Chapter 7 - REBECCA
Rebecca Sloan agreed to speak.
She was sixty-five.
Retired after thirty-eight years in hospital registration and maternity-unit clerical work.
She admitted helping Margaret interpret the band number.
She admitted being in the former-employee Facebook group.
She denied making the fake notice.
Then Linda asked:
“Did you send Margaret anything from the group?”
Rebecca looked uncomfortable.
One screenshot.
The old generic security-log screenshot.
Why?
Margaret asked what a tag communication failure looked like in the system.
Rebecca sent an example.
No patient name.
No Noah event.
Margaret then forwarded that screenshot to someone.
Who?
A woman named:
Paula Finch.
Margaret froze.
Daniel frowned.
“Who is Paula?”
Margaret had joined an online group for parents and grandparents concerned about hospital identification errors.
Not anti-medicine.
Not conspiracy branding.
A consumer-safety group.
Paula was an administrator.
Margaret posted:
same-name patient,
wrong discharge sheet,
band issue.
Paula responded privately:
Get everything in writing.
Then Margaret sent her:
the generic security-log screenshot,
a photo of Noah’s wrong demographic paper,
the band photo.
Paula said:
“I can help you organize a discrepancy packet.”
Margaret thought:
advocacy.
Paula created the fake notice.
Not to deceive Margaret exactly, she later claimed.
She said it was a:
reconstructed event summary.
But she used the hospital logo.
Inserted a real date.
Invented an event number.
No label saying:
reconstruction.
That crossed a line.
Why?
Paula’s group sold:
hospital-record review packages.
$349.
Margaret had paid.
There was the financial angle, but not family greed.
Paula made messy facts look formal because formal-looking evidence sold certainty.
Then Margaret stared at the fake notice.
“You made me think this was official.”
Paula answered on a recorded call:
“I told you it was reconstructed.”
Margaret searched messages.
Paula had written:
I reconstructed what likely happened based on the internal language.
That word:
likely.
Margaret remembered it as:
confirmed.
Again.
Interpretation.
Then Daniel asked:
“Did Paula ever tell you Noah was switched?”
No.
She wrote:
A switch cannot be excluded without full chain-of-identity review.
Margaret turned that into:
possible switch.
Then:
likely switch.
Then:
not your son.
Step by step.
Then Claire asked:
“What exactly did you plan to do with Noah this morning?”
Margaret finally answered fully.
She had come to take him to St. Anne’s Patient Safety office.
Without permission.
She believed if she arrived with the baby, staff could:
rescan his tag history,
compare newborn photos,
and “confirm identity.”
That was not how retrospective review worked.
Claire refused to let her take Noah.
They argued.
Margaret picked him up anyway.
Claire ran to call Daniel.
Margaret moved toward the laundry room to get the document sleeve hidden behind the washer.
She needed both hands to pull the appliance slightly forward.
She looked around for somewhere to set Noah.
Saw the open washer.
Unplugged.
Empty.
She intended to place him inside for seconds.
A makeshift cradle.
A catastrophic judgment error.
Then Claire entered.
The washer event was not a plan to injure Noah.
It was a reckless act produced by Margaret’s belief that the investigation mattered more than ordinary judgment.
That distinction mattered.
It did not excuse it.
Then Daniel asked:
“Why hide the documents behind the washer?”
Margaret looked ashamed.
Because Claire had thrown away the first paper.
Margaret feared she would destroy the rest.
Then Daniel said:
“You were building a case against the mother of the child you claimed you were protecting.”
Margaret had no answer.
Then the hospital’s full chain-of-identity review was completed.
It included:
delivery-room identifiers,
cord-blood timing,
newborn photographs,
barcode scans,
bassinet logs,
staff statements,
discharge matching.
Conclusion:
No evidence of infant misidentification or switch.
The wrong demographic sheet was a print-and-filing error.
Margaret’s theory collapsed.
But one question remained.
May you like
Why had the wrong demographic sheet been in Claire’s discharge folder at all if staff believed they had caught the printing mistake?
Someone had placed it back.
