It was a sunny summer morning when Zoë opened the countdown calendar on her phone. There it was: zero days, seven hours.
Another seven hours. That’s the downside of desperately wanting something: the wait seems to take for ever. To kill some time, she went for a stroll along the canals of Leiden. This will be my last time here, she thought to herself. She sauntered past an organic chip shop, a restaurant and the cafe terrace where she’d had the occasional G&T over the previous few weeks.
It was 19 June 2023 – the day Zoë, who was 22, was allowed to die. Her original choice had been the 18th, for the symbolic significance of the number. With the one, she was putting herself first; with the eight, the infinity sign on its side, she was doing so for all eternity. When the psychiatrist called to say that her euthanasia would be happening a day later, she had an 18 tattooed on her neck.
