Rescue me

Euthanasia | She liberated her husband from a concentration camp, but who will free Lang Yen Thi Vo from the medical establishment? | Kathleen Thorne

AUSTIN—Only the occasional whir of the respirator in the corner interrupts the steady hum of medical machinery. Lines and numbers flash frenetically on a series of monitors. A game show plays, unwatched, on a television mounted on the wall of a cold room at St. David's North Austin Medical Center.

In the room Binh Trinh stares intently at his wife, Lang Yen Thi Vo, but she lies motionless on a bed. They have been married for 38 years. He leans over her, brushes her thinning hair, and tells her in Vietnamese, "I love you. Come back."

It's been years since Mrs. Vo has been "back"—back to resembling the woman who raised two daughters and a son, and possessed the strength to rescue her husband from a Vietnamese concentration camp almost three decades ago. By communicating with Mr. Trinh in code, concealing a car for a midnight escape, and arranging hiding places for her husband until they reached their getaway boat, Mrs. Vo made it possible for the couple to leave Vietnam for the United States in 1979.