Kimberly and Leila live a normal life - until Kimberly meets a girl trespassing on the playground of the elementary school she is employed at. Kimberly knows Nova is too old to be a student at the school. She figures her to be a preteen or in her ve...
Late that Monday morning, a county medical examiner wrapped up Mr. McGregor's autopsy. He determined the cause of death to be an ischemic cerebral infarction - a stroke. The examiner believed Mr. McGregor suffered an asymptomatic cerebral infarction, also known as a silent stroke, several hours earlier on Friday evening and that it was the silent stroke that caused the major one that killed him.
The medical examiner had read the notes taken by the police and paramedics called to Mr. McGregor's home and was distressed. Mr. McGregor had displayed clear behavioral changes right around the time when the asymptomatic stroke likely happened, but two aides seemed to just ignore that. Hours later, he had a more severe stroke that went unnoticed because the aide was asleep. Had she seen the stroke occur, could medical attention have saved him? The medical examiner wasn't sure. He decided to leave that up to the district attorney's office, who he called immediately after completing the autopsy.
The assistant district attorney assigned to the case spoke to the home health agency that Mr. McGregor was using. They confirmed exactly what was in the notes. Although the ADA didn't speak to Leila directly, he found her actions to be negligent. By Wednesday morning, two days after the autopsy was complete, the district attorney's office had made up its mind. This was a clear case of involuntary manslaughter.
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Wednesday afternoon, after she got home from work, Kimberly took over the care of Nova while Leila went online to continue her strenuous job search. Kimberly and Nova sat in the dining room for Nova's lesson.
Every afternoon, Nova and Kimberly worked for half an hour on math and half an hour on literacy, with Nova deciding which they did first. This routine had only begun last week, but she was making steady progress, likely because Kimberly had found a way to help Nova learn throughout the day rather than just for an hour weekday afternoons.
Kimberly had hung a numbers chart and letters chart on Nova's bedroom wall, and every day, as soon as they were up, Leila and Nova looked at it. First, Nova would point to each letter and name its sounds. Then she'd look at the numbers chart and recite the numbers she was studying that week. Since she was only in week one of learning numbers twenty-one to one hundred, Nova was still on numbers twenty-one to thirty.
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Kimberly had also designated a "letter of the day" and a "number of the day," and periodically throughout the day, following Kimberly's instructions, Leila would ask Nova what the letter of the day was and what sound or sounds that letter made. Then Leila asked the girl to name the number of the day and to tell Leila what two numbers were used to print that number.
For instance, if the number of the day was twenty-four, Leila asked her what numbers are used to write twenty-four. If Nova answered correctly, she would say two and four. This method helped her to remember how to one day write these new numbers she was being introduced to, even though she wasn't learning how to print anything yet.
