I was mad at myself for not doing a better exam in the ED to see if our guy was truly brain dead. That diagnosis is transformative. The same warm body from ten seconds ago undergoes a state change, much like the transition of a liquid into a solid, and once pronounced officially dead, is entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, which is to say, none whatsoever. When you are dead you cease to be a person, and you become an object. You no longer have possessions, a future, even a present, only a past. But Mike was not dead yet, not legally, not biologically, not until we said he was.
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