August 4, 2018 AD
Death of Jane Elisabeth Lahey (née Lewis)
Jane Elisabeth Lahey died in Room 7 of Vaucluse Nursing Home at 6:28 pm, minutes after asking Virginia May Collins to call her granddaughter. Paramedics came without a siren to confirm the death. Sarah Lahey arrived twelve minutes too late, found a folded waxed-paper wrapper on the side table and pocketed it without a word, while Constance Addleton watched unseen from the corridor. The death was recorded as cardiac arrest, and no autopsy followed.
A little before half past six, Jane Lahey rang the bell beside her bed in Room 7 of Vaucluse Nursing Home. Virginia Collins answered it. Jane was by then short of breath and could barely raise her voice above a whisper, but she asked Virginia to telephone Sarah. She was insistent that Sarah had to know. She did not say what. Virginia made the call.
Jane died at 6:28 pm, before her granddaughter arrived. She was ninety-two. Virginia was with her and could not account for the speed of it. Jane had eaten the whole of her lunch that day, and nothing in the afternoon's observations had pointed toward an end that evening.
Paramedics were called as a matter of procedure. They came without the siren. Their task was to confirm the death, not to reverse it, and they went about it quietly.
Sarah Lahey reached Room 7 at twenty to seven. She touched her grandmother's forehead. On the side table, beside the lamp and the untouched tea, lay a small triangle of folded waxed paper. Sarah unfolded it and caught the faint residue on its inner face. She said nothing of it to Virginia or to the paramedics, and slipped it into her pocket.
Constance Addleton watched from the corridor, half hidden beside a linen cart. No one in the room noticed her. When the paramedics began packing away their equipment, she reversed her chair and returned to Room 3C.
The death was recorded as cardiac arrest in a ninety-two-year-old woman with terminal pancreatic cancer. Given the diagnosis, no one at Vaucluse thought an autopsy necessary.
