Murder: What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make?

The most expensive costs to insurance programs are the first and last six months of life. In Murder—What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make? the government has created ways to drastically reduce those costs. Quint and Doris Ursini are an unwilling part of the cost-reduction program.

Mommy?

Yes, dear.

Where’s our baby?

Our baby? We don’t have a baby. Why do you ask about a baby?

In your tummy—you called it our little bump. Now our bump is gone. I heard you and Daddy talking about our baby. Where is the little bump? I want to see it.

Dear, you’re only five. I think you’re confused. Honey, there is no baby. You’re our baby—our only child. Maybe someday you’ll have a brother or sister, but for now the three of us are a family.

No! No, Mamma! I heard Daddy—he doesn’t want any more. You had our little bump in your tummy. I heard you and Daddy talking—you said you had a baby in your tummy.

Where’s our baby, Mommy?

* * * * * * *

Over 56 million babies have been aborted in the United States of America since Roe vs. Wade. The Supreme Court of the United States of America—the land of the free, and home of the brave—ruled that a woman can own another person—her slave—and can murder that person with impunity, without being charged with murder. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act—ObamaCare—older citizens can also be murdered; it’s okay because the Supreme Court says murder is okay.

Hitler’s courts ruled that it was okay to murder 6 million Jews during his madman reign of terror over Germany. When the Second World War was over, those involved in the murder of 6 million Jews—jailers, doctors, nurses, guards, politicians, and those who ran the camps were brought to justice. The World Court’s judges stated that it did not matter if those involved in the Holocaust were following orders and the laws of Germany—the murder of 6 million Jews was a crime against humanity; it was genocide and would be treated as such.

What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make? Just as Hillary Clinton stated to the congressional fact-finding committee of Congress regarding the death of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, who were murdered—one of them our own Ambassador Stevens—What difference, at this point, does it make, was Hillary’s retort to a question regarding her involvement. Her question is easily used in the case of abortion and euthanasia.

Although this novel deals in part with the murdering of babies, the story’s main focus is the struggle of Quint and Doris Ursini attempting to raise the consciousness of their fellow US citizens, that older people—people over seventy—have value and worth far beyond the reduced costs of insurance; and to somehow stop the government from illegally confiscating wealth and property for redistribution by withholding treatment and euthanizing—murdering—those that are in need of a transplant or extended hospital care.

This is a story of an old couple who take on the government.

The old man lay back down on his newly-replaced sheets. What, what was that? What were they saying? God, I can barely hear them. Am I deaf? I can’t tell. If they’d speak a little louder, maybe then I could tell if my hearing is gone. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. If my hearing were good, they wouldn’t need to speak louder. Oh, Lord, I hate being old. Ah, now I can hear them; I was lying on my good ear.

He’s been here for almost three years; we’re… the voices drifted off and then back in. …gistered euthanasia at least 18 months ago. You can’t keep changing his… out again and back in. …umber just to keep him alive.

The old man recognized the voice; it was one of the female nurses. But who’s she talking to? And why in hell is she discussing the young people of Asia? he thought.

Listen, I agree. I probably shouldn’t be keeping him alive… the voices drifted out again; fog cluttered the old man’s brain and then he could hear the conversation again. …the injection of euthanasia is that at least one vital organ must be failing. None of his are. Hell, twenty years ago, before we started building organs from tissues, doctors would have been standing in line for his kidneys, heart, lungs, liver, eyes, and spleen; they would have harvested him before his heart stopped beating.

The old man knew who the other one was. The man’s voice is the doctor that comes in and sits with me once a week. But why this discussion about Asia, and what the hell is this crap about harvesting organs before the heart stops beating? The medically-induced fog had lifted for a few minutes, and the old man’s pale, blue eyes opened wide in disbelief. They’re talking about me—about keeping me alive or killing me. Killing me? Jesus, I need to get the hell out of here.

The mind fog returned as the voices in the hall drifted further away. The old man closed his eyes and tried to remember where he was. He looked at the tiles in the ceiling and the T-bar that held them in place. For the millionth time, he began to count the holes that acted as sound-absorption pores so the other residents couldn’t hear each other scream in fear and realization that this was their last stop. Counting holes in ceiling tiles? Is that what I’ve been reduced to?

