"MONDAY 3PM" "Sunil, it's Paul calling..." "Paul weston." "Um, it's now 3:15 and I was just wondering where you are." "I'm pretty certain we agreed you'd be coming back this week." "Julia, this is... this is Dr. weston calling again." "I..." "I'm trying to reach your father-in-law." "And he doesn't seem to be responding to any of my messages on his cell." "I wonder if you could please have him be in touch or let me know how I might reach him." "I'd appreciate that." "Thank you." "So do you think I did the wrong thing?" "Why do you always assume that I'm judging you negatively?" "Isn't that a negative judgment?" "Frances, please, let's not start this again." "It's just the way that it feels." "You know, I think that you judge yourself negatively most of the time." "I think you expect people to think the worst of you..." "Izzy, Russell, Patricia." " You." " Yes, me." "Then you want me either to confirm what an empty, irresponsible..." "Narcissistic." "...Person you are..." "Is that what you think?" "...Or you want me to refute it in some way that will validate you once and for all in the eyes of the world." "That's not my job." "So what is your job?" "My job is to help you discover what you think of yourself and if you're displeased with what you discover, to help you change that." "Right." "Let me rephrase:" "What do you think of what I did?" "Patricia was in deep distress and you had to make a choice." "I think what you did sounds reasonable." "Well, Izzy doesn't think so." "She says Trish wanted to be at home, we had finally gotten her home, and I was wrong to send her back." "Well, Izzy wasn't there on Sunday night, so it's easy for her to stand in judgment." "She thinks I should have just held her, held on to her, done nothing until tricia, I don't know, lost consciousness, went into a coma, fuck, died in my arms, I guess." "It sounds simple in theory... no extraordinary measures." "Yeah, and the crazy part is it was going okay this week..." "I mean better than okay even... fine." "Tricia wanted to die at home and that's," "I guess, what she was doing." "And Sunday..." "Sunday started out the same." "Izzy had spent the whole day with her and then I came to be with her for the night." "And when the hospice nurse left, she quizzed me on everything." "She gave me her number to call her at home in case I needed to." "And then she checked to make sure the rescue kit was stocked... morphine, something for nausea, something else for fever." "Tricia has this port now, you know, that you can inject whatever into." "It's a lot of responsibility." "It's not so hard." "We had a decent night actually." "You know, tricia seemed almost stronger." "You know, her temperature was way down." "She started asking about daddy." "She was so young when he died." "She hardly has any memory of him... none really." "Suddenly she was curious." "And what did you tell her about your father?" "That's the alarming part." "I mean he's really faded for me too." "I told her I had this vivid memory of him picking her up when she was a little baby." "He was laughing and smiling and holding her up to the sky." "She was laughing." "Everybody was saying how beautiful she was, you know, what a gorgeous baby." "That's a lovely memory to have." "Well, I don't know that I really remember it or if mama told it to me or it's from an old photo." "Either way, the image is clearly important to you." "I hope it's real." "I hope it really happened." "The rest of the night is a blur." "The way I remember it, we went from, you know, childhood reminiscing... these happy memories by the bedside, to five paramedics shoving a tube down Tricia's throat." "And it happened just that fast, in an instant." "I know it wasn't, but... but that's what it felt like." "Yes, it was awful." "I mean she just sat up in the bed gasping for breath like she was drowning or something." "I gave her more morphine, but it didn't help." "And I called the nurse and she didn't answer." "And Tricia's saying, "help me." "Help me."" "And what am I supposed to do?" "Nothing?" "You know, later in the ambulance" "I'm looking at her and I'm thinking, "oh shit," "Izzy's gonna be so mad with me." "I should not have let them do that."" "But it was... it was beyond your control." "That's what Izzy doesn't get." "In the hospital she was just screaming at me..." ""why didn't you call me?"" "How could you not honor Patricia's wishes?" "You always do exactly what you want to do,"" "on and on." "It was like an assault." "And you know what the final thing she said to me before she walked off in a rage was?" ""You really fucked this up, mom."" "So... so how is Patricia?" "She's, you know, sedated, on the ventilator." "Is she conscious?" "In and out." "Mostly out." "And when she comes around, does she know who you are?" "I think so." "I don't know." "And what's her prognosis?" "Will she go home again?" "The doctors say no." "I really did fuck this up." "You did the best you could." "No, but my best was pretty fucking pathetic, wasn't it?" "I don't think so, not at all." "Her living will." "Look at what it says at the very bottom." ""I hereby appoint" "Frances Greer as my health care agent to make all health care decisions for me in conformity with the guidelines i have expressed in this document."" "She named you." "Are you surprised?" "That she chose you?" "No, I'm not." "Clearly you are." "You'd seen this before Sunday." "Ugh, that's part of the reason Izzy's so furious." "She says tricia trusted me and that I failed her." "I tried to explain to her what it felt like in the mom." "This was the last thing I was thinking about, the last thing that tricia was thinking