Page 68 of Chosen Path
Hope giggled. “I’ll bet it wasn’t. Could you imagine Doc Larson doing yoga?”
Bodhi knew plenty of octogenarians and nonagenarians who had established lifelong yoga or martial arts practices, some of whom could do a full split. Before he could share his experience, Molly gasped.
“What is it?”
Molly was peering down at a handwritten note that had fluttered out of the file in her hand. “I guess Doctor Thompson made a note that somehow didn’t get written up and added to the official file. The day after I accepted Doc’s offer, he called Doctor Thompson and … well, look.”
Bodhi crossed the room and crouched beside Molly on the floor to read the note. “Oh.”
“Why would he ask Doctor Thompson to prescribe those two drugs?”
“You know why,” Bodhi said softly.
“But he wasn’t terminally ill. He didn’t qualify under Act 39.”
“We don’t know whether Doctor Thompson wrote the prescriptions. In fact, he probably didn’t, or this note would be part of the file.”
“What are you two talking about?” Hope demanded. “What’s Act 39?”
Molly would be more familiar with the details than Bodhi, so he looked to her. She sneezed into her elbow, then said, “Act 39’s formal name is the Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act.”
“The medical-aid-in-dying law?” Hope asked. “The one that was all over the news a few years ago?”
Molly nodded. “Under the act, terminally ill Vermont residents who meet a series of requirements can ask for a prescription of a medication to, well, end their life. Doctors don’t have to do it, but if they do, there’s a whole procedure they have to follow. There’s no record of any of that in Doc’s file.”
“Plus, Doc wasn’t dying,” Hope said.
“It doesn’t appear so, no.”
“Is there any other reason Doc would want these drugs?”
“Maybe. Doubtful, though.” Molly shook her head.
“If he wanted to get his hands on those medications, he could’ve found a way, with or without Doctor Thompson’s help. You know that, right?” Bodhi asked her.
“I know.” Molly’s voice was heavy with sadness.
Bodhi watched a ribbon of dust motes twirl lazily in a beam of morning sunlight that was streaming through the window. After a moment of following the dust’s dance, he asked, “What’s his death certificate say?”
Molly cleared her throat. “Guess.”
“Undetermined natural causes?”
“Bingo. And Doctor Thompson didn’t deem it a reportable death because there’s no record that he contacted the medical examiner.”
“Would you have? A ninety-year-old man?” Hope asked, genuinely curious.
“A ninety-year-old man who I examined one month prior to his death, who had no acute conditions, and who I had reason to believe may have wanted to end his life? Yeah, I would have.” She looked to Bodhi for support.
“It’d be a close call. Without that request for the barbiturates and muscle relaxants, I’d lean toward no. But, in light of them, I might report it. Of course, we don’t know, maybe Doctor Thompson called him back and they had a conversation that made him confident Doc wasn’t planning to end his life.”
“Maybe,” Molly said doubtfully. “I’d paper that conversation.”
“Doc was from a different time. Maybe his doctor is, too.”
Hope snorted. “Doc may have been old-school, but he papered everything. He wrote every remotely relevant observation in his patients’ chart, and plenty that sure seem irrelevant—at least to a layperson.”
“None of this is getting us any closer to an answer about an insulin serial killer or whatever,” Molly said in frustration. “And the rest of this box is copies of Doctor Collins’ archived files.”
