I wasn’t responsible for Abigail Snowe’s subdural hematoma, but if I’d been at my desk when she called, she might have survived.
The recent death of a well-known actress, especially its cause, reminded now middle-aged Nora Cahill yet again of a death she'd been involved with some thirty years ago. Nora wasn’t responsible for Abigail Snowe’s subdural hematoma but if she'd been at her post when Abigail had tried to call for help; if she'd even remembered to check in with the answering service where the dead woman had left half a dozen messages, Nora might have saved a life.
Written in first-person as a memoir of an episode that occurred in mid-1970s Atlanta, a city enjoying its first bout of national popularity since the opening of Gone With the Wind (in 1939!). Governor Jimmy Carter was loading the Peanut Train for Washington, D.C. and a brash young entrepreneur named Ted Turner crooned, "I was cable before cable was cool."
Among the thousands of young men and women to leave the rusting Northeast for Georgia, Nora Cahill, a 25-year-old college graduate with few marketable skills, found herself a job as assistant manager at Arborgate Apartments close enough to Christmas to call it a gift..