call from a woman named Jana Carpenter, who had introduced herself to him during the trial, which she had attended for its last two days.

“It was a Saturday when the call came in,” Bob says. “Jana told me she belonged to a group of doctors, nurses, caretakers, and attorneys. ‘There are some doctors who would like to visit Terri at the Palm Gardens nursing home,’ she said. ‘Do you think you could arrange it?’

“Three doctors showed up and spent an hour with Terri. Based on what they saw of her, each filled out affidavits confirming that Terri could swallow and that she was not in a persistent vegetative state.

“I should have been happy, but to me it was a case of locking the barn door after the horses had fled. They gave the affidavits to Pam Campbell,
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who immediately filed an emergency petition with Judge Greer. Meanwhile, I got another affidavit from a retired bishop, Thomas Larkin, Bishop Lynch’s predecessor, who, I guess, had come to the trial after hearing of Father Murphy’s testimony. He was accompanied by Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, a retired army general and Roman Catholic priest.
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Bishop Larkin’s affidavit stated that Father Murphy had misrepresented the Catholic Church’s position on end-of-life matters, and Pam included that in her package to Greer.”

The motion for rehearing, which was heard by Judge Greer on March 2, 2000, asked for a review of the case and for Greer to allow medical tests for Terri to determine her capabilities and true neurological condition. On March 7, he denied all motions in the petition.

By then, though, the depressed lethargy we were battling had lifted. We were mad. Our energy returned. We renewed our commitment to Terri that we would get her the therapy she so desperately needed. By God, we would fight for our daughter’s life! If she had to die, we would not let it happen quietly as we suspect our adversaries had planned.

Michael was fighting, too. Shortly after our doctors examined Terri, he filed a petition to prohibit us from seeing Terri or, if that wasn’t granted, to be allowed to severely restrict our visiting hours.

True or not, we felt that this was an act of retribution. The cruelty of it bewildered us. The Michael who had worked with me, sweated with me, loved Terri with me, had disappeared. In his place was a man I prayed Terri had never seen.

His attack spurred us on. The husband of a teacher at Tampa Catholic advised us to contact a renowned lawyer named Joseph Magri, who, with his partner Robert Merkle, specialized in appeal cases. He had known about our troubles and immediately agreed to represent us on a pro bono basis. Still, he’d need the transcript of the January 2000 trial, which would cost us in the neighborhood of $10,000 to obtain, money we didn’t have. Magri, who looks like an elegant Paul Sorvino, impressed us from the start. Bob and I liked his honesty, his ability to tell us tough news gently but straightforwardly, his knowledge of the law, and his professionalism. For the first time, we felt we had a powerful ally. As he told us himself, the appeal process would be difficult. But at least it would be held in a different court with a different judge. We had a chance!

Meanwhile, as soon as Bobby told him of Greer’s decision, Dave Pritchard, a teacher friend of Bobby’s at Tampa Catholic, insisted we get a Web site going. He came up with Terrisfight.org, which it remains today. The site was used to get news of Terri’s situation to anyone interested, and as it turned out, a lot of people were. The media did a story on the site; people began to e-mail us with support and questions.

Another teacher, Frannie Siracusa, helped organize a celebrity charity basketball game at the high school to raise money for the appeal. The media publicized this as well. Star athletes from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Vinny Testaverde of the New York Jets, and famous basketball and hockey players agreed to attend. I had no idea how many people would show up, let alone contribute, but to my surprise, there must have been six to eight hundred in the stands, a show of support that touched me profoundly. The support only escalated in the following years.

On March 24, 2000, Judge Greer imposed guidelines on the times we could visit Terri and insisted we draw up a “visitation guest list” for Michael’s approval; authorized Michael to hire a security guard for Terri and one for himself; and granted Michael the right to pay these security costs out of Terri’s medical fund.

Michael’s excuse for needing the guards was that he’d observed some of Bobby’s students praying for Terri’s life outside the Palm Gardens nursing home. He described them as an “unruly mob” and said his and Terri’s lives were in jeopardy. But Bobby’s kids were well behaved, and they were just praying. They were as “dangerous” as pet kittens.

It seems that Greer was as aggravated as Michael that we had “dared” question his decision, and he gave us twenty minutes to come up with a list of people we would want to visit Terri.

“We couldn’t think of anyone to put on the list,” Suzanne remembers, “so we wrote down anybody and everybody we could think of—family, friends, who knows, just in case—so Terri would have visitors. And supporters.”

One name was an inspiration of Bobby’s: Frank Pavone. Unknown to Michael, Felos, or Judge Greer, Frank Pavone was a priest. Bobby had never met him, but he had heard him on television the night before, been impressed by his outspoken statements on pro-life issues, and figured he might, someday, come to our aid. Michael looked at our list and removed some names, but Frank Pavone, submitted without his priestly title, was not one of them. If he’d known the part Father Pavone would play later, his would have been one of the first names Michael crossed out.

