Daniel’s finger rested beside the witness line while my daughter slept against my chest.
The signature above it resembled mine from a distance.
The first letter curved the way I usually wrote it.
The final stroke slanted upward.
But I had not signed it.
And the witness listed beneath my forged name was Amber Collins.
For several seconds, I could hear nothing except the rain and my daughter’s small, uneven breaths.
Rachel leaned over the page.
“What exactly is this?” she asked.
Daniel drew the folder closer, careful not to let it touch the baby.
“It is a patient proxy authorization,” he said.
“It grants two people permission to receive updates from Catherine’s medical record, view appointment information, and communicate with staff on her behalf.”
He turned the page.
Michael’s name appeared first.
Amber’s appeared second.
My stomach dropped harder than it had when she answered Michael’s phone.
“She could see my records?” I whispered.
“Someone using her credentials accessed portions of your chart,” Daniel said.
“The hospital’s privacy team detected unusual activity tonight.”
Rachel looked toward the door as though Amber might be standing outside it.
“How unusual?”
Daniel hesitated.
I understood why.
I had just delivered a baby.
My body was shaking from exhaustion.
My husband’s affair had been confirmed less than two hours earlier.
But I was tired of being protected from truths other people had already used against me.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
Daniel pulled a chair beside the bed.
“At 2:41 this morning, while you were in active labor, your chart was opened through a remote proxy account.
Whoever accessed it viewed your admission status, your room assignment, the fetal monitoring summary, and the name of the physician on call.”
Amber had known exactly where I was.
She had known I was in labor.
She had known the situation was real when she called it dramatic.
My daughter stirred against me.
I placed one hand over her back and felt the steady rhythm of her breathing.
“Why were you carrying the folder?” Rachel asked.
“The privacy alert appeared when I accepted Catherine’s case,” Daniel said.
“I requested the underlying authorizations because the signature on tonight’s admission form did not match the one already stored in the chart.”
He showed me both signatures.
The real one was shaky because I had written it during a contraction.
Even so, it was unmistakably mine.
The other was too careful.
Someone had studied my handwriting and reconstructed it letter by letter.
A second document authorized the hospital to send medical notifications to an email address I did not recognize.
A third named Michael as my healthcare representative if I became unable to make decisions.
That signature was false too.
“When were these submitted?” I asked.
“The earliest one was uploaded five months ago,” Daniel said.
“The most recent was filed six days ago.”
Five months.
I thought back to the summer evening Michael had brought home a stack of papers and asked me to sign an updated insurance form.
I had been cooking dinner.
He had stood behind me, impatiently tapping a pen against the counter.
I remembered signing one page.
I did not remember seeing the others.