Euthanasia? I know what they’re talking about. I’m old and taking up space and costing time and money to keep me alive, and they’re debating if they should kill me or not. How casually they speak of taking someone’s life—my life—that has only given and never taken away. I never killed anyone—wanted to a couple of times, thought I did a few times, but I never actually did. Never stole a cent—okay, once, but I paid for the candy I took and actually gave the storeowner three times the amount it would have cost. What cost what? Who did I kill? I never killed anyone. He fell asleep for the fortieth time this day and it was only eleven in the morning.

The medication kept the old man in an almost constant state of haziness—a foggy stupor. But his mind was sharp when they forgot to give him his shot. The staff said he asked far too many questions as he wheeled himself around the residence in a wheelchair. He could walk just fine, but doing so panicked the staff, and he was returned to his bed and handcuffed to the frame because he was a threat. He also bothered the other Gomers—what the medical staff called the old people that were here to get their final shot. The meat wagon made at least ten trips a day to his facility—he could see them through his window as they backed up to the double doors at the back of the main building.

The old man watched as one after another draped body was loaded into the back of unmarked, black Mercedes vans. Until today, he thought the people they took out had fought the gallant fight and finally lost. Now he realized they had been legally murdered because some organ had failed. What am I doing here? Where’s my wife? Wait, I don’t recall if I was ever married. If I was, did we have children? Why don’t they come to visit? Do they come to visit and I can’t remember? Now I can’t remember what it was I was trying to remember, or maybe it was something that I was trying to forget? Oh shit! Maybe I should just pray for the final shot and get it over with.

The old man fell into a deep sleep—something he seldom did. He got too much rest and was never tired enough to really sleep, but the last twenty minutes of thinking and trying to contemplate all the events he had observed and overheard today, while he fought the medications, wore him out and he slept.

Doctor, we have over 200 patients in this residence; we’re licensed for 180. That’s a maximum according to the state’s Department of Health and the Fire Marshal. We’re over—way over; and we have hospitals calling every day to take fifteen, twenty, or more in. We have to increase our quota to twenty a day, the residence administrator said, with sternness in her voice that told the doctor he needed to euthanize more Gomers each day than he was currently doing.

"Look, I know we have to keep up with the demand to reduce the clinic population and take the pressure off the hospitals; and I know that only clinics like ours—that are licensed to give a final shot that legally ends a life—are all overcrowded, but so many of these old people are just not at that point. If we didn’t keep them sedated, they’d be up playing chess, writing letters, watching TV, running corporations, or maybe even getting married again. One thing for sure is most of them would not be here. The government’s control over medicine is an abomination, to say the least. Do you know how many good, old people I have killed? I stopped counting a few years ago.

"I’m telling you this because I’m hoping that you’ll understand; I’ve taken some of your Gomers off their sedation medications a number of times and had very intellectually-stimulating conversations with them. Do you know the old lady in room 318 was a neurosurgeon and actually performed the first successful human brain transplant? And the old guy with the huge mane of white hair in room 210 owned over 50 movie theaters and was worth millions before the government took his property and committed him to us—for me to kill? What about the old man in room 77? Do you know he once owned four major casino hotels here in Vegas?

"These people have knowledge of business, economics, medicine, and life in general that no one else has, and we’re keeping them doped up and killing them to make room for others so that insurance costs will stay down and we can keep our charter and keep our overbearing, omnipotent government appeased. Do you know what your and my destiny is? Forty years from now we’ll be one of the Gomers waiting for our shot." The doctor spun on one heel, exited the office and walked down the hall to his office, sat down at his desk with his elbows on top and his face in his hands and cried—not hard, not sobbing, just a few tears for all those he had, and would, put to death in the name of medicine. No, not in the name of medicine, he thought, in the name of population and insurance cost control. Where is all this going?

The old man heard the squeak, squawk of the lunch cart as an orderly got close to the door to his room. The old man’s fog lifted as he looked around his room—not much to show for over seventy years of life and millions in earned income. He flashed back to his last day as the owner-operator of four casino hotels.

Hell, I was sitting in my office at the Trolley. It was Friday night and the place was packed. I’d just returned from touring the other three hotels and taken a tour of the casino floor. God, I loved to stop and talk to my guests. Everyone knew me, the owner of the Trolley—a 1,400-room, eight-restaurant, six-bar, two-lounge, showroom casino hotel just off the Strip in Vegas—plus the owner of three other properties. My wife and I owned four major Vegas casino hotels—all of them very successful.

