Chapter 5
By morning, the hospital had become a place I could enter without expecting Chloe to be in one of its rooms.
My body hadn’t learned that yet.
Raymond spread the papers across a small table near the chapel, where the coffee smelled burnt and the fluorescent lights made every page look pale. His copies came from records he had kept in his capacity as my father’s attorney: monthly account summaries, a care-reserve activity report, and a thin printout with a column labeled REVIEW STATUS.
“They aren’t the original ledger,” he said. “They won’t tell us who made each change.”
“But they might tell us when.”
“If the records were kept accurately.”
I leaned over the pages. The entries were plain, their neat columns almost insultingly calm. A request submitted. A review opened. A status left pending. Amounts carried forward as if nothing more human than arithmetic had happened.
I found Chloe’s medication requests by date. The first had a notation about the allowance. The next appeared on a separate page, under review, then under review again. I followed the entries down with my finger.
“There.” I stopped at the edge of the report. “The dates skip.”
Raymond drew the pages closer. The activity jumped from the third to the eleventh. Eight days gone from the sequence, though the monthly summary claimed the account had been reconciled.
The missing stretch sat between the first request and the one Dr. Ortiz said remained pending through Chloe’s final week.
I looked at the report until the words blurred.
“They were deciding whether to give her the medication while somebody was changing the account.”
“We know the events overlapped,” Raymond said carefully. “We don’t yet know who changed it, or why.”
I hated the care in his answer. I also knew it was the difference between what I could prove and what I wanted to believe.
Then I saw the line near the bottom.
“Manual reallocation,” I read. “Care reserve.”
A transfer had been posted during the missing stretch, its amount large enough to change the balance by more than the cost of any one request. The summary offered no destination, no authorizing name—only the date and a terse note that the amount had been moved.
I pressed a finger against the paper.
“That’s the same week.”
“Yes.”
“Does it explain why the allowance was exceeded?”
“Not by itself.”
The money had moved. Chloe’s request had stayed pending. Both facts sat in front of me, close enough to touch and not close enough to join.
I gripped the table’s edge. Beyond the chapel door, a cart rattled down the corridor. Someone laughed softly at the nurses’ station. The ordinary sounds struck me harder than they should have.
For a moment, I wasn’t looking at an account report. I was back outside Chloe’s room, watching a nurse adjust the line while I counted the minutes between checks. I could still feel the hard seam of the chair beneath my thighs. I could still hear myself saying her name because I’d been afraid silence meant she was slipping farther away.
My hand curled around the table edge until my knuckles hurt.
Raymond said nothing.
“I need to see Dr. Ortiz.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. I want to ask her myself.”
The words came out uneven, but they came out.
Dr. Lena Ortiz met me in a consultation room off the pediatric corridor. The empty room had a paper-covered exam table, a box of tissues, and a mural of bright fish swimming above the sink. Chloe had once pointed to the orange one and called it “the fast fish.” I had not expected to find that memory waiting here.
Dr. Ortiz noticed where I was looking. Her face softened, but she didn’t offer comfort I hadn’t asked for.
“I’m reviewing my own notes,” I said. “I need to know they’ll be preserved exactly as they are.”
“They will.”
“And the receipt for the emergency dose?”
“Also preserved. I kept the original pharmacy record with the copy I gave you.”
I took it from my bag. The paper had softened along the fold from being handled too many times. For one awful instant, it seemed impossible that this thin slip could prove anything. A receipt for one dose. One small piece of paper against the fact that Chloe had needed more than one.
“Do your notes show when the request was made and when it was still pending?”
“They show what I documented at the time,” Dr. Ortiz said. “I can confirm the medical timeline. I can’t tell you what was happening inside the family office.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
She reached for the receipt, then stopped before touching it.
“Keep that copy with you. I’ll make sure the original is secured with the chart.”
I nodded. It was all I could manage. Her words could not carry Chloe back into the room. They could keep someone from pretending the request had never existed.
When I stepped into the corridor, Samantha Hayes was waiting near the elevators.
She wore a dark coat and carried no purse, just her phone in one hand. Her gaze moved from me to the receipt, then to Raymond standing farther down the hall. Her smile appeared a second too late.
“Nora. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t ask what she was sorry for. She had known where to find me, and that felt more important.
“Brendan wants to help,” she said. “He wants you to have whatever you need right now.”
“Did he send you to say that?”
“He asked me to check on you.”
“He could have checked himself.”
A small muscle jumped in her cheek. She glanced toward the open corridor, where anyone passing could hear us.
“Can we speak somewhere private?”
“No.”
Her eyes flicked again to the receipt.
“Nora, please. This doesn’t have to become a fight.”
“It became one before I knew the account had been touched.”
Samantha lowered her voice.
“You should stop looking through those records.”
I stared at her. “Why?”
For the first time, her expression lost its polish. Not guilt, exactly. Fear—quick and tightly controlled.
“You’re grieving,” she said. “Everything you find will look like another betrayal. People will say you’re making accusations because you can’t accept what happened.”
“I haven’t accused anyone of anything.”
“Not yet.”
“Then you know something I don’t.”
She looked down the hall toward Raymond. He hadn’t moved, but he was watching us.
“I know how this family works,” she said.
“So do I.”
“No, Nora. You know what Brendan lets you see.”
The words landed between us. For half a breath, I thought she might say more. Her mouth opened, then closed. She tucked the phone into her coat pocket as if she needed both hands to keep herself composed.
“Go home,” she said. “Let Raymond handle the records.”
“You came all this way to tell me to stop asking questions.”
“I came because I don’t want this to get worse.”
“For whom?”
She didn’t answer. She turned toward the elevator, then stopped when the doors slid open. The mirrored wall caught her face, dividing it into bright, narrow pieces.
May you like
“Brendan isn’t the only person who can destroy your reputation,” she said.
Then she stepped inside, and the doors closed between us.
