Earth Angel

They stopped the forced feeding three months ago. She still hasn’t had any food or water. How does she survive?” “Says she can convert light into energy and store it in her body - like a plant.” “You’ve got to be kidding.” “No, I’m not.” Detective James Parker sat in the passenger side of a gray unmarked police car flipping through files on his lap. He tried swallowing the excitement in his voice, but he wasn’t succeeding. His partner Sergeant Richard Boyle glowered at him. In the department for over thirty years, Boyle was close to retiring and pissed to be stuck with tan ambitious rookie who was studying for a law degree and taking this case too seriously. That enthusiasm was making Boyle’s thin patience, thinner. “A precedent was set,” Parker continued haltingly. “Her lawyer, James Scanlon - know who he is?” Boyle glowered. “Big time!“ Parker continued, ignoring Boyle’s reaction. “Scanlon brought in evidence that people can exist without food, citing an Indian woman who had not eaten for 55 years, another in Canada who started fasting in 1923...” “They must have been skinny,” Boyle laughed, patting his ample stomach bulging over the buckle of a cowboy belt, engraved, C.O.P.. Parker pulled a file out. “The background on this case is interesting. The state Supreme Court overturned a lower Court decision to continue intravenous feeding against the patient’s will. It’s all here in the transcript. Wanna read it?” Parker held the paper out to Boyle who waved it away. “Whataya nuts? I’m driving. You read it.” Parker cleared his throat. “The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Jenny Webster, declared unanimously that she has a ‘fundamental right’ to refuse food or drink.” “Ha!” Boyle snorted, “rights…” Parker went on. “After due deliberation, Judge Robert Gray wrote that for self-determination to have any meaning, it cannot be subject to the scrutiny of anyone else’s conscience or sensibilities. It is the individual who must live or die with the course of treatment chosen or rejected, not the state.” “Yeah?” asked Boyle, skeptical. Parker raised his eyebrows and smiled. “She’s been in that hospital without eating for three months.” He paused, waiting. Again Boyle didn’t react, so he continued. “According to the reports she’s healthy as a horse.” Boyle frowned. “I don’t believe it.” “But its here. A matter of record.” “It’s bullshit. The whole thing’s a put on. Someone’s slipping her something. Can’t you see it? You’ve got a lot to learn!” Boyle gunned the gas pedal of the late model Chevrolet, swerving around a corner and barely missing a young woman pushing a baby stroller. Parker didn’t seem to notice as he searched to get his bearings. The car slammed to a stop in front of a two-story apartment that hadn’t seen a paintbrush in more than ten years. On a dusty lawn in front , a gaggle of rumpled old people sat on aluminum folding chairs, gossiping in the pale sunlight. Parker checked the address against a document in his hand. He hadn’t expected that Jenny Webster’s apartment would be in a place like this. Feeling conspicuous as he climbed out of the sedan, Parker felt six pairs of curious eyes turning to stare as a gust of wind revealed the gun holstered beneath his jacket. Boyle nodded to the group as Parker marched stiffly past them, his eyes straight ahead, his neck prickling with the old people’s stares. Across the street two young boys, their pale skinny legs bruised and scratched, kicked fiercely at each other as they played soccer on the sidewalk. Boyle opened the front door using a passkey. The elderly audience gazed knowingly. They knew who those men were. Cops. They shifted in their plastic webbing, watching the action like it was a television screen. An old woman with skin like crumpled tissue paper pushed her loose teeth back against her gums with a practiced finger and hissed to a fat woman in the next chair. “It’s about that girl on the second floor.” “She hasn’t been here for awhile,” the plump woman agreed. “Right.” Boyle puffed his way up the stairs to the second floor and followed Parker down the peeling corridor to apartment 2A. “I can’t believe this fasting business,” he wheezed as he fumbled through his master keys. “She’s got to be getting something, pills, water - someone’s passing her something.” “Not according to the hospital,” said Parker, wrinkling his nose against the sour cooking smells that permeated the hallway. “Hospitals,” snorted Boyle. “What the hell do they know? I knew a guy once - cat burglar. Climbed out of a hospital window every night for two weeks. Hid his loot in the Director’s office.” He chuckled. “One night the guy broke his leg trying to climb back in. I read him his rights while they set the bone.” A child screamed in the apartment across the hall. A woman’s shrill voice yelled back. There was a sound of breaking crockery. “Nice neighbors,” observed Parker as Boyle jammed a key into the lock. The door opened. “Jesus H. Christ,” breathed Boyle. “What is it?” asked Parker. Boyle didn’t answer but walked straight in. The apartment was sumptuous. Elegant furniture beautifully placed on polished hardwood floors glinted in shafts of pale sunlight filtered by oriental window screens. There were potted ferns and palms casting geometric shadows on the glossy white walls, and a white marble Parsons table used as a desk with a sleek lap top computer placed precisely in the center. Brushed aluminum trays held papers, floor to ceiling bookshelves covered one wall, and a mass of elegantly framed lithographs covered another. “Why in the hell would she live in a neighborhood like this?” Parker whispered. Chills ran down his spine as he looked at the exquisite room. He had never seen anything like it except in magazines. He wondered at the dichotomy; extreme elegance in working clas