LEFT ON THE TABLE, THE HUMAN AND THUS TRUE COST OF ENDING JUSTICE IN HEALTH CARE

LEFT ON THE TABLE BY MATTHEW LUCAS BECKETT The operation was at its critical mid point when the call came through. My Niece, Nicole, had been sick for two years. The Cancer had first appeared when she was twenty-eight, but at the time there had been nothing that could be done but watch and wait. Since she had been born with only one kidney, no Health Insurance Company would come near her even before the diagnosis, and certainly not after. “You should just accept your fate, Nick,” I tried to explain to her more than once. “Sometimes The Lord gives us a long life, and sometimes not. If He wanted you to have a long life, he wouldn't have made you subhuman by giving you just one kidney.” Even though that was true, saying it aloud had been a mistake. My sister had thrown me out and not let me back in her house for two months, and only then after an on my belly apology to Nicole, who had only just now, more than a year later, let me start calling her Nick, as her family and friends did, again. Then, of course, came the horrible health care reform law that said Insurance Companies could no longer discriminate against people like her, and even though I and every other Republican in the country had been working hard ever since to get it undone, we had not yet succeeded when she signed up first for Health Insurance. There had been signs, recently, of hope for repealing or at least defunding the awful idea, but these had not achieved the desired end before she had signed up for the operation to fight her cancer. I still thought, as a subhuman monster, she should just accept her fate and die, especially since the law might be undone any day now, but I kept my moth shut for I knew what my bleeding heart liberal sister, Nick's mother, would do and say if I voiced this opinion. There had been weeks of waiting and preparing, of course. This was not an operation one just had done and then left, and each day those of us on the right side of Health Care Reform, firmly against it, got closer to winning. After all, if a client can not help a company earn a profit, the company should not be compelled to keep them on. But at last the blasted day came. We all went to the hospital, even me. We were all in the waiting room, waiting for who knew what. Suddenly, though, we all turned to The TV. News as we heard the words I'd been waiting for for a long time. “And in a stunningly fast maneuver, both Chambers of Congress have just overridden President Davison's Veto of his Landmark Justice In Health Care Act. So the law is gone, immediately, and everything reverts to what it was before.” Two minutes later,, the doctors came out. “What happened?” Screamed my sister. “You're too early. Did she die?” A doctor shook his head. “We legally had to stop, where we wee, when the call came through about the law. We were right at the critical point, but we cannot go on. You can go in and see her, but by law there is nothing more we can do.” Then they walked away, leaving my sister and her husband, for once, thankfully, speechless. When we made it to the operating room, we found Nick wide awake, wide open, and screaming. “What in the . . .?” she fought to find words. “'So called Justice in Health Care' was just undone, so the doctors had to stop, right where they were, by law,” I explain. “I told you that. . .” I stop at the looks on her parents' faces. If looks could kill. “So what now?!” she screamed in agony. “Now you get The Hell out of my Hospital and die somewhere else, Monster,” says the director of The Hospital, a former High Raking Republican Congressman whose name escapes me at the moment. “NOW.” We grab the screaming girl by feet and head and start to carry her out. Right when we come to the long hall that the doors lie at he other end of, however, Nick's screams cease. Looking down, we see her last breath leave her lungs and no more come in. “If you say that she deserved this or that this is as it should be, John,” my sister says. “I'll push you out that fifth floor window over there. They didn't even close her up. We'll have to bury her like this.” “You could cremate. . .” I start to say, when my brother-in-law's fist connects with the back of my head and I know no more.