Chapter 3 - FRANK HAD BEEN GETTING SICK AT HOME
For eleven months, Evelyn had told everyone Frank was deteriorating.
Heart failure.
Pulmonary weakness.
Age.
Stress.
Whatever explanation fit the day.
Frank stopped driving.
Then stopped attending board meetings.
Then stopped signing checks without Evelyn beside him.
He needed oxygen more often.
He became confused in the afternoons.
At family dinners he sometimes stared at his plate as if he could not remember why it was there.
Madison began telling friends:
“Dad’s fading.”
Nora believed it too.
She had been overseas with a training command for part of the year and recovering from surgery for the rest.
Every time she asked questions, Evelyn answered with irritation.
“He has doctors.”
“Which doctors?”
“People better qualified than you.”
“I’m not pretending to be a doctor.”
“Then stop interrogating me.”
Now the hospital medication reconciliation found problems.
Frank’s prescribed medications were ordinary for his conditions.
But the pills in his home bottle included:
a higher-dose beta blocker than prescribed,
a sedating medication issued months earlier for short-term insomnia,
and one tablet not listed in his current chart at all.
No one immediately accused Evelyn of poisoning him.
That word was too big.
Too early.
Medication mismanagement was possible.
Duplicate prescriptions were possible.
Frank himself could have mixed pills.
But then the hospital pharmacist found something else.
The bottle had been refilled through two different pharmacies.
One prescription came from Frank’s cardiologist.
The other from a concierge physician named Dr. Leonard Price.
Nora knew the name.
May you like
Evelyn’s doctor.
Not Frank’s.
