Final Stroke (14 page)

Apparently, Marjorie had walked out of her room and down the hall to the end of the nursing home wing near the kitchen and activ ity room in the evening when all of the staff were helping other nurs ing home residents get ready for bed. Apparently, she slipped and fell
when she rounded a corner and stepped into a puddle that had been made by another resident earlier in the day, the puddle not having been discovered so it could be cleaned up. Apparently, Marjorie had not been her usual self because she normally dressed whenever she left her room and always took her wheelchair. Even if she wanted to walk she took her wheelchair and walked behind it. Because of these cir cumstances, the staff concluded that Marjorie might have had a dream combined with an ischemic spell or even a mini-stroke.

“I sometimes work in the nursing wing to fill in for summer vaca
tions,” said the LPN, “and I’ve seen how stroke can affect the elderly. I’ve seen people who I didn’t think could get around without assis
tance jump up and start running. It’s like when you hear about some
one lifting a car to save another’s life. I’ve still got the remains of a bruise here on my arm where one of them squeezed me. I’m sure they don’t do these things on purpose, but it does happen. In a way, that’s why I’m happier on this floor. Younger people who’ve had strokes seem to have better control of themselves.”

Steve passed when the LPN said this and she smiled toward him, but Steve did not smile.

“What kind of injury did Mrs. Gianetti sustain?” asked Jan.

“They say she hit her head quite hard and apparently had a hem
orrhage. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The paramedics left in a hurry and cleaned up where she bled, but I guess because nobody else was around down there that time of night, and because someone was always at the nurses’ station to make sure no
body else went down there, the puddle was still there when your hus
band decided to investigate. For all I know the puddle stayed there for the morning cleaning crew. I don’t hold it against your husband that he went down there. I know he was a detective and it’s common for stroke victims to act out things they used to do.”

“Did someone initiate an actual investigation?” asked Jan.

“I don’t think so,” said the LPN. “We have to file a special report if the patient dies here, but she died in the ambulance in transit, so it’s up to the hospital to take care of the death certificate, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I guess what bothers me, and what seems to be bothering my husband, is that there are some loose ends here.”

The LPN opened her eyes wide. “Loose ends?”

“Yes,” said Jan. “For example, if the paramedics took time to wipe up the blood, as you said, wouldn’t that indicate they weren’t in a big hurry to leave and that maybe she was already dead?”

The LPN shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe there wasn’t any blood, or maybe someone on staff wiped up the blood after the am
bulance left.”

“But if someone other than paramedics wiped up the blood, why wouldn’t they take time to mop up the puddle?”

Steve slowed his walk as he passed the counter, giving Jan a smile and a nod when she turned to him, apparently pleased with what he heard. It was a turning point, the first smile since his seizure. Then he continued his walk at a faster pace, the rubber feet on the walker beginning to squeak on the tile floor.

The LPN made a smirky half smile. “Well, perhaps you’d have to know something about health care procedure to answer that. Per
haps it had something to do with paramedics always being more careful around blood because of the obvious risk of exposure. Perhaps part of their procedure is to remove any blood from the scene of an accident.”

“What if it wasn’t an accident? I’m sure when paramedics treat someone who’s been shot they leave the blood there for evidence. Who exactly would have the authority to determine if something like this
really was an accident? I know there wasn’t a weapon, but things hap
pen and if I were related to Mrs. Gianetti I’d want to know
exactly
what happened. That’s all I’m saying.”

Jan tried an engaging smile, but it was obvious by the LPN’s face that she felt threatened.

“That’s what I get for trying to be nice,” said the LPN, looking down and shuffling papers behind the counter. “If you want to talk to someone about this any more, you’ll have to contact the business office.”

Later that afternoon, Jan and Steve sat in their usual alcove in the third floor television lounge with windows facing the parking lot and woods. It was early, most of the others in the wing still down in rehab. Steve had brought the chart from his room on which they sometimes transferred information gleaned from whichever handful of magazines Jan brought in from the back seat of her car that day. But they did not unroll the chart on the coffee table or open any of the magazines yet, because it was obvious Steve wanted to know about Jan’s trip to the business office. She had promised to go to the main business office, which was downtown at the main hospital, then fill him in if he prom
ised to take an afternoon nap like the doctor suggested.

Steve sat to her right on the sofa that faced the windows and held her right hand with his left hand. He sat forward and watched her face as she spoke.

“It was the typical bureaucratic nightmare. I had to tell my tale to four people before someone finally sent me to the legal office, and then the legal guy made an appointment for the two of us to go talk to the head hospital administrator. Basically, they said that in a hospital,
or in one of its branch facilities, it was reasonable for staff to assume the malady that brought the patient there might be considered the cause of death when the circumstances fit. They said many patients, and especially stroke victims, act differently than they normally act because of physical or emotional stress. They said it would be impos sible to launch an investigation every time someone died in a hospital and would only take away resources from others. They also said they could not stop nursing home residents from walking off unassisted if that’s what they wanted and that falls were more common in the nurs ing home wing for that reason.

“When I asked under what circumstances they would launch an in
vestigation, they said, for example, if Marjorie had fallen and anything that could have been used for a weapon had been found, then they would have investigated. They said the only thing that was found near the body was her walker, and they did not consider that a weapon.”

Steve squeezed her hand. “Walker?”

