She was Dying Anyway

by P. D. Workman

  “He didn’t smother her,” Zachary said. “I think the nurses and the doctor who signed her death certificate would have noticed if she’d been smothered. But poisoning… I think he might have. It wouldn’t even have to be in her food. It could be straight into her blood, through the IV.”

  “Lawrence didn’t do it,” Bridget said. Her voice was weak, less sure than it had been the last few times she had insisted it couldn’t have been Lawrence. She was starting to see that he was the one who had the most motive and opportunity. “I know how much he loved her. When they were together, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. It was like…” She looked at Zachary and stopped. Was she remembering how besotted he had been with her? How she would look up and find his eyes on her, just drinking her in? “He just couldn’t have, Zachary.”

  “Extreme love can turn quickly to hate when spurned,” Gordon said wisely. “It’s a story as old as time. If I can’t have you, nobody can. If you won’t have me, you won’t have anybody. Jealousy has turned many a lover’s hand against his former mistress.”

  “Don’t, Gordon,” Bridget murmured. She looked at Zachary again, as if hoping that he hadn’t heard Gordon.

  “Anyway…” Zachary decided to fill Bridget in on the few other bits she didn’t know, telling her about meeting with Dr. Wiltshire and his agreement to open a death investigation for Robin. “They’re going to audit the insulin prescriptions against the inventory to see whether there are any missing doses. I guess they’ll do that with any of the medications they think could have been used to kill her. And they’ll look at all of her records, and at all of the shift logs and the surveillance cameras. Make sure she wasn’t given something she should not have been.”

  “You’re not going to find anything on the surveillance. I don’t believe anyone killed her intentionally. She was probably given a wrong dosage, or the wrong medication…”

  “I don’t know what it was. I told Dr. Wiltshire everything I knew. He couldn’t tell from the symptoms what it might have been… she was sick. She was going to die anyway… just maybe not that fast.”

  “It still doesn’t make it right. She should have had more time with her family. I want whoever is responsible for taking her away from her family and friends so soon to pay. They shouldn’t just walk away from this. It shouldn’t just be an ‘oops’ like if you added the wrong cells in a budget spreadsheet. We’re talking about someone’s life here. Her last days were just taken away from her.”

  Zachary could hear the pain in Bridget’s voice. Survivor’s guilt? Because she had overcome cancer and Robin had not? Because Bridget still had days and years ahead of her, and Robin was gone?

  Bridget still had time to make things up to Zachary and be reconciled with him. Robin would never have that chance with Lawrence. That ship had sailed.

  Chapter Twelve

  N

  urse Betty wasn’t nearly as happy to talk to Zachary as she had been on the previous occasions. She gave him a glower that would have curdled cream.

  “You sure stirred up a crap-ton of trouble. I thought you were a nice guy. Quiet, not pushy, just a nice guy helping out his wife. But now… we’ve had police all over this place. I have been run off my feet trying to get them all of the records they want. We have patients to care for. We can’t be running around dealing with all of their demands!”

  “I’m sorry it’s all landed on you. I never meant for that to happen. I didn’t realize how much extra work it would be for you.”

  She looked a little mollified, unsure whether to keep complaining or not. She hadn’t expected any sympathy from him.

  “It’s just that for Bridget and for Robin’s family… they had to know the truth. They had to know what it was that went wrong, if anything. What it was that took Robin away from them so suddenly. I certainly never intended to target you or any of the other staff.”

  “Well, of course we want to know what went wrong too,” Betty agreed. “But we’ve all seen it happen before. Some people just go before you think it’s their time. It doesn’t mean anyone did anything wrong or anything malicious. Sometimes a person’s time just comes before you expect it.”

  “I’m sure that’s all it will be in this case,” Zachary soothed. “Can I get you anything? Can I bring you a coffee or a sandwich from the cafeteria? You’re probably sick of cafeteria food; is there a restaurant nearby that you like? I can bring you whatever you want.”

  She blushed and patted at her hair. “Oh, you don’t need to do anything like that. I’m just doing my job. These things happen sometimes and you just have to go with the flow.”

  “I know, but it’s been such a burden for you…”

  “No, no.” She waved his concern away. “It’s something interesting to break up the long stretches of boredom. At least being called on to photocopy records means that I wasn’t the one who had to take care of Mrs. Groucho’s diaper this morning.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh, but that woman can…” She pressed her thin lips together primly. “Treatments can be very hard on the digestive tract, and she is no exception. And the way she starts yelling the second she makes in her diaper, you’d think the woman was on fire! Honestly, some of the patients around here think they are the only one you have to take care of. Believe me, if I only had to take care of one woman, it would not be her.”

  Zachary chuckled sympathetically. “I can only imagine. It must be very trying to deal with some of the patients.”

  “They ain’t called patience for nothing.” She shook her head.

  “You’d rather deal with someone like Robin?” Zachary suggested.

  Betty raised her brows and cocked her head slightly. “Robin Salter?” she said. “No, I should think not!”

  “Oh. She wasn’t one of the better patients?”

  “Oh, no.”

