Dewey likes his eggs "scrambled light." By the time they were served this day, "the eggs were kind of brown around the edges," says his wife, Edith. Dewey became very upset and the couple argued, Edith later tells authorities.

Dewey left home Monday morning after the argument, and nobody knows where he went. By Wednesday morning the 55-year-old man ends up as a walk-in at County General emergency room in the Ohio Valley.

He’d been to County General before for emergency treatment for labored breathing. Dewey had been a heavy smoker for over 30 years before he quit. Too late. He now suffers from emphysema, a debilitating lung disease.

On this visit he doesn’t check in at the nurse’s station. He sits down on a couch in a lounge next to the ER waiting room. A nurse gives Dewey a blanket in which he bundles himself, then curls up on a couch for the rest of the day. Apparently, to Dewey, the emergency room seems friendlier than home following the argument with Edith.

You can imagine what an ER looks like — even during the daytime. The word is busy. The nurses on two shifts see Dewey curled up under a hospital blanket on a couch.

It’s nearly 18 hours before one of the nurses walks over to Dewey’s couch to awaken him and inquire about his need for medical treatment. By that time Dewey no longer needs treatment. In the words of a hospital spokesperson, "Dewey had expired."

The coroner’s office is planning an autopsy to determine how long Dewey was dead before nurses found him. One nurse said he was face down in a sofa pillow and was cold. His skin was discolored.

The police report said death was "probably from natural causes." The hospital spokesperson wasn’t commenting on Dewey’s death except to say, "we are cooperating at all levels of the investigation into this person’s demise."