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Finished Would You by Marthe Jocelyn for the New Author Challenge.
This is a quick read--less than 200 pages, short chapters. It takes place over a summer week. Claire and Natalie are sisters and pretty close. Claire's going off to college in the fall and Natalie's spending time with her sister and her (Natalie's) friends.
And then Claire gets hit by a car. There's all kinds of trauma to the body and her brain's bleeding and swelling. So her family has to choose whether to keep her on life support or to let her die.
Really, really good book. And I cried a little at the end.
Also, because it's appropriate--I am an organ donor. And I would never want to be kept on life support. If I'm not at Johns Hopkins, I hope my family consults the doctors there and if there's no hope, pull the plug. It's too expensive, and besides, I'm not really alive anymore anyway.
Comments
That's how I feel, too. I won't need it anymore--I want to be cremated anyway, so there won't be an open casket or whatever--and if I can save lives (and, in the case of skin, improve someone's quality of life), why wouldn't I want to do that?
The Terri Schiavo case was so upsetting for me--I think I told everyone in my family (and a couple of friends) about 300 times that I did NOT want to be kept alive like that and if I were, people would be getting haunted. I get the impulse to keep the people you love with you, but it's selfish--they're already essentially dead, you know?
(I say that and I don't know what I would do if it were someone I loved.)