Next March 12 will be published To be the last in Robert Laffont editions, the account of the legal battle between the wife and parents of Vincent Lambert, the nurse plunged into a vegetative state from 2008 to 2019 in following a road accident. The story is told by the latter's nephew, François Lambert, very close to Vincent Lambert and who devoted himself to defending his right to die, until treatment was stopped last July. We have browsed for you the first extracts from the book, published exclusively in the Sunday Journal .
"This pressure that has lived in me for six years"
François Lambert returns to the trauma of the slow death of his uncle, shaken by "rattles" and caught choking, after stopping the artificial feeding and hydration. A doctor explains to him that Vincent Lambert "will suffocate, because his bronchi will gradually fill, then the kidneys will fail first, leading to cardiac arrest which will be fatal to him".
Then comes the moment of the last sigh and the announcement of his brutal death. "On July 11 at 9 am, I receive a call from a journalist from France 3 Champagne Ardenne," he explains. "He asks me to confirm Vincent's death. Not yet aware, I hang up and immediately send an SMS to Doctor Sanchez, asking him if Vincent is dead. He answers me at 9:05 am: 'Yes, at 8:24 am. '' Finally…"
>> READ ALSO - Vincent Lambert: six years of a legal battle that has become symbolic
But François Lambert says he was prepared for the death of his uncle. "I only perceive the beginning of a drop in this pressure which has been living in me for six years, when the end of the ordeal was announced, the end of the fight having intervened a few days earlier", he analyzes with a few months of hindsight.
"I attend surreal scenes of contradiction"
In this poignant tale which looks like an essay on euthanasia, François Lambert does not hesitate to point out the responsibilities of all the parties: parents, wife but also doctors, steeped in paradoxes. "I witness surreal scenes of contradiction," recalls François Lambert. "[The nurses] examine a wound on his foot to make sure that it resolves. I have the impression that it is a game: we no longer feed it, we do not hydrate more, and to avoid causing death, the medical team must take care of him, and therefore do everything to keep him alive for as long as possible. There is a logic: he remains a human being whom we must keep busy until the end, without giving up. "
But François Lambert, he is not afraid to meticulously dissect the behavior of each. "The abandonment can also be the fact for the doctor to cause death by stopping treatment, and not to assume it afterwards by pretending to do his job as a doctor: to treat and keep alive," he writes. "While making those who he considers ideologues cause death. He only withdrew."