by Barbara Ebel
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Annabel still needed to circle back and see May Oliver before leaving. Another decision had been made at the conclusion of rounds about May’s care. Dr. Schott scheduled her for radiation treatments in addition to the chemotherapy she had completed so far. She found out they could fit her in the next morning.
May leaned over the sink brushing her teeth when Annabel entered.
“Mind if we talk again?” Annabel asked.
“No, I’m always up for talking with you. Are you feeling any better about your dog?” She stuck her toothbrush in a cup and went to her chair … as if standing was too tiresome.
“My sister brought me some of his ashes this weekend. Remains of our pets are comforting, aren’t they?”
“I agree. Although I think my ashes will soon be next … for my parents to put beside my beloved Misty.” She rolled the tray table to the side and sat. Her buzzed-off hair still startled Annabel every time she saw it and her face seemed to be growing gaunter by the day. A sinewy hand went up past her cheek and she rubbed her eye.
“May, you’re scheduled for a radiation treatment tomorrow morning.”
May stifled a sigh and frowned. Her bulging eyes stared at Annabel and clouded over. “No. I don’t think so.”
Annabel saddened. Besides learning, it was part of her duty to provide care and treatments, but May Oliver might have been at the end of her tolerance for further medical care.
A juggling noise came from outside the doorway and the drug cart began rolling in. Annabel took a double take at the medical assistant behind it. Gloria Pratt. What was she doing here?
“Dr. Tilson, it’s me, Gloria. I was wondering if I’d be seeing you on the ward. I told you I had interviews scheduled for medical assistant jobs and I landed one at my favorite hospital.”
“I remember. Congratulations. What a surprise. How is your mother?”
“The bad news is that she passed away. I miss her so much, but she’s in God’s hands now and not suffering.”
Annabel nodded at the information she already knew. She guessed the police were doing their job and had, or would, talk to her again.
Gloria clunked by Annabel and addressed May. “While Dr. Tilson and I talk, I’m here with your meds.”
“Pills for what purpose?” May commented. “You and I have had some serious little discussions about my feelings towards where I’m heading. In a day or two I may start refusing those medicines.”
“It’s your prerogative,” Gloria said, “but I wouldn’t want to watch you wither away much more or take on more pain. Some natural ways to die are brutal.”
“A man a few doors up from me,” May said, “told me he had congestive heart failure. Next thing, he was dead.”
“That was Mr. Hogan. Good thing he passed before a harsher end.”
A nerve twitched on Annabel’s temple, especially listening to Gloria’s remark about Mr. Hogan. The woman gave her the creeps. How long had she been working on the ward and privy to his medical condition?
Meanwhile, the two women talked like she was invisible. Gloria pressed on a plastic bottle on her cart and spit out sanitizer and rubbed her hands. She plucked pills out of the drawers and prepared May’s midday medications. As Annabel watched, dread mounted in her stomach like she had swallowed a whole twisted-up pretzel. An alarm went off in her brain. Gloria Pratt’s appearance was too much of a coincidence.
“I need to go,” Annabel said. “Nice to see you, Gloria. Sorry about your mom. And May, I’ll catch you in the morning before rounds.”
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Annabel drove home clutching the wheel with a solid grip. Should she call Dustin to tell him her suspicions? She parked and flew up the apartment steps.
Nancy was about to roll up her sleeping bag. “You’re later than I thought. Let’s grab a bite and I need to hit the road.”
Annabel was out of breath and put her hand forward like a stop sign. She slumped down on her sister’s makeshift bed and scrolled through her cell phone contacts and dialed.
“Annabel Tilson,” Dustin said after one ring.
“You said to call, it may be nothing, but my instinct tells me otherwise.” Annabel gulped for air and Nancy lowered down next to her.
Dustin pressed the phone against his ear. “Tell me.”
“Gloria Pratt started working at the hospital.”
“The government hospital?”
