The doctor motioned me into the hall. It was just he and I standing there - no witnesses, no contrary ideology, no colleagues, no clergy, no member of the palliative care team. He attacked me, telling me my husband was dying and he would not give him food.

Then he walked into Jay's room and looked into his pleading eyes. He saw the tears and the emotion. He heard him say, "I am hungry. Yes, I want to eat."  - - -

Without a tricle of observable humanity, the doctor pivoted on the spot and spit the words out of his mouth like daggers stolen from street crime, "I guess I'll have to do it then."

Would this doctor have acted the same way with colleagues, visitors, people with dissenting views, or the media at hand? Would he be a different man, at a different time, with a different audience, in a different place?

Was the doctor really there or was it just a human shell we saw? Did he see the emotion in my husband's eyes? Did he hear the pleading? Did he feel a tug at his heart? Did he see a man lying there or was his disconnect complete? - - - - -

Was Jay no longer a man who could walk, and think, and feel? Or had he become a statistic instead? Was the end to the doctor's means the dollar, prestige, saving face, power, esteem?

If none of these . . . what then?