He thought back once again to the first few seconds of the government’s intrusion. They didn’t knock or open the door to my office. They smashed down the door and burst into my office—agents from the Department of Justice and the Nevada Gaming Commission with flack vests on, camouflage uniforms, and pistols drawn, screaming indiscernible words at the tops of their voices, walking the sideways, short-step, stupid walk.

Good Lord, they looked like they all had cobs up their asses, Quint said out loud.

We almost had a shootout when my security saw them in the Trolley with weapons drawn. They disarmed my security, threw me to the ground, handcuffed me and dragged me out of my casino like a common crook.

And then the awful truth set in when I awakened here. Holy Shit! For over two months I didn’t even know where here was. I was drugged, handcuffed to the bed, sedated to the point that I saw snakes on the ceiling, and then one of my attorneys found me. Man, I thought, I’m out of here. Then he told me I was broke, and that all my assets had been confiscated and sold at auction for back taxes. Back taxes? My three homes and four hotels were confiscated, and all bank accounts closed. I was now broke and a ward of the state.

I begged him to get me out. I was never late on my taxes—always overpaid, if anything. He said that at the trial it was reported and proven that I owed over $40 million in back taxes, had been skimming for the past 38 years, and that I had far more money in my bank accounts, homes, and other assets than I could possibly have made. While pointing to the parking lot, my attorney said that all I own now is that decrepit, blue Prius parked outside my window, and that he had left the keys with my doctor. He ended by saying he wished he could do something, but that all appeals had been scuttled by a federal judge and that he, himself, had been fined over $400 thousand, and he was broke. And then he left. The old man’s long-time friend, and attorney, walked out of his life.

As the old man reflected on the events that took place just a few months after he was arrested, he made a comment out loud to the ceiling, Shit! What an asshole!

Who’s an asshole? someone asked. The old man slowly rolled onto his left side and creaked his neck to the left so he could see who had asked. "Oh, it’s you, Doc. My former attorney. What do you want? Did you finally get up enough courage to give me the final shot? Or did you come in to cry on my shoulder? Doc, do you have any idea how much knowledge a person must have to successfully manage four major casino hotels at one time? Do you have any idea how much analysis must be done to keep all of the revenue departments humming and making money? Do you know that most casino slot machine departments only keep three-and-a-half or four percent of the money played through the machines? And from that small percentage, owners and managers must meet all their obligations?

Doc, I never got to testify at my own trial. Why? I have no idea. I haven’t seen a newspaper since I was handcuffed to my bed. My TV is never on news channels; I have no idea what the date is. My God, I just remembered that I have grandchildren and some great-grandchildren. I have kids, and I was married. Where’s my wife? You keep me in such a state of fogginess that I can’t even remember my name most of the time. Why aren’t I sedated now?

"Listen, old man, I’ve decided that your story should get out—out to the general public. This healthcare system is in shambles. We’re euthanizing thousands of people that are over seventy every day. The system rounds them up from hospitals, rest homes, their own homes, and businesses like yours. I can’t be sure, but your being the age that you are and running four successful casino hotels was an affront to the whole system, and a contradiction to the government’s philosophy that old people have no worth—they are useless, an unnecessary burden to society and the insurance industry, and must be dealt with.

"Maybe the two of us can shed some light on this political corruption—these authorized murders. To do so, I need you aware and alert and clearly thinking. I need to tell your life story, so our fellow citizens can abolish all this craziness. All of this killing for the sake of reducing the burden on the medical system is a sham. As the baby boomers get older and die of natural causes, the population of the United States is getting smaller and people are living longer and healthier. There never was a reason to kill off the old and now there is even less of a reason—if that makes sense.

Are you in?

Doc, what else do I have to do? I’ve counted all the holes in six ceiling tiles, divided by six and counted them again just to make sure I’m correct. Doc, do you want to know the average number of holes there are in each tile?

No, not really. Why divide by six? Never mind, I don’t want to know how many holes and I don’t want to know why you divide by six.

Good, I’m your man. You keep the medicines away from me and I’ll give you my story. The average is 487. The room is 12x18 so there are 216 tiles, less the 12 for the bathroom, which is sheet-rocked. That leaves 204 tiles times 487 holes, which equals a total of 99,348 holes plus or minus 5% for error.

Reflex took over and the doctor looked up. God damn you, you old fart, now I’ll be looking at those stupid holes and wondering if you’re correct or not. I ought to get someone else to tell me their story and let you keep counting holes.

