Chapter 1 - THE CALL BUDDY MADE
The apple knife struck the tile before Margaret Ellis understood she was falling.
Pain tightened beneath her breastbone and spread into her jaw. She grabbed the kitchen counter, knocking a bowl of sliced apples onto the floor, but her legs folded beneath her.
“Buddy,” she managed.
The shaggy brown dog rose from his bed so fast that it skidded backward across the linoleum. He rushed to Margaret, pushing his nose beneath her cheek, then barked sharply beside her ear.
Margaret tried to reach the phone on the breakfast table. Her arm moved only a few inches.
“Help me.”
Buddy ran from the kitchen.
Margaret heard his nails scrape across the hardwood, followed by the thump of something hitting the floor. He returned carrying her cell phone by its rubber case, placed it beside her hand, and pawed the screen.
The display lit up, but Margaret could not focus on it.
Buddy struck the screen again. A woman’s voice came through the speaker.
“Emergency services. Can you tell me your location?”
Buddy barked three times.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
Margaret dragged in a breath. “Chest.”
The dispatcher’s tone changed. “Ma’am, are you having chest pain?”
Buddy barked again, then ran to the front door. He pulled down on the fabric loop Margaret’s son had tied around the lever handle months earlier. The door opened three inches before the security chain caught.
The dispatcher heard the metal rattle.
“I’m sending paramedics. Stay on the line.”
Margaret remembered arguing with her son about that loop.
“I’m seventy, Cole, not helpless.”
“It’s for Buddy,” he had told her. “Not for you.”
At the time, she had dismissed it as another example of Cole treating her like one of his cardiac patients. Now Buddy threw his weight against the door until the chain tore loose from the old wooden frame.
Cold January air swept into the house.
By the time paramedics arrived at Margaret’s small home in Westerville, Ohio, Buddy was standing on the porch, barking toward the kitchen and then back at them.
Margaret remained conscious long enough to hear one paramedic ask why her prescription bottle contained the wrong pills.
“What pills?” she whispered.
“The heart medication listed in your hospital record.”
“I don’t take heart medicine.”
The paramedics exchanged a look.
Buddy moved to the cabinet beneath the kitchen telephone and scratched at the locked drawer where Margaret’s daughter, Lauren, kept household documents.
Margaret tried to tell them the key was in Lauren’s purse.
Then the kitchen ceiling drifted away.
She woke briefly inside the ambulance. A paramedic was calling Cole, her forty-year-old son, who worked as a cardiac intensive-care nurse in Columbus.
“Your mother has an unstable rhythm,” the paramedic said. “We’re taking her directly to the cardiac ICU.”
Margaret heard Cole ask one question.
“Is her daughter there?”
“No. Only the dog.”
Cole went quiet.
“Check every medication in the house,” he said. “And don’t let Lauren remove anything.”
Margaret closed her eyes again.
May you like
She had expected fear in her son’s voice.
She had not expected suspicion.
