I hung up and sat there in the parking lot with my hands on the wheel. For the first time in a year, I wasn’t tired. I was angry, and it was the kind of anger that keeps a person awake.
I started the car and drove back toward the hospital.
Chapter 6 – The Signature That Wasn’t Mine
Nadia Okafor had an office on the fourth floor, past the billing department, with a window that looked out at the parking garage. She was in her fifties, with short gray hair and reading glasses on a chain, and she did not smile when I sat down.
“You asked for a personnel file audit,” she said. “Tell me why.”
I put the transfer packet on her desk. Then I put the memo from Paige on top of it. Then I put my phone on the desk next to them.
“My performance reviews are missing from my file,” I said. “My husband’s office pulled them. My name is on a consent form I never signed. And I have a recording of him telling a room full of people that I wouldn’t fight this because I didn’t have the energy.”
Nadia looked at the phone, then at me. “Dr. Harlow is the medical director,” she said. “This is a serious allegation.”
“I know what it is.”
She put on her glasses and opened the packet. She read slowly, turning each page with one finger, and I sat there and listened to the clock on her wall.
“You said your reviews are missing,” she said. “They’re not missing. They’re in the system archive. I can see them right here.”
She turned her screen toward me. There were two reviews, one from March and one from September, both marked outstanding, both signed by my former supervisor before he retired.
“Those are mine,” I said. “Those are the real ones.”
“Then let’s see what’s in the packet.”
She opened the packet to the attachment section and set the two reviews side by side with the ones on her screen. The ones in the packet were different. Not the ratings, but the comments, softened and rewritten, and the dates had been moved. And at the bottom of each page, where my signature was supposed to be, there was a signature that was almost mine. Almost. But the loop on the M was wrong, and the y at the end of my name was too short.
I have signed my name ten thousand times in my life, and I know my own handwriting the way I know my own face. That was not my hand.
Nadia took off her glasses and set them on the desk. “Do you have a signature on file with credentialing?” she asked.
“Yes. From when I was hired.”
She picked up her phone and made a call, and she didn’t explain who she was calling or why. She just said, “I need a credentialing signature card pulled. Night shift, Meredith Harlow. Bring it to my office. Now.”
We waited. Nadia didn’t make small talk, and I was grateful for that. A young woman came in with a folder and handed it to Nadia, and Nadia opened it and laid the card on the desk next to the packet.
My real signature was small and careful, with a hard stop at the end of the last letter. The signature on the packet drifted off the line and had a little hook at the end.
Nadia looked at both of them for a long time. Then she looked up at me.
“Mrs. Harlow,” she said, “this isn’t a transfer anymore. This is a forgery investigation.”
I sat very still. “What happens now?”
“Now I open a case. I’ll need a written statement from you, the original packet, the memo, and that recording. I’ll also need to speak with Ms. Paige, if she’s willing.”
“She is.”
“You’ve spoken to her?”
“This morning. She gave me the recording and the memo on her own.”
Nadia wrote something down. “Good,” she said. “Then I’ll also be looking at who approved the packet and who had access to your file. That includes Dr. Harlow.”
I nodded.
“Mrs. Harlow,” she said, “I have to ask you something, and I need you to think before you answer. Do you want to pursue this as a personnel matter, or do you want to pursue it as a criminal matter?”
I thought about Julian in the hallway, saying I’m sorry to the floor. I thought about the way he had told a room full of people that I wouldn’t fight.
“I want it to be the truth,” I said. “Whatever that turns out to be.”