There’s no one else with a story like mine, the old man said as if he held a royal flush in a game of poker.

Not exactly your story, but they have good stories. I can leave if you’re going to play games with me.

Settle down, Doc. I’ll work with ya, but I tell my story my way, starting at the time in my life I want to start; then you can decide what part of it you want to present to the world. And, you have to find out what happened to my wife. Deal?

I don’t know if I can.

Finding my wife is not negotiable. Deal or not?

Okay. One more very important aspect—you have to continue to act like you’re drugged when others are around. When I come in, I’ll close the door and we can continue. We start tomorrow.

Wait, the nurses are going to give me a shot or change my drip like they do every four hours to make sure I stay in a stupor. Sometimes they miss me, but not often. How do we deal with them?

I’ve taken care of that. You just do your part and act dopey. Shouldn’t be hard; you’ve had lots of practice.

You can be a real asshole, Doc. And they say doctors don’t have a sense of humor.

The doctor winked at the old man and departed.

How the hell do I act doped up? When I’m doped up I don’t know how I act. Crap! I’m asleep. I’ll have to start listening better to the fellow across the hall. He’s always screaming something incoherent.

As the old man smiled to himself that he had figured out how to learn to appear dopey, he saw the gurney come out of the screamer’s room. Sure as hell, there was a body on it being wheeled out. Shit! There goes my study and cover.

This is really the shits. I had millions of dollars in cash, bonds, securities, land holdings, buildings, homes, casino hotels, and now I’m helping a smuck doctor try to rescue others from being murdered. I guess that’s a noble way to go out of this life, he thought.

I hear a nurse or nurse’s aid coming in. I need to act like I’m asleep; that’s our deal. I play possum and the good doctor keeps me from being sedated on a daily basis. What the hell? I’m getting the same feeling as before. My head’s starting to swim—I’m half sick. Shit! He lied to me. Who was I thinking about? Why would anyone lie to me? Where am I, anyway? It was the old man’s last thought as he drifted into a drug-induced sleep and watched as snakes began to fall from the ceiling onto his bed.

God, I am sorry. I got called away for a week and they re-drugged you against my orders. I hope you believe me. My biggest worry was that someone was going to give you your final shot before I returned.

Doc, you’re a real jerk, do you know that? We make a deal and right away you break it and they send me off into la-la land for God only knows how long, and your biggest worry is that you won’t be here to give me my last shot?

No, I said that wrong. What I intended to say was that I want your story before you’re killed.

Wow, now that’s saying it better. Did you take any classes on how to talk to people—patients? In the hotels I owned, each employee was required to go through a week of customer service training, and took a two-day refresher course every year thereafter, and again anytime their supervisors felt that an employee needed updating.

No, we really don’t get that type of training; it isn’t necessary to be a good doctor.

"Bullshit! Is what I have to say to that. Maybe not here in this, the living-dead residence, but in a normal hospital how a patient feels about the treatment they are receiving, and the attitude of the staff, helps in the healing process. Being treated like a person, and not a number or slab of meat, gets people out of the hospital sooner and reduces the ratio of return. Did you know that?

Jesus, Doc, aren’t you really interested in healing people? Obviously not. Damn you and your going away. I’ve got that terrible headache, and my mind is still swimming. Can you get me some orange juice or soda pop? Something with sugar, so I can clear my mind.

Sure, and be thinking about how you’re going to relay your story to me—you know, how you ran four successful casino hotels, up until the time of your arrest.

The doctor was out the door and down the hall before the old man could gather his thoughts and remind the doctor that he was going to start where he wanted to, and not where the doctor wanted.

Orange juice it is. Now how did you come to own four major casino hotels, here in Vegas?

"Not so fast, Doc. I’ll start my story where I want, and you just listen.

I was born in the early ‘50s. The first few years my family lived in central California, then we moved to a ranch in Nevada where I spent a couple of years being a ranch hand’s son. No other kids were around, so the ranch cowboys were my buddies, and they were rough and tumble. We then moved to a lumber mill town in the Sierra. There were kids—logger’s kids—and for the first time I had guys my own age to play with. They were tough, but so was I. That’s how I thought boys played—rough and tumble, taking no shit from anyone. The logger’s credo—if you can’t throw a choke, you’d better stay out of the woods.

What’s a choke?

"Look it up, Doc.

