Mandy quickly found Adrianna an empty room. She attempted to give her friend an Ambien so she could get some good sleep, but Adrianna resisted, saying that Ambien would put her out for the next twelve hours. All she needed was a few hours rest. Instead Mandy gave her a couple of tabs of short-acting Benadryl. It would help her sleep but wouldn’t knock her out for the day.

After Adrianna was tucked away, Mandy went back to work, stewing about how Adrianna was ruining her life. She knew that Garth put up with Adrianna because she was his cash cow. Mandy accepted that. Garth needed money. But she wasn’t about to let Adrianna screw up her few measly days alone with her secret lover. Garth would be arriving at the hospital in a couple of hours and all Mandy wanted was for Adrianna to be “indisposed.” Then she’d tell Garth that Adrianna left and didn’t want to be contacted. The two of them could go on their planned getaway. Garth would probably go back to Adrianna, but at least they’d have their time alone.

Since Mandy worked in an ICU, she decided to knock Adrianna out with a strong muscle relaxant used in surgery called Pavulon. The drug, whose generic name is pancuronium, is used for muscle paralysis and is administered before a patient goes on a ventilator. Muscle paralysis usually takes place between two to four minutes after administration and the clinical effects usually last about an hour and a half. Full recovery in healthy adults comes anywhere from two to three hours later.

Decker had some familiarity with Pavulon because it had been one of the drugs of choice for a serial-killer respiratory therapist named Efren Saldivar. The man had used Pavulon to murder his patients in a decade-long spree when he had worked at Glendale Adventist Medical Center about ten miles away from where Decker worked and lived. The local case was sensational and made national news. It had been a long-drawn-out affair that included confession, recantation, and exhumation of bodies. Most important, Decker knew that the drug did not show up on a routine tox exam.

While Adrianna slept, Mandy, a deft nurse with a gentle touch, injected her with the drug in the neck. The coroner didn’t pick up on it because the cable ligature had broken some of the skin and had obscured the puncture wound. When Garth arrived, Mandy made excuses, but Garth didn’t buy them. When he became threatening, Mandy finally confessed that Adrianna was sleeping in one of the on-call rooms.

How was he threatening? Decker had asked her.

Not threatening…she had whispered…just he knew some embarrassing things about her. With that confession, Mandy’s monitor started beeping. Her blood pressure started spiking and the nurses came rushing in. Mandy had talked enough for the day.

End of interview.