By the time it ended, his attorney’s shoulders had taken on the defeated slope of a man mentally drafting a withdrawal.
The hospice physician testified next. Calm. Precise. My father had been medicated, yes, but lucid. Oriented. Capable of understanding his decisions. Capable, the doctor added dryly, of correcting me on the historical origin of palliative compounds while I attempted to adjust his dosage.
Even the judge smiled at that.
Then the nurse testified that Grant had attempted to visit after visiting hours with paperwork and had been denied access because my father was resting and because, in her words, “the patient had specifically requested that legal documents go only through Mr. Blackwood and his daughter.”
That one landed.
Grant’s attorney tried to recover by suggesting concern, confusion, miscommunication. But concern doesn’t usually come with private banker emails and power-of-attorney templates. Miscommunication doesn’t wear cologne and take a mistress to a funeral in stolen couture.
By lunchtime, the challenge was effectively dead.
By two o’clock, it was embarrassing.