A Life That Matters (7 page)

A:
I believe in the vows I took with my wife, through sickness, in health, for richer or poor. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I’m going to do that.

Moving testimony from the 1992 trial, told with passion and conviction, accompanied by Michael’s sobs and tears. Bobby and I were in the courtroom as Michael testified, and were deeply moved. I imagined then that our son-in-law was feeling as much pain as I was. Michael said nothing about Terri’s wish to die in case of a traumatic injury.

Michael had repeatedly told us that any money he won, and Terri won, from the lawsuits would go toward her rehabilitation. When Terri came back from California and was living at MediPlex, Dr. Yingling urged us to move Terri to the Shands Hospital rehabilitation center in Gainesville.
¹
Michael and we agreed that when and if Michael received an award, this would be our plan. Michael promised that Shands would be her next stop, for it was her best hope.
²

We believed him, even though all through 1991–92, there were indications that Michael was neither the good husband nor the diligent caretaker he portrayed himself as being during the trial.

In the summer of 1991, he transferred Terri from the MediPlex rehab center to the Sabal Palms nursing home in Largo, Florida. Michael told us MediPlex had recommended we discontinue rehab, that it made no sense to keep her there. This was the beginning of the end. From that point forward, Terri was denied any chance of improving. Tragically, she was never to receive any rehabilitation or therapy again. We were legally unable to stop him—we had, remember, given up our right to have a say in any medical decisions regarding our daughter—but he told us he was doing it for her good, that he had investigated the nursing home and was convinced she would be well cared for until the medical malpractice money came through.

•  It was in this period (September 1991) that he had the terrible fight with Suzanne.

•  It was in this period that he began a relationship with a nurse named Cindi Shook.

•  In May 1992, Michael moved out of our Vina del Mar house to live with his new girlfriend, Cindi Shook. Good, we thought. This would leave us free to take care of Terri.

•  To our horror, he had Terri’s two cats euthanized because Cindi had a dog and didn’t want cats.

•  In August 1992, Terri’s GP, Dr. Prawer,
³
on the advice of his insurance company, settled Michael’s suit out of court for $250,000. Despite these assurances, we have no idea where the money went because he never informed us. The money was to go to Terri. Michael promised to add it to the malpractice lawsuit award—there would be that much more to spend on Terri’s rehabilitation, he told us. But the money went elsewhere, and he never told us where.

All this should have made us more suspicious of our son-in-law. Yet so great were our dreams, and so persuasive Michael’s assurances, that we simply waited for the trial to begin and focused on the victory we assumed would soon be ours. Our hope was that we’d get enough financing to take care of Terri at Shands—and then, when she was better, to bring her home for the rest of her life.

The verdict came quickly. Woodworth had asked for $20 million. The jury, evidently buying the argument that Terri was bulimic but figuring that she herself was 70 percent at fault for her condition, awarded her $1.56 million and Michael $686,700 for loss of consortium. We were elated. Terri’s financial problems had ended. We would be able to take care of her for as long as necessary. We could devote ourselves to her without worrying about the cost. As Michael said to me, “Mom, you and Dad [meaning Bob] and my mother and father will never have to worry again a day in your lives.” If he said it once, he said it a thousand times.

A few weeks later, Bob went to Michael. “You made a commitment,” he said. “If we got the money, you were going to give Terri the therapy you promised. When is that going to be?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Michael said.

Bob went to see him again a few days later with the same result.

On February 14, 1993, St. Valentine’s Day, Bob and I went to the nursing home. Michael was in Terri’s room, doing his homework for the nursing course he was taking. What happened next produced such deep emotional scars that even as I write this, twelve years later, I can feel our anger, relive the depths of our pain.

Bob started with his by-now-familiar plea. “Michael, your commitment. The promises you made to give Terri rehabilitation. When are you going to do that?”

“There’s no money,” Michael said coldly.
⁴

“What do you mean there’s no money? Terri got over a million dollars—and you said you were going to use it for her rehabilitation.”

