The patient's name was Debbie, and she was dying of ovarian cancer. After two sleepless days, she was struggling to breathe, vomiting repeatedly from a drug meant to sedate her. The resident physician on call was roused from sleep and summoned to her bedside in the night. The doctor had never seen the emaciated, dark-haired figure before. "It was a gallows scene, a cruel mockery of her youth and unfulfilled potential," the doctor wrote later. "Her only words to me were, 'Let's get this over with.' " The resident took her exhausted plea literally and instructed a nurse to prepare an...
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