St. Catherine’s Kept Receipts
Chapter 05 - St. Catherine’s Kept Receipts
My mother did not deny being in the study.
That was the first thing that frightened me.
A guilty person rushes to explain. My mother simply sat in the conference room, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at the frozen video as if it were a photograph of someone she used to know.
“Evelyn,” my father said, very quietly.
She flinched at his voice.
Not because it was loud.
Because it was hurt.
I had seen my parents argue, of course. About contractors, politics, how long to leave a roast in the oven. But I had never seen my father look at my mother like she was standing on the other side of a river.
“Why were you in Marco’s study with Valerie?” I asked.
My mother closed her eyes.
“I wasn’t with Valerie.”
“You’re on camera.”
“I followed her.”
That stopped me.
My mother opened her eyes again. “I saw her leave the garden and go into the house. Something about her bothered me before Marco even took that microphone. She knew where to walk. She didn’t look around like a guest. She moved like she’d been in your home many times.”
My father’s jaw flexed.
“She had,” I said.
Marco had brought Valerie into my home.
Maybe while I was at work.
Maybe while Leo was asleep upstairs.
My mother’s voice softened. “I followed her because I wanted to know what she was doing.”
“And then?”
“She opened the desk. She had the code. She took out the hospital envelope. I asked what she thought she was doing, and she told me—”
My mother stopped.
Sandra leaned forward. “Mrs. Whitaker, what did she tell you?”
My mother looked at me.
“She said, ‘Ask your daughter how much she remembers from the clinic.’”
The conference room seemed to shrink.
I remembered the clinic.
Of course I remembered it.
The white walls. The cold stirrups. The cheerful nurses who spoke in acronyms as if they were ordering lunch. IVF. ICSI. AMH. FSH. Chemical pregnancy. Failed transfer.
I remembered leaving appointments with bruised arms and smiling at strangers in elevators because I did not want anyone to know my body had become a place of repeated disappointment.
I remembered Marco holding my hand in the early months.
Then standing near the window.
Then not coming.
I remembered one procedure after an infection, when they gave me stronger medication than usual. I had woken up groggy, thirsty, and furious because Marco was arguing with someone outside the curtain.
I did not remember signing anything.
“Valerie was at St. Catherine’s?” I asked.
My mother nodded.
“I recognized her today, but not from your office.”
My father turned toward her. “What?”
My mother’s eyes filled.
“The day Leo was born, I saw that girl in the hospital hallway.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“She was a nurse?”
“No. She wore scrubs, but not the right color. I thought she was staff. She was standing near the nursery door, arguing with a man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He had a visitor badge. Tall. Beard. Baseball cap.”
Paul typed something. Sandra wrote a note.
My mother swallowed. “When Leo was brought back to your room, his ankle bracelet was loose. I remember because I told the nurse, and she said the adhesive sometimes failed on newborn skin.”
“The hospital bracelet,” I whispered.
Marco had gone for the envelope.
But something had already been missing from it.
The little silver and plastic baby ID bracelet I saved in Leo’s memory box was gone.
I had seen it two weeks earlier when I was looking for his preschool vaccination card.
Now I knew why Marco’s desk had felt like a hole.
Valerie had taken proof.
Or removed proof.
Sandra stood. “We are going to St. Catherine’s.”
“At this hour?” Caroline asked.
Sandra looked at her. “Hospitals have night administrators. So do cover-ups.”
My father drove.
Nobody spoke much.
St. Catherine’s had changed in five years. New glass entrance. New lobby chairs. Same smell of antiseptic and vending machine coffee. The fertility center had closed after merging with a larger hospital network, but medical records remained in a basement office staffed by a tired woman named Denise who clearly hated surprise visits from lawyers.
Sandra placed her card on the counter.
“We need to preserve records connected to Andrea Whitaker Moretti, Leo Everett Moretti, and St. Catherine’s Fertility Center.”
Denise blinked slowly. “Ma’am, you’ll need a formal request.”
Sandra smiled.
“I have one. I also have reason to believe records may have been accessed by unauthorized parties. If any file disappears after this conversation, your hospital’s legal department will be very busy by sunrise.”
Denise disappeared into the back.
While we waited, I walked to the maternity hallway.
The lights were dim. A nurse pushed an empty bassinet past me. Somewhere, a newborn cried with the thin, furious sound of new life protesting everything.
I stood by the window of the nursery and remembered Leo’s first cry.
I had been so tired I could not lift my head. Then I heard him.
That cry split the room open.
The nurse placed him against me, slick and angry, and he stopped crying as soon as his cheek touched my chest.
No paper could rewrite that.
No DNA test could erase that.
No woman in a red dress could take that moment and call it hers.
Sandra found me twenty minutes later.
Her face told me before her mouth did.
“What?”
She held a printed log.
“Someone requested Leo’s birth file last week.”
“Marco?”
“No.”
She pointed to the name.
Valerie Crane.
Reason for request: biological parent inquiry.
My throat tightened.
“How did she prove that?”
“She didn’t,” Sandra said. “That’s the problem. Somebody inside approved it.”
Denise came running down the hall then, no longer bored.
“I found something you need to see.”
In the basement records office, she opened a scanned delivery file.
Most of it was ordinary.
My admission time.
Labor notes.
Marco’s signature.
Leo’s weight.
Then Denise scrolled to the newborn identification section.
Two bracelets had been printed at birth.
One for Baby Boy Moretti.
One duplicate backup.
The backup had been checked out by a nurse named Ruth Mallory.
Denise frowned.
“That’s odd.”
“Why?” Sandra asked.
“Ruth Mallory retired six years ago.”
Leo was five.
Denise scrolled further.
There was a note attached to the record.
FLAGGED: INFANT ID IRREGULARITY. INTERNAL REVIEW CLOSED.
The date was two days after Leo’s birth.
My mother whispered, “Dear God.”
Sandra’s voice dropped. “Who closed the review?”
Denise clicked.
The supervisor name appeared.
Dr. Harold Voss.
The fertility specialist who had treated me.
And beside his name was a scanned note:
Do not release without counsel. Donor discrepancy possible.
I read the words until they blurred.
Donor discrepancy.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number again.
This time there was no text.
Only a photograph.
A younger Valerie, standing outside St. Catherine’s in scrubs, holding a newborn bracelet between two fingers.
May you like
Under the image were six words.
She was never supposed to know.
