Shari Fink tells the story of the choices made by the hospital in a balanced fashion. It is clear that Fink does not agree completely with the choices Anna Pou and Dr. Ewing Cook made in deciding who to save and who to let die. She knew that the reader would be disgusted with the circumstances of the situation and the decisions that were made. Fink strategically includes commentary from families who loved ones were declared least likely to survive. She shows the reader the stress the hospital staff is experiencing and the reasoning for their decision making. Fink’s descriptive ability further makes the anxiety and mass death seem like the walking dead without the zombies. Fink is able to win the reader’s heart and ethical mind into thinking how can we better handle disaster situations.
Fink’s bias is fully spelled out in the eighth paragraph. The hyphenated part of the first sentence beginning with that and ending in deserve closer attention shows that Fink does not agree with the legislation Pou is trying to pass. It is made clearer in the second sentence of the paragraph when she says, “health officials are now weighing, with little public discussion and insufficient scientific evidence.” The key word is insufficient because it shows Fink’s disagreement with the ideology. If not why use the word it could have stopped at public discussion. Throughout the rest of the story Fink seems to raise ethical questions along every stop in the story making the reader think in a situation such as this, what is the right decision?
Fink’s story is in chronological order starting in the section “A Shelter from the Storm.” The introduction to the story begins with a descriptive scene of the make shift morgue in Memorial Medical Center. The nutgraf jumps ahead in time to July of 2006 to explain the legal repercussions of decisions made by nurses and doctors at the hospital during hurricane Katrina. At this point, the story follows Anna Pou’s journey on passing legislation in Louisiana. The organization of the story is brilliant for the topic and effective in keeping the reader’s attention.