“Yes, as a medical assistant. She dispenses medications along the medical ward. I find that too weird. We had a patient with congestive heart failure die while ready for discharge. Something about her doesn’t feel right … over and above her matronly shoes and hand-sanitizer fetish.” She finally slowed her pressured speech and chuckled at the end of her comment.
“What did you say?”
“She gives out medicines …”
“No, something about hand-sanitizer.”
“I talked with her often while she visited or stayed over with her mother in the hospital. She routinely massages ethyl alcohol into her hands.”
Dustin’s thoughts raced. Didn’t the lab report indicate anti-freeze residue in the paper cups at the Pratt’s residence as well as a germ-killing lotion on the outside? He thought back to when he and Edgar poked around at her house when they took the 911 call. He noticed Gloria pump Purell on her hands in the kitchen. The caretaker, Marabeth, had nothing to do with Darlene Pratt’s death!
“Dustin, are you there?”
“Yes.”
“This may be making sense,” Annabel said. “Gloria may believe in euthanasia, mercy killing or whatever you want to call it. Maybe she had something to do with her mother’s death with what she considered a compassionate motive. But our patient, a Mr. Hogan, was desperate to die, other than wanting to go home one more time to clean up his affairs. He died Friday night and I’m worried because Gloria dispenses drugs.”
“I can’t ignore even your slightest hunch. I’m more convinced now that she was responsible for Darlene Pratt’s death.”
“She’s working today at my hospital.”
“Listen, I’ll get back to you. The BCI is overseeing the majority of this case but, under the circumstances, I don’t have time to contact them and explain our suspicions. Edgar and I better go take another look at the Pratt residence. I need to get off and procure a search warrant.”
“Thanks. You see, she has access to other patients and that’s what has me worried.”
“I understand. Gotta go.”
Annabel put her phone down and stared at her sister. “After you leave, I don’t understand how I’ll concentrate on my studies.”
“Tell me what you can. I’ll treat you to lunch and then I have to leave.”
-----
Dustin told his chief a sketchy newsflash of Gloria Pratt and had his search warrant in hand sooner than he anticipated.
“What do you think we’re going to find?” Edgar asked as they swung on their seat belts.
Dustin turned on the ignition. “Damn if I know, but the woman wearing a halo around her head may be Machiavellian in her treatment of people desperate to die.”
“I agree with you, but, for people like Gloria, that may depend on how you look at it.”
When they arrived, Edgar rapped on the front door.
“She’s not home,” Dustin said. “She’s at her job at Annabel’s hospital.”
“Her again.”
“I don’t know what Annabel Tilson is better at. Getting herself into social trouble with men or being fantastic as a medical sleuth. She’s cut out for medicine, that’s for sure.”
The two men were soon inside. The hospice-like environment they witnessed last time no longer existed. The hospital bed was gone and a simple cloth couch fit against the wall. The wood floor shined and the end table now had a match on the other side.
Dustin strolled to the kitchen counter where pill bottles immediately drew his attention. One of them with a multicolored label were multivitamins and the other a sto
re-brand of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. Simple enough. But nothing is as simple as it seems with Gloria Pratt, so he opened the vitamins and turned the bottle upside down. An assortment of pills shapes and sizes splattered out. He exchanged glances with Edgar, put them back in, and spilled the second bottle.
“These are all something else,” Dustin said. “We don’t have time for the lab to analyze these. Let’s go.”
Edgar followed Dustin’s coat tails and before he knew it, they rushed into a major drug store.
Dustin went back to the pharmacy area. The pharmacist spotted them and stepped to the window before his employee. “Can I help you, officers?”
“I’m short on time,” Dustin said. “Give me your opinion about what any or all of the pills are in these containers.”
The big bald man opened the gate and let them in. They went to a counter where the pharmacist dropped the contents of the nonsteroidal pain pills into a tray. He moved them apart and furrowed his brow. He picked up an oval off-white pill, walked to a shelf, and compared it with another pill. He stood again between Dustin and Edgar.
