The Sales Agreement Placed June In Two Cities At Once

“A boarding pass doesn't prove you couldn't sign something online,” I said.

June looked pleased.

“Exactly. Ask the next question.”

We asked how the agreement had been signed. We asked for the time, the location, and the record showing how the signature reached the page.

The form said in-office fitting. It also charged $380 for a session with me.

I had been running balance tests that morning. More to the point, June had already returned those aids.

“I can speak about my own work,” I said. “I won't guess about the rest.”

We made a chart with five columns: date, document, device number, amount, and question. June wanted the last column called question, even when the answer seemed clear.

“At work, people used to say, 'Everybody knows what he meant,'” she told me. “That wasn't what I was paid to record.”

Her kitchen window looked over a narrow yard where rain had flattened the peonies. Each time we finished a row, she laid a ruler under the next one.

Once, I put a charge in the wrong month. June tapped the ruler against the table.

“That's mine,” I said, reaching for an eraser.

“Leave a line through it. We should be able to see what changed.”

I crossed it out, added my initials, and wrote the right date. It took ten seconds. I thought of all the harm Cedric could have stopped by doing something that simple.

The yellow return slip stayed at the top.

Ruth reviewed our chart. She helped June submit a consumer complaint with copies of the bills, return slips, disputed agreement, and bank debit.

June kept the originals in her hall cabinet.

“No public claims about forgery yet,” Ruth told us. “We can prove a disputed bill. We can request the rest.”

I had wanted a word large enough to hold my anger. Disputed felt too small.

It was also the word we could support.

A week later, Cedric answered June's letter. He offered a $540 courtesy credit if she signed a release covering all accounts and stopped making statements about the clinic.

“He calls returning my money a courtesy,” June said.

The release would have left the device balances in place unless the office adjusted them later. Ruth marked that sentence with a pencil.

June declined in three lines.

She then brought her folder to lunch with her friend Alma Velez.

I was not there. June called afterward and made that clear before telling me anything else.

“I discussed my own bill,” she said. “Alma wants help with hers.”

Alma was a retired cafeteria manager who used Cedric's Branford office. She had paid $1,260 toward hearing aids she said she returned in February.

“Tell her she can call me,” I said. “Please don't send her records unless she asks you to.”

Alma called that evening.

“Are you the doctor he fired?”

“I'm an audiologist. Yes, he fired me.”

“Did you take money?”

My fingers closed around the phone.

“No. Is that what you were told?”

“He said there were serious concerns. People fill in blanks.”

“I understand.”

“I don't think you do. I was a lunch lady. People said that word like it meant I couldn't count.”

We met with June at a library table. Alma brought her own folder and signed permission for me to review it. We used patient copies, never the clinic's system.

Her return receipt was white.

“They ran out of yellow,” she said.

“Paper color doesn't decide whether it counts.”

June slid her ruler across the table to me.

Alma's serial numbers did not match June's. Her problem was the same: returned trial devices listed as sales, followed by monthly withdrawals.

Then she produced a repair receipt from a later visit. It named another patient at the top.

We stopped reading.

“That goes in a separate envelope,” I said. “Ask Ruth how to handle it.”

Even angry, we had to keep other people's lives out of our hands unless they chose otherwise.

The next day I had a job interview in Hamden. The director asked whether Cedric would give me a reference.

“There's a billing dispute,” I said. “You can contact my prior supervisor and the physicians who referred balance patients.”

She folded my resume and said she would call.

She did not.

On Friday, my unemployment claim drew an objection from the clinic. Cedric alleged misconduct. He attached a statement saying I had caused confusion about device ownership.

I read it at my kitchen counter while my rice went cold.

Then my phone rang.

A man introduced himself as David Shaw. He said he used the Meriden satellite office and had received my number from Alma.

“I've got one of those yellow slips,” he said. “But the number on it is also on the hearing aid my brother wears.”