Chapter 12 - The Sealed Registry of 1994
The medical records from St. Joseph’s Hospital from the winter of 1994 did not exist in the electronic archives of the county health system. They were stored in the sub-basement of the former convent on College Avenue, bound in buckram covers that smelled of damp limestone, coal dust, and sulfur.
Marcus drove. My doctor had forbidden me from operating heavy machinery until the sixty-day post-operative seizure risk had elapsed. Every time the car hit a pothole on Route 30, the titanium plate behind my ear sang a dull, metallic note into my jawline.
"Caroline won't pick up the phone," Marcus said, his knuckles pale on the steering wheel. "I’ve called the cottage in Lititz four times. Her neighbor said her sedan has been in the driveway since Sunday, but the curtains are drawn."
"She knows what Vance found," I said. "She was there that winter. She was the one who bandaged my ear and told the visiting nurse that I had fallen against the radiator."
The archivist at the hospital records repository was a woman named Sister Beatrice, whose hands were so withered they looked like dried paper birch. She slid the microfiche reel into the carrier with the mechanical indifference of someone who had watched fifty years of human misery reduced to thirty-five-millimeter negative strips.
"Carter, infant," she read, her finger tracing the luminescent blue screen. "Admitted December 14, 1994. Presenting symptom: unilateral otorrhea, severe contusion to the left temporal region, systemic shock. Discharged thirty-six hours later into the custody of James Carter, father."
I leaned over the frosted glass. "Who signed the intake assessment?"
Sister Beatrice adjusted her spectacles. "Dr. Julian Hargrove. Pediatric neurology."
"Is there an x-ray report?"
She turned the knob. The film whirred, scratches flashing across the screen like white needles. A document appeared—a single typed page with the letterhead of the Lancaster County Medical Bureau.
*Findings: Soft tissue swelling consistent with domestic accident. No evidence of cranial fracture. No foreign bodies noted. Craniotabes and subsequent dizziness attributed to maternal nutritional deficiency during gestation. Case closed. No referral to Children and Youth Services warranted.*
Underneath the signature line, in black fountain-pen ink that had faded to sepia, was a handwritten notation that had not been part of the official carbon copy:
*James Carter paid the balance in cash at the rear loading dock. Do not re-open.*
"He bought the pediatrician," Marcus breathed, staring at the cursive script. "Thirty years ago. He shot a four-year-old child in the head, walked into an emergency room, and bought the attending physician."
May you like
"No," I said, pointing to the margin where a second stamp had been pressed and then vigorously scrubbed with solvent. "Look at the bed assignment. Bed 4-B. In 1994, the pediatric ward at St. Joseph’s had only three beds in the intensive care unit. Bed 4 was in the morgue annex."
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