“I have calls into the bank’s fraud unit,” Julian said. “Go back to the hospital. Let me dig.”
When I returned to Methodist Hospital, the hallway was quiet except for the squeak of a nurse’s rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum floor.
Maya was sitting up in bed, a plastic cup of apple juice on her tray. Her color was returning, the gray tint in her cheeks replaced by a faint, healthy pink.
The doctor had stopped by an hour earlier to confirm that the intensive antibiotic treatment had finally broken the postpartum infection. Her fever was gone, and for the first time in five days, her breathing was easy.
She kept her right hand pressed flat over her surgical incision as she adjusted her pillows.
“They said I can go home in two days,” Maya said, her voice soft but steady.
“Not to the apartment,” I said, pulling a chair close to her mattress. “Not until I know the locks are changed and the steam radiators are working properly. Julian is helping me look for a short-term rental.”
“Did you talk to Mark?” she asked.
I did not want to tell her about the threat in the street, or the look on his face when he walked away.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting a message from Julian.
Instead, a banking alert flashed on the screen.
A charge of nine hundred and forty dollars at a boutique hotel in Miami had just been declined.
Two seconds later, another alert popped up. A grocery transaction for three hundred and twelve dollars in Coral Gables had failed.
I pictured my mother and Mark standing at a grocery checkout, their carts full of imported food, while a cashier handed back a piece of useless plastic. They were stranded there, five hundred miles away, without my money to pay for their vacation.
“David?” Maya asked, watching my face.
“It is nothing,” I said, putting the phone face down on the small bedside table. “Just the bank confirming that the shared accounts are locked.”
“I do not want Eleanor coming here,” Maya said, her fingers tightening against her hospital gown. “She has the spare key to our place. She could just walk in.”
“She won’t,” I said. “I am moving you to a private wing downstairs. No one will have the room number except Julian and the nursing staff.”
A nurse named Clara came in with a wheelchair and a small plastic bag for Maya’s toiletries.
Maya held our newborn son, Liam, in his white wicker bassinet on her lap as I pushed the wheelchair down the long, quiet corridor to the west wing.
The new room was smaller, but the window faced a quiet interior courtyard away from the street.
“The pain is still there,” Maya whispered as I helped her into the new bed. “But it is a clean pain now, not the hot, throbbing ache of the infection.”
“Rest now,” I said, tucking the thin white blanket around her. “We are safe here.”
The security desk in the lobby was manned by a guard named Miller, who wore a faded blue uniform and a silver badge that had lost its luster. He was eating a turkey sandwich from a wax paper wrapper.
I laid a printed sheet of paper on the high counter between us.
“I need to restrict the visitor list for room four-twelve,” I said.
Miller looked up from his crossword puzzle, his pen hovering. “That is the maternity recovery wing?”
“My wife is there,” I said. “These three people are not allowed on the floor under any circumstances.”
He picked up the paper, squinting at the photocopied driver’s licenses of my mother, my sister, and Mark.
“Are they local?” Miller asked.
“Two of them are currently in Florida,” I said. “But they might return. The husband, Mark, is the one I am most concerned about. He is tall, always looking at his phone, and speaks with a very polished, urgent voice.”
“I know the type,” Miller said, sliding the paper into a black plastic binder under his keyboard. “We had a guy like that try to push past us last winter. Claimed he was the patient’s personal doctor.”
He tapped the corner of my mother’s photo with his pen. “This one is your mother?”
“Yes,” I said.
“We get this sometimes,” Miller said. “Don’t worry. They won’t get past the elevator bay.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Take care of your girl,” he said, turning back to his puzzle.
I walked out into the cold night, the steam rising from the street grates in white plumes. I stood on the corner for ten minutes, watching the yellow cabs pass, before I headed back inside to sleep on the vinyl chair next to Maya’s bed.
At nine o’clock the next morning, Julian’s conference room was freezing.
A woman in a gray wool suit sat at the end of the long table, a black leather folder closed in front of her.
“David, this is Special Investigator Vance from the state banking commission,” Julian said, not offering me a seat before he spoke.
I nodded to her and sat down.
Vance did not smile. She opened her folder to reveal a stack of signature cards and corporate ledger prints.
“Mr. Miller,” she said, using my last name. “We flagged an account at Brooklyn Union Bank that was opened five weeks ago under your business name, Miller Engineering Associates.”
“I only bank with Chase,” I said.
“We know,” Vance said. “But this account was opened using your federal tax identification number and your professional engineering license.”
She slid a document across the polished wood table.
It was an application for a commercial line of credit for seventy-five thousand dollars.
My signature was written at the bottom in thick blue ink, a perfect imitation of the loop I used on my payroll checks.
“Who is the co-signer?” I asked, my voice tight.
