At Schiavo's Hospice, a Return to Routine

"She's screaming, but she's not in pain," Buck says. "She looks retarded, but she is not. It's the chemo, the side effects, the urinary tract infection. I told the family I'm hopeful, but I can't promise."

Trained as a pulmonary specialist who worked for much of her early years in the emergency room, Theresa Buck, 43, is finally doing the missionary work she dreamed of. Each day she ministers to the dying, utterly at ease with the sights, smells, sounds and unique language of death.

In the heat of The Siege, Buck, who was not Schiavo's primary physician but who cared for her when needed, tried convincing her parents that not everything they saw in the news was true. To them, the video clips of Schiavo rolling her head, emitting gurgling sounds, proved the young woman was not in the persistent vegetative state that Buck and other doctors had diagnosed.

"I gave up. It was a losing battle," she says, not a hint of anger in her voice. "God knows what I do."

It isn't always easy for Buck to let nature take its course. She admits to being angry when a diabetic in kidney failure recently arrived in bad shape. The woman could be healthy today if she had gotten proper treatment. At this point, though, Buck has little choice but to stop the insulin pump and wait.

"My initial instinct -- what I wanted to do -- was fix it," Buck says. "She's tired. She wanted to go in peace."

Thomas Broderick, on the other hand, is fighting death with what little strength his body can muster.

"My lungs are congested," the 51-year-old tells Buck when she arrives at his apartment on the Woodside grounds. "I was thinking about that pump."

She jots a note to switch Broderick from pain pills to an intravenous line so he can administer the medication himself. "We'll make a good cocktail for you."

"You still sound horrible, Thomas," she says, listening to his chest.

After his inoperable lung cancer was diagnosed six months ago, Broderick, like many, resisted coming to Woodside, fearing the recognition that there is little time left.

"I'm still in shock," he confides, looking out from under a Yankees cap that fails to conceal his bald head. "I have not cried one tear to this day."