I used to date a lawyer a few years back and he owned and ran this motel. The motel is located about 40 minutes from my historic County.

Being a lawyer, he often allowed some of his clients that were on probation to stay there if they were homeless. That gave his clients on probation a means of providing a stable address for court purposes and for the safety of those clients.

One of those clients had happened to have grown close to the lawyer. You see, they had both had their spouses leave them after so many years, so this shared heartbreak bonded them. They would usually be seen sitting and drinking together on the motel’s front patio, lamenting their lost wives.

Well as you know, the lawyer”s friend was there because he was indeed on probation and needed a place to stay for that reason. He was on probation for the same reason a lot of people in these small rural communities are, drug charges. But, the guy had been pretty much complying as far as drug testing and random searches were concerned.

After a long week of dealing with probation and his own clients’ lack of concern obeying their probationary terms, the lawyer was exhausted and sick of it all!

So naturally, the lawyer was both perplexed and irritated upon receiving a call that his friend had failed to come in that day for his drug test, and that he wasn’t there in his motel room when probation came and knocked. This wasn’t the lawyer’s friends recent pattern of behavior, but he had been known to pull that sort of stuff in the recent past.

Exasperated and generally annoyed after his long week, the lawyer knocked only once before entering using his master key. The lawyer gave a sigh of exasperation as he stared into the pitch blackness of the room before him.

As he was carefully feeling his way over to one of the bedside lamps, an odd smell caught his attention. The faint smell of chemicals and maybe iron? Flipping on the lamp switch, the lawyer blinked in the sudden brightness and looked around the room.

But his breath caught in his throat as soon as he looked behind him on the bed. There, on the double bed, lay his friend obviously passed away. The iron smell that emanated from the body was that of blood and fluid. He estimated that his friend had probably been laying there that way for at least 2 days.

I remember him calling me very upset, after of course first calling 911. For a few weeks, we eagerly awaited the autopsy results. When they came back, they weren’t a shocker.

The lawyer’s friend was on probation for drug charges, so it was kinda expected that his death had to do with such. The man’s heart has failed, as well as his kidneys. Years of prolonged drug use and ignorance to the doctor’s warnings, had finally cost him his life.