Chapter 5 - The man who read my medical file
“That’s impossible.”
Rita shook her head.
“He showed me a report.”
My stomach turned.
The clinic had sent records to my transplant coordination team.
Victor had access to some shared insurance documents.
But not my private oncology chart.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Rita reached into her handbag.
Not red now.
Black.
She removed a printed email.
Victor to Rita.
Subject lines were enough.
Sarah’s condition.
Timing.
Estate.
The body text was worse.
He wrote that doctors had discovered something serious.
That he believed I had “maybe a year.”
That once I was gone, the Brookline house would be straightforward.
There was no diagnosis in the email.
Because there had been none.
Victor had converted uncertainty into my death sentence because it served his future.
Rita watched me reading.
“I thought you knew.”
“Why would I donate a kidney if I believed I had a year?”
“He said you insisted.”
Of course he did.
That version of me sounded useful.
Sacrificial to the end.
Then I asked:
“How long?”
She looked down.
“Three years.”
Not two.
Victor had lied to her about that too.
“What did he tell you about Lucas?”
Silence.
“Rita.”
“He is Victor’s son.”
My chest hurt.
Not from the incision.
“Does Lucas know?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
I closed my eyes.
A child—no, almost a man—had known my husband as his father while I still thought our greatest marital tragedy was infertility.
Victor and I had tried for children early in our marriage.
Two miscarriages.
Then I stopped trying after forty.
He had held me through both losses.
Or appeared to.
The cruelty rearranged old memories.
Then Rita said:
“Lucas isn’t why I came.”
“What is?”
“The blue folder.”
Victor had told her it contained documents proving the house would belong to him after my death.
But she overheard him speaking with attorney Martin Kline.
The folder contained more than a deed.
It contained changes to my estate.
Changes I had never signed.
If the fire had destroyed them, maybe that helped me.
If someone else had removed them first, maybe not.
Then I asked the question she was avoiding.
“Why did you leave the house before the fire?”
Her face tightened.
“I heard someone upstairs.”
“The house was empty.”
“I know.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see.”
She ran because she thought I might have returned.
Then, from the sidewalk, she saw someone exit through the back garden.
A man.
Older.
Gray coat.
“Victor?”
“No.”
“Martin Kline?”
Rita looked at me.
“Yes.”
My husband’s attorney had been inside my house moments before it burned.
Then my phone rang.
Dr. Salcedo.
“Sarah, I need you to come back to the transplant center.”
“Why?”
A pause.
“There is a discrepancy in your donor-consent file.”
My heart stopped.
May you like
“What discrepancy?”
“Someone altered one of your medical clearance documents.”
