She answered on the second ring, her voice sharp with worry, the sound of her television low in the background.
“Clara? Is he gone?”
“No,” I said, clearing my throat. “He is asleep. But something happened.”
“What did he do now?” she asked, and I could hear the tiny, rhythmic tick of her wristwatch through the receiver.
“The nurse told me to look under the mattress,” I said, my voice barely a whisper in the dark car. “I found a green medical folder hidden there.”
“A medical folder?” Martha paused, and I knew she was looking at her watch again. “Why would a nurse hide papers under a mattress if everything is above board?”
“I don’t know,” I said, staring out at the empty pavement. “Dr. Paulson just told me the records are locked.”
“You need to bring that folder straight here, Clara,” she said, her voice rising slightly. “We need to know what they are hiding from us, don’t we?”
“I have it in my bag,” I said, my hand reaching down to touch the cold vinyl corner through the canvas.
“Don’t open it in the car,” Martha warned. “Just drive. Come to my house right now.”
I hung up the phone and set it on the passenger seat, the screen glowing briefly before going dark.
The silence in the car was heavy, broken only by my own uneven breathing.
I reached into the bag and pulled the green folder out, laying it flat across my lap under the steering wheel.
The dome light cast a pale yellow glow over the textured cover.
I stared at the green vinyl, my thumb hovering over the metal clasp that held the pages shut.
The smudge from the drugstore photocopier ran right through the handwritten figures, but the words were readable enough.
Gary set his coffee mug on my oak coffee table without a coaster, something he never did at his office. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them with the wide end of his blue silk tie, his eyes narrowing as he studied the gray paper.
“These notations,” Gary said, pausing to breathe on the left lens, “refer to a routing number in San Jose.”
“San Jose, California?” I asked. I smoothed the copy against my knee, twisting my silver wedding band until the metal pinched my skin.
“Costa Rica,” Gary said.
He put his glasses back on and stared at the column of numbers I had copied from the green folder. The handwriting was Ben’s, the same neat, drafting-style print he used when he drew up kitchen remodeling estimates.
“He told me his medical treatments were experimental,” I said, clearing my throat to keep my voice steady. “He said the specialty clinic required an advance deposit before they would admit him to the program.”
Gary looked at me, his eyes magnified behind his lenses. “Clara, this is not a hospital billing code.”
He tapped the page with his index finger, right on the hand-drawn dollar sign followed by the number eighty-five thousand. My father’s inheritance was exactly eighty-five thousand dollars.
“There is another name here,” Gary said, pointing to a scribbled line at the bottom of the page. “But it is cut off by the copier margin. It looks like the beginning of an alias.”
