Chapter 2 - THE SECOND BOTTLE
Police arrived before the private ambulance.
Bridget immediately changed her story.
The white bottle contained a harmless herbal concentrate, she said.
She used it herself.
It fell near my medication tray because she had been carrying breakfast.
Detective Mara Ellis asked why it had no label.
Bridget said the original label peeled off.
“Where did you buy it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Online?”
“Probably.”
“Brand?”
Silence.
The bottle went into evidence.
So did my orange juice.
Diane sealed the medication tray and handed officers the key to my medication cabinet.
Bridget became furious.
“You had no authority to surrender his prescriptions.”
Diane looked at her.
“I am his licensed nurse. A possible contamination event has occurred.”
“He is not competent to make medical decisions when he is agitated.”
My eyes moved toward her.
There it was.
The sentence she had used increasingly often.
Not capable.
Confused.
Agitated.
Fatigued.
The vocabulary of my life had slowly shifted until every disagreement with Bridget became a symptom.
Detective Ellis noticed.
“Who holds Mr. Sterling’s medical power of attorney?”
“I do,” Bridget said.
“No,” I answered.
Everyone looked at me.
“My wife held it.”
“Laura died,” Bridget said gently, changing her voice for the officers. “Her successor designation named me.”
I had never seen that document.
My attorney had told me temporary papers were signed while I was unconscious after the crash.
I assumed they concerned emergency care.
Detective Ellis asked for copies.
Bridget hesitated.
That hesitation became the first crack.
At the hospital, doctors drew blood and urine before giving me anything beyond ordinary fluids and pain management.
They also reviewed every prescription Diane brought.
Dr. Samuel Kent, a neurologist who had treated me immediately after the crash but had not seen me for seven months, entered my room.
“You look different.”
“Worse?”
“More sedated.”
Bridget had told me worsening fatigue was expected after spinal trauma.
Dr. Kent did not say she was wrong.
He asked who managed my medication.
“Diane administers it.”
Diane corrected him.
“I administer according to the chart supplied by Sterling Rehabilitation Services.”
“Who oversees the chart?”
“Dr. Andrew Hale.”
I knew the name.
I had never met the man in person.
Most consultations occurred remotely, usually when I was too tired to concentrate.
Dr. Kent requested the original hospital discharge plan from eleven months earlier.
The current list contained five additional medications.
Three had plausible reasons.
Two did not match any condition documented in my file.
He would not speculate until records were verified.
That restraint frightened me more than alarm would have.
Sophie sat with Alma in another room while a child specialist interviewed her.
She described the second bottle.
White.
Smaller.
Kept inside a drawer in Bridget’s dressing room.
“Did you touch it?”
“No.”
“How did you see it?”
“Aunt Bridget put drops in Mr. Miles’s cup and then put it away.”
Sophie called every adult in the house aunt or uncle if Alma did not correct her.
The specialist asked:
“Did she know you were watching?”
Sophie nodded.
“What did she say?”
“She said medicine helps people who don’t know they’re sick.”
Police obtained a warrant for the estate’s medication areas and Bridget’s room.
They found no second bottle.
But inside her locked desk was a handwritten schedule.
It listed my breakfast, lunch, evening tea, and bedtime milk.
Beside several dates appeared tiny check marks.
No drug names.
No quantities.
Only initials.
B.
W.
And occasionally:
DOUBLE.
Detective Ellis showed me a photograph.
“Do these letters mean anything to you?”
“No.”
Diane leaned closer.
Her face changed.
“What?”
She pointed to the bottom of the sheet.
“That date.”
“What about it?”
“That was the morning Miles collapsed during physical therapy.”
I remembered waking on the floor with Bridget kneeling over me.
She said I had pushed myself too hard.
The schedule showed:
B — DOUBLE.
May you like
And underneath it:
Cancel gait assessment.
