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ht to make medical decisions for them if they are unable to make the decisions themselves. Usually it's a relative or spouse or a longtime companion."
"Sure," I said. I'd filled out insurance forms in my own time; if anything ever happened to me, my mother would have to decide whether to unplug me or not.
"Well, Miss Beck doesn't have any of those," Mizuhara said.
"All right," I said. "So?"
"Tom," Carl said. "The person who Michelle authorized to make medical decisions for her is you."
I found a chair and sat down.
"You really didn't know?" Adams asked.
I shook my head. "No. No, I didn't."
"I'm sorry," Adams said. "It's a hard job to have."
"Tom," Carl said, again. "What do you want to do?"
I covered my face with my hands and just sat there for a few minutes, awash in guilt and grief. I felt my actions had put Michelle here to begin with; now I was being asked to make decisions that could affect the rest of her life. I was going to need a really good cry when this was all over.
But not right now. I put my hands down in my lap.
"We'll keep her here," I said.
Now if I could just figure the rest of it out.
Chapter Fifteen
The leak, of course, was as impossible to track as it was inevitable to occur. Sometime after the 2 am shift change, one of the janitors or nurses or doctors hit the phones, waking up friends and relatives because, after all, how often does the hottest female star in the United States come into your hospital in a coma? At 3:35 in the morning, one of these friends or relatives called KOST-FM and requested to hear "Your Eyes Tell Me," the hit theme song from Summertime Blues, because she heard Michelle Beck had died. After the song played, another listener called in to say no, she wasn't dead, but she was in a coma, and she had heard that Michelle's corneas were slated to be give
