Angela the nurse turned her tablet toward me on the radiation table, and I read the note my stepdaughter Veronica had slipped into my medical file. A declaration of death, and behind it a note from a doctor no one at that hospital had ever heard of, stating I had passed at MUSC the week before.
I was lying on the table at MUSC. Right then. Alive. Finishing my last radiation treatment.
Veronica worked in medical records at the very hospital treating me. She used that access to forge a death certificate with my name, my birthday, and the hospital seal, and then she went further. She changed my emergency contact to herself. She changed my power of attorney. She planted a fake doctors note. All so she could tell my condo building I had died and send movers to clear out the unit she did not know I had bought.
She asked at Henrys funeral whether I would be leaving the house to Daddys real family. The answer was no. So she tried to make me dead on paper to take it anyway.
Forging a death certificate, falsifying a living patients medical record, and planting a fraudulent doctors note are not family drama. They are serious crimes, and when the hospital that employs you is the hospital you falsified records at, they are also the fastest way to lose your job and face prosecution.
Angela had caught it because the patient the file said was dead was talking to her. She took it straight to hospital administration and to the police. Veronica was walked out of medical records that same day. The forged death certificate, the altered power of attorney, the fake note, all of it became the case against her.
My records were corrected. My real emergency contact and my real wishes were restored. The Myrtle Beach police turned the movers away, and my condo, two hundred seventy-six thousand, cash, my name on the deed, stayed mine.
I finished my last minute of radiation. The machine hummed and clicked off, and Angela squeezed my hand. I am cancer free now, and very much alive, whatever Veronicas paperwork claimed. I keep a certified copy of my own very current, very living medical summary in my purse. Just in case anyone ever tries to bury me before my time again.