Beatriz Opened Her Envelope And Asked Me To Read Every Line

I brought Beatriz a chair beside the shipping counter. She sat carefully, keeping her right leg straight until the chair stopped moving.

She was forty-five, a Mexican American school librarian with square glasses and a voice that made people lower theirs. Her dark braid rested over a green cardigan.

I had built her socket in April. She had stopped being our patient after several calls about a strange pause in her knee went nowhere.

“I'm not asking you to fix it here,” she said. “I want to know what I bought.”

Her bill totaled $18,600. One line charged $9,400 for a new knee component. Her share had been $1,260, paid in three checks.

“They said new,” she said.

“That's what this says.”

“At school, it hesitated by the book cart. I stayed up. Now I plan every trip across the room.”

I looked toward Malcolm's closed office.

“I raised a concern about a component number yesterday,” I said. “I can't tell from this bill which knee you have.”

“Then let's find out.”

She said it as though we were looking for a missing library book.

I explained that I made sockets. A qualified prosthetist needed to inspect the knee and decide what was safe for her.

“I have an appointment with Eileen Cho on Friday,” she said. “A friend helped me find her. She works across town.”

Beatriz had already done more than complain. Her envelope held a dated list of calls, names, and the words she had used to describe the trouble.

She had folded no corners. Even the check receipts lay flat. I thought of the loose return tags Malcolm left piled beneath his coffee mug.

“The inspection costs $185,” she said. “I can pay that. I can't keep paying for promises.”

Mara, our front desk clerk, came over with a records request form.

“You can ask for the fitting images too,” I told Beatriz. “There should be photographs of the plate.”

“Why would there be photographs?”

“Because numbers get copied wrong.”

She looked at the shipping labels in my hands.

“And sometimes they get copied right.”

I did not answer that.

Beatriz signed for her own records to go directly to Eileen. Mara made a copy of the request and stamped it received. I showed Mara where Beatriz's April session sat in the archive, using the access I still had for packing records requested by patients.

I opened only Beatriz's session.

The plate in the picture read K41782.

I had photographed it in February, beside a return tag.

My hands went cold, though the room was warm.

“Is that the number?” Beatriz asked.

“It's another number I remember from the return shelf.”

Mara stopped moving her pen.

I gave Beatriz the date of my concern, but I did not show her another patient's file. The February return belonged in a proper review.

“What do I tell my insurer?” she asked.

“Exactly what happened to you. Ask them to check the bill against the part.”

She called from the chair. She wrote her claim number on the envelope, then asked the person on the phone to repeat it.

That afternoon Malcolm found me folding cartons.

“You involved a patient in your grievance.”

“She asked for her records.”

“I can dismiss you for causing alarm.”

“Put the reason in writing.”

He looked at me for a long time.

“You're packing boxes, Yadira. Remember that.”

Friday, Beatriz called during my lunch break. She invited me to meet her at Eileen's office after work, and signed permission for Eileen to discuss the inspection with me.

When I arrived, the prosthesis lay on a padded table. Eileen had made a careful record before removing the cover. Beatriz sat nearby with a loaned mobility aid arranged by the office.

“I'm keeping the knee out of use pending evaluation,” Eileen said. “I've documented what I found. We have a plan for getting you around meanwhile.”

She did not guess at every cause. She showed us the plate, the wear, and a fastener with a damaged edge.

“The serial matches your April fitting image,” she said. “That ties this physical component to that visit. It does not, by itself, show its whole history.”

Beatriz nodded.

“Then we need its whole history.”

Eileen sealed the removed knee in a clear evidence bag for storage, with Beatriz's permission. Both signed the label. The office would document every transfer.

I took my crooked foam bird from my pocket and turned it once between my fingers.

“You make those?” Beatriz asked.

“From waste.”

“Keep this one,” she said. “We aren't finished.”

Her phone rang before she could put the bill away.

She listened, asked for a name, and wrote it below her claim number.

Then she held the screen toward us.

The message confirmed that an insurer's auditor would arrive at Riverstep on Monday morning.