Eileen and Tom Smith had just sat down to watch the evening news when the received a call no parent ever wants to get. The woman on the other end of the line was hysterical. She said the Smiths' 22-year-old daughter, Laura, was in the emergency room at Cape Cod Hospital. The doctors were looking for next of kin. Mary Ann Bragg, "Parents search for clues in daughter's unexplained death", Cape Cod Times, October 21, 2007)
That call came on September 13, 2007. The hysterical woman on the phone was Laura's friend Karen, who had brought Laura that day to Women Health Clinic in Hyannis for an abortion.
Eileen and Tom hadn't even known that their daughter was pregnant.
Karen and Laura had arrived at the clinic in the morning for preparatory steps to abort Laura's 13-week baby. The two young women were to return in the afternoon for the actual procedure. Laura wasn't supposed to drive, so Karen drove and the two ran errands. Because Laura wasn't supposed to eat, Karen fasted with her friend.They returned to the facility at about 4 in the afternoon and waited. Laura was called in at about 5, and Karen stepped out briefly, expecting her friend to be out of surgery in about fifteen minutes. But Laura didn't emerge from the bowels of the clinic. A worried Karen grew increasingly distressed.
And then all of a sudden [an assistant] comes out and says she's not breathing. And I was like, what do you mean she's not breathing," Karen told the Cape Cod Times.
Fire department rescuers were dispatched to the clinic at 5:49 p.m., and found an unresponsive patient. They initiated CPR and took her to the hospital. Karen followed, but was not permitted to see her friend. She asked about Laura's condition. "It doesn't look good," she was told. But Laura was already dead on arrival. It was 6:22 p.m.
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