On March 24, Judge Greer did issue a stay of the removal of the tube, to be in effect until all appellate remedies had been exhausted. Michael could sue to have this decision reversed, the judge said, but for whatever reason, Michael chose not to—at least not then.

He made a different move.

In early April, without consulting us or our attorney, Michael transferred Terri from the Palm Gardens nursing home to Woodside Hospice, a facility of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, in the city of Pinellas Park, just north of St. Petersburg. Again, this was supposedly for Terri’s “protection.” Michael needed a court order to have her transferred, and he got one without our knowledge. Who was chairman of the board of the hospice? George Felos.
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As soon as we found out about the transfer, Pam Campbell filed a motion with Judge Greer to have Terri transferred back to Palm Gardens. Since Terri had already moved, Greer said, the motion was irrelevant. Motion denied.

To me, putting Terri in a hospice was like putting her in jail. Michael was the jailer, Felos the warden. I could bang on the door, and they could let me in or not. I could scream for information, but they could ignore it. It was as though four hands were strangling me. Even as Terri continued to regress from lack of therapy and stimulation, evident in her clenched hands and by longer periods when it was difficult for her to respond, I felt she was being pushed further and further away. I imagined her crying out for her mother, and I was powerless to help her.

Bob and Bobby went to the hospice to speak to its administrator, Pat Sargent. They wanted to make sure Terri was getting the best care possible.

“We had one of the most heated arguments ever,” Bobby reported.
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“We were very worried about Terri’s safety and welfare because we knew she was now under Michael’s complete control, and we could do nothing because of Felos’s position on the board. We asked Pat Sargent if she’d let us know if Terri got sick. She stonewalled us. Well, then, we asked, what would she do if Terri got an infection? Her answer: nothing.

“The argument started in the hall and continued into her office. She had to see we were very upset. Yes, she was in her legal right, but didn’t she understand the human aspects? Eventually we backed off and calmed down, but I think I was almost as scared of my rage as Pat Sargent was. Even the hospice chaplain refused to help us. We turned to Joe Magri—and to the media.

“By this time, I was starting to have a little rapport with some of the reporters, and someone at Channel 28 put me on the air that night. I said, ‘Hey, my sister’s at a hospice now, and the hospice told me today that if Terri gets an infection, they won’t tell my family and they’ll let her die.’

“They had Felos on, too. ‘That’s hogwash,’ he said. ‘We’d never let her die.’”

Magri and Felos reached a compromise, though it wasn’t easy. In early May, Michael verbally committed to the court words to the effect that Terri would get medical treatment at Woodside, thereby canceling a court hearing Magri had applied for.

Michael later reneged on the commitment. The following month, however, he signed a document worked out by Felos and Magri that stated the hospice would not terminate or withdraw Terri’s treatment without prior notice to the court, and would treat Terri for five days if she got an infection. It meant that we would have a few days to fight if Terri got sick.

It’s a testament to my state of mind that such small “victories”—things it seemed to me that any humane person could never dispute—gave me comfort.

Meanwhile, Magri, reflecting our concern that Michael and Felos were acting in concert to kill Terri, worked on the appeal of Greer’s ruling removing the feeding tube. In early July, he filed with the appellate court to reverse the decision. His brief argued that the probate court had misapplied Florida law because it used an incorrect standard of proof; that Terri had a constitutional right to have all the evidence reviewed by a neutral arbiter; that Terri’s First Amendment rights were violated; and that Terri’s estate had been violated by wasting her money on legal fees.

Felos didn’t file an “answer brief” with the appellate court until late August. It argued that Judge Greer’s ruling was correct and pleaded that Terri be allowed to die “naturally.” I thought,
How can any sane human being consider starvation and dehydration “natural”?

An oral hearing was scheduled for November 8. A three-member panel consisting of Judges Jerry Parker, Chris Altenbernd, and John Blue would preside at the appellate court in Lakeland.

Thus, some ten months after we had our emotional lives turned into chaos by Judge Greer, we would have to go through the same suspense, the same anxiety, the same uncertainty, all over again. With no guarantee that anything would be different at the end.

Bobby’s description of his life during those months applied to us all:

“The case was starting to build some publicity, at least locally. More and more people were learning about it, more and more people became outraged. We were getting phone calls every day. People were contacting the Web site, e-mailing us. Glenn Beck, who at that time had a local radio show, was talking more about the case. Every day our family would call each other—a dozen, two dozen times—saying, ‘Hey, is anything going on?’ ‘Have you heard from any . . . ?’ ‘Did we get any . . .’ ‘Did Mr. Magri hear anything?’ ‘Any good news from the lawyers?’ Because I think each of us still had the sense that truth would prevail. Something was going to happen to stop this.