Chapter 9: The Real Chart

I read all sixty-one pages at the long table while my coffee went cold.

Valerio sat across from me and didn't say a word.

My whole marriage was in there, in a stranger's handwriting.

Patient tearful. Patient reports poor sleep. Patient reports she has stopped seeing friends.

I had never reported that. I had never been asked.

"He told me Fiorella couldn't get these," I said. "Doctor-patient privilege. He said it to my face on Wednesday."

"He had them already," Valerio said.

"He had them already."

I turned the pages back to the start.

Page one. Page two. Page three.

Page ten.

I went back and counted again.

"Pages four through nine are gone," I said. "And eighteen. And thirty through thirty-five."

Valerio leaned over.

"Somebody cut this file," I said. "Somebody who knew what to cut."

The doctor I chose that afternoon was a woman in her sixties.

She had a cardigan worse than any of mine and a bowl of mints on her desk.

I'd never met her before.

That was the point.

She called the old prescriber's office while I sat in front of her.

She asked for my complete chart in a voice that didn't leave room for the word no.

It came through her printer forty minutes later.

Seventy-four pages, not sixty-one.

She read the missing ones first, with her glasses on the end of her nose.

Then she turned them around so I could read them too.

The first visit was three years ago, the month after my wedding.

Mild situational anxiety. Short course. Lowest dose. Reassess in eight weeks.

There was no reassessment.

Instead there was a phone note.

Spoke with husband. Husband reports patient confused, forgetful, not coping. Husband requests increase. Increased.

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