Michael was silent for a moment. Then, face contorted, eyes flashing disgust, he hurled his books across the room. “Look,” he screamed. “I’m her husband. I’ll make all the decisions. You have nothing to say.”

He came after Bob physically, fists raised, wild with rage. “I thought we were going to tangle, and I was prepared to defend myself,” Bob remembers.

Terrified, I had to jump in between the two of them to stop them from hurting each other.

“You’re a liar,” Bob said.

Panting, his face bright red, the cords on his neck bulging, Michael glared at us. “This has nothing to do with you,” he said. “This is about my wife, and as far as I’m concerned, you will never see your daughter again—that is, if I have anything to do with it.” He turned around and stormed down the hall. “I’m calling my lawyer,” he shouted.

And that was it.

The words “you will never see your daughter again” hung in the room like poison gas. Then, too upset to see Terri, we drove home and told Bobby what happened. He put his hand through the wall.

“It was almost like I knew that was going to happen,” Bobby
says. “In fact, I had suggested even before the malpractice suit that we should sit down and get Michael to put everything in writing.” (It was still a time when we trusted Michael, and Bob and I didn’t think it was necessary.)

“Anyway, I ran out to the car. I was going to confront him. I was going to drive to his house, and I don’t know what I would have done. And Mom came running after me, crying and begging me not to go, not to go. I was out of my mind, beyond reason, I was that mad. But I didn’t go, which might have saved his life—or mine.

“One of the things that always upset me later was the questions the media asked all the time. ‘What about the breakup? What about the split between the families?’ Through his lawyer George Felos, Michael would say, ‘This wasn’t about rehabilitation and therapy, this was about Mr. Schindler wanting his piece of the pie. He was demanding money from me and I wasn’t going to give in to him.’

“Okay. Let’s for a moment pretend that Dad was only after the money. That Dad was the worst person in the world. What bearing would it have on Michael’s promise to use the money for rehabilitation and therapy? It doesn’t take away the commitment he made to himself and to the jury—and to our family—that he was going to care for Terri for the rest of his life. And what does it have to do with his petitioning the courts to remove her feeding tube? It’s as though he was saying, the father is a bad guy, therefore I’m going to kill his daughter.”

That Valentine’s Day was one of our darkest days. It was as though Michael had punched us in the stomach, taken our breath away. I thought of how my brother-in-law had been saved by the very rehabilitation Terri had been refused. She would exist at Sabal Palms nursing home with nothing but the most rudimentary care. No doctor, no therapist, no psychologist, would be allowed to try to make her better.

My thoughts went back to when she was a little baby and couldn’t speak for herself. But as any mother does, I knew when my baby needed help, and I was always there to ease her pain, mend her cuts and bruises, comfort her when she was sick. Now, though, her husband would not let anyone tell me if she was sick, let alone allow me to tend to her. It was unbearable.

CHAPTER 7

Sabal Palms

Almost immediately—we think it was on Valentine’s Day itself—Michael told the administrators at Sabal Palms not to release any medical information to us without his authority. He also instituted a “do not resuscitate” order.

On one of my visits to see Terri, she was sitting in the atrium looking pale and uncomfortable.

A nurse approached. “Gee, she looks kind of funny,” I said.

“Well, you know, she just got back from the hospital.”

No one had told us anything about a hospital, but I played along, figuring it was the best way to get information.

“Yes. But is she getting any better?”

“Absolutely! Do you remember that they took her gallstones out?”
¹

“Of course. It was in the spring.”

“She’s on antibiotics now,” the nurse went on.

I thought I must be going mad. “That’s great. What for?”

“She had a really bad urinary tract infection. But,” she added cheerfully, “the antibiotics will cure it.”

It was like being hit by lightning when we later found out that in June Terri had another UTI and that Michael had ordered Sabal Palms to refuse her any medication. The action was a potential death sentence. Untreated, the infection—sepsis—would spread throughout Terri’s body and she would die. It is thanks to the people at Sabal Palms, who countermanded Michael’s wishes, that she survived. Without them, she might have died before we even knew she was in danger! The thought terrified me. We resolved to be more vigilant in the future—but how?

