He understood that what Katie had gone through the night before was traumatic in so many different ways. She was going to need support. He needed to be there for her.
He texted Katie on the way over: “God, Katie. Life isn’t fair.”
“I know. That’s why we have to make the best of it. Do what we want.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam responded.
“We would have come to the same conclusion, anyway,” Katie suggested, referring to her medically induced miscarriage.
This text conversation, according to Katie, was in reference to her losing their child, the reason for the emergency hospital visit that night. If she’d not lost the child, Katie implied, they would have likely agreed to abort it, anyway.
“If we talked about it before or not,” Katie continued in her text, “you were going through your own things. You expressly told me you did not want a child. I respected that. Damn it, Adam, if you had said otherwise.”
As Adam thought about it, he considered what Katie was saying: If only we were still a couple, we could have made this decision together. Adam had once told Katie how scared he was to have children at that stage of his life.
Texting her back, Adam ranted: “The things I say don’t just give you the right to make decisions that involve me by yourself! I’m so torn up and hurt and confused now.” Adam told Katie the day was the “fucking worst” of his “entire life.”
He was referring to Katie saying she would have had an abortion if she hadn’t lost the child.
As Adam drove toward his home, rushing to be by Katie’s side, he was livid, fearful, and concerned. After all, this was the first he’d heard of her being pregnant with his child.
He stopped to pick up a twelve-pack of beer on the way. He needed it, Adam said later, to cope with the unfolding events.
When he arrived, he rushed into the house, sat on the couch upstairs with Katie and talked.
She was crying, upset over having lost their child.
Adam comforted her. “It’s going to be okay, Katie.”
“I . . . cannot . . . believe this has happened.”
“We’ll get through this, Katie. Don’t worry. We’ll get through it together.”
Katie tore into Adam via text throughout the next few days, describing how “explicit” he had been about their not having kids. “I didn’t want to do that alone and you didn’t want to be there . . . Two weeks later, you’re ready to have kids?”
In all caps, Adam texted, “YOU WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN FUCKING ALONE. IM NOT A PIECE OF SHIT.” He continued, saying how the decision she’d made at the hospital without him should have been made “BY 2 PEOPLE EITHER WAY.”
Adam wondered why she’d called him only once, near midnight. Why hadn’t she kept calling so he could meet her at the hospital and they could decide together what to do.
“You were quite clear. I was very alone,” Katie shot back. “What does it change . . . you don’t want to [be] tied to me. That was my life. You left me alone!”
“Fuck you!” Adam shot back. “That officially cuts us. I want nothing with you. You’re fucking selfish.”
Katie repeated how he hadn’t been there for her, so she was forced to make such a tough decision on her own.
They bickered back and forth for a few moments.
“I hate you,” Adam said. He insisted he would have supported her at the hospital. If the baby had survived, he said, he would have taken care of them both.
“You’d’ve gone to doctor [appointments] with me? Just like that? Why’d you leave! You aren’t even here!”
The conversation became even more combative as the days passed. Even vicious at times. Hostile and accusatory on both sides. Katie warned Adam about “her head” and how he’d messed with her emotions in the past.
“FUUUUUUUUCK,” Adam texted back.
What actually happened at the hospital that night?
Katie claimed to have gone home by the time she called him. In a text on November 3, 2013, Katie explained how, after that midnight call, she’d rushed out of the house, leaving her phone at home. She had pains in her stomach and severe bleeding. She went directly to the ER. It turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy. “Internal bleeding. Positive yours. Ironically I got to go to the birth floor! Given cancer med to fix it. Told them you were coming. Missed you. Left by myself. All better, right. So fucked up. They kept telling me how lucky I am.”3
“Please tell me [what] this means?” Adam responded. “I called you right back.”
“It means I was pregnant. But the baby wasn’t where it was supposed to be and they had to inject me and they killed it like it was some kind of tumor, Adam . . . The bleeding should’ve killed me but they stopped it.”
“You called me once and just fucking left your phone?”
“I was sick and apparently in shock.”
“Fuck.”
They argued for the next few moments, Katie pouring it on heavily, letting Adam know she’d wanted him there. Needed him there. Because they’d broken up, she implied that she was now “used to doing things by” herself.
After calming down, feeling Katie “was [still] going to need some help emotionally,” Adam texted at six thirty-five that night: “You want me to come over?”
Katie went into self-loathing mode, trying to make Adam feel guiltier than he already was: “I don’t feel lucky . . . I can’t do anything right, Adam. Not even what I am supposed to do unconsciously.” Regarding his question, “Yes,” she concluded.
Adam drove over to her house immediately.
Leaving the next morning, after having sex with Katie that night, Adam decided they needed to be together. He drove back to his new girlfriend’s and explained that he’d made a decision to rekindle his relationship with Katie.
On November 5, Adam texted Katie: “I’m no longer seeing anyone. Like I told you, we weren’t dating, and there was no sex. And now there is nothing.”
Katie and Adam were back on.
