Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO CALLED HERSELF A NURSE
For several seconds, I could hear nothing except the alarm behind the operating room doors.
My mother held the forged document between us as if it were a dinner invitation.
“What decisions?” I asked.
Françoise glanced around the corridor.
“Lower your voice.”
“My wife is in surgery. My son is fighting to breathe. You forged my signature, and you’re telling me to lower my voice?”
A nurse at the station looked toward us.
My mother offered her the same polished smile she had used at charity dinners, shareholder meetings and funerals.
Then she stepped closer.
“Élodie has been emotionally unstable for months,” she whispered. “You know that.”
“No. You kept saying it until I stopped questioning you.”
“She has made irrational accusations.”
“She was bleeding, and you prevented her from calling an ambulance.”
“That is not what happened.”
“I heard the voicemail.”
For the first time, her expression shifted.
Only slightly.
A tightening near her mouth.
“She was confused.”
“I heard your voice.”
“You heard a few seconds from a woman in distress.”
“I saw the papers.”
My mother’s eyes moved toward the phone in my hand.
“She had no right to photograph private legal documents.”
“They were in my home.”
“They were prepared for your protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“From losing your child to a woman who was becoming increasingly unpredictable.”
My stomach turned.
Élodie had spent months painting the nursery herself. She had learned to sew because she wanted to make the curtains. She had attended every appointment, stopped drinking coffee and kept a notebook of every medication she took.
The only time she seemed unstable was after my mother had cornered her.
I had called that sensitivity.
Now I understood it had been fear.
A doctor emerged from the operating room.
His gown was marked with blood.
“Mr. Delcourt?”
I walked toward him.
He removed his mask.
“We delivered your son seven minutes ago. He required resuscitation and has been transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit. He is receiving respiratory support.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not yet.”
“And Élodie?”
“The placental separation caused severe hemorrhaging. We have controlled part of the bleeding, but her uterus is not contracting adequately.”
“What does that mean?”
“We are attempting several measures. If they fail, we may need to perform a hysterectomy to save her life.”
The word passed through me slowly.
Élodie and I had talked about having two children.
Sometimes three.
She wanted a daughter with dark hair. I wanted another boy because I had already imagined two brothers racing bicycles through the vineyards near my father’s old house.
Now she might never be able to have another child.
Because help had been delayed.
“How long had the abruption been happening?” I asked.
“We cannot know exactly, but based on the amount of bleeding and clotting, it did not begin minutes before her arrival.”
My mother stepped forward.
“Doctor, I am Françoise Delcourt. I have emergency authorization for the family.”
The doctor looked at the document.
Then at me.
“Is that correct?”
“No.”
My answer came without hesitation.
For the first time in my life, my mother looked genuinely shocked.
“That signature is forged,” I said. “She has no authority over my wife or child. Do not give her information. Do not allow her near either of them.”
“Marc.”
I did not look at her.
The doctor handed the paper to the nurse.
“Contact hospital legal services and security,” he said.
My mother’s face went still.
“You are humiliating yourself.”
“No. I spent years humiliating my wife by allowing you to treat her like she was beneath you.”
“You don’t understand the consequences.”
“I’m beginning to.”
A security supervisor arrived and asked Françoise to step away from the restricted area.
She refused.
“This hospital’s maternal health foundation bears my family’s name.”
“That does not give you clinical access,” he said.
“I serve on the foundation board.”
“And right now, you are interfering with patient care.”
She looked at me one last time.
“You will regret choosing panic over family.”
I finally met her eyes.
“My family is behind those doors.”
Security escorted her toward the elevator.
She did not struggle.
She did not raise her voice.
That would have made her look guilty.
Instead, she walked with her head high, making everyone who saw her wonder whether I was the cruel son throwing his concerned mother out of a hospital.
That had always been her greatest skill.
She could injure someone and still leave the room looking wounded.
I sat in the corridor and opened Élodie’s phone.
Her passcode was the date we met.
Inside her recent photographs were dozens of pictures of documents.
The first was the petition I had seen.
It had been drafted by a private attorney nearly three months earlier. It described Élodie as paranoid, emotionally volatile and potentially incapable of making safe decisions for her child.
Attached were notes from prenatal appointments.
Patient repeatedly expresses irrational fears concerning paternal grandmother.
Patient demonstrates hostility when offered family support.
Potential postpartum psychiatric risk should be monitored.
I recognized none of the doctors’ names beside those notes.
Some were printed on clinic letterhead, but the formatting was inconsistent. One page listed an appointment on a day Élodie and I had spent together in Arcachon.
The records were false.
My mother had been building a case.
Not to help us if Élodie became ill.
To take control if anything happened during the pregnancy.
There were also screenshots of messages between Élodie and an unknown number.
You should think carefully about what kind of mother publicly attacks her child’s grandmother.
Marc already has enough pressure.
One emotional incident after the baby arrives could make the authorities question whether you are safe.
The messages had started as polite advice.
They had become threats.
The final screenshot showed a reply from Élodie.
I am showing Marc everything tonight.
That message had been sent at 2:46 p.m.
Thirty-two minutes before her first call to me.
My mother had known Élodie was about to expose her.
A man in a wrinkled shirt came running into the corridor.
He was in his late forties, with gray beginning at his temples. He looked exhausted.
“Mr. Delcourt?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Thomas Vernet.”
I stood and handed him his jacket.
He barely looked at it.
“Where is your wife?”
“In surgery.”
His face fell.
“And the baby?”
“NICU.”
He closed his eyes.
“I told them this would happen.”
“Them?”
“Your mother and your wife.”
My hands tightened.
“Tell me everything.”
Dr. Vernet sat beside me.
Élodie had called his clinic shortly after three. She reported sudden abdominal pain, spotting and reduced fetal movement. Because she was nearby and sounded frightened, he had agreed to stop at the apartment before returning to the hospital.
“When I examined her, her uterus was rigid and tender,” he said. “The baby’s heart rate was difficult to locate with my portable monitor. I told her we needed emergency transport.”
“Why didn’t you call the ambulance yourself?”
“I tried. Your mother arrived while I was speaking to the dispatcher.”
He looked toward the elevator, as if expecting Françoise to return.
“She told me she was a retired nurse.”
“She has never been a nurse.”
“She showed me identification from the hospital foundation and said you had sent her. She claimed an ambulance was already downstairs.”
“There was no ambulance.”
“I know that now.”
“What happened next?”
“Your wife became more frightened when they began arguing. She stood too quickly, reached for her phone and knocked the wedding photograph to the floor. She cut her hand on the frame. I took off my jacket because there was blood on my sleeve, and I went into the hallway to direct the paramedics.”
“But they weren’t there.”
“No. When I returned, the door was locked.”
My mouth went dry.
“I knocked. Your mother answered through the door and said Élodie had changed her mind. Then she said you were on the phone and had instructed her to drive your wife privately.”
“Did you believe her?”
“For about two minutes.”
He lowered his head.
“When I called your office to confirm, a woman answered. She identified herself as a nurse from Pellegrin Hospital. She said Mrs. Delcourt had been assessed and told to rest while transportation was arranged.”
“My mother.”
“I believe so.”
“What did you do?”
“I called the hospital directly. They had no record of the call. I contacted emergency services again, but I did not know whether your wife had left the apartment or where she might be. I returned to the building with police assistance. By then no one answered.”
“How long ago?”
“Nearly two hours.”
My anger sharpened into something colder.
“My mother left her there.”
Dr. Vernet did not answer.