Chapter 2 - My Father Was Supposed To Be Getting Better
My father’s name was Alistair Mercer.
Seventy-one when he died.
Strong for most of his life.
Obsessed with routine.
Morning walks.
Black coffee.
Half a grapefruit.
Work until six.
One glass of bourbon after dinner.
The kind of man who never missed a physical and kept every test result in labeled folders.
Six months before his death, he underwent minor cardiac surgery.
The procedure went well.
His cardiologist expected a steady recovery.
For the first few weeks, that is exactly what happened.
Then everything changed.
Fatigue.
Confusion.
Nausea.
Periods of dizziness.
Sometimes he seemed completely himself.
Other days, he could barely stay awake through lunch.
Doctors adjusted medication.
Blood pressure.
Heart rhythm.
Electrolytes.
Nothing seemed dramatic enough to explain how quickly he declined.
Lenora became deeply involved.
At the time, I thought it was kindness.
She arranged pill organizers.
Spoke with pharmacies.
Managed meals.
Kept a notebook of symptoms.
She had spent years complaining that my parents were too involved in our marriage, yet suddenly she was volunteering to become my father’s most attentive helper.
I told myself grief had softened her.
My mother never trusted it.
“She wants too much access,” Maris told me once.
“To Dad’s medication?”
“To everything.”
I dismissed her.
Lenora was my wife.
Maris was protective of my father.
Tension between them had existed for years.
It was easy to classify the concern as another personality conflict.
Then Alistair died.
Official cause:
A fatal cardiac arrhythmia complicated by medication imbalance and underlying heart disease.
Nothing about the death was immediately suspicious.
He was seventy-one.
He had a heart condition.
He had been declining.
We buried him.
I grieved.
Maris stopped sleeping.
Lenora told me my mother was refusing to accept reality.
May you like
And for eleven months, I believed her.
Until a pharmacist called me.
