The Chart: A Meridian Files Thriller - Book 1

The chart says she's declining. The chart is lying.

Rachel Adler did everything right to protect her mother. She read the reviews and toured in daylight. She chose Meridian Oaks, the memory-care facility with the 4.5 stars and the lobby that smelled like eucalyptus, signed the papers, and drove home believing her mother, Helen, was safe. But one Sunday, Helen told her, "At night it's different. There's only one."
Then Rachel visited at night.

At 1 AM, the hallway smells like urine, and one aide, Cora James, covers twenty-six patients alone. Call lights blink in the dark, and no one comes. Helen's water pitcher is bone dry, yet the chart says appetite adequate. "I asked but nobody came," Helen says.

So Rachel times every call light from the chair beside Helen's bed, to prove the gap between what the chart claims and what the hallway holds. On a night with two aides on the floor, Cora warns her, "Not every night is tonight." Now Rachel can complain and get the line Meridian posts under every bad review, "We take all feedback seriously," or stay quiet and build proof, night after night, while Helen waits in the dark for water.

An unsettling psychological thriller about the hours families never see, a daughter fighting for her mother, and what a chart leaves out.

The Chart is Book One of The Meridian Files series.