“I’m so sorry. I was clumsy and broke it yesterday. I was going to call a repair man, but I haven’t gotten around to it. This old one is a bit weak. I’m worried Dad isn’t getting enough humidity.”
Evans grunted non-committally. He approached the bed, pulled out his stethoscope, and placed it on Arthur’s chest. He listened for a long time, then lifted Arthur’s eyelids to shine a pen light, and checked his reflexes. I stood beside him, my heart pounding, terrified he would find something a miss, but the herbal sedative had worked its magic. Arthur lay completely still, his body limp, his pupilary response sluggish. Evans nodded to himself, a smug, self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips. He turned to me, his tone grave.
“I’m afraid his condition seems to have weakened considerably. His lungs are congested, and his heart rate is slow. At this rate, he—”
He let the sentence hang, but his eyes gleemed with triumph. He believed the plan was proceeding perfectly, that Arthur was dying on schedule. I pretended to sniffle, dabbing at my eyes.
“Oh no, I’m so worried, doctor. With Michael away, if anything happens to his father, I don’t know how I’ll face him.”
Evans patted my shoulder consolingly, but his hand felt as cold as a snake.
“Don’t you worry. For the elderly, after a long illness, it’s the natural course of things. You just continue to provide the best care you can.”
He packed up his things, but before leaving, he pulled a small unlabeled dark glass bottle from his briefcase.
“Michael also asked me to bring this over. It’s a high potency multivitamin supplement imported from Germany. It’s very good. Make sure you administer five drops through his feeding tube every evening. It will help boost his immune system.”
I took the bottle, the cold glass chilling my skin. The bottle was smooth without a single word of instruction. The cap was crudely sealed with a thin plastic wrap. A high potency vitamin. I’d been in the medical field for 15 years and had never seen any legitimate supplement, especially an imported one, without a label, an FDA seal, or instructions. I nodded, my voice trembling with faux gratitude.
“Thank you so much, doctor. This is wonderful. I’ll give it to him tonight.”
Evans looked pleased. He offered a few more empty platitudes and left. I saw him to the door, watching until his black sedan disappeared around the corner before daring to go back inside. The moment the door closed, the grateful smile vanished from my face, replaced by a wave of revulsion and fury. I ran with the bottle to my makeshift lab, a small corner in the storage room where I kept a microscope and some basic testing equipment for my continuing education. I extracted a small amount of the liquid onto a slide and added a reagent. The result was what I had feared. The solution turned a dark violet when it met the specific chemical indicator. This wasn’t a vitamin. It was a derivative of digitalis, a powerful cardiac medication. But if overdosed or given to someone with a slow heart rate like Arthur, it would cause a severe arrhythmia leading to ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrest. A single stone to kill two birds. If Arthur died of a sudden heart attack, it would be attributed to old age and a failing heart. More importantly, if an autopsy were performed, they would find a high concentration of digitalis in his blood. And who was the person directly administering the medicine? me. The unlabeled bottle would disappear or Evans would swear he gave me vitamins and that I had either made a mistake or intentionally swapped the medication to harm my father-in-law.
Michael. Oh, Michael, how could you be so cruel? You want me to take the fall for everything so you can righteously inherit the money and clear your debts? You value 16 years of marriage less than a stack of IUS. Shaking, I poured most of the liquid down the toilet, flushing it away. But I kept a small amount, sealed it in a test tube, and hid it in the back of the freezer disguised inside a bag of frozen peas. This would be my second piece of evidence. After the audio recording, then I refilled the bottle with a similarly colored sugar water solution. I knew Michael was still watching me through the cameras. I had to let him see me obediently following his orders.
That evening, under the dim yellow light of the bedroom, I carefully administered five drops of the medicine, in reality, sugar water, into Arthur’s feeding tube. I did it slowly, meticulously so the camera could clearly capture every action. As I did, I murmured.
“Here’s your special medicine to make you strong, Dad. Michael loves you so much. He had this scent all the way from overseas.”
I glanced up at the tiny red light on top of the armwire, thinking to myself, Watch closely, Michael. Your wife is taking excellent care of your father. But I knew defense wasn’t enough. I needed my father-in-law to regain consciousness, or at least enough movement in his hand to sign or thumbrint a new will, invalidating Michael’s scheme. With only two days left, I had to make a big gamble. After giving him the medicine, I began my audacious plan. I knew the exact placement of every camera in the room. The main one on the armwire covered most of the bed, but it had a fatal flaw, a fixed angle. I dragged out the standing frame from the corner of the room, a bulky piece of equipment used for spinal cord injury patients that I had bought long ago, but rarely used because Arthur was too weak. I painstakingly maneuvered it to block the main camera’s line of sight, creating a perfect shield for the upper half of Arthur’s body. To anyone watching like Michael, it would just look like I was rearranging furniture or preparing for a passive standing session, a normal part of physical therapy. But in that precious blind spot, I began a real battle. I didn’t put him in the frame. I used an advanced PNF technique, propriioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, a method to reawaken dormant nerves. I took Arthur’s frail hand and pressed my thumb hard into the sensitive pressure point between his thumb and forefinger. It was an extremely sensitive spot that sent a sharp shooting pain up the arm.
“It hurts, doesn’t it, Dad? Please bear with me,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes, but my hand didn’t lessen the pressure. “I need you to wake up. I need you to be able to move this finger.”
