Chapter 11: The Binder

"I'll see him," I said. "After I read his file."

Camille stared at me.

"His file."

"His medical file. You told me once you keep it in the study safe. I gave him my life, Camille. I want to see what it was for."

The staff on the steps studied the gravel.

Camille's jaw worked.

She wanted to refuse.

I watched the want go across her face and lose to something else, a small, tired honesty.

"Fine," she said. "Come."

The study was on the ground floor, behind the library, with a safe built into the wall behind a painting of a clipper ship.

Camille turned the dial with her back to me.

Alana stood close at my shoulder, and I felt her shift her weight.

The safe opened with a soft click.

Inside was a black binder as thick as my forearm.

Camille lifted it out and set it on her father's old desk and opened it under the lamp.

"Everything's in here," she said. "Fifteen years. Every scan, every report."

I turned the first page.

It was a cardiologist's letter on cream stationery, with a hospital crest at the top and a doctor's signature at the bottom.

Alana leaned over my arm.

"That's the letterhead the office told me doesn't exist," she whispered.

"Alana," Camille said sharply.

"I called them today. They said they've never had a patient named Reeve."

"Then they made an error."

"All of them? For fifteen years?"

I kept turning pages.

There were echocardiogram printouts, a surgical consent, a list of medications with doses and dates.

The paper was thick and expensive, and every page was in perfect order.

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