“This one here,” he pointed, “that’s propranolol, a heart and blood pressure pill. These two are diuretics. You know, to make someone pee. I’m not sure about this yellow coated pill, but this tiny blue one is for stabilizing a heart rhythm like atrial fibrillation.” He scooped them back into the bottle and dumped out the one remaining.
“Would you say,” Dustin asked, “that some of these pills could be a heart patient’s medicines? What did she call it … congestive heart failure?”
“I would say ‘yes.’ People do this kind of thing when they’re going on a trip for a day or two. They throw their meds into other containers.”
“Something more sinister is going on here. Let’s pack these back up.” He took the full bottles and slipped them in his jacket.
“On her job, Gloria Pratt kept a patient’s heart pills,” Dustin said to Edgar as they zipped back to the police station. “And instead of giving the old man anti-freeze like her mother, I think she gave him other patients’ pills which may have killed him.”
CHAPTER 31
After Annabel left and Gloria finished talking with May Oliver, Gloria dwelled on May’s condition. The woman, only thirty-two years old, coughs up blood. Her lungs could bleed her to death, she thought. Every day, her brain grew more alien cells; her bones hosted living, growing cells from her respiratory alveoli cancer; and she could throw another seizure at any time. Her situation was hopeless; she resembled a turtle waiting to withdraw her head into a shell and hibernate into death’s wondrous embrace.
Gloria had discovered her purpose; May Oliver must fall under her sublime care. The doctors were wrong in trying to make her go for radiation cancer treatments. Why couldn’t the poor woman spend her last days on a sunny beach wiggling her toes in the sand or on a hilltop gazing at a wildflower meadow where she could spot her last deer or rabbit?
It was too late for May, Gloria thought. She would put her out of her misery. Her method was so easy and, after all, she had succeeded with Mr. Hogan. She bought another bottle of cheap vitamins downstairs and by her late day rounds, by collecting pain meds, sedatives, and sleeping pills from other patients, and substituting them with the vitamins, she would deliver May to her maker.
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Dustin and Edgar spilled into the chief’s office with Dustin waving the pill bottles found at Gloria Pratt’s house.
“We need to have the lab identify each pill in these,” Dustin said, “and we need to get the list of medications that Mr. Hogan took at the military hospital. I’m betting these pills and his prescriptions will be a match. My premise, or Annabel Tilson’s premise, is that he received a deadly overdose from other patient’s narcotics and sedatives.”
Erickson sat dumbfounded. “Who’s Mr. Hogan? Who’s Annabel Tilson?”
“No time to explain. Gloria Pratt is working in the hospital and we need to bring her in stat. She could be killing another patient as we speak.”
Erickson popped up from his chair. “Another patient? Not on my watch. Go. Get out of here. Bring her in.”
Edgar found himself again keeping up with his partner. Outside, Dustin turned on the siren and flashing lights. “Plug my cell phone in so we can talk and listen on the speaker. Call Annabel back. She’s the last call.”
They zipped onto I-75 as Annabel answered.
“Tell me where to go from the hospital front entrance,” Dustin said. “We’re picking up Gloria Pratt.”
“Go straight. Elevator’s on the right; stairs to the left. Take one or the other to the third floor. May Oliver, the woman I’m worried most about, is on the east wing. Room 318.”
“Thanks. Looks like Pratt substituted your heart patient’s meds. He didn’t get what he was supposed to.”
“Hurry, then. Gloria should be doing the last round of medications.”
The officers stopped the car near the hospital entrance and jumped out. Dustin burst through the front door and ran up the stairs with Edgar at his heels.
A nurse came out of a room by the window. Dustin tapped her shoulder. “Room 318?”
The woman gasped and pointed. The two men rushed down the hallway and turned into May Oliver’s room.
The medicine cart stood in the middle of the room and May Oliver was lying down sideways on the bed. Gloria Pratt stood next to the mattress obscuring May’s face.
“No,” Dustin said loudly. He thought of the literal translation of a “deathbed.” Were they too late?
May’s leg moved under the covers. Gloria turned and her empty hand flew to her face with surprise. “What’s happening?” she asked.