20
ADAM YODER HAD AN unpredictable side to him, as far as college and career goals. He kept his personal business to himself, mostly, but would open up to Mary. He dabbled in many different career choices, never settling on a major while in his early days of undergrad. None of it had to do with Adam having trouble with the curriculum, or his intelligence. He had taken Chinese for a while and wound up being president of the Chinese club, speaking the language nearly fluently. He was the only non-Asian in the club. He’d master something, or as close as he could get, then take a year off and head in a different direction. Mathematics became a passion for a time, then computer science.
“Why don’t you finish?” Bill asked his son one day.
Adam shrugged. “Thinking about it.”
Katie toying with his emotions had a lot to do with Adam’s uncertainty where school and life were concerned. She was routinely confusing him about what he could and could not accomplish.
Adam became interested in pursuing many different aspects of life, but Katie somehow managed to spoil these—without Adam knowing what was happening. He was so focused on her needs, he ignored his own.
In primary school, Adam decided to dance. Near his middle-school years, Adam immersed himself. He took an entire banquet of classes, hoping to get into competition. During one event, Adam and his family received the surprise of the year. After the competition, the judges announced they’d chosen one boy and girl for a trip to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to participate in a weeklong study program. It was seven days of professional instruction, concluding with a recital.
Adam was chosen.
“We just promptly fell out of our chairs,” Bill recalled, speaking about the moment Adam’s name was called. As Bill remembered this day, the memory was so profound, it brought tears to his eyes.
Mary accompanied Adam for the week. Bill flew out for the recital. It was a special trip for Mary.
“I’ve never seen a more loving mother than Mary,” Bill said.
Eve
n as the kids grew, started families of their own, managing their way through adulthood, Mary was intimately involved. Liana and Mary spoke every day on the phone, right up until the moment Mary died.
“Her top three priorities in life were mother, grandmother, and wife,” Bill said.
This close relationship provided an open channel for Mary’s children to confide in her with issues and problems, as well as accomplishments and happier moments.
Especially Adam.
“He would not come to me,” Bill said. “But he’d go to her with anything that was bothering him.”
Even when he was in a bad place, Bill concluded, Adam would go to his mother and unload. Some would later claim Adam was mean to his mother at times. He’d say untoward things to her—leaving an impression that Adam bullied his mother. This was completely untrue. Adam would get agitated and “spout off,” his sister and father recalled. But the next day, Adam would hug his mother, and say he was sorry if he’d hurt her in any way or had yelled. Mary never feared her son, and Adam never gave her a reason to be afraid.
21
AS LIANA HEGDE COLLECTED her thoughts after saying good-bye to her mother in the hospital, it occurred to Mary Yoder’s oldest child just how helpless she felt. Mary was suffering—dying—and no one could do anything for her. Liana drove directly to her parents’ house from the hospital. It was near 4:00 p.m. when she arrived.
Bill was on the back porch, sitting, “sobbing,” Liana later recalled. She put a hand on her father’s shoulder, squeezed lovingly. What could she say? There were no words. She walked inside the house—the first time she’d been there since her mother was gone.
Every detail of the house reminded Liana of her mother: the plants, the rug Mary had picked out, a piano just beyond the short breezeway. Mary Yoder was everywhere. But she was missing.
Bill walked in behind his daughter.
* * *
LIKE THE REST OF the family, Liana was functioning more on autopilot, even though she had been trained to deal with trauma and loss. During a time such as this, your brain switches to reflex mode. It finds a temporary way of coping with unexpected, overwhelming grief and loss. Essentially, our brains produce a defense mechanism, protecting us from more psychological pain and damage than we can handle. We function on adrenaline, one of the reasons why Bill later said he could hardly recall what time it was or much of what he did when he returned from the hospital.
With her dad at home, others arriving, Liana took a moment and thought about how, when she’d gone in to see her mother, “you wouldn’t have recognized her.” As a physician, Liana knew to look for symptoms that others did not. Mary’s legs were “very swollen . . . edematous.” Twice their normal size, Mary’s legs had turned colors, mostly a “dusky pale,” while the rest of her body remained yellow as an egg yolk.
Liana had noticed a Foley bag, which drains urine from the body, so she’d walked over for a closer look. She saw “dark-colored sediment at the bottom [of the empty bag].” When that occurs and the person is cold to the touch—which Mary was by then—it means the body is overloaded with fluid and the kidneys have stopped functioning. By then, Mary had been put on the maximum dosage of medications, but doctors were unable to raise her blood pressure. Blood was not moving throughout Mary’s body any longer.
Her organs had shut down.
The obvious question for Liana was how had her mother gone from healthy one day, exhibiting flulike symptoms and stomach issues, to her body shutting down twenty hours later? What had been introduced into the situation to cause such a sudden turn of events?
The one consistent factor was that Bill had been with Mary that morning and when she returned home ill. Additionally, he was present throughout that day and the following day when she died.
Outside the immediate area around Mary’s hospital bed, just beyond the curtain, the family had sat on chairs and waited. Her three children, of course, were sullen, crying, and equally as stunned. They were unable to process such an abrupt, tragic turn in their mother’s life. After Katie arrived, Adam had taken off during the day. As far as Liana knew, he had left to retrieve a couple of items he wanted to give to his mother. At the time, despite the circumstances, they were all under the impression Mary would pull through.