about." "She wanted me to call." "Did she?" "Yes, she did." "She was begging me..." ""please get help." "Get help, Frances."" "But that's not what you said earlier." "Fuck, I don't know." "Maybe that isn't what she was saying." "Maybe I just heard what I wanted to hear." "Can we talk about how... how we move forward from here?" "You've dealt with one extremely painful situation and now you're facing another." "What did the doctors say?" "Well, they said I have to think about a couple of things, you know... whether to take her off the ventilator." "I don't think I can do it." "I keep wondering why tricia chose me." "She must have known that I don't have this in me." "I'm not up to it." "Who do you think she should have chosen?" "This is such a mess." "I don't know what to do." "I imagine Izzy is for it... taking her off the ventilator." "That's the bewildering thing... she's not." "Now it's all, "don't you dare." "She could rally and come home." ""Don't you dare think about killing her."" "Is that really how she put it?" "Last night she said I... no, I can't even repeat it." "What?" "She said that I've always hated tricia and that I want her to die." "Well..." "I hope that you can put that remark in perspective." "You've got to remember she's just a teenager and she's dealing with the imminent death of somebody that she loves very much." "Of course she's gonna be angry." "And of course she's gonna take it out on you." "I want to make sure that you hear this clearly:" "It would be normal, when all this is over, to feel a sense of relief." "You said there were a couple of decisions to be made." "A feeding tube... that's the next big one." "Izzy's all for it, paradoxically." "And you?" "I haven't made up my mind." "What about Patricia?" "I can't not feed her, Paul." "The idea of starving my sister to death... it's just not something I can do." "I'm not strong enough." "Your sister thought you were." "You say you don't know why she chose you, but Patricia knew what she was doing." "She put you in charge of these extremely difficult decisions." "And that means that she trusted you... trusts you to make the right choices." "She believes that you have it in you." "What if Izzy's right?" "She keeps sending me these articles, stuff from the Internet where people go off the ventilator and they breathe on their own." "They wake up." "Let me ask you again... what would Patricia want?" "If she was sitting right in front of you, what do you think she would say?" "The will that you have there in your hand... what does it say about extraordinary measures?" "Please read it to me." "The part in bold in the middle of the page." "Please." ""I do not want cardiac resuscitation."" "I do not want mechanical respiration." "I do not want tube feeding." "I do not want antibiotics." ""I do want maximum pain relief."" "Then it's clear, isn't it?" "She wanted to die at home." "I know." "If I pull the plug, as Izzy says, there's no chance for that." "I mean, maybe..." "I know that you want to give your sister the death that she envisioned for herself, but it's a fantasy." "And in that fantasy you get to redeem yourself." "And that's why you cling to it." "It seems to me that Patricia's wishes are right in front of you in that letter and what she's asking you to do is to follow her instructions." "What am I gonna do when she's not here?" "You know, 'cause I have no one really... nobody... nobody that knew me when I was a kid." "She... it's like that time when we were kids won't exist anymore, you know." "It will just be stories." "I won't even know which ones are real and which ones I made up, like that picture of my father holding her up in the air." "Without her I don't know." "You don't know what?" "No, it's just she grounded me, you know?" "She... she believes in me." "You said it, Paul." "Remember last week I told you that she said, "I love you"?" "You know, I cannot remember the last time that somebody said that to me." "You know what that feels like to lose that, to be completely alone?" "Yes." "I don't think it's quite true though that you're going to be completely alone." "You have Izzy." "Izzy hates me." "You're her mother." "She needs you." "She needs you to be there for her when Patricia passes." "We've talked about this." "I believe that relationship can be repaired." "I'm not so sure of that." "It'll take time, but you can do it." "You have your work." "You have your career." "Please, the play is gonna close." "It's not gonna extend past the limited run and..." "I've read the reviews." "You read them?" "They're good, especially for you." "Not good enough to keep it past the limited run." "Look, I asked you something last week and you didn't get a chance to answer because Izzy interrupted us." "What was that?" "She said that therapy wouldn't do me any good." "Oh yes." "Yes, I remember." " She diagnosed you." " A true narcissist." "Where did Izzy get her degree?" "Do you agree with her?" "That you are a narcissist?" "No, that I can't be helped, I can't change." "Tell me this... because I need to know that you'll be here for me." "Will you be here for me?" "I will." "You hesitated." "It's just... earlier on we... we kind of touched on this... why you chose me." "Are you still certain that that was the right decision?" "Yeah, you knew Trish and Trish knew me." "I wanted that connection." "I want to keep that connection." "Does that make sense?" "Yes." "So what are you going to do?" "About tricia?" "I don't know." "I guess I'll tell you next week." "Tell me something, Paul... were you in love with her?" "I cared about her a great deal." "She was... she was a striking woman." "Yeah, she was."