Chapter 4 - NO APPOINTMENT UNDER HER NAME
I had heard the name Marisol once before.
Clara told me she was a decorator helping with the nursery.
When I returned downstairs, Sofia was sitting on my mother’s lap eating a dinner roll as if she had not just detonated my marriage.
“What did Clara say about Marisol?” I asked.
Sofia frowned, thinking hard. “She said, ‘I need the picture before Friday.’ And then she said, ‘Make sure the date shows.’”
My mother’s hand stopped moving on Sofia’s back.
“What picture?”
Sofia shrugged. “Baby picture.”
Clara appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Stop interrogating a child.”
“I’m asking my daughter what she heard in my house.”
“She’s confused.”
“Then help me get unconfused.”
I called the number printed on Clara’s prenatal folder. A recorded voice answered with the name of an imaging boutique, not an obstetrics practice.
The address matched the place Clara had taken me twice for private 3D ultrasounds.
I had never met her actual doctor.
Every time I asked to attend a medical appointment, there was a reason I could not. A schedule change. A visitor limit. An emergency reschedule.
I opened the patient portal link Clara had once texted me. It no longer worked.
Camila searched the clinic name printed across the top of a lab sheet Clara had left on our refrigerator.
“It’s real,” she said.
Relief hit me so hard my knees weakened.
Then Camila kept reading.
“But that doctor moved offices three years ago. This address is old.”
Clara whispered, “You’re all acting insane.”
My father finally spoke.
“Then give Mateo the doctor’s current number.”
She looked at him.
Nobody moved.
Clara reached for her purse.
“I’m leaving.”
“You’re not taking Sofia,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
Something about the speed of that answer hurt.
She walked toward the front door.
Before she reached it, Camila called my name.
She had opened one of the ultrasound photos on her phone and zoomed in on the bottom corner.
There was a patient identification number printed beneath the image.
It did not match Clara’s birthday.
May you like
And the patient initials were not C.A.
They were M.R.
