the address on the outside, but it was clearly a bill for her time in the hospital after her car accident. A revolving balance showed an amount of ten thousand dollars still owed.
Jake had told her their insurance had covered everything. Looking closer, she realized it wasn’t a hospital bill at all, but an invoice from a nursing home.
Nursing home? That wasn’t right. She’d been in the hospital for a little more than a week. Four days in a coma in ICU, another three until they moved her to a regular room, then five on the med/surge floor recovering from her injuries.
She looked at the bill again.
San Francisco.
No, that wasn’t right either. The accident had happened outside Dallas. She’d been driving home from a geology conference in Ft. Worth. Her journal had been covering the event. She’d never even been to San Francisco.
The dates of service were wrong as well. They spanned more than two years.
Her hands shook as she set the invoice on the desk. A chill settled over her.
Medical records. Jake was meticulous about his files.
She swiveled toward the file cabinet and flipped through the files, looking for one with her name.
Nothing.
She yanked open the second drawer. Taxes, appraisal information on the house, medical journals he belonged to. The man even had a file with all his grades from college. He was OCD to the max.
But where were her files?
Impatience settled over her, a dismal feeling she didn’t want to acknowledge. She yanked open the third drawer, breathing out a sigh of relief when she saw medical folders for Jake, Reed, and herself.
Yes, it would be here. Someone had screwed up, billed the wrong person.
She drew her folder open on the desk, flipped through the stack of forms. A claim for stitches in her toe when she’d stepped on a piece of glass last month. A dental claim when she had to have a tooth repaired last spring. Medical updates from Dr. Reynolds, the neurosurgeon she’d been seeing since the accident. Forms and evaluations spanned the last year and a half of her life, then stopped.
No records on her pregnancy, none on Reed’s birth. Nothing from her stay at Baylor University Medical Center where she’d been treated after the accident.
They had to be in different folders. Something separate, marked “delivery” and “accident”. She closed the drawer, reached for the bottom one. It wouldn’t budge.
She pulled again, only to realize it was locked.
She fumbled through the drawers of his desk, searching for a key. An odd sense of urgency pushed her forward. She tried the few keys she found but none fit the lock. Swallowing the growing lump in her throat, she pawed through his shelves.
Still no key.
The blood rushed to her head, intensifying that dull ache around her scar.
She scrambled up to the bedroom they’d once shared and yanked open his dresser drawers, fumbling through socks and underwear and old T-shirts.
It had to be somewhere. He wouldn’t have locked the drawer and thrown away the key. Her fingers skimmed cotton and finally settled on cold metal.
Pressure settled on her chest as she pulled the key ring from the back of the drawer. Two keys glittered in the low light, one bigger than the other. On wobbly legs, she made her way back down to the office, kneeling on the floor in front of the file cabinet.
Don’t open it. Forget about the key. Forget about the drawer. Forget about that stupid bill. Nothing good can come from this. You’ve already been through enough today.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Before she could change her mind, she turned the key in the lock. The drawer gave with a pop.
Inside, a long metal box rested on the bottom of the drawer. She set it carefully on the desk, then sat in his chair and rubbed damp palms along her slacks. The second key slid into the lockbox with ease.
Drawing in a deep breath, she opened the lid. Medical forms, evaluations, bills filled the box. She extracted each paper, scanned the dates and contents. All referenced the nursing home in San Francisco. All mentioned dates two to five years in the past.
According to the papers, she’d been in a coma for almost three years, not four days. Reed had been born by C-section when she’d been in that coma.
Her eyes slid shut. It couldn’t be. She’d had a long labor—over twenty-four hours. Jake had held her hand through the pain. She’d been wheeled into surgery when the labor had stopped progressing.