My face turns bright, guilty red.
“Find what you’re looking for?” he asks. “Your mother won’t like you messing around up in the attic.”
“Yeah, I just needed some of my old W-9 forms. For work.”
“I thought you said you were getting clothes?”
Oh, crap. “That, too. But, uh, I couldn’t find any, so…”
“Your poor mother. Radio silence from you for weeks, then you barge in here—”
I sniff. “What’s burning?”
“Oh, for God’s sake—hang on a sec.” He dives back into the kitchen, and I seize my chance to dash, feeling like a middle schooler caught cheating in class. But I’ve got a hunch these files might bring me closer to Mom’s secrets.
On the drive home, my hands are shaking on the wheel, my stomach twisting. What is my mom hiding from me? Where is she getting extra money to dine out at five-star restaurants for lunch? What else is she not telling me about her life?
I need to understand now.
I run into my apartment and make a beeline for the kitchen, clutching my bag. I’m full-body trembling as I dump the files onto the counter. At least it’s a place to start.
What happened to me? Was I even sick six years ago? Do I have my own timeline wrong?
No doubt I’ve blocked out the worst parts of my childhood. Mostly on purpose, but maybe my unconscious brain did some of it on its own, too. Like, doesn’t everyone try to move past their trauma? What’s the point of reliving your worst moments just to burn them deeper into your amygdala?
The questions circle like vultures in my head.
I need to understand the real story of my childhood.
This is it. No turning back now.
I flip open the first folder. Mom is notorious for holding on to everything. My fingers brush past birthday cards and childhood drawings and old report cards. Garbage, garbage, and more garbage. Dust puffs into my face, and I cough. Not good for my asthma, but I’m too wound up to care. I reach for a giant accordion folder stuffed with papers. My chest tightens to see it again. Mom used to lug this thing around back when I was little. She’d save every scrap—medical notations, invoices, prescription duplicates. Inside, I find folders labeled with my name and dates spanning several years of my childhood. The records inside chart my roller-coaster health history, and for the first time in my life, I’m ready to face it: I want to see the details of my cancer—the diagnosis, the treatment, the recurrence.
I drop cross-legged on the floor as I spread out the documents around me. I extract a bundle of yellowing papers from the file, and I recognize Nonna’s careful, spindly handwriting. A record of doctor visits for the first three years of my life, including immunizations, growth charts, and a few minor illnesses. A typical child’s medical history. Ear infections, strep, stomach flu.
My percentiles for height and weight are consistent.
Flipping through the pages, I search for any mention of the wordcanceror related terms:malignancies,tumors,atypical masses. It feels surreal sifting through faded documents to piece together my own health history, like I’m reading about someone else’s life. The Josie Greene who, at eighteen months, reportedly knew “far more than the benchmark number of words,” according to one doctor’s visit.
Still, no evidence of sickness. Of course, I just haven’t fast-forwarded far enough into the future. I was six the first time I was diagnosed…I think? That’s when we went to Supercuts and shaved off all my hair.
So why does it feel like there’s a piece of the story missing?
One document catches my eye—a doctor’s note that’s annotated in red with a sense of urgency, explaining that our health insurance denied further testing and that the doctors had already gone above and beyond the typical protocol for an earache. But it’s my mother’s familiar handwriting in the margins, anxious and insistent.I’m sure something is wrong, she wrote.Mother’s intuition!
A follow-up letter from the same doctor suggests my mother seek an alternative primary care physician for me. That we were no longer welcome in the practice.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember an earache. When did Mom get in an argument with a doctor about my care? Nothing comes to mind.
I delve deeper, and my cheeks go hot as I follow a trail of my mother’s anxiety. Her notes are frantic, desperate, overshadowing the calm reassurances of medical professionals.
A particular report catches my eye, and my stomach tightens. The note details a series of particularly aggressive tests—some of the most painful procedures I can barely allow myself to remember. The wordleukemiastares out at me from the pages, as if highlighted in neon. Dr. Don, a name that sends a shiver through me, is mentioned frequently throughout the notes. I think of his curdled smile, his dry, papery fingers, his insistence that I take off all my clothes for a checkup.
I pull out my phone and enter his full name into the search engine:Dr. Donald M. Rogers. I didn’t know his last name; I only knew him as Dr. D or Dr. Don, like we were pals. And when the results load, I’m not even slightly surprised: a splashy malpractice suit was filed against Dr. Rogers by families accusing him of diagnosing and treating illnesses that were, at best, dubious. I read a formal public notice from the medical board detailing how Dr.Rogers was stripped of his license due to unethical practices, but by then he’d made millions overdiagnosing his pediatric patients and subjecting them to experimental treatments.
But that’s not the part that chills me to my bones. The lawsuit and the revocation of his license happened more than two decades ago.
I was his patientafterthe class action suit was settled.
