Pricilla Palmer says she spent weeks trying to connect with her father's nursing home, only to receive a voicemail: "Your dad has passed."

Apr 22, 2020 12:38 pm ET | Updated Apr 22, 2020 12:54 pm ET

Lawrence Cook died at the Concord Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Bed-Stuy Sunday morning. He was 81. (Photo courtesy of Kyana Herrera)

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — A voicemail message left by a stranger was how Pricilla Palmer says she found out the new coronavirus had killed her father.

"This is Concord Nursing Home, your dad has passed," the caller said in a message left just after 5 a.m. Sunday morning, Palmer said. "Please give us a call."

The man's daughter had spent weeks trying to find out what was happening to her 81-year-old father, who she wasn't allowed to visit at the Concord Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Bed Stuy, she said.

On Tuesday, a Concord staffer told her Lawrence Cook had "a little cold," she said. On Saturday, they told her Cook had COVID-19. On Sunday, he was dead.

"They lied to me so much," Palmer said. "[They] took my right away for me to see him

Palmer, 52, detailed a horror story that involved weeks of conflicting reports about her father's health and ended with a demand that she immediately find a morgue to take his bagged body, which they would not allow her to see.

"It's the lack of integrity," said Palmer. "You're supposed to let his family know."

A Concord Nursing and Rehabilitation Center spokesperson told Patch the facility worked in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state guidelines and notified Palmer that Cook was being treated for COVID-19 symptoms.

The spokesperson was unable to confirm if the news was broken by voicemail.

"As with any skilled nursing facility currently, unfortunately, testing cannot be done rapidly and waiting for results is not something we want to do," the spokesperson said.

"Clinical staff spoke to Ms. Palmer about her father explaining that there was no actual test, but rather was being treated by the physician and nurse practitioner for his symptoms as if he had COVID-19."

But Palmer's daughter Kyana Herrera, 27, said the family was informed of her grandfather's condition only after it was too late to say goodbye.

"He had a life, he had family, grandchildren," Herrera said. "Just two weeks ago he was happy, laughing, strong."

Palmer became frightened during a telephone call on April 14 when her father, who suffers from asthma and dementia, was almost unable to speak, she said.

When Palmer asked a physician assistant and nurse manager about his condition, they said Cook had developed a cough over the weekend but a chest X-ray showed no serious problems and he was receiving treatment.

Palmer hoped her father would be tested for COVID-19 and, after two days of dialing numbers, a social worker told the concerned daughter Cook had been tested and a lab would pick up the test, she said.

"I just had an eerie feeling," said Palmer. "My feeling is they weren't treating my father with anything."

Then, on Saturday, a Concord doctor called to contradict each of the Concord staffers' assurances, Palmer said.

Cook had never been tested for COVID-19 but, because his X-ray showed signs of pneumonia, it was a certainty that he had it, the doctor said in a telephone conversation Palmer recorded and shared with Patch.

"It's clearly COVID," the doctor says before detailing two days of treatment that included hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin — two drugs not yet proven to treat the virus — but not a ventilator.

"His X-ray wasn't clear?" Asks Palmer.

"That's correct," the doctor replies.

"Nobody never called me and told me anything," Palmer says. "Take care of my dad, please."

Concord's spokesperson told Patch Cook's chest X-ray showed his lungs were clear but his doctor treated him as if he had indeed been tested for COVID-19.

Palmer is one of countless Americans facing nightmare scenarios as family members disappear in nursing homes where a fatal virus runs rampant among its most vulnerable victims.

An Associated Press tally links at least 8,496 deaths to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes nationwide with 55 deaths at just one Brooklyn nursing home and at least 40 deaths each at five homes in outer boroughs.

A whistleblower reported last week Brooklyn's elderly people are held alone in locked rooms across the borough's 40 nursing homes and bodies are piling up in makeshift morgues.

Both Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams have called for an investigation into nursing home conditions.

"The virus does not discriminate, but policies and practices and procedures in this city and state and country continue to discriminate," said Adams. "Nothing we believe really personifies that more than what is happening in nursing homes."

Palmer and Herrera remain uncertain about what happened at Concord, but the mother and daughter mean to find out.

Herrera has sent complaints to the offices of the New York Attorney General, Public Advocate and Brooklyn Borough President, which confirmed it will investigate. The Attorney's General office declined to comment or confirm.

Now one challenge remains: Palmer must rush to organize her father's burial.

When the grieving daughter replied to the voicemail message later Sunday, workers told her she had just 24 hours to find a morgue, Patch heard in a second recorded telephone conversation.

"This is not good, you can't do this to people's family," Palmer says. "My father was a good man."

"Oh, yeah," replies the Concord worker. "He was."