“You tell us,” Dustin said. “Have you given her any pills yet?”
May leaned up with one elbow. “I was napping. You all are giving me a heart attack. What’s going on?”
“Ma’am, have you swallowed any pills before we arrived?”
“No, not since earlier this afternoon.”
Gloria held a pill cup in one hand.
“Give me that.”
She handed it over and Dustin put it in an empty uniform pocket.
Edgar put his hand around Gloria’s upper arm. “You’re coming with us.”
By now, a group of curious employees, patients, and visitors were scattered in the hallway as Edgar escorted Gloria downstairs to the car.
“Mrs. Oliver, sorry for the disruption,” Dustin said. “We must talk to that hospital employee. I’m sure the medical school student, Annabel Tilson, will fill you in tomorrow morning. Have a good evening. Sorry we disturbed you.”
By now, May sat on the edge of the bed. “No trouble. Two police officers in my room is the highlight of my hospitalization.”
“You get better, ma’am, or at least try.” He crouched down, took her hand, and smiled warmly into her eyes.
On his way out, Dustin found the head nurse and explained that Gloria Pratt would not be at her job until further notice and that May Oliver would need the real pills that the doctors had prescribed for her. He had confiscated the pills that Gloria was about to give her.
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As much as Annabel tried, it was difficult to study once Nancy left. Taking the medicine test hovered over her in two more days. The clinical experience and studying up to this point, she thought, better suffice to carry her through for a passing first grade. Best to spend any remaining time reviewing what she already knew and not fight the fact that major events were taking place with Dustin and Edgar, May Oliver, and Gloria Pratt.
She paced the room every ten minutes and finally left the apartment for a run. Maybe that would dispense her nervous energy about whether the officers had reached May in time and if their hypothesis about Gloria Pratt was correct. After a twenty-minute run, she stopped and stood facing south. The sun was disappearing over the horizon and low-lying clouds hung over the Ohio as if they trailed a bulky barge coasting along between the two shores. Her cell phone rang and she
wiggled it out of her back pocket.
“Dustin, I’ve been worried sick not knowing what’s going on.”
“I’m putting in overtime on this one and the Bureau of Criminal Investigations doesn’t know whether they love me or hate me. Edgar and I are wrapping up this case like cement on a casket.
“You want to hear this first, I’m sure. Gloria Pratt was in your patient’s room. She held a cup with a cluster of pills, but May had not taken any. We know what we’re going to find when they’re examined. Mr. Hogan’s drug screen should confirmed what we already suspected.”
Annabel sighed with relief and blinked away her happiness that May wasn’t harmed. “Sounds like you’re sure evidence will come back against Gloria.”
“Lab work, pills, anti-freeze and ethyl alcohol on cups, dead bodies will all corroborate Gloria Pratt’s confession.”
“Confession?”
“Yes. Everything.”
“Wow, Dustin Lowe. You did it.”
“We caught her red-handed with the pills she was about to feed Ms. Oliver, so her details and her motives came spilling out of her like a hose we couldn’t shut off.”
“What did she tell you about her motives?”
“Once she started, she told us a lot. She said patients deserve the euthanasia we often afford to our dogs and that some people end up hopelessly sick and disabled to the point that there is no meaning or purpose in their lives. All that is left is great unhappiness and suffering as well as other individuals telling them what they should and shouldn’t do, such as the health care system.”
Dustin’s tone saddened. “She gave her mother and Mr. Hogan their wish: to die when they were ready and to die without pain. She wished she had succeeded with May Oliver.”
“I’m glad you stopped her. Medical ethics is a real moral dilemma. Darlene Pratt’s condition was atrocious and Mr. Hogan, well, I don’t know about him. May Oliver is a young woman for whom medical science has not adequately come up with a cure. We also had an elderly man, a Mr. Harty, who took his own life. I’m sure Gloria would have obliged him if she had met him first.” She sighed as the last ray of light disappeared beyond the bridge and water.