“Yes. They said they found her walker nearby. I asked if it had been upright or lying down and they said they didn’t know but they could ask the staff member who found her.”

Steve squeezed again. “Fast walker?”

“Right, I thought of that. From what the LPN said earlier, it sounded like Marjorie was doing the hundred-yard-dash down the hall and I wondered how fast she could be going and how hard she could have fallen if she was using a walker.”

“Find out?”

“I did. When I brought it up, the administrator had someone call the nurses’ aide who found Marjorie. She was on duty and they had her drive over to the hospital while they made a big deal about treating me to coffee. The girl who found Marjorie was scared, probably her first job, and I felt sorry for her. But we all went ahead and questioned
her and determined the walker had been found some distance from where Marjorie fell. She said the walker was at the corner where the hallway turns, and it looked like Marjorie might have left it there and went off down the short hall without it. She said she called for help right away and tried to revive Marjorie until help came. She said she had a pulse, but that it was weak. Then, when the paramedics arrived and took over, she said she didn’t know what else to do and took the walker back to the nurses’ station so no one would come around the corner and trip over it.

“She seemed to be telling the truth, Steve. If there’s anything fishy about this, I don’t think she had anything to do with it. She just found Marjorie and determined she wasn’t dead and called for help.”

Steve smiled and squeezed her hand twice. Two squeezes was his positive signal. Sometimes it meant yes, sometimes thanks, or some
times it meant he was glad she was there.

Steve had brought his water cup from his room and he picked it up and handed it to her. There was no water in it and she knew he hadn’t had a drink from it so she asked him about it.

“Yes, I see it’s empty. You thirsty? You want me to fill it?”

“No.”

“So it has something to do with what you want to tell me?”

“Yes, Marjorie.”

“This cup has something to do with Marjorie’s accident?”

He stared at her for a moment and she could see the look of mild frustration he always got when he wanted to say something but could not. She put the cup down on the end table on her side of the sofa and held his hand. “Go ahead, I’ll try to figure it out.”

With a look of concentration on his face, he squeezed her hand and stared past her at the cup on the table. Finally he said, “Cups in the water. No, water in cups. The place … very good if you know
what it is.”

When she did not answer, he let go of her hand, reached across her to pick up the cup, grunted as he pulled himself up into the walker that stood before him, and made his way to the window. Then he pre
tended to drink from the cup and tapped on the window glass with his fingertip.

“Had one, but broke,” he said.

“You had a cup. No, you had a glass, but it broke?”

He nodded, then came back to the sofa and sat down. He handed the cup back to her and held her hand again. “Downstairs. Me. The broken thing. Water. Floor.”

“You mean the urine that Marjorie slipped in?”

Steve shook his head, spoke slowly and deliberately. “Water. know. Tried it.”

When she did not respond, he displayed one of his overly exasper
ated looks. “Listen. One word at time.”

“Okay,” she said. “One word at a time like you do in rehab.”

“Good.”

After a pause he began, spacing the words, sometimes by several seconds. “Water. Floor. Not pee. Glass. Sink. Shit.”

“Take your time. I won’t interrupt.”

“Okay. Glass. No … sink, then glass, then water, then floor, then me, then … yes, then fingerprints … then crash.”

“You mean the puddle on the floor wasn’t urine? You mean it was water?”

Steve nodded and gave the come-ahead signal like playing charades.

Jan went through several iterations of this until she got it right.

“Okay, one more time. The puddle on the floor was water, so it had to come from somewhere. There was a sink nearby and you found
a glass with some water in it. You were going to bring the glass back

and get someone to fingerprint it, but the glass broke.”

Steve hugged her and laughed.

Jan knew better than to ask qualifying questions like, how did he know it wasn’t urine, because that would simply throw him off track and they’d have to start over. Instead, she repeated the scenario about the water and the sink and the broken glass and simply led Steve on, trying to get him to add information, bit by bit, piece by piece, the way they did when she visited and tried to get him to recall a magazine ar
ticle they had gone over on a previous visit.

After an hour or so of letting Steve go on with his single word concepts, and Jan filling in the gaps to make sentences, this is what she had: When he heard Marjorie had been found dead, Steve remem
bered things she recently said to him in rehab. One day, while they were watching
Wheel of Fortune
and playing along, Marjorie said her family had big money, enough to keep her there forever, but for what
ever reason, this upset Marjorie and she said something to the effect that a bunch of keys would be needed sometime in the future. An other thing that upset Marjorie was that she suspected staff members of stealing equipment, and maybe even drugs. Another thing that upset her was her claim that her son was different from other boys. This didn’t bother her so much, but she knew it would have bothered her dead husband, and that bothered her. Although she never came out and said it, Steve figured her son must be gay. Marjorie had often spoken of the fact that her husband had been a mobster, but never in detail, and not in a serious vein, not until recently. Another thing Steve got across to Jan was Marjorie saying in rehab that her husband loved Ronald Reagan and hated Jimmy Carter, and that something had been said before the election, something about waiting until the votes are in. All of this on its own didn’t seem to mean much, but
taken together, and having a gut feeling about Marjorie’s accident the way Steve did, he’d decided to investigate and now felt he’d proven, if only to himself, that perhaps Marjorie’s fall was not an accident. Things had happened in the past that upset her and he had a feeling these things had something to do with her death.