The last time Sue Williams spoke with her daughter, there were too many things she didn't know.
She didn't know two fellow prisoners practically carried Rachel to the phone that day in March 2012 at Madison Correctional Facility. She didn't know Rachel's friends had been helping her to the bathroom, and with eating and filling out forms asking for medical help.
She didn't know that when she asked Rachel for months about her health, her daughter had been lying. Rachel told her friends she didn't want her mother to worry.
Williams didn't know her family was about to start a frustrating, desperate search for answers about what happened in prison to Rachel, one that has not ended three years after she died as she coughed up blood while shackled and surrounded by strangers.
'She's fine'
Rachel Wood was married to a man with a criminal history when, in February 2010, she was arrested after handing prescription drugs to an undercover cop as part of a larger investigation.
In prison, she earned her GED, completed other courses and was allowed to join Madison's dog program, where she lived in an open dorm with other women who trained, slept with and cared for shelter dogs for adoption.
Wood hoped to open a doggie day care with her twin sister, Mandy, after she was released from prison. She also wanted to adopt kids; it was after two babies were stillborn that she discovered the full extent of her health conditions, which had contributed to her childrens' deaths.
State records had outlined those conditions — lupus and a blood-clotting disorder, among others — when she entered the prison system. Two years later, her condition began to decline rapidly.