Chapter 2 - The Vultures of Greenwich
The automated chest compressions were a mechanical rhythm against the backdrop of Richard’s frantic breathing. One, two, three, four. I locked my elbows, using the full weight of my upper body to keep the blood flowing to Eleanor’s brain. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the double doors click open again.
This time, it wasn't a medical professional. It was Evelyn Carter, Richard’s vicious, impeccably groomed wife. She stepped into the room with the practiced grace of a runway model, her sharp features set in a mask of calculated concern that didn't reach her cold, calculating eyes. She wore a pristine cream-colored cashmere coat, and her fingers were adorned with diamonds that could have bought my hometown.
"Richard, what on earth is going on in here?" Evelyn gasped, though her voice lacked any real terror. She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes darting from the flatlined monitor to me, perched over the dying matriarch, and finally to the vanity table where the open laptop sat. "Why is the help touching your mother? Richard, pull her off! She’s going to kill her!"
"She's doing CPR, Evelyn!" Richard yelled, his voice cracking as he held his mother's feet, completely useless in the medical crisis. "The ambulance isn't here yet!"
Evelyn walked forward, her pointed heels clicking aggressively against the hardwood perimeter of the rug. She didn't look at Eleanor's blue-tinted lips; she looked directly at the laptop screen. "Richard, look at what she was doing before we arrived. The maid was at Eleanor's computer. She’s trying to alter the estate documents! I knew we shouldn't have trusted this low-life girl!"
"I am trying to keep her alive long enough for the paramedics to intubate her, you narcissistic psychopath!" I shouted between compressions, my muscles burning, sweat dripping from my jaw onto the sheets. "If you want to argue about money, do it outside my resuscitation zone!"
Evelyn’s face turned a sharp, ugly shade of red beneath her expensive foundation. She stepped closer, raising a manicured finger and pointing it directly at my face, her voice dropping to a venomous, low hiss. "Don't you dare speak to me that way in this house, Valerie. You are a common maid. A peasant we brought in out of charity. The moment the doctors get here, I am having the police drag you out of Greenwich in handcuffs for elder abuse and attempted theft!"
Before I could respond, the front gates of the estate roared open, and the distant, wailing siren of the emergency vehicle finally crested the hill. Within ninety seconds, three paramedics burst into the room carrying a heavy red trauma jump-kit and a portable defibrillator.
The lead paramedic, a veteran named Marcus whom I recognized from my past life in the Stamford hospital system, didn't hesitate. "What's the downtime?" he asked loudly, throwing the kit open.
"Two minutes and forty seconds," I responded automatically, not stopping my compressions. "Initial rhythm was a flatline following acute respiratory failure due to fluid accumulation. She’s terminal small cell, stage four. No current DNR is active on the primary chart."
Marcus looked up at me, his eyes widening slightly as he registered the precise medical terminology coming from a woman wearing a blue cotton maid's apron. "Good copy. Charge the monitor to one hundred and fifty joules. Clear the bed."
I jumped back off the mattress, my hands trembling as I watched Marcus place the hard plastic pads onto Eleanor's chest. Richard watched from the corner, his arm wrapped around Evelyn, who was staring intently at the flatline graph, her fingers nervously clutching her leather purse.
"Clear!" Marcus shouted.
Eleanor's body jolted off the bed as the electric current surged through her heart. The monitor shrieked a high-pitched tone, and then, after three agonizing seconds of erratic spikes, it settled into a slow, weak, but definitive beep... beep... beep...
"Sinus bradycardia," Marcus muttered, adjusting the oxygen mask over her face. "We have a pulse. Let's get her on the gurney right now. We need to clear the airway before she drops again."
As they lifted Eleanor's fragile, weightless body onto the wheeled stretcher, Richard took a step forward, his face full of relief. But Evelyn caught his arm, pulling him back toward the vanity table.
"Richard, look at the laptop," she whispered loudly, pointing to the screen where the digital signature block of the Carter Family Trust was displayed. "She was trying to execute the transfer before we got here. The maid has the active token!"
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Richard turned to me, his relief instantly evaporating into a dark, corporate paranoia. He stepped between me and the doorway, his massive frame blocking my exit. "Valerie, step back from that gurney. What did you do to my mother's documents? What did you make her sign?"
I stood there, my apron stained with Eleanor's blood, my breath ragged. I reached into the pocket of my uniform, my fingers brushing against the cold, hard edges of a small silver digital voice recorder and a high-capacity flash drive—the ultimate evidence I had spent six months gathering. They thought they had won because they had the money, the lawyers, and the family name. But they didn't know who I really was, and they didn't know what Eleanor had discovered about them before her lungs failed.
