15. Ashley
15
ASHLEY
I sat on my couch thinking about the strange interaction I had with Farah earlier this afternoon while I scrolled my socials. When Michael asked her what she thought of the patients' dying unexpectedly, she made a weird comment and it stuck with me. She said sometimes dying was more merciful than living, especially if a patient was only living to suffer longer. What struck me was how casually she'd said it too, as if she truly believed that.
While I couldn't fault her thinking, it gave me the chills. I curled up with a glass of wine and my laptop and tried to shake how morbid it sounded. I was in the business of saving lives, not mourning them or taking them. Thinking about death gave me the creeps, and I needed to distract myself.
So I pulled out my phone and the code Sam had typed into my notes app for me. He told me how to access the hospital system from home. Someone else gave him the code, and it took a great deal of trust on his part that I wouldn't abuse it and get him in trouble. I had no intention of being malicious. I wanted to see if there were other similar cases logged away in patient files. This code gave me access to all patient files and the employee directory too. If there was a correlation, I would find it.
I set to work navigating to the employee portal and logging in, then followed the steps he gave me to access patient files. With his code, the site opened seamlessly and I was in. I spent at least an hour using different keywords to try to find patients who matched the same criteria of having died of a heart attack. However, it was nearly impossible since heart attack was the leading cause of death. I couldn't sort through that many case files over several years.
So I changed my focus, looking for patients who had been prescribed potassium chloride. I picked up my wine to sip it but instantly felt sick to my stomach again, the same nausea that had been tormenting me. It reminded me that I wasn't just searching for a potential killer who was setting Jack up. I had my own mess to iron out with a testy man who didn't seem to know what he wanted.
Jacks' behavior was erratic and irrational. He was moody one moment and hungry for me the next. The stress of this whole thing was showing on him and it wasn't a good look. It didn't chase me off, but it did nothing to attract me, either. I felt like I had to work harder to help him, which was why when Sam asked me to meet him after work to get this code, I agreed instantly. Anything I could do to take the pressure off Jack and help him get normalcy again, I'd do.
Finally, after two and a half hours of searching, I found a few more cases where patients were prescribed potassium chloride. I didn't have access to pharmacy records to see when or by whom those meds were filled and distributed, but I discovered two more people who had died of what appeared to be accidental overdose of the drug. What was strange was, they also were surviving cancer patients whose cancer had recurred after remission.
My gut told me they were directly linked, despite the two recent patients never having been prescribed the potassium chloride. If it was easy to get the drug and give it to a patient who wasn't already taking it, how much simpler was it to poison a patient with their own medicine? My fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up more stats about the deaths, ages, and non-related conditions. Then I searched other patients' files and found another death in a patient who was taking potassium chloride that was completely unexplained other than cardiac arrest, and no autopsy had been performed. Still, the patient's connection to the others was direct—all of them with recent cancer treatments.
Staring at my computer, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. All three of the previous cases, however, had been ruled accidental or natural causes by hospital staff with no need for investigation. The families didn't press charges or file lawsuits, and no one even batted an eye. It was as if Farah's mentality of "save them only to suffer" had been adopted by others too, even the families involved. It was strange and chilling, and my gut told me something was off about it.
When I looked again at the current patient files and realized Farah was not only the doctor on the second patient's case, but she also treated patient number one for vasculitis previous to the surgery Jack performed, it cemented it for me. The other deaths might have happened before she came to CU, but it was obvious to me that she was involved somehow in the two recent cases.
If hospital admins didn't get worked up about the previous ones, there was nothing I could do now. Too much time had passed. But they had to know they had a doctor on staff who would just as likely euthanize a patient to keep them from suffering than to save their life and let them choose for themselves what they wanted.
It didn't get past me that I'd found three other suspicious deaths, but I wasn't allowed to be in this system. Sam had stuck his neck out for me. And on top of that, even if I pointed them out, no one else had been suspicious and there was every chance they were exactly as they seemed—accidental or natural causes. I couldn't use them as evidence, but now that I knew Farah had been involved in these two, I felt like I had to go to the board, or at least Jack. It was possible she wasn't working alone, that someone else had done it first and she got the idea from them.
My phone rang, an unknown number, and I almost ignored it. With the weight of this discovery hanging over me, I didn't want to talk to anyone but Jack. But the nurses caring for my sick patient had my number in case something came up. I told them to call me directly. So I picked up my phone and swiped to answer.
"Dr. Sutton.”
"Strange how you kept your last name." It was Sam, and he was furious. "Most women take their husband's name."
"Sam, what's wrong? How did you get my number?" I was confused and alarmed. I hadn't given him my phone number and I didn't want him to have it.
"I have the same code you do, Ashley. And if you know what's good for you, you'll put that husband on a leash. The man sucker-punched me for no good reason. He demanded that I back off and stay away from you."
To hear that Jack had assaulted Sam shocked me. I knew Jack had been upset lately, but I hadn't realized it was jealousy over my being around Sam. He knew I didn't want anything to do with the man. Why would he assault him?
"I ought to take this to the board and?—"
"Sam, no!" I blurted out. "Please, don't do that." I thought of Jack and how that would affect his future at Cambridge. "Please, he's going through something. Please don't do that. I'm sure we can work something out. He's been on edge with this lawsuit."
"You'd better tell him to back off. I'm trying to be a friend, Ashley, but I don't have to be."
Sam had the capacity to be the biggest jerk of all time, but if he was willing to back down, I knew I could get Jack under control. "It won't happen again. I'm so sorry, Sam. Please just don’t say anything to the board. I'll deal with Jack."
"You'd better," he warned and then he hung up, and the first thing I did was call Jack.
He picked up and sounded slightly drunk. His words were slurred and he was upset too. "Yeah, I'm here.”
It was sweet that Jack defended me, whether it was to chase Sam off since he knew I wanted nothing to do with him or whether he was jealous. Or maybe he thought Sam was bad for me and Jack was just doing what he promised my father he'd do. Either way, it showed me that Jack cared in his backward, grumpy way.
"Jack, are you alright?" His tone worried me.
He sounded too out of sorts, like whatever altercation had happened between him and Sam had affected him a lot.
"Why don’t you just come over and find out for yourself?" he growled, and then he hung up. I didn’t know if that was a challenge or an invitation, but I grabbed my car keys and my purse and went straight to my car. He needed me, or at least some accountability. If he went after Sam again, he was done for.