What do the doctors say? Is this a time to notify all family members to get here? Then yes, I tell him. If we’re not at that point, then no.
Why do I tell? Death is an awfully final “fuck you”.
I don’t know April and August, but I do know Julius and his mother January. Other than the reversed genders (which makes the societal power dynamic a little more interesting IMO), they’re the same in every particular. Well, January isn’t tempted by Stormy Daniels–but she is off organizing a mighty general strike that’s going to bring Republicans to their knees and force some real change in the world.
The question, stripped of its particulars, becomes: when can a person ask me to keep a secret from a friend, when keeping that secret will devastate my friend and probably end our friendship? Julius has asked me to do exactly that. And he didn’t swear me to secrecy before revealing anything: he’s tried to obtain my silence after I already know the situation.
It’s not just about Julius. It’s about me, and it’s about January, and it’s about all three of us. He’s welcome to tell the hospital not to allow January in to see him, but he’s not welcome to force me to stay silent.
I’ll tell my friend about her son. If that ends my friendship with Julius, so be it: I’d rather end the friendship with the person who forced me to choose between my friends.
Not going to make the call until or unless one of two things happens;
1> The Doctors make that ‘she’s not going make it, call her family’ judgement (as mentioned above), at which time April’s wishes go out the door and I make the call.
2> April dies.
Here’s a twist.
“I” may be held liable for trespass or illegal use of personal property if I use April’s phone to call or get August’s number from her phone without her explicit consent. An order of magnitude greater, but because I know where the emergency key to April’s house is, it doesn’t give me permission to enter the house.
"I’ may get away with “But it was an emergency and done in good intent”, but it’s still morally and possibly legally wrong.
Edit: If the phone is password protected and you happen to know, but were not explicitly told the password or manage to guess the password, another layer of invasion of privacy is added.
Don’t care. If April is mad enough about it to stop being my friend, I might apologize for upsetting her, but I would not apologize for doing it.
I likewise don’t think that any jury in the country would convict me of such a petty crime and I seriously doubt that any jurisdiction would get that far just on the basis of how much money it would cost them to prosecute vs. the level of the crime and the likelihood of gaining a conviction.
Once she enters the hospital for surgery, you’re the adult in the room, her signed power of attorney, so to speak.
So really, this idea is a non-starter.
The hypothetical says that I am friends with August, and that I have his number on my own phone. If I am not friends with the parent, that changes the hypothetical radically.
I am loath to keep friendship – breaking secrets from my own friends. I am not worried about informing people I don’t know about things they would want to know about.
Re-reading the original post, “I’m” a bigger jerk than I thought. I love her so I won’t risk her possibly rejecting me because I oppose her opinion. But now that I’ll possibly lose her anyway, I’ll play the “hero” and call August to remove any guilt I may feel and possibly have her love me more (or possibly fall in love with me if the feeling wasn’t mutual).
Personally, I’m a HUGE proponent of free will. If April dies, I’ve gone against her last ( in “my” opinion, misguided) request. If she lives, I have to confess to her that “my” opinion is more important than hers.
I’ve been in situations where my friends have said: “I’m not worried, because you’ll catch me (emotionally) before I fall.” I correct them and say “I’ll let you fall, but will pick you up when you do.”
She said don’t tell, so I don’t tell.
Skald, I’ve noticed a theme in your hypotheticals of “overriding people’s will” or “acting contrary to people’s will due to knowing better”…is there a reason for this?
Not exactly: the question is, whose opinion is more important, the child’s or the parent’s? I’m friends with both.
Consider a different situation. I’m friends with Claire, and I barely know her 20-year-old son. I know in the past that her son has had troubles with addiction, and that his mom has helped him detox. While I’m downtown, I see her son hanging out with a dude I know is a dealer. Her son begs me not to tell mom. Am I obligated to respect his opinion?
I’d say no: I’m friends with his mom, not with him. If his mom found out I suspected he was spiraling, and I didn’t tell her, she’s gonna feel very betrayed. If he ODs, how is she gonna feel about me?
The duty I owe in the hypothetical to April is a duty of friendship, not some duty of respecting an adult’s wishes. Thing is, I owe a similar duty to her dad, with whom I’m also a friend. It’s then for me to balance these competing duties.
The drug dealer example is a bit forced, isn’t it?
Surgery isn’t illegal, and whatever else may hold, this is an adult engaging in otherwise legal and quite rational behavior to safeguard her health making a reasonable request - no matter my personal take on it.
