Amber's brain; Conservatives Against Justice

AMBER'S BRAIN: CONSERVATIVES ATTEMPT TO THWART JUSTICE

Amber woke up with a massive head ache. She grabbed her head and screamed as it took a tremendous leap in intensity and pain. Her roommate and sometime lover Scot, rushed in.
“What's wrong, Amber?” he asked, his expression growing alarmed as he saw her posture.
“I don't know,Scott,” she said through the pain. “I've just got this massive headache, and it keeps getting worse. I think we'd better go to. ..”
Before she could say another word, Scott had his car keys out and was walking her towards the door. Then he paused.
“Or should I call an ambulance, they could get you straight to the emergency room?”
Amber started to shake her head, then clutched it as a wave of even greater pain washed over it, screamed even louder, then fell to the floor as Scott went to the phone and dialed 911, and then blacked out.

Amber woke up in a hospital bed, Scott by her side.
“I did call an ambulance,” he said. “And it's a good thing, because they said if I'd driven you we would have gotten here too late for them to help you.”
“What happened to me?” she asked.
“You had a minor stroke,” Scott replied.
“If that was minor,” she said with a gasp. “I don't ever want to feel a major one.”
Scott looked uncomfortable.
“What?” she asked.
After hesitating a moment, Scott replied. “The doctors say this kind of minor stroke is an early warning of a much more major stroke.”
:How major, Scott?” Amber demanded, impatient with the slowness of the feed of information.
“Oh amber,” said Scott, clearly c holding back tears. “They say if you have the major stroke you'll sped the rest of your life in a persistent, vegetative state with no hope of recovery.”
“You said 'if' I have that kind of stroke, so there's a chance that I might not.”
“If you have the new procedure just FDA approved two months ago, you will not. Otherwise you will, thy say.”
“My insurance will never pay for something that new.”
“They have to, after the recent change in the law, since this is your only chance at recovery, they have to.”
“Well then,” said Amber. “Let's gt things started.”
“I already have,” said Scott. “We just need to wait for all of the ts and is, if you know what I mean.”
She did, she always did. She went to sleep ten, sure that when she woke up there would be a plan in place for her full recovery.

Meanwhile, on Capital Hill, a closed door meeting of Congressional Republicans was taking place.
“We have public sentiment on our side,” said one. “After November, we can undo government run health care.”
“We may have a problem,” said the representative from Amber's district. “There's a fairly prominent figure in my district, a young woman named Amber Trothmoth who had a stroke three weeks ago and without a fairly new procedure would be a vegetable for life. Under the old system, her insurance would not have paid for this procedure, but now it has to. If she has this procedure and recovers, people may tart to feel this change is a positive, so we've got to head it off now. I suggest an injunction against her having this procedure.”
Her colleagues agreed, and so it was drawn up, approved, and issued.

“Well, amber, you'll be b being fixed two days from now, and then everything will be all right,” said Scott.
Amber nodded.
Then came a knock, a currier entered, handed Scott a very legal looking document, and left.
Puzzled, Scott tore open the envelope and quickly read it, his expression growing more soar with every line.
“What is it, what's wrong?” asked Amber.
“It's a Republican congressional injunction against you having this procedure.”
Amber gasped. “What? Why?”
“They say it sets a bad precedent,” said Scott. “Then everything will have to be covered. What the mean is that once people see the benefits of the new system, they'll look bad. Well, they're going to look bad all right, I guarantee that.”
That afternoon, Scott held a press conference on Amber's condition, potential treatment and why that was now uncertain, and then launched an old and new media blitz on the matter, and public opinion, particularly among the locals who knew Amber best, started to turn against those who had issued the injunction, but the injunction remained in effect.

The day after Amber was to have had the operation, Scott was with her in her hospital room when she stiffened.
“Hold my hand, Scott, tight,” she said in a strained voice. “It's time. It's coming.”
Scott longed more than anything to argue the point, but he knew it would be useless, so he took her hand and squeezed tightly as the pressure built inside Amber's skull, tears flooding from his eyes.

AMBER GAVE A SCREAM BEYOND ANGUISH AND AGONY COMBIED AS HER BRAIN EXPLODED WITHIN HER SKULL AND SCOTT HOWLED AS HE COULD DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.

Then, it was over. Amber was dead, and Scott wept and howled into the empty night, but no answer echoed back from the rest of the hospital beyond, for everyone had there own problems to worry about. Weeping unchecked and uncontrollably, Scott kissed Amber's hand one last time, moved his lips in a silent vow, and then left to tell the appropriate hospital personnel that that their services for the living were no longer required.