“I woke up today,” I said.
“Then we begin there,” he replied. “Has your father been near your grandmother’s property recently?”
I felt Pat go still beside me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”
“Hold a moment.”
I could hear typing at the other end. The click of keys. A file drawer perhaps, a page turned. I stared at the wall across from my bed where a faded watercolor print of blue flowers tried and failed to make the ICU less brutal.
When he spoke again, his tone had changed. Not alarmed. Colder than that. Precise.
“The deed to the property was transferred three weeks ago,” he said. “From the estate trust into Robert Thomas’s personal name. Two days ago a mortgage was filed against the property for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
For a second I forgot how to breathe.
Pat said my name softly, but it was far away.
“While I was unconscious,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is legally impossible, yes,” he said. “Which is why we are now dealing not with confusion, but fraud.”
I closed my eyes. Somewhere in my head the nurse part of me, the part trained to stay functional while the room catches fire, stepped forward. It was almost a physical sensation, like changing shift. Emotion moved back. Process moved in.
“I need the filing numbers,” I said.
Pat turned toward me sharply. “Wendy—”
“A pen,” I said, looking at her. “Please.”
She hesitated only a beat, then got up and fetched a legal pad from the counter and a blue hospital pen from her pocket. When she placed them on my blanket, our eyes met. What I saw there wasn’t disapproval. It was worry braided to recognition. She knew what I was doing because she had trained me to do versions of it a hundred times. When something is wrong, you document before anyone can rearrange the story.
Kesler read out numbers and dates. Instrument number. Recording date. Lender name. Mortgage amount. Trust document reference. I wrote slowly because my hand trembled and my ribs protested every shift, but I wrote clearly. Dates. Times. Entities. Then I asked him questions in the only order that mattered. Was the transfer notarized? Yes. Was my name used anywhere? He was checking. Had funds been disbursed yet? Possibly not; that would depend on lender procedures. Could he act immediately? He said yes, if I authorized him in writing once he got emergency paperwork to the hospital.
When I hung up, the room had gone very quiet. Pat stood with her arms folded, watching me the way nurses watch patients who are doing something both necessary and dangerous.
“Wendy,” she said at last, “are you sure you’re strong enough for this?”
I looked down. My hospital gown gaped at the collar. Bruises yellowed and purpled my arms. A chest tube scarched line peeked above the blanket. On the bedrail hung my employee badge, the one someone had clipped there after they cut it from my clothes in the ER. My photo on it showed me smiling, tired from a shift but upright, capable, unaware. RN in black letters beneath my name. I stared at that badge and felt myself return to it.
