The average woman in the United States is expected to live up to eighty years. Given that I’m fifteen years old and assuming that I maintain a lifestyle no riskier than the one I lead now, I should be granted sixty-five years of life down the line. If I take good care of my health, I might be gifted with more. But I don’t want to live any longer than I’m supposed to.
My great-grandparents on both sides of my family managed to spend a good ninety-plus years on earth before kicking the bucket and going elsewhere. The thought depressed me more than losing Natalie’s friendship.
I think about the expanse of the rest of my life stretched before me. I imagine a friendless, academic existence made of endless hours of rigorous classes punctuated by lonely lunch hours. At the end of my four years, I picture a spare graduation where only my family members cheered for my name while I crossed the stage. College would be similarly isolating, but I promised myself it would be more bearable. I would be too busy with classes by then, too occupied for anything resembling a friend.
Then, there would be the dreary trudge of the remainder of my existence where I worked to make as much money as I could and die swiftly. Never mind falling in love because boys are stupid and awkward creatures or starting a family because that will demand of me more than I can give.
It wasn’t a life worth living, but it was the only one I could picture. The bleak tableau percolated into my brain one afternoon during ethics class. Indeed, Two Bridges was the sort of institution that had a pretentious class for teaching high school students the difference between wrong and right and discussing pointless things like “current events” and “world news.”
The topic that day had been euthanasia. It was appropriately controversial, precisely the thing to get a classroom full of teenagers to start arguing. Is it ethical to have physician-assisted suicide? Yes or no?
But I suppose the real question was whether it made sense for a person to die when they wanted to. The class split into two camps. I was randomly assigned to prepare the argument for euthanasia. Across the room, Louis was put into the group against it.
I came up with three key points. The first was that dying was a fundamental right. People deserved to choose how they died. In a world of car accidents and burning houses, didn’t the average person deserve the safe assurance of dying in their sleep? Was a needle full of lethal chemicals worse than getting hit by a truck?
The second point was that it was cruel to prolong excessive suffering. The teacher had given us articles and videos of people who lived with depression for years, individuals with painful chronic conditions, and patients with terminal illnesses. Given the limitations of modern medicine, it made no sense to continue to force people who experienced hell on earth to live longer than they wanted to. Did anyone want to be the person to tell the patient subjected to rounds of painful chemotherapy that they had to keep going even with their unnaturally short life span?
The third point was a matter of resources. Why spend unnecessary money and resources keeping people alive when they want to die when those same money and resources could be used to sustain those who genuinely desire to live? I think this point was objectively the most difficult to argue against. It was cold but utilitarian.
The argument wasn’t flawless, but that was the whole point. Both sides of euthanasia, pro and con, has its merits. A good debater understands the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. A great one could undermine and support each side with ease.
I am neither good nor great. But there was a new student in our class, a Swedish boy named Mikael Svensson, who seemed to handle the beats of the argument easily. At first glance, he didn’t appear to be sharp. I thought he was timid and soft, with his tousled dirty blond hair and dark russet eyes.
“You’re familiar with the argument,” he said after we finished preparations.
“I did the readings,” I replied. We were assigned them as homework the day before.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Then, what do you mean?”
He meets my gaze evenly. “You agree with the argument. You believe euthanasia is a good thing.”
“I do.” For some reason, I feel compelled to be honest with him. He didn’t strike me as judgmental or particularly mean.
“Why?” His eyes search mine with open curiosity.
I look away. “Why not? It’s not unkind.”
Before he could probe me more, the debate commenced. Louis led the other team’s side, presenting the first of their three points. He began with the obvious.
“It goes completely against the Hippocratic Oath,” he said. “Doctors have a duty of care and healing. Killing someone goes against that completely.”
“Is that still true for a stage IV cancer patient? Can a doctor fulfill their oath by trying to keep someone alive, someone that modern science can’t cure?”
Mikael presented the counterarguments. Two other students presented the first two main points while I took the third and final point. I didn’t want to outshine my peers, but I also didn’t want to come off as slacking with my classwork. Presenting last was the perfect compromise between those competing desires.
After the debate, the teacher gave us notes on how to improve our style of argument. For Louis, he cautioned against ad hominem attacks. For me, he asked for stronger arguments that fully addressed the merits of the opposition. For Mikael, there were no notes.
As a reward for completing the debate, the teacher played a snippet of a film. I don’t remember its name, but a scene from it is burned into my mind’s eye.
The camera pans to a huddle of penguins. The voiceover informs the audience that a scientist in Antarctica has been observing them for a series of years to track mating behavior. The calm German narrator asks the frazzled scientist casually sitting among the penguins if insanity is possible for the animal. The scientist smiles at the unusual question, but he answers with the tone of someone talking about what they had for breakfast.
“I’ve never seen a penguin bashing its head against a rock. Um, they do get disoriented. They do end up in places they shouldn’t be, a long way from the ocean.”
A swell of ominous orchestral music floods the speakers. A speck of black and white specks waddle on the screen. The German narrator says they’re headed to the ocean to hunt for food. Another speck waddles in the opposite direction, back to the colony.
But one penguin does neither. The camera zooms in on the bird waddling toward the mountains in the distance, away from its brethren. The narrator describes the penguin as deranged, headed for certain death because the terrain contained no resources to sustain the animal.
“Dr. Ainley explained even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would immediately head back for the mountains.” The narrator went on to say that he could not interfere with the path of the penguins, that he must stay still and let them go about their way.
I stare at the screen in wonder. Here was an animal, who much like myself, did not want to behave rationally. Did the penguin know, somewhere deep down, that it wouldn’t function in regular penguin society? Was he simply accelerating what I already contended with, waddling to the mountains to finish the slow march of life prematurely?
I think about this at lunch, nibbling on leftover pastries from my family’s bakery. Even eating seemed useless in the grand scheme of things. What was the point of it all? I imagine leaving my food on the cafeteria table and walking out of the school, zombie-like into Manhattan traffic. All of my worries - college, grades, and eventually, a job - would disappear along with me, crushed by the tires of so many cars.
“Hey.” The single word snaps me out of my trance. Two girls sit across the table from me, a golden-skinned girl wearing a pink hijab and another who could only be described as a porcelain doll come to life.
“We noticed that you were eating by yourself,” the hijabi said. “Do you mind if we sit with you?”
“I mean, we’re already sitting with you,” the porcelain girl interjected. “What we’re really asking is if you’d let us eat with you. It’s not good for your health to have your lunch alone.”
I had spent months eating alone. What was another hour of the lunch period going to do, spontaneously give me cancer?
I picture myself on the icy Antarctic tundra clothed in black and white. To my right, I see the vast ocean teeming with fish. Up ahead, the mountains and certain death loom. To my left, I see others like me, eating in the colony.
Without thinking, I turn left. I ask for the girls’ names. The hijabi was Maia, a Malaysian girl who was quick to show me the Cartier bracelet on her left wrist, a birthday gift from her father. The porcelain doll was Ainsley, a reserved Singaporean who, despite wearing the same uniform as the two of us, appeared more regal. I suspect she had her clothes tailored to fit her body better, but I also had a feeling she would deny it if I ever asked.
I offer them the pastries in my bag. From that day forward, I spent the rest of my lunch periods in Two Bridges with them. Little did I know what that would mean for my mental health for the remainder of high school.
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