"We lived just outside of town. In his spare time, my dad was building a home for my aunt and uncle that was about three miles away, over a mountain and through tall timbers.

"I never thought about the dangers—I’d grown up in the woods. I had my dog and a hand axe. I was five years old, and I could take care of myself—that’s what I thought, anyway. I made it without incident, but really got into trouble with my dad. But later I overheard him bragging to other loggers and mill workers that I had hiked over three miles through the woods, by myself, with just my little dog and a hand axe.

"The next town we moved to was also a mill town, but bigger, so everyone wasn’t a logger’s kid. That didn’t matter, as the influence of the loggers permeated the culture from top to bottom. My dad worked in the mill pulling green chain—he was big, extremely strong, and tough in his own right. Being big, no one bothered him; but that wasn’t the real reason—he was always smiling and he never ever expected someone else to do his job. During our three years there, Dad saved two men’s lives when, at different times, their clothing got caught in the machinery and was pulling them into sure death. The noise in the mill was so loud that no one could hear their shouts for help, but my dad saw them struggling and pulled back on them so powerfully that he ripped their shirts off in the process and saved their lives.

I asked my dad once why he always smiled and laughed so easily. His answer, Life is too short not to enjoy it.

Being the new kid in town, I got picked on; but I held my own and won most of my fights—sometimes against three or four others. My reputation grew when a kid, two years older than I, and bigger, refused to retrieve my kickball that he had kicked over a barbed wire fence and out into a pasture that backed up to the school. I gave him a chance to get it, but he refused and then he taunted me. I threw him over the fence to get my ball. The principal of the school saw the whole thing and later told her eighth grade class that throwing someone over a barbed wire fence was not the way to settle a dispute. I received ten paddle swats from her for that one, but my place at that school was secure. No one bothered me.

Sorry, old man, but what the heck does growing up in a logging town and being a tough kid have to do with being a successful casino hotel operator? How are the people going to relate to you when most of them think that the wood that was used to build their homes came from Lowe’s or Home Depot?

"Keep listening, Doc. I think there are more people out there that have been bullied and fought back than you think. And, I believe maybe they might think, if a 70-year-old fart did it, why can’t I? Maybe they’ll stand up against the government and bureaucrats, just like the old man did against overwhelming odds.

"But that is just hope. Let me continue. We moved back to central California and I got involved in sports. My dad had taught me to play baseball from the time I could catch, bat, and run. I was a natural. In the fifth grade they moved me to the sixth grade team. I did strike out at times, but I hit more home runs, and batted more runs in, than any other player on the team.

"In basketball, the same thing. I was moved up to the sixth grade team and was the high scorer. During my fifth, sixth, and seventh grades we never lost a game in baseball or basketball. Obviously, I wasn’t the only player on those teams; we had some other very talented athletes. The high school basketball and baseball coaches noticed me, and invited me to attend some of their practices. I was totally outmatched, but the experience was great.

We then moved to a little gold rush town at the southern end of the famous Highway 49. That was a great time. We swam, rode horses, played basketball, shot 22s, speared salmon, poached quail, dove, duck and pheasant, and snuck down to the river a few times to watch as the town’s teenage girls swam nude in the river and sunbathed on a secluded sandbar. It was a good time to be alive. My freshman year I played on the junior varsity team, but also played about half of the varsity games. We did well, but then we moved to Nevada again, to a small town not far from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I made the varsity basketball team three years. My junior year we placed second in the state—senior year we were third. In my senior year I was ranked an All-American—number one in the state of Nevada, and one of the top 100 high school basketball players in the nation. In track and field I was third fastest in the high and low hurdles and the 880 and 440-yard relays. I received over twelve scholarship offers for basketball and track.

OK, I can see that your being involved in sports creates leadership skills; but come on, not every successful business man was a nationally-ranked athlete. So spare me the war stories and get to the story we need to get out there.

Doc, I was married. Do you know if my wife is still alive? And if she is, where is she?

You know that none of you have names. Your names are filed away in the manager’s office when you’re checked in. Your number is 7777.

Funny—very funny. That’s why the nurses call me Jackpot. Thanks for clearing that up.

Because all the facilities use numbers and not names, and because even we doctors must have a written request to view the name and history of a patient, I don’t think I can find your wife, even if she is alive.

"Doc, please try. I’m sorry, but right now I’m really tired—genuinely tired—this is the most talking I’ve done since my abduction. I need to sleep for a few hours. Can we continue