Clarice had learned her husband was a diabetic two years earlier when she received a phone call from the hospital saying that he had been found in his university office in a coma and might not make it. He was in intensive care for weeks, and for months afterward he was nearly helpless—no feeling in his feet, no strength in his beautiful hands. When she finally got him home, she prayed, bullied, sweet-talked, and seduced, anything to get Richmond well again.
