A medical resident--we called her "Dr. Death"--at the Intensive Care Unit at Long Island's North Shore Hospital chased us down the hallway. "Your husband wants to die," she told my mother, again. Just minutes before I had asked her to leave us alone. "He can't even talk," I reminded her. ...My father, 85, ... was not in a "persistent vegetative state" (itself a phrase subject to broad interpretation), that magic point at which family members are required to pull the plug--or risk the accusation that they are right-wing Christians. ..Then a light bulb went off in my head. We could...