Liana viewed Katie as a family friend. She “had spent a lot of time with us . . . My kids loved her and they were with her all the time.”
During what turned out to be her final code, before it was decided to call Mary’s death, Liana texted Adam. She told him to get back to the ICU immediately. As the alarm rang and doctors and nurses filed in around Mary’s bed, Bill did not move from the chair on the outer side of the curtain.
“He had tears and was in shock,” Liana said later.
Bill looked at his daughter as Liana stepped behind the curtain a final time. “Why?” he asked. How had this happened?
“I don’t know, Dad.”
Adam came running back. In his hand was a picture he’d painted for Mother’s Day that past May. He wanted it near his mother. As Liana stepped in to watch medical personnel work to resuscitate Mary, Adam knelt on the tile floor by his father, clutching the picture to his chest, sobbing.
Then it was over.
From her medical training, Liana understood that when an unexplained death occurred, or a patient had been admitted to the hospital and died within twenty-four hours, it was automatic, standard practice for the body to be autopsied. After Mary’s death, Liana stayed behind in the ICU to confirm the hospital followed that protocol. She and her family wanted answers. They needed some sort of understanding.
After being told by a physician that Mary’s body would be forwarded to the ME, Liana left. By then, Bill, Adam, and Katie were gone, too.
* * *
STANDING INSIDE HER PARENTS’ house, Liana did not know how to help anyone, including herself. After Bill got up and had walked in, Liana grew concerned as she heard her father speak.
“I don’t want to be here,” Bill said. “Without her, I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Talk to somebody who lost a spouse, Dad, because I don’t know what to tell you.”
Liana suggested her father speak with her aunt—Mary’s sister, Kathleen Richmond—who had lost her husband the previous year.
“I felt . . . he might be suicidal,” Liana recalled.
As Bill retired upstairs, Liana did what she could to stay busy. So she called the local funeral home and explained that after the medical examiner’s office performed Mary’s autopsy, her mother’s body would be ready for cremation. It would be a day or two at the most.
Speaking with the ME’s office next, Liana was told her mother’s autopsy was scheduled for the following morning, July 23.
“Good, we can get some answers,” she told herself.
22
THE SPRING OF 2014 brought a cold snap in through the hills and valleys of Oneida County. Meanwhile, Adam and Katie’s relationship was held together by a cobweb. They’d reunited on the basis that Katie had endured a traumatic ectopic pregnancy. Still, an underlying hostility existed between them they could not seem to move past. Were they together because (according to Katie) she’d lost their child and nearly died? Was it love? Did they have a future, especially after such a tumultuous history?
Adam felt he was back to where he’d started, emotionally speaking. He’d only reunited with Katie because of the pregnancy. He was worried about her. Now, though, he found himself drinking more. Being with Katie was not what he wanted. They were toxic together. There was no “happily ever after”—and he knew this.
Katie sensed Adam slipping away. One night, she mentioned how he was paying far too much money in interest on his student loans and credit cards. There was no need to do this, Katie suggested. “I can help you.”
Katie explained her idea. She had money in the bank. It was just sitting there: “I’ll loan you the money at a lower rate.”
Adam was reluctant. “I don’t know, Kati
e.” This would tie him to her, until the debt was paid off.
“We can sign a contract,” Katie suggested. “I’ll set up a bank account for you. You can deposit money into it so we can keep track of how much you pay me back.”
It didn’t feel right. Adam was hesitant. It would put him in an awkward position of having Katie exert control over part of his life. “I’m not sure, Katie.” He thought more about it.
Katie was adamant: She needed to do this. Couples helped each other.
“Okay,” Adam agreed.
Katie paid off Adam’s bills, totaling about $12,000. They never signed a contract. She never opened a bank account.
A few weeks later, Adam was grumbling about a new vehicle he’d found, but he did not have enough money to buy it.
“Let me help you,” Katie said. She offered another $3,000.
Adam already owed her $12,000. Why not another $3,000? He took the money and bought a used Jeep Wrangler he’d found on Craigslist.
As he considered the loan, Adam viewed it two ways: They were building the relationship and trying to work through past issues. Partners were there for each other. Still, that little voice on his shoulder told him he was now indebted to Katie more than having his heart on the line. She held something over his head—not that Katie strutted around with an attitude, talking about how much money Adam owed her. But to Adam, the loan was always there at the center of their relationship.
Festering.
Percolating.
Just one argument away from becoming an issue she would use to yield power and control over him.
23
BASED ON THE INFORMATION the ME’s office was given regarding the day and night of July 22, 2015, Mary Yoder entered the hospital an otherwise healthy sixty-year-old female. She was diagnosed in the ER with “gastrointestinal symptoms,” which became the official medical analysis leading up to Mary’s death. This seemed ambiguous in a sense of ruling cause of death. After looking through the history of Mary’s hospital admittance and sudden death, the ME sought more information in order to pinpoint an exact cause—and manner—of death.
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