Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO “DECLINED”
The helicopter rotors kept turning while Tori and an orderly gathered the papers from the roof. Everett lunged for the second healthcare proxy, but Tori covered it with her hand.
“This is now part of a disputed medical decision,” she said. “You do not touch it.”
“It is my property.”
“It has your patient’s name on it.”
Everett’s jaw tightened. I knew that expression. It appeared whenever a waiter questioned a charge, an employee challenged a schedule, or I asked why money had moved between our accounts without warning. He never shouted first. He made the other person feel foolish until they apologized for noticing.
“My wife is hypoxic and medicated,” he said. “She signed the updated proxy two days ago because her sister couldn’t reach the hospital during the flood.”
“I signed nothing two days ago.”
“Odette, you don’t remember half of yesterday.”
“I remember asking for my sister.”
Six months earlier, after my cardiologist first warned that I would eventually need valve surgery, Nadine and I had met with an attorney. I named her as my healthcare agent because she was a respiratory therapist before becoming a nursing instructor. Everett was listed only as an alternate. He had pretended not to care.
That night, he had stood at our kitchen counter cutting lemons and said, “So your sister gets to overrule your husband?”
“She understands the medical questions,” I had replied. “And if anything happens to me, you should be able to be my husband instead of arguing with doctors.”
He had smiled and kissed my temple.
Now I understood that he had never accepted the answer.
Tori slid both proxies into the pouch. The older one bore the raised seal of our attorney’s office. The new one named Everett as my sole agent and included a witness signature I did not recognize. My supposed signature looked perfect at first glance. Then I noticed the long upward stroke in the L of Lane.
I knew where he had taken it from.
“That signature came from my consent form,” I said.
Tori leaned closer. “Which consent form?”
“The transesophageal echo they did on Monday. The original is in my chart.”
Everett looked toward the stairwell.
I saw the calculation before he moved.
“Security,” Tori called.
Two hospital officers stationed by the rooftop door stepped forward. Everett lifted both hands as though everyone around him had become hysterical.
“I am the operations director,” he said. “Those officers report through my department.”
“Not during an active patient-safety dispute,” Tori replied.
Another document had landed beneath my gurney. The orderly retrieved it and held it where I could see.
It was not a medical form. It was a durable financial power of attorney granting Everett authority over my real estate, bank accounts, and insurance proceeds.
Below it lay a purchase agreement for the white two-story house on Hawthorn Avenue where I had lived since I was twenty-seven. My mother had left it to me outright when she died. Everett’s name had never been on the deed.
The sale price was $486,000.
“No,” I whispered.
The house had been appraised at more than seven hundred thousand dollars the previous spring. I had refused two developers who wanted to buy the block, tear down the older homes, and build luxury townhouses along the river road.
The buyer listed on Everett’s contract was Harbor Pike Redevelopment.
The closing time was eight o’clock the next morning.
“You were selling my house?” I asked.
“We discussed downsizing.”
“We discussed replacing the upstairs windows.”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to do this on a roof.” He glanced toward the crew as if inviting them into his embarrassment. “Odette has been under enormous stress. She agreed to the sale before her condition worsened.”
“Then why did you need a forged power of attorney?”
For the first time, he had no polished answer.
From inside the helicopter, Maren held up another page. “Everett, this says disbursement goes to Lane Response Consulting.”
I had never heard of the company.
“Put the papers away,” he told her.
“You said the proceeds were being divided in the divorce.”
“There is no divorce,” I said.
Maren’s face drained of color.
The rooftop door slammed open and Dr. Simone Reyes emerged in blue scrubs beneath a yellow rain shell. She was fifty-two, compact and calm, with the unnerving ability to quiet a room simply by lowering her voice.
“Why has this aircraft not departed?” she asked.
Everett pointed to me. “My wife is refusing to honor the revised manifest.”
“Your wife is the patient I approved.”
“Her priority was downgraded after she declined transfer.”
Dr. Reyes came to my gurney. “Odette, do you want to be transferred to St. Vincent for surgery?”
“Yes.”
“Did you authorize anyone to decline for you?”
“No.”
Dr. Reyes turned to Everett. “Then she did not decline.”
“Maren has a suspected abdominal injury,” he insisted. “The updated record is in the transport system.”
Maren stared at him. “They X-rayed my wrist. Nobody examined my abdomen.”
Tori climbed into the helicopter and picked up the handheld scanner. “I’m checking both patients against the receiving orders.”
She scanned Maren’s wristband. The device chirped. Tori read the screen once, then again. She climbed back out with the scanner in her hand.
“The wristband identifies her as Maren Vale,” she said. “But the attached diagnosis is Odette Lane’s acute mitral valve failure. It even lists Odette’s cardiologist and surgical acceptance number.”
The pilot leaned out of the cockpit. “Do we have an identity mismatch?”
May you like
Tori looked directly at Everett.
“Someone put your wife’s medical priority under your girlfriend’s patient number.”
