Toronto: Monday, June 26
Franny had the computer skills of an early hominid. He avoided typing notes or reports as often as possible, preferring to fill black pocket-sized notebooks in Palmer script, which the nuns at his school had drilled into him by dint of terror. I booted up his computer with the password he’d given me and groaned loudly when I saw the Windows desktop. Nothing had been saved to folders. There were no folders. His desktop could barely be seen for all the documents and applications scattered over its surface. Nor did his document names make any sense. They were cryptic abbreviations that might have been French, English or Esperanto for all I knew.
I created an electronic folder called “FP DOX” and dragged all Franny’s scattered Word documents into it, save one: the standard intake Franny had filled out on his new client. Even he couldn’t escape typing and filing one because it outlined the scope of the investigation the client wanted us to undertake and, more important, what he expected to pay.
The client was Errol Boyko, a single fifty-four-year-old civil servant who lived in North York. His mother had passed away recently in a nursing home called Meadowvale, owned and operated by the Vista Mar Care Group. Boyko wanted Beacon Security to determine whether neglect, abuse or malpractice had contributed.
I created a new folder called Meadowvale and placed the intake form in it. Then I created a new Word document and pushed play on the tape recorder. Errol Boyko: All her life, Mr. Paradis, my mother was a force of nature… Francois Paradis: Franny’s fine. EB: Eh? Oh, sure. Franny. Mom was a big, robust, unstoppable, independent woman. When my dad passed away, she took over his hardware store and ran it better than he ever did. She didn’t retire until she was seventy-five and when she turned eighty a few years ago, she was still living on her own, doing her own tax returns, taking pottery classes, hosting a book club and putting personal ads in the Globe for a companion. The last part I wasn’t too crazy about but that was Mom. FP: Sounds like quite a gal. EB: Oh, she was. Until a year ago. FP: What happened? EB: A severe stroke. She’d had high blood pressure for years and it finally caught up with her. The stroke was devastating. She changed overnight. She couldn’t read or write anymore, couldn’t remember anyone’s name. She started having anxiety attacks if you changed the channel or got up to leave the room or a cloud passed over the sun. Anything could set her off. Her doctor gave her medication to control the anxiety but she needed more care than we could provide. FP: So you brought her to Meadowvale? EB: It’s not like I wanted to. I had to. My brother lives in Vancouver and has no interest in moving back. My sister’s in Toronto but she’s an alcoholic and God knows what else. She can barely take care of herself. I tried at first to keep Mom in her apartment with a caregiver. I was still hoping she would improve, you know? Regain some functioning. But it cost a fortune and she was getting no stimulation. The two of them sat in front of the TV all day. The woman was knitting sweaters she sold on the side and Mom was staring into space. Finally my brother and I decided a residential setting would be better for everyone. FP: How did you choose Meadowvale? EB: I called the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. They assigned me a case manager and she made the recommendation based on Mom’s needs. FP: Her name? EB: Darlene Tunney. FP: Did you check it out yourself? EB: Absolutely. I did my homework. I went on a tour and I called a good friend of mine who had placed his father there a few years ago. He had nothing but good things to say about it. Mind you, that was before it was taken over by this Vista Mar group. FP: When did your mother move in? EB: Early in the new year. FP: And when did she die? EB: A month ago. FP: We’re very sorry for your loss. EB: Thank you. FP: You okay? EB: Yes. FP: Get you some water? Cup of coffee? EB: A glass of water would be fine. FP: As long as you don’t mind it in a mug… here you go. EB: Thanks. FP: So what brought you here today, Errol? Why an investigation? The more specific you can be, the better. EB: Are you close with your mother? FP: Me? EB: Yes. FP: Well, we’re a very big family, you know, I’m the second youngest of eight, so my mother always had her hands full, but we get along well. Iguess I try to call every Sunday. EB: My mother and I were very close. Always. I was the baby of three and kind of her favourite. There was always trouble with my sister and my older brother is what you’d call aloof. It fell to me to look after her. I took on that responsibility, Franny. I took it very seriously. I gave it everything I had, everything, and