Chapter 3 - THE DOG BEHIND THE GLASS
Margaret’s second cardiac episode began the following afternoon.
By then, Buddy had been brought to the hospital under a temporary accommodation arranged by the ICU social worker. He could not enter Margaret’s sterile room, but he was allowed into the family anteroom beyond the glass after being bathed and covered in loose blue protective scrubs.
A disposable cap sat crookedly between his ears.
Margaret laughed when she saw him.
It was the first time anyone had heard her laugh since the ambulance arrived.
Buddy pressed his nose to the glass. Margaret raised her hand toward him.
“Look at you,” she whispered.
Cole stood behind Buddy, one hand resting lightly on the dog’s back.
The visit lasted less than a minute before Margaret’s eyes lost focus.
Her fingers curled against the blanket. Her heart rate dropped, climbed suddenly, then broke into an unstable rhythm.
Buddy struck the glass with both front paws.
“Buddy,” Margaret said weakly. “Don’t let me die here.”
He howled.
Cole turned toward the monitor, but before he could reach the door, Buddy caught the fabric loop attached to the low emergency-call cord in the visitor area.
He yanked it down.
A light activated at the nurses’ station.
“He’s calling for help,” Cole said.
Buddy released the cord, hit the large assistance button mounted beneath it, and barked three times toward the intercom.
A nurse answered immediately.
“Family room, do you need assistance?”
Buddy barked three more times while Cole opened Margaret’s door for the medical team.
Margaret remained conscious as medication entered her IV.
“He knows my heart needs help,” she murmured.
Cole froze.
The nurses stabilized her before the rhythm required another shock. When the crisis passed, Buddy returned to the glass and pressed his nose against it.
Then he looked away from Margaret.
His gaze fixed on a locked medication drawer built beneath the ICU counter.
Cole followed his eyes.
“Who taught him that?” one nurse asked.
Cole did not answer.
After Margaret was resting, he brought Buddy into an empty consultation room.
On the table, he placed three sealed scent samples obtained from the hospital pharmacy: one containing Margaret’s prescribed heart medication, one containing calcium tablets, and one containing an unrelated antibiotic.
Buddy sniffed each container.
He sat immediately beside the heart medication and struck the table with his paw.
Cole closed his eyes.
Six months earlier, Margaret had briefly fainted during a church luncheon. She blamed the heat and refused further testing after the first appointment.
Cole had contacted a certified medical-alert trainer outside Dayton. Together, they taught Buddy to retrieve the phone, open the front door, activate a large emergency button, and respond to changes in Margaret’s breathing and body scent.
Margaret knew about the phone.
She did not know Buddy had also been trained to find her medication bag.
Cole had hidden training samples inside the locked kitchen drawer because Lauren complained that Buddy was “obsessed” with the cabinet and kept moving them.
Now the dog’s behavior meant the missing prescription had probably been stored there at some point.
Cole called the Westerville police officer who had secured Margaret’s house after the emergency. With Margaret’s verbal permission and Lauren present, they opened the drawer.
Inside were insurance statements, bank notices, two prescription bottles, and a rubber-banded stack of cash.
One bottle had Margaret’s name on it.
It was empty.
The second bottle had no pharmacy label.
It contained thirty-seven tablets matching Margaret’s prescribed medication.
The bank notices showed withdrawals Margaret did not recognize.
The cash totaled four thousand eight hundred dollars.
Lauren sat at the kitchen table while the officer photographed the contents.
“I can explain the money,” she said.
Cole looked at the unlabeled bottle.
“Start with the pills.”
Lauren’s gaze moved toward the garage apartment, where her twenty-four-year-old son, Ethan, had been staying since losing his job.
“I wasn’t keeping them from Mom,” she said.
But she would not explain why Margaret’s medication had been removed from its bottle.
Cole called Ethan.
The young man answered while driving a heating-and-air-conditioning service van through downtown Columbus.
May you like
Halfway through Cole’s first question, Ethan said his vision was narrowing.
Then the call filled with the sound of tires striking a curb.
