The Nicholas Effect

To laymen like me, the practice of medicine can be magical: a pain is making life miserable, a doctor treats it, the pain subsides. But modern medicine also has a touch of the miraculous. Consider organ transplants where the body parts of someone who is dead are put into people who are dying and on average three or four healthy people come out of it. However many times that is done — and it is done nowadays as an everyday event in hospitals all over the world — it remains a medical miracle. I have seen it first hand.

     One beautiful night in Italy on the main highway from Naples to Sicily a car overtook us — a family of four from California on vacation — but instead of moving ahead, it stayed alongside and I said half to myself “There’s something wrong here.” Then through the night came savage, bloodcurdling yells telling us to pull over. 

     To obey would put us — my wife, Maggie, and our children, Nicholas aged seven and Eleanor, four — at their mercy so instead I accelerated. They accelerated too and the two cars raced side-by-side along the highway. Shots rang out, the windows disintegrated. Maggie, on the front seat, turned around to make sure the children were safe. Both appeared to be sleeping peacefully in their car seats. 

     By now, however, we were pulling away and the other car gradually faded back into the night. I raced on looking for somewhere with people, lights, some activity and a few miles later I saw there had been an accident with the police already there. I stopped and Eleanor woke immediately. But Nicholas didn’t move and, horrified, I saw his tongue was sticking out and there was a trace of vomit on his chin.

Two days later on October 1, 1994 (it seems like prehistory, doesn’t it?) the doctors at the University of Messina Polyclinic told us he was brain dead. We sat there silently, holding hands. I remember trying to grasp the thought that I would never again hear this gentle boy, eager to learn and full of fun, say “Goodnight, daddy.” 

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