Rochelle had known for a while that Ian wasn’t well, but she’d had
other concerns weighing on her mind: she was grieving her mother,
who had just passed away and left behind a complicated estate to sort
out, and she had just launched a new law practice with an associate.
Part of her had been resentful that she wasn’t getting the marital
support she needed during this stressful period of her life. But Ian’s
anguished state that day made her realize how dire his mental
condition had become. She got him to agree to get help and scheduled
an appointment with his general practitioner for the next morning.
—
WHEN ROCHELLE GOT UP around seven thirty a.m. on May 16, she saw
that the bathroom light was on and the door closed. She assumed Ian
was getting ready to go to the doctor’s. But when he failed to come out
after a while and didn’t answer her calls, she pushed the bathroom
door open. She found her husband hunched over in a chair
unconscious and barely breathing. Panicked, she called 911.
Ian spent the next eight days hooked up to a ventilator at Stanford
Hospital. He had taken enough acetaminophen, the active ingredient
in painkillers like Tylenol, to kill a horse. Combined with the wine he’d
consumed, the drug had destroyed his liver. He was pronounced dead
on May 23. As an expert chemist, Ian knew exactly what he was doing.
Rochelle later found a signed will that he’d had witnessed by Paul
Patel and another colleague a few weeks before.
Rochelle was overwhelmed with grief but she found the strength to
call Elizabeth’s office and left a message with her assistant informing
her about Ian’s passing. Elizabeth didn’t call back. Instead, later that
day, Rochelle received an email from a Theranos lawyer requesting
that she immediately return Ian’s company laptop and cell phone and
any other confidential information he might have retained.
Inside Theranos, Ian’s death was handled with the same cold,
businesslike approach. Most employees weren’t even informed of it.
Elizabeth notified only a small group of company veterans in a brief
email that made a vague mention of holding a memorial service for