I… FP: There’s some tissues behind you. EB: Where? Oh, thanks. I’m sorry. FP: Happens all the time. That’s why we keep ’em there. EB: Thanks. I guess what I’m saying is I need to know if they did anything to cause her death. FP: What makes you think they did? EB: At first, her doctor handled all her medication, in consultation with a neurologist, and things were fine. Mom didn’t get any better but she was stable. Her blood pressure was under control. So were the anxiety attacks. Then the medical director at Meadowvale, Dr. Bader, persuaded us that he should take over her care. You know, being on the premises and everything. It made sense to me because-well, you know how it is trying to get a doctor to see you these days. Like trying to see the Pope. So I agreed. FP: And things changed? EB: Not at first. Or I should say not that I saw. I couldn’t visit as often as I wanted. I’m an analyst at the Ministry of Finance and the months leading up to a budget-well, as bad as they normally are, they were even worse this year because of the size of the deficit we were projecting. So I only saw Mom on Sundays. She’d generally be okay-not too anxious, her colour good. I felt we had made the right decision. But a month or so before she died, I took a day off midweek to make up for all the overtime I’d been putting in and dropped by unannounced. It was like a bad movie. All the way down the hall toward her room, I could hear someone calling out, ‘Help me, help me,’ and I’m wondering, Who is this madwoman? Franny, it was my mother. She was hyperventilating, flushed, her eyes wild, half out of her mind. I called for a nurse and one came running, and the thing I remember is that she didn’t seem concerned so much as scared. FP: Scared of what? EB: Of me. Of seeing me there. I asked what was going on and she wouldn’t say a thing, just that she had to call Dr. Bader. A minute later Bader showed up with one of those little plastic cups with pills in it. Mom took them and eventually calmed down. He took her blood pressure and it was high as a damn bowling score, but he said it would come down soon. I demanded an explanation and he gave me some long, convoluted story about trying a promising new medication and needing to fine-tune the dosage. But the more I asked about it, the more evasive he got. FP: Specifics, please. EB: I asked to see Mom’s file, because each medication is supposed to be logged, and he gave me a song and dance about how her records had been shipped by mistake to their archives and he’d have to fill out requisition forms to get them back. That made it two mistakes: one with the medication, one with the records. FP: Okay. So mistakes were being made. Some of these places, you hear they’re understaffed or- EB: It wasn’t just the mistakes, Franny. Mistakes I could live with. But like I said, I’m a budget analyst. All day long I look at income statements, balance sheets, expense reports, looking for the things that don’t fit, that look inflated, that are just-out of proportion, I guess. And that’s all I can say about it. The nurse’s reaction seemed out of proportion. And so did Bader’s. He was covering something up, I could feel it. FP: Feelings aren’t the best way- EB: Then I know. I know something’s going on. She wasn’t getting her medication like she was supposed to. FP: But why? What you hear about some places, they over-medicate to keep people, what’s the word… manageable. EB: I don’t know why. Maybe they sell them to someone else. FP: What kind of meds was she on, may I ask? EB: Oh, God. All kinds. For her blood pressure, her anxiety, plus diuretics, anti-seizure meds… FP: Not morphine or OxyContin or anything like that. EB: No. FP: All right, Errol. Did you confront Dr. Bader with your suspicions? EB: [pause] I was afraid to. Afraid for Mom, I mean, not for myself. You hear stories about helpless old people being abused, and I thought if I made trouble they might take it out on Mom. I should have come to you then. Maybe if I had- FP: Errol, let’s stay with the things we can control here and now, okay? Did you consider moving her to another facility? EB: It’s not that easy. The good ones have long waiting lists. And what if nothing was wrong and I was just being overpro-tective? We’d move her for nothing, and people in her condition don’t handle change well. After the stroke, every change in her routine was a huge setback. FP: What did she die of, may I ask? EB: Another stroke. FP: This Dr. Bader signed the death certificate? EB: Yes. FP: So as I understand it, you want us to find out whether mistakes were made with her medications and whether they contributed to her death. EB: That’s right. My brother is fully behind this and very affluent. There won’t be any problem with fees. FB: Let’s talk about that.