Page 8 of Chosen Path
“The only one you’d treated within even a month of their death was Laura Gardener.”
One month shy of her sixty-fifth birthday, Laura was the youngest of the dead.
“Right. She came in for her annual examination shortly after I took over the practice. It was the week before Thanksgiving.”
He blinked at her recall. She was right. Laura Gardener had had what would prove to be her last annual exam the Friday before Thanksgiving. “How do you remember that?”
“Well, she was a few weeks early for her annual, and she mentioned that Doctor Larson always did her exam before Thanksgiving because her birthday was Christmas week and she was too busy to come in then.”
“Did she say anything else memorable?”
“Do you mean like physical complaints or health concerns? I would’ve noted them in her chart if she had.”
“No, no, I mean anything at all that sticks out in your memory?”
A small frown creased her lips. “Yeah, there was something. She asked me what I planned to do for the holiday.”
“Did you find that odd?”
“Not really. I thought it was nice. I was new in town, and she was just being friendly. I told her I didn’t have plans. I’d only been in town for three weeks. Rather than spend the long weekend driving back and forth to see my parents or suffer through holiday airline travel, I figured I’d spend the time getting my house set up. Besides, the weather forecast was bad. Lots of snow. I didn’t want anyone in town to be stranded without access to medical care.”
She paused. He waited.
She laughed softly at a memory and then continued, “Shetsk tskedme and said all work and no play would make me a dull girl. I almost asked her if my mother had gotten ahold of her and put her up to the speech. She invited me to join her family for dinner, and I would have, too, only—”
“—Only George Alden died the day before Thanksgiving.”
“Right. A neighbor found his body on Thanksgiving morning when she stopped by with a pie. He was the first, and I wasn’t sure about the procedures. By the time I called the medical examiner, located George’s great-nephew in Texas, and completed the paperwork, it was late. And I wasn’t exactly in the mood to be around a big group of people.”
“Of course not. And Laura Gardener?”
Molly’s voice was strained when she answered. “She made up a plate and brought it over to me that night. She was the kindest person I’d met in Scandia Bluff. She still is. And two weeks later, she was dead, too.”
“That must have been a shock.”
“I was stunned. She’d been in good health. Active. Lively. And then, boom, she was dead.”
“You said she had dinner with her family?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“I noticed all the dead lived alone.”
“Oh. I guess that’s right. I never thought about it. Well, Laura’s younger daughter, Hope, still lives in town. She works at the library. And Laura’s other daughter and son-in-law were local, too, at that point. They moved away not long after she died. Connecticut, I think. They have a couple kids. I assume they all would’ve gone to Laura’s for dinner.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you think it’s significant that the patients who died all lived alone?”
He pursed his lips for a moment before answering. “I’m not sure. It may be. They did all die in their homes. Alone. It’s possible that they each experienced an acute episode of some sort just before they died but there was nobody to bring them in to see you or to rush them to the nearest hospital. I don’t suppose Scandia Bluff has an ambulance service?”
She frowned and shook her head no.
He decided to leave the discussion of the circumstances of the rest of her patients’ deaths for a later time. “So, what’s the issue with accessing Doctor Larson’s files?”
A rueful smile crossed her face. “Where do I start? They’re all handwritten. In his own private shorthand. And they go back to the 1950s.”
“Ahh.” He’d assumed there was a patient database that they could search using date of death in the preceding twelve months as the filter. This changed things. “Well, I guess we’ll have to roll up our sleeves.”
