A man giving all he owned—aside from a car—to the old woman working at the hospital where he was receiving treatment startles his young wife.
All of Patrick Petting’s friends envied him. Because he had married a woman half his age, the 79-year-old guy was considered lucky.
The woman who captivated him, Alice, was a stunning woman with perfect skin, delicate features, and feminine curves. As far as everyone was concerned, she had eyes only for Patrick, and she demonstrated this at every chance she got.
Alice, who came from a poor family as a youngster, never would have imagined meeting a man like Patrick, but she did, and her commitment to him made him believe that her love was sincere, leading to their marriage.
The wedding was a flamboyant affair organized by Alice, and she had spared no expense. Of course, it cost a lot of money, but Alice didn’t care; it was not coming out of her purse.
She became increasingly extravagant with her spending the longer they were married.
One day, the old man became extremely ill and was moved to a hospital. Many of his friends visited him to wish him well, but Alice said she was busy and couldn’t come.
Patrick was deeply troubled and concerned by this, and it made him quite sad. His wife was not interested in sticking around with sick people, even if he wanted to see her.
“I could also catch something at the hospital,” she told him when he called her from his sickbed. “I’ll be praying for you, honey.”
As he could be overwhelming, she was actually relieved to be rid of him. However, Alice had also made plans to make sure that her freedom would be permanent.
After receiving a box from a shady man later that day, she promptly took a drive to the hospital where her spouse was receiving medical attention. When she arrived, she quickly walked up to one of the front desk nurses.
“I need to find my husband,” she said, sounding desperate. “Please.”
Following her emotional outburst, the nurses directed her appropriately. The old man wasn’t there when she found the chamber. He had been taken for an examination, but that was perfect for Alice, who didn’t need an audience for what she wanted to do.
She sneaked inside the room and opened the present after making sure she was alone. It was a bottle of drugs, several tabs of which she put into the glass of water on his bedside locker.
After dissolving a few pills in the glass, Alice slyly left the room. As she closed the door behind her, she ran straight into a cleaning lady, spilling all the contents of her bucket, including the soapy water she was cleaning the floor with.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” the old cleaner said as she tried to right herself.
“You should be!” Alice groaned. “You need to be more careful when you walk.” Her rude words rubbed Martha the cleaner wrong, and it made her frown as she tried to decide if it had been her fault while watching the lady walk away.
Looking around to make sure nothing got damaged in her fall, but she found something else instead.
It was a small bottle of drugs, and Martha knew instantly that it must have fallen from Alice. She recognized the drug and knew what she had to do.
Martha had just left when Patrick got back to his ward. She told him that she had cleaned his room when they met as she was leaving his room.
“Thank you ma’am,” he said.
When Patrick walked into his room, he took a quick look around, appreciating the cleanness, then he discovered a note on the table from his beloved wife:
“I love you very much, sometimes it may seem to you that it is not true, but the fault lies with me because I don’t know how to express my feelings. The most important thing for me is that you recover quickly! Your Alice!”
The letter warmed his heart, and he could not stop thinking about it for the rest of that day. He made a quick phone call to his lawyer before retiring back in his bed.
The following day, he summoned his wife to the hospital and called the cleaning lady. When they both arrived, he summoned his lawyer and presented his will to his wife.
Alice’s eyes bulged when she saw the contents of the documents — her husband was leaving her only a car while everything else was going to the cleaner!
“How could you do this?” she asked, stunned. “How is this fair?”
Unfazed by her reaction, Patrick revealed the ruse. “When I arrived at my ward yesterday, I saw a letter on my table,” he said. “It was addressed to me and it was a lovely letter.”
“The writer would have me think it was from you but I know it was not your doing. Why? First off, I knew you always made errors when you wrote words but everything in the note was written correctly and grammatically right.
“That was a dead giveaway, but not as much as the handwriting. You see, they were familiar to me and it took me several minutes to remember whose writing it was.”
He turned to Martha then: “You once wrote me a note of medicines my doctor asked me to buy,” he said. “Why did you write that letter?”
The old woman was afraid of getting caught not minding her business, so she was stiff with fear. But he begged her to speak as he meant her no harm.
When she did, Martha told him about how she had run into his wife and found the drug bottle afterward.
“I asked a doctor and he said they were bad drugs so I returned to your room, threw out the water I saw by your bedside, and replaced it with a bottled one.”
Martha also revealed that she wrote the note so he would feel better and get well faster. After she finished speaking, Patrick turned back to Alice, who had a look of horror on her face — her plan had just backfired.
“Do you know why I left you nothing of my wealth except a car?” he asked her. “It is so that you can use it to get as far away from me as possible and never return or I’ll tell the police about what you tried to do!”
Alice took the threat very seriously, and before Patrick was released from the hospital, she had packed her things and taken off.
What did we gain from this story?
– Don’t let your greed control you.
Alice let her greed for Patrick’s money push her into attempting to kill him faster, but unfortunately for her, she ran into someone who offset the whole thing, and she lost it all.
– Trust your gut.
Martha could have chosen to mind her business even after she found out how deadly the drugs were that day, but her gut instinct made her return to the bedroom and switch out the water, thereby saving Patrick’s life.
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If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a man who pays for an old woman’s groceries and after her death, he gets a car as a gift from her.
