Chapter 4 - The Plan at Riverside
I read Derek’s message until the letters blurred.
She’ll be alone at Riverside.
Make sure psych gets there before discharge.
Rachel swore under her breath.
Dana did not.
She became quiet, which was worse.
“Natalie,” she said, “did anyone ever talk to you about a psychiatric evaluation after delivery?”
“No.”
“Did you sign anything authorizing Derek or Judith to make medical decisions for you?”
“No.”
“Estate documents? Power of attorney? Hospital planning forms?”
I thought about the stack Derek put in front of me three months earlier.
Insurance updates, he had said.
I had been nauseated and tired. Emily had been kicking hard enough to make me lose my place while reading. Derek kept flipping pages and pointing where I needed to sign.
My mouth went dry.
“There were insurance forms.”
Dana stared at me through the screen.
“Find copies.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Then we assume he does.”
Rachel stood. “I can go back to Columbus.”
“No,” I said immediately.
She looked at me.
“He knows your car. He knows you helped me.”
“You’re not sending me away because your husband is creepy.”
“I’m not sending you away. I’m asking you not to walk into the house where the creepy husband lives.”
That almost became an argument until my newborn daughter made a tiny squeaking noise against my chest.
We both stopped.
Emily had no idea adults were building legal weapons around her first day alive.
Dana arranged for a Columbus attorney she trusted to request the emergency filing and send a preservation notice to Derek, Meridian, Riverside Women’s Group, and the hospital.
“Once they are formally told to preserve records,” Dana explained, “deleting things becomes a different kind of problem.”
At 3:00 p.m., Derek called again.
Dana told me to answer on speaker and record only if Pennsylvania law allowed it. She checked. It did.
I pressed accept.
“Natalie.”
His voice sounded exhausted.
For one humiliating second, I missed him.
Then I remembered the message.
Psych before discharge.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Safe.”
“I’ve been terrified.”
“You had a client dinner.”
Silence.
“That was before you disappeared.”
“I didn’t disappear. You gave me cab fare.”
“I thought you were going to Riverside.”
“I changed my mind.”
His breathing shifted.
“You were never supposed to cross state lines.”
Dana lifted one finger sharply. Do not interrupt.
I stared at the wall.
“Supposed to?”
Derek caught himself.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“I meant you were in labor. Driving for hours was reckless.”
“I wasn’t driving.”
Another silence.
He had not known Rachel was waiting.
But he had expected me to leave the house.
“Derek,” I said softly, “why did you file an emergency petition before I walked out?”
The line went dead.
Dana immediately saved the recording.
Two hours later, a courier arrived at the hospital with documents from the Ohio case.
Inside the packet was a notarized form titled TEMPORARY MATERNAL INCAPACITY AND INFANT CARE AUTHORIZATION.
At the bottom was my signature.
It looked exactly like mine.
I had never seen the document before.
And the notary stamp belonged to a woman who worked three offices down from Derek at Meridian.
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