When Is Saving a Life 'Too Much Medicine'? This Is a Lifelong Test for Doctors.

It seems to me that Davey died as a person long before he arrived in the hospital. His wife must have spent some time taking care of a zombie (though not dangerous like fictional ones) because she couldn't bear to recognize that that's what he had become.

I saw my father once after he had got Alzheimer's, and he could barely recognize me. I concluded that he was dead. It was painful to see him that way, but since he was not going to remember it, it wasn't doing him any good; and didn't mean anything to me except to show me that he was dead. I missed him but there was no point visiting his occasionally walking corpse.