Chapter 6 - The clearance
The altered document concerned my oncology screening.
Original note:
Further evaluation recommended after donation; current findings not an absolute contraindication based on available evidence.
Altered version:
No further oncological concern identified.
Someone had removed the uncertainty.
Dr. Salcedo was furious.
“We would still potentially have proceeded, but not without another review.”
“Who changed it?”
The system showed an administrative login.
Transplant coordinator Melissa Grant.
She denied making the edit.
Her credentials had been used remotely.
The hospital opened an internal investigation.
Victor, meanwhile, received his new kidney and knew nothing—or pretended to know nothing.
I sat beside Dr. Salcedo.
“If the original note had stayed, would surgery have been delayed?”
“Possibly.”
“How long?”
“Days. Maybe weeks.”
Victor had been deteriorating.
Delay frightened him.
That gave motive.
Not proof.
Then Salcedo said:
“There’s something else.”
The request to expedite our surgery had come through a physician on Victor’s private medical team.
Dr. Alan West.
I knew the name.
Victor played golf with him.
West insisted he simply advocated for his patient.
Maybe.
But when Helen searched public corporate records, Dr. West appeared as an investor in one of Victor’s developments.
Conflict.
Money.
Another door.
Meanwhile, Martin Kline disappeared.
His office claimed he was traveling.
Fire investigators could not locate him.
Rita agreed to give a formal statement.
Not immunity.
Not forgiveness.
Just a statement.
The police asked why she entered my home.
Victor had instructed her to retrieve the folder and bring it to Kline.
Then why was Kline already there?
She didn’t know.
That evening, I returned to a hotel near the hospital.
My incision hurt.
I was exhausted.
For the first time since overhearing Victor, I cried.
Not loudly.
Not beautifully.
I cried because I had almost risked my remaining kidney for a man who may have manipulated the process to receive the first one sooner.
I cried because there was a seventeen-year-old boy carrying my husband’s face.
I cried because Rita, the woman I wanted to hate, looked almost as deceived as I felt.
Then someone knocked.
Helen.
She carried property records.
“Sarah, the Brookline house has a mortgage.”
“No, it doesn’t. My parents bought it before they died. I inherited it outright.”
“That’s what you believed.”
She showed me.
A $1.2 million line of credit had been secured against the property eighteen months earlier.
Borrower authorization:
Sarah Miller Vance.
My signature.
Again.
Forged.
“Where did the money go?”
Helen looked grim.
“Into Victor’s development company.”
Then almost immediately out again.
“To where?”
She placed a photograph of the transaction summary in front of me.
Rita Bell.
May you like
But the account did not belong to Rita.
It belonged to Lucas.
