The Audit Table Held Twelve Treatments And One Signed Discharge

"Twelve?" Dorothy said.

She took off her glasses, cleaned them, and put them back on.

The lead auditor, Calvin Moss, pointed to the amount beside each date.

"The clinic submitted $428 per fraction. Twelve lines total $5,136. We are still checking which payments cleared."

"I couldn't get twelve rides in July if I tried," Dorothy said. "My sister had my good suitcase."

Lionel rested both palms on the table.

"Charges can land under the wrong service dates. This is a mapping problem."

Calvin turned another page.

It was the clinic's discharge summary. The doctor had signed it June 27. It said Dorothy had finished her prescribed course. No further radiation was ordered.

"Where is the prescription for July?" Calvin asked.

"In the clinical system."

The second auditor searched the read-only export the team had obtained. She found none.

Lionel gave a small, patient smile.

"Adaeze has had difficulty navigating that system. That's part of why we're here."

The words landed in the old sore place.

I turned my pencil until it lay parallel with my notebook.

"Ask the treating doctor," I said. "She wrote the prescription."

Ruth made the call. The doctor, who worked from another site that morning, confirmed she had ordered no second course.

Dorothy turned to July 9.

"Salina," she said. "Would you like my sister's number?"

Calvin asked her to walk through all twelve dates. Some had grocery receipts. Some had ride entries. One showed a neighborhood lunch where Dorothy had collected dues and signed the cash book.

Her diary did not become proof just because it was thick. The auditors asked for things they could check. Dorothy gave them names, receipts, and permission to contact the people involved.

Her cheer never slipped.

Mine almost did when Lionel called the diary a hobby.

"So was dispatching," she said. "For thirty-two years, with a pension."

Ruth opened the rolling case. Inside were sealed storage packets delivered directly by the records service. Each bore a receipt number and an unbroken seal.

Lionel looked at me.

"You took those?"

"I sent them to storage under the policy you signed."

"They belong to this clinic."

"Yes," Ruth said. "The committee authorized their release to the audit."

He sat back.

I had not owned a secret server or a hidden copy of every chart. I had held the custody trail for records his server could not rewrite.

They had called me too slow for the software. But I had kept the one set of records that still carried the day's own marks.

The physicist joined us to explain the films. He placed a June test film on a light panel. Its dark pattern matched the daily check sheet inside the same packet.

"This is a quality exposure," he said. "It is not a patient treatment. You can't turn one into the other."

Then Calvin laid the original machine-use sheet beside the proposed replacement.

June 11. Service lock. No patient beam work after 12:42.

The replacement listed treatment at 1:16 and 1:34.

Ben identified his initials on the original and the engineer's signature on the lockout slip.

"Did you approve this replacement?" Calvin asked.

"No."

"Did Ms. Okafor?"

"No. She refused."

For the July dates, the signed sheets listed the patients actually treated. Dorothy's patient code appeared on none of them. The films accounted for the daily check exposures; the signed readings and use entries accounted for the recorded beam work.

The physicist compared the machine's cumulative readings at opening and closing. He separated the check exposures from patient work. There was no extra recorded beam use left over for Dorothy's claimed visits.

"Could a missing signature explain all this?" Calvin asked.

"A missing signature needs review," the physicist said. "Twelve treatments also need dose, time, a prescription, and staff who delivered them. Where are those?"

The clinic's online history, however, showed Dorothy receiving twelve more fractions.

"Who entered these?" Ruth asked.

Lionel reached for his water and missed it by an inch.

"Several people have administrative access."

"We will check that," she said.

For the first time, nobody asked me to defend my speed at a keyboard.

At four, the auditors closed their case. They had more patients to contact and more claims to compare. Ruth told us the committee was pausing investor distributions while it reviewed the findings.

Lionel's head snapped up.

"That will frighten them."

"The committee received a discrepancy report," Ruth said. "It has to act on it."

Outside, Dorothy squeezed my wrist.

"You all right, child?"

"I'm thirty-five."

"Then you're old enough to know that wasn't my question."

I laughed, and it hurt a little.

When I got home, an overnight envelope leaned against my door. Inside was a demand that I surrender my custody receipts by nine the next morning or face a $50,000 claim.