He Promised My Mother a Doctor, Then Locked Her in a Freezer

In the dead of summer, my mother accidentally locked Charles Gilbert's secretary in the car. By the time I came back from getting her checked in and tracked down my mother, who'd had one of her episodes, and hurried back to the parking lot, Hildegarde Pruitt had already collapsed from heatstroke. When I brought a gift basket to her hospital room to apologize, Charles didn't even look up. "It's fine. Your mother's sick, she didn't mean it. Don't take it to heart."