Chapter 38 The Last Weeks of Evelyn Hartford: The Decline
Sloane
The office door clicked shut, cutting off the sterilized sounds of the hospital.
Patricia didn't sit down right away. She stood by the door for a second, her hand still resting on the wood, before she turned to face me.
"I was so very sorry to hear about your grandmother, Sloane," she said. Her voice was warm, the kind of voice a doctor uses when they really mean it. "She was a remarkable woman. Even at the end."
"Thank you," I said, taking a seat in the chair across from her desk.
The plastic felt cold against my legs. "I was just relieved to know she was in good hands. Jonathan, her lawyer. He made me understand you took great care of her."
I watched her closely. Patricia sat down and folded her hands on top of a stack of folders.
She looked tired. Not just "long shift" tired, but the kind of tiredness that comes from carrying something heavy for a long time.
"I know you were part of the medical team that looked after her at the house," I continued, testing the waters.
Patricia let out a small, dry laugh.
"I wasn't just part of the team, Sloane. I was on the team. Your grandmother was very specific about that. She didn't want a crowd of doctors and nurses trampling through her home, that would get staff gossiping. She wanted one person she could trust to keep her steady."
"That sounds like her," I said. My grandmother had always treated her privacy like a fortress. "She didn't like people seeing her when she wasn't in control."
"No, she didn't."
I leaned forward a little, my pulse quickening.
"Jonathan mentioned that you were one of the witnesses when she added the marriage clause to her will. You were there the day she chose Cade whitmore."
Patricia nodded slowly. "I was. I had to sign off on her mental state. It's standard procedure for a patient in her condition."
"Did she ever say why?" I asked.
I tried to keep my voice calm, but the desperation was leaking through.
"Did she give you any hint as to why she was suddenly forcing me into a marriage him?"
Patricia looked at me with a sad, knowing smile.
"I can imagine your curiosity, Sloane. I really can. But sadly, she didn't say a word about her reasons. And to be honest, it felt selfish to probe. By that point, her physical state was becoming quite terrible. I was more worried about her pain levels than her legal choices."
I felt a sharp sting of disappointment. It was the same dead end I had hit with Jonathan.
Everyone knew what she did, but no one seemed to know why.
But as I looked at Patricia, I noticed the way she avoided my eyes. She was fidgeting with the edge of a medical chart, her thumb rubbing the paper over and over.
She was withholding something. I’ve spent enough time in boardrooms to know when someone is sitting on a piece of information they’re afraid to let go of.
"You’re not telling me everything, Patricia," I said quietly.
The doctor stayed silent for a long moment. She looked at a framed photo on her desk, then back at me. "Do you want to know my own thoughts, Sloane?"
I didn't hesitate. "Yes."
"I was at the funeral," she said suddenly.
I blinked, surprised. "You were? I didn't see you. I thought I knew everyone who was there."
"I didn't stay long," Patricia said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "And I didn't approach you or the rest of the family. It didn’t feel safe."
My heart gave a hard thump. "Safe? Why wouldn't it be safe? It was a funeral, Patricia. "
"Because people would ask questions. And I didn't have the answers they wanted to hear.", she replied.
"I don't understand," I said, my confusion turning into a dull ache in my chest. "What answers?"
Patricia sighed. It was a heavy, ragged sound.
She stood up and walked over to a locked filing cabinet in the corner of the room. She fished a key out of her pocket, unlocked the drawer, and pulled out a thin, yellowing folder.
"This is the original medical chart," she said, laying it on the desk between us. "From the weeks leading up to the night Evelyn died."
I looked at the rows of numbers and scrawled notes. It looked like a foreign language to me.
"Look at the dates," Patricia said, pointing to a section near the middle. "Your grandmother was sick, yes. But she actually enjoyed some very healthy days about a month before the end.
She was responding incredibly well to her new medications. Her appetite was back. She was sitting up, talking, even planning things."
She flipped the page, showing me a graph of heart rates and blood pressure readings.
"See this? Her vitals were stable. Better than stable, they were improving. I actually thought we might have months, maybe even years left with her."
She paused, letting that sink in. I stared at the lines on the paper. They were steady. Calm.
"But then, about forty-eight hours after this reading," Patricia continued, her finger sliding down the page to a sharp drop in the graph, "she began deteriorating. Rapidly.
She stopped responding to the medications that had been working perfectly the day before. It was like her body just gave up, but in a way that didn't make medical sense."
I felt a chill crawl up my spine. "What do you mean, it didn't make sense?"
"Her tremors got worse. Her vision was failing.” Patricia said, her eyes dark with a memory she clearly hated.
We couldn't explain what was wrong. It was as if a new disease had just moved in overnight.
I processed that, my mind flashing back to the timeline Jonathan had given me.
A few days after that change... that’s when she called the lawyers, isn't it? That's when she amended the will."
"Yes," Patricia said. "She knew something was happening to her. She knew her time was being cut short. And a few weeks after she signed those papers, she was gone."
The room suddenly felt very small. The smell of peppermint was gone, replaced by the cold, metallic scent of the hospital again.
"Patricia," I said, my voice trembling. "Why did she die? If she was getting better, why did she die?"
Patricia looked at me with deep sympathy, but also a confusion that mirrored my own. She reached across the desk and placed her hand over mine.
Her skin was warm, but it didn't make me feel better.
"I don't know, Sloane," she said honestly. "But as far as my medical knowledge goes, your grandmother’s death might not have had anything to do with her original sickness at all."
I stared at her, the words echoing in my head.
"She died of something else," Patricia whispered.