The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark Read Online Free PDF Page B

sweatshops of the Lower East Side and living in tenements, Beth Israel was for many decades a charity hospital. From that inauspicious beginning, the hospital has morphed into a busy urban modern medical facility with such gritty units as a methadone clinic for drug addicts. This is not the kind of place where William Andrews Clark could have imagined one of his descendants spending the night, even in an emergency. If by some accident of fate an heiress to one of the great American fortunes was admitted to Beth Israel, the obvious place for her would be the VIP floor, where a chef creates gourmet meals and suites begin at $450 per night on top of regular hospital costs.
    On Friday, December 5, 2008, Ian and Carla arrived at the hospital and headed toward the upscale third-floor wing. But Huguette Clark was not there. Instead, William Clark’s youngest child was right around the corner in the Karpas Pavilion, down a dreary corridorto Room 3K01, next to a utility closet. Huguette’s room had an old-fashioned radiator with peeling paint and a window overlooking the industrial air-conditioning unit.
    Ian and Carla knocked on the door. The private nurse on duty, Christie Ysit, a Filipino immigrant, came out to greet them. Christie was chatty and told them that Huguette was sleeping but was doing well for her age. The nurse reported that Huguette still had a good appetite and was able to get up and walk around the room, albeit with assistance. Looking for an excuse to enter, Carla seized on a friendly mention of religion. “I asked if I could go in and give her a blessing,” Carla said. “Ian and I entered the room. She was sleeping peacefully.” They stayed for scarcely a minute, standing at the foot of Huguette’s bed. Ysit suggested that if they wanted more information, they might want to return the following day to talk to Huguette Clark’s primary nurse, Hadassah Peri.
    A Filipino immigrant married to an Israeli cabdriver, Hadassah Peri was so devoted to her patient that she sometimes put in twelve-hour days taking care of Huguette. Her own children complained that the nurse was never home. Her maiden name had been Gicela Oloroso, but after moving to New York and marrying Daniel Peri, she had converted to Judaism and changed her name. Hadassah’s native language was Tagalog, and although she had lived in the United States since 1972, she still spoke in fractured English, with lapses in grammar and awkward sentence structure.
    At Beth Israel, the doctors were aware that the patient and her chief nurse were unusually close. “Mrs. Peri was very caring, and she couldn’t do enough for Mrs. Clark,” says Dr. Jack Rudick, a surgeon, adding that the heiress “related to her as her very best friend.” Every night when Hadassah returned to her home in the unfashionable Brooklyn neighborhood of Manhattan Beach, within minutes after she walked in the door she would get a phone call from her patient. Huguette wanted to make sure the nurse got home safely. Sometimes Hadassah would get another call later in the evening. Huguette wanted to say, “Good night.”
    When Carla and Ian arrived for their second visit to the hospital twenty-four hours later, they were hoping to see Huguette and broughta bouquet of flowers. This time, when they knocked on Huguette’s door, Hadassah Peri came out to speak to them in the hallway. The pint-sized nurse was furious. She told them that Huguette Clark was “very upset” that they had turned up uninvited on Sunday and barged into her room. Carla and Ian could not see into the hospital room but heard Huguette in the background, calling out for Hadassah in a shrill, high-pitched voice. The nurse demanded that they leave the hospital immediately.
    For scions of a WASP family who had attended elite schools—Ian was a product of the Palm Beach Day School, Deerfield Academy, and the University of Pennsylvania; Carla had attended the Ethel Walker boarding school followed by Middlebury