Chương 9
“He won’t get into this room if you don’t want him here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ll tell the staff.”
“Can they stop him?”
“Yes.”
Ines picked at the straw wrapper.
“What if I do want to see him later?”
Mathilde’s chest tightened.
“Then you can.”
“You won’t be mad?”
The question hurt more than it should have.
“No.”
Ines studied her.
“I might be mad.”
“At him?”
“At everybody.”
“That’s allowed.”
“Even you?”
Mathilde looked at her daughter.
“Especially me, if you need to be.”
Ines nodded slowly.
A knock came at the door.
Mathilde expected a nurse.
Instead, a hospital administrator entered with Dr. Laurent.
The administrator introduced herself as Madame Girard from patient relations.
She carried no dramatic folder.
Only a tablet.
Her tone was calm and procedural.
“I need to discuss an issue concerning the prior visit five weeks ago.”
Mathilde straightened.
“What issue?”
Madame Girard looked at Ines first.
“Would you prefer to have this conversation with your daughter present?”
Ines answered before Mathilde could.
“Yes.”
The administrator nodded.
“Our review shows that Mr. Moreau returned to this hospital four days after Ines’s first visit.”
Mathilde felt her pulse in her throat.
“We already know that.”
“There is more.”
Madame Girard glanced at the tablet.
“He did not return as a visitor.”
She looked directly at Mathilde.
“He requested that a correction be made to Ines’s medical record.”
Ines went still.
“What correction?”
Madame Girard’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly.
“He disputed the accuracy of the physician’s note stating that urgent specialist follow-up had been explained to the family.”
Mathilde stared at her.
“He tried to make it look like nobody told him.”
“He submitted a formal request stating that the recommendation had been unclear and that he had not understood it to be urgent.”
Ines whispered, “But he did understand.”
Dr. Laurent answered quietly.
“Yes.”
Mathilde looked at Madame Girard.
“Was the record changed?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the physician declined the request and documented that the recommendation had been discussed directly with Mr. Moreau in clear terms.”
Mathilde felt something inside her settle.
Not calm.
Not relief.
Something harder.
Until that moment, she had still been able to imagine Marc as a frightened man making one terrible decision and then becoming trapped inside it.
A formal correction request was different.
It required time.
It required language.
It required him to sit down and turn fear into paperwork.
“Was that why he came back alone?”
“Yes.”
Madame Girard paused.
“And according to the record, he asked one additional question.”
Mathilde waited.
“He asked whether removing his name as the accompanying parent would affect who could access the note through the family patient portal.”
Ines stared at the administrator.
Mathilde did not move at all.
Marc had not only hidden the truth.
He had checked whether the system itself could help him hide that he had been there.
Mathilde looked at Madame Girard for several seconds before the meaning fully settled.
“Was he allowed to do that?”
“He was allowed to request a correction.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Madame Girard folded her hands around the tablet.
“No, the original record was not altered.”
“And the portal?”
“The access history is preserved.”
Ines looked at Mathilde.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the system can show who looked at things and when.”
Madame Girard nodded.
“In many cases, yes.”
“Did Dad look?”
The administrator hesitated.
“We are reviewing that.”
Mathilde heard the careful institutional language and hated it, but she also understood why it existed.
“Can I see the request he submitted?”
“As Ines’s parent, there is a process for obtaining a copy.”
“Today?”
“I can help initiate it today.”
“That’s not the same answer.”
“No.”
Mathilde almost smiled.
At least everyone had stopped pretending procedure was kindness.
Madame Girard continued.
“There is another reason we came.”
Mathilde felt Ines shift beside her.
“The physician who saw Ines during the first visit documented a separate conversation with Mr. Moreau.”
“What conversation?”
“He asked whether certain family-history details could be omitted from the record if he considered them unconfirmed.”
Mathilde’s skin prickled.
“What details?”
“The note does not specify.”
“Did he provide them?”
“Apparently not.”
Ines whispered, “He knew something already.”
Mathilde looked at her.
“Maybe.”
Ines shook her head.
“No, he asked if he could leave something out before he knew whether leaving it out mattered.”
Madame Girard glanced at her with something like respect.
“That is one interpretation.”
It was the kind of sentence adults used when a teenager had said the obvious thing no one wanted to endorse.
Mathilde turned back to the administrator.
“Can Marc access Ines’s records right now?”
“That depends on the portal permissions currently associated with the account.”
“Can you check?”
“Yes.”
“Please.”
Madame Girard stepped into the hall to make a call.
Dr. Laurent stayed.
Ines rubbed her thumb over the edge of the blanket.
“Do you think he read everything?”
Mathilde wanted to say no.
She wanted to say that even Marc had limits.
Instead she said, “I don’t know.”
Ines nodded.
“Okay.”
Dr. Laurent looked at her.
“You are allowed to be tired of that answer.”
“I am.”
He smiled faintly.
“So am I, sometimes.”
Mathilde glanced at him.
The comment was small, but it loosened the room.
Then Dr. Benhamou appeared at the doorway.
She did not smile.
Mathilde stood immediately.
“What did the study show?”
“We have enough information to explain the pain.”
Ines’s face tightened.
Dr. Benhamou came inside and pulled the chair closer.
“There is a significant narrowing at the junction where urine drains from your left kidney.”
Ines stared at her.
“Significant means bad?”
“It means real.”
That was not the answer Mathilde expected.
Dr. Benhamou continued.
“It is causing intermittent obstruction.”
“Is my kidney damaged?”
“There are signs it has been under stress.”
Mathilde felt her fingernails press into her palm.
“How much damage?”
“We need one more functional assessment before I answer that responsibly.”
May you like
“Will she need surgery?”
“Likely, yes.”
