Gene Hackman's wife, Betsy Arakawa, reached out for medical assistance on what might have been the last day of her life. Initially believed to have died on the evening of Feb. 11 after returning home from running errands, Arakawa was alive on the morning of Feb. 12, as her cellphone shows three calls placed to a private medical clinic, Cloudberry Health, a rep for the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office said Monday, per the New York Times. "I suspect that she was starting to feel ill and that's why she reached out to us," the clinic's lead doctor, Dr. Josiah Child, tells the outlet, noting Arakawa reported feeling congested.
Arakawa had initially scheduled an appointment for Feb. 12 but canceled it two days in advance, saying she needed to take care of her husband, Child says. When she called again, the clinic scheduled an appointment for that same afternoon, but Arakawa never showed and didn't answer later phone calls from the clinic. She died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a severe respiratory disease contracted through exposure to excrement from rodents that typically begins with flu-like symptoms but can ultimately interfere with lung and heart function.
Hackman, who had Alzheimer's disease, may not have known his wife had died in a bathroom of their home outside of Santa Fe, near a caged dog who would ultimately die of starvation and dehydration. Hackman is believed to have died of heart disease in the mudroom of the home on Feb. 18, the last day his pacemaker showed activity. The bodies wouldn't be discovered until Feb. 26. A rep for the medical investigator's office notes cellphone records had not been obtained before March 7, when the chief medical examiner publicly estimated Arakawa's time of death as Feb. 11, per NBC News. (More Gene Hackman stories.)
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