  Zachary remembered Lawrence confiding that Robin sometimes overdramatized and complained about the care she was getting at the treatment center. Maybe he was being generous. A woman that could string a man along like Robin had, only to dump him hard at the end of the day was probably not the nicest one in the unit.

  “I didn’t realize. Her boyfriend did say that she often found reasons to complain, but he didn’t think she had any reason to. He thought the care here was very good.”

  “Well, thank you for that.”

  “I know I never found any reason for complaint when Bridget was here,” Zachary said. Which was truthful. He hadn’t been around to hear any complaints from her or to have any himself. If Betty thought about it, she probably knew that, but she wasn’t about to turn down a compliment.

  “I suppose they have a right to be miserable,” Zachary said. “But taking it out on the staff… that’s not very fair.”

  “You know, we get some patients through here who are angels on earth. They could be coding and they would smile and apologize for making you hurry. But some people, the women in particular… honey, the sooner they are out of here, one way or the other, the better.”

  And Robin had been one of those patients. Zachary was glad that the police department was already looking at the staff at the care center. It saved him the trouble of trying to sort out which of them might have had a reason to put an early end to Robin’s suffering. It sounded like they all did.

  Zachary had decided that he was going to pop over to the cafeteria and pick something up for Nurse Betty anyway. She might have said that she didn’t really want anything and that she had been happy to have to do paperwork for the police rather than take care of irritable patients for a while, but he knew he had still inconvenienced her, and that even after that, she had given him more insight into Robin and what it was like to deal with her while she was there. The more he knew about Robin’s personality and the dynamics, the better.

  “Leave me alone! Just get your hands off!”

  Zachary froze at the words. He stopped stock-still in the middle of the hallway. If someone had been walking behind him, they would have walked right into him
. Zachary looked around.

  “No,” the voice repeated. “I said to stop.”

  The sound came from one of the small visitor rooms that branched off from the main hallway. Small rooms for families to meet in, some with a TV or toys, some with plants, toys, or books; there were different kinds of surroundings to suit different visitor personalities or needs. Zachary stepped into the doorway ready to stop whatever assault was going on.

  A man bent over a woman in a wheelchair. He was standing at an awkward angle beside it, as if he had been behind it to push it, but had to step around it to take care of a problem. The problem seemed to be his attempt to sponge off a layer of drool that coated the woman’s chin and stretched down to her chest, where she wore a bib to soak it up. Her hands, stiffened into claws, battered at his, trying to make him stop

  Zachary didn’t know what to do or say at first.

  The man avoided the woman’s awkward movements and patted at her throat and chest, blotting the spittle with a thin hospital towel. It was obvious from his smock that he was part of the staff. The woman’s movements became more frantic, her words dissolving into a sob of protest.

  “Leave her alone,” Zachary finally worked up the courage to say.

  The hospital worker turned around to look at Zachary. He sneered, but he took a step back from the patient as if he had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

  “Who are you? This is none of your business.” The oft-repeated refrain of an abuser.

  “She asked you to leave her alone, so leave her alone.”

  “She needs help. I’m just taking care of her.”

  “She said no.”

  “She doesn’t get to say no.”

  “I say she does,” Zachary insisted. He stepped into the small room. He wasn’t physically imposing; he was smaller than the man, and yet the man stepped back again, looking around the room to measure his escape.

  “You don’t work here. You don’t have to spend your days carting around people who are so broken down by disease and treatment that they can’t do anything for themselves. She should be thanking me, not fighting me.”

  “She doesn’t owe you anything.”

  “I need to take her back to her room.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’ll call security on you! You don’t have any right to be ordering me around. Who are you to walk in here and act like you’re my boss?” The man was inching toward the door. It was obvious he was on his way out. He was just using the words to cover himself, like a man caught with his pants down.

  Zachary just stood there and watched him retreat. He shifted his body sideways to allow the man to make a swift exit without blocking his way. Zachary wasn’t about to get punched in the nose by an animal desperate for escape.

  Zachary stood there and listened to the whisper of the man’s soft-soled shoes down the hospital corridor.

  He turned to the woman. He didn’t know if he should apologize to her for interfering or maybe push her back to her unit.

  She was younger than he had first realized. The clawed fingers and reedy voice had made him think she was an elderly woman. But he saw that in spite of her boniness and air of frailty, she was younger than he was. Her expression was a mixture of relief and dread. Did she think that he was going to do something to her? That he’d gotten rid of the man just to have her to himself?

  Zachary sat in one of the visitor chairs, lowering himself to her eye level. “Are you okay?” he asked gently, “What else can I do for you?”

  She gave an odd, choking laugh and tears brimmed up in her eyes.

  “They think they have a right to your body,” she said. “They think that being in a wheelchair or being weak means they can do whatever they want. But I’m still in here! I still have the right to choose who touches me and how!”

  Zachary nodded. “Yes. You do.”

  “It may be his job to take me from one place to another, but it’s not his job to touch me. And even if it was, I can still say no!”

  Her voice was getting stronger and more strident.