I don’t see how butting into the middle of a family affair is in any way justified in this case. If I was going to play sides, I wouldn’t have driven her to the hospital in the first place or would have told her I’d tell her father before doing so.
It seems to me that it is likely I would have called August while following the ambulance to the hospital, since frankly, that seems like the kind of thing I would tell him immediately. In the unlikely event that I haven’t already called August before April even has a chance to ask me not to, I would still call him. My reasoning is essentially identical to that of Left Hand of Dorkness.
Worst possible decision; likely to accomplish nothing but angering April and August.
The kid gets to run their life, no question–but I’m friends with kid and parent, and the kid doesn’t get to unilaterally tell me to end my friendship with the parent, which is what the kid is doing. The kid is 100% forcing me to pick a side, which is super uncool.
This isn’t a “child” though. And the “parent” is only a nominal one, since he’s only been in her life a short time. He is not in a caretaker role and never has been. These factors shouldn’t be glossed over.
This is not sufficiently analogous to the scenario. Claire has been helping her son with his addiction problem, and thus, has invested a lot of herself in his recovery. They also aren’t currently estranged (unless you’ve left that detail out) as the two folks in the hypothetical are.
Would your feelings about the defensibility of your choice change if you learned that August did the unthinkable to April, and that’s why she didn’t want to have anything more to do with him? So here she is, either lying on her death bed or in the recovery room in serious condition, and he shows up like Daddy Dearest. When she starts crying at the sight of him and demands to know why you violated her trust…will you still feel justified?
“Child” here means, of course, the familial/biological relationship, not the age. I am forty, and the child of my parents; my father, at 70, is the child of his. I’m using those words to identify the characters (since I think that the genders of the characters creates weird power dynamics that I want to avoid in the discussion).
I’m also not concerned with the relationship between the child and parent. The relationships that concern me are my own friendships, and my duties along those friendships.
If I learned that, absolutely. But remember, it is my considered opinion, according to the OP, that the parent is in the right, and the child is in the wrong.
If I have any reasonable reason to suspect that, then it changes things–BECAUSE I WON’T BE FRIENDS WITH THE PARENT ANYMORE. That duty of friendship doesn’t extend to a molestor, fercryinoutloud.
(Also, Christ, do we have to bring sexual abuse into this? That’s not in the hypothetical, let’s not add it in suddenly! And the OP clearly excludes those things, anyway.)
But that’s the thing. It requires an act of hubris to decide you know better than April as to whether her feelings about August are valid just because of what you think you know. This is the inherent danger of butting in anyone else’s relationship. The potential is high you don’t know the full story.
It’s ok to think your opinion is sounder than hers, but acting on that opinion is something different.
Hey, I was envisioning a scenario in which April overheard August referring to her as his “one night stand nigger baby”. After grinning and bearing other little quips and microaggressions from him for all the time she’s known him, she’s finally decided she wants a long and potentially permanent time out from this guy. The reason she didn’t tell you is because she’s always wrestled with her racial identity and doesn’t feel like sharing how his words have affected her psychologically. But it’s essentially why she doesn’t feel loved by him.
The reader is free to infer whatever he/she wishes by “unthinkable” because we all have different definitions. Sexual abuse is not the only thing that would be that.
But in the hypothetical, you asked April whom to tell.
If I want to tell August, and know she doesn’t want me to, I don’t ask her opinion. I just tell him.
If April spontaneously asks me not to tell August, I have to weigh my duty of friendship towards each of them, as well as how upset each will be by my choice. That’s your situation.
Again: it’s not just my opinion, it’s the opinion of my friends. The parent also has an opinion. Granted, the parent hasn’t explicitly expressed that opinion to me, but I’m not an idiot: I know that the parent wants to be involved, and in the case of the child undergoing life-threatening surgery, it’s clear what the parent wants me to do.
You are making this incredibly grotesque. I don’t want to participate with you any more.
That’s an interesting point. I shouldn’t have asked. That said, it doesn’t change my friendship duties. It just means I fucked up.
Oh.Sweet.Jesus. I take pains to not be explicit by using nonspecific shorthand for a really really bad thing and then get accused of talking about sex. So I then use an alternative scenario to illustrate it doesn’t have to be sex, and I only get more pearl clutching.
But your reaction, oddly enough, makes my point. Like you, April doesn’t want to participate either…in a relationship with her father. It would be insensitive to make her feelings subordinate to your own sense of duty.
The use of a graphic racial slur is not appropriate in this forum. You can make your point less graphically.
No warning issued but let’s keep this IMHO appropriate.