But Maggie is paralyzed when her neck is broken in a fight. In a climactic moment, she begs Frankie to pull the plug and let her die. Haggis faced a similar choice in real life with his best friend, who was brain-dead from a staph infection. “They don’t die easily,” he recalled. “Even in a coma, he kicked and moaned for twelve hours.”
Neck down paralysis and brain death are not the same. Also spinal reflexes can occur in brain death, and the moaning is definitely not conscious pain.