Bob made a direct plea to Michael in a letter:

July 16, 1993

Mike

Long before and during the malpractice trial, you made a number of commitments to Mary and myself. One of your commitments was that award money was to be used to enhance Terri’s medical and neurological care . . .

Since the trial and the ensuing award, you have chosen to ignore your commitments and have totally removed Terri from our lives. You have not communicated to us anything concerning her medical nor neurological status.

We want to know what Terri’s latest evaluations are both medically and neurologically. It is very upsetting to be told by her medical attendants that you instructed them to withhold any and all information concerning our daughter’s medical status . . .

I/we are requesting you to keep us informed, on a weekly basis, of Terri’s condition and progress. Simply drop us a note telling us what is happening. It will only take a few minutes. I am sure we will all sleep more comfortably.

On a long term basis, I would like you to consider giving Terri back to us, so we can give her the love and care she deserves. Logically and realistically you still have a life ahead of you.

Give this some thought. Are you ready to dedicate the rest of your life to Terri? We are! Let us know your feelings.

Mary and Bob Schindler

There was no reply.

Imagine what it’s like to have your young and beautiful daughter in a nursing home in the first place. Then imagine that someone is controlling the information—or lack of it—you receive about her condition. Imagine what it’s like to go to sleep (
if
you can sleep) without knowing whether your daughter is sick, whether there’s been some crisis, whether her condition is stable or deteriorating. And imagine being in this position not just in one specific instance, but for twelve years.

No, don’t imagine. I don’t wish even the thought of it on anyone else.

Michael threatened Bob with a lawsuit, demanding return of $650 we “owed” him for household items he had contributed to our Vina del Mar living room. We felt it was a deliberate affront and decided to contest it. We hired a lawyer, Jim Sheehan, to represent us.
²
Sheehan was outraged by Michael’s order to deny Terri medication. “This is wrong. He can’t do that,” he said, and promptly went after Michael’s guardianship of Terri. Sabal Palms initially agreed to file a joint suit with us, but later backed off, giving as their excuse that there
was so much evidence against Michael that we didn’t need them.
³
In Michael’s deposition for the case, responding to the question “Why are you trying to kill her?” he answered, “Because I think it’s what she’d want.”

I think
that’s what she’d want. She had never said it
was
what she wanted. He was guessing at her wishes, and didn’t state in open court that they
were
her wishes until 2000, when he was arguing for the removal of Terri’s feeding tube. What she did and didn’t want with regard to her death wasn’t an issue in 1993. He would change his testimony seven years later, when the issue was at the core of our fight, and when it suited him.

The summer had passed almost without our noticing it. Be-
fore Terri’s collapse, these months were a time for vacation, but now vacations of more than a couple of days were impossible. We kept working, occasionally went out to dinner, saw friends. Our world’s boundaries were home and nursing home. Terri was always our primary concern.

In the fall of 1993, the court appointed an investigator named Novinski to try to determine Michael’s fitness as Terri’s guardian. After an inquiry of several weeks, he concluded Michael should be removed.

We were jubilant. If Michael were removed, he could no longer single-handedly dictate Terri’s treatment. Judge Thomas Penick, who presided over the hearings, announced that he would appoint a guardian ad litem
(an independent, interim guardian) and set a date two weeks later for the court to reconvene.

The guardian ad litem’s name was John Pecarek. Judge Penick asked him if he had had an opinion on who the best permanent guardian might be. “Michael Schiavo,” Pecarek stated firmly.

“Case closed,” Penick declared, slamming his book closed, rising from the bench, and heading for the door.

“Wait a minute, Your Honor!” Jim Sheehan shouted after him. “You haven’t even given me a chance to cross-examine him.”

“It’s closed,” Penick said. “It’s over.” He walked out the door, Sheehan rushing after him to no avail.