  “I’m sorry,” Zachary said. Apologizing not for himself, but for what had happened to her. All of the times people had made presumptions and thought they had the right to control her.

  The woman was quiet for a few minutes, breathing and trying to get her emotions under control. Tears brimmed over her lids and down her cheeks, and Zachary made no move to try to stop them or wipe them away. He made a soft, calming noise.

  “Sh, it’s okay.”

  After a couple of minutes, she attempted to bring her hand up to her face. Zachary saw that she had a balled-up tissue or cloth in her grip that she was trying to dab at her face with. A way for her to have control over her own spit and tears. Her arms shook and the muscles in her hands and arms grew taut as she tried to perform the simple task. She touched the tissue to her cheek, but that was all she could manage. More tears flooded down her face and soaked into the tissue. Keeping her hand up appeared to be too great an effort for her, and it sank down into her lap until both hands lay there still, side by side.

  “You put a person in a wheelchair,” she said shakily, “and they suddenly become an object. Something to be acted upon. People grab the wheelchair and push you around without asking, like just because you have some impairment, you no longer have a will of your own. You complain, and they say they are just helping.” Her hands shook in her lap. “And it doesn’t stop there. Some of them say vile things. They touch you without permission. You can’t do anything to stop them. They can do whatever they want to and get away with it. Because even to the police or the staff or people out in public, you are just an object. You lose your personhood when they put you in this chair.”

  “That’s…” Zachary couldn’t think of language strong enough. He remembered what it was like after the accident that had left him paralyzed and needing to learn how to walk and take care of himself again. People coming in and out of his room, moving him around, transporting him from the bed to the chair, down to physio, or wherever else they wanted him. It wasn’t as serious as what the woman was describing; he’d never had anyone take advantage of him. Not really. He’d felt minimized and less than a real person, but he hadn’t had to deal with all of the things she was talking about. It was probably worse for a woman, and his convalescence had not been long. “That’s not right. I’m sorry. People don’t have the right to treat you that way.”

  She snuffled, snorting back tears and phlegm and swallowing. The choking, gagging noise made Zachary feel sick. He wanted to help her, but he knew there was nothing he could do. Even to offer seemed insensitive when she was so worked up about people treating her as an object.

  Zachary felt guilty for his instinct to help. Was he any better than the others? If he had worked there, how long would it have taken for him to stop listening to the objections and asking or waiting for consent? With so many people needing so much help, could they be blamed for moving in and doing what needed to be done, even if the patient didn’t want help?

  It had been a complaint he had often heard from Bridget, even before she was sick. I don’t need help. I don’t need you to do things for me. He had wanted to do things for her, to be the strong one, the provider. But she was strong-minded and independent and didn’t want him to rush in and take over when a jar needed to be opened or the groceries carried in.

  How much of a toll had it taken on Bridget to approach Zachary and ask him for help in finding out what had happened to Robin?

  “Who are you?” the woman asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

  “My name is Zachary Goldman. My wife was in treatment here a while back, but right now I’m looking into the death of Robin Salter.”

  “Robin?” Her head had been sinking down and it bobbed up at his explanation.

  “Yes. Did you know her?”

  “I know who she was. Didn’t know her very well. We weren’t in the same unit. Are you a policeman, then?”


  He considered whether to fudge his answer. People sometimes felt more comfortable talking to someone they thought was a police officer rather than a private investigator. But his rapid assessment was that the woman had been mistreated by authority figures and was more likely to trust an individual than an official.

  “No. I’m a private investigator. Bridget knew Robin and asked me to look into it. The police are involved now, but I’m not part of the department.”

  She gave a small nod.

  “I’m Ruth. Ruth Wick.” She lifted her left hand, the one not holding the tissue, and offered it to him, fingers still hooked. Rather than trying to fit his hand into hers in a traditional handshake, Zachary folded his fingers around hers to give them a comforting squeeze, then let go.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ruth.”

  “Thank you… for that.” She made a small gesture in the direction of the door the hospital worker had left through.

  “No problem. You think he’s really going to call security on me?”

  “Why would he? You didn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t have any reason to have you kicked out. It would just backfire and put him in the spotlight. Cowards like him don’t want the attention.”

  “Are you okay now?”

  “Getting there. Being like this,” she nodded toward her lap to indicate her condition or the wheelchair, “it makes you very vulnerable. You depend on other people for all of your needs. Most of the nursing staff is pretty good, but it’s like walking around naked.” She gave a short laugh. “I feel like I spend half the day naked as it is. I don’t want to feel that way the rest of the time.”

  Zachary nodded. “I had an accident,” he confided to her. “I had a spinal cord injury. Not serious, but enough that I was paralyzed for a few days and had to work to get my mobility back. It is invasive to have other people handling your body and acting like you are a thing instead of a person.”

  Ruth nodded. “And I’ve heard them talk about the patients who are worse… ones who can’t respond at all or are in a vegetative state… talking about them like they are plants in a garden instead of people. Even if they can’t move at all, they are still people,” she said explosively. “Talking about watering the vegetables is disrespectful! It’s depersonalizing.” She sniffled again. “And I’m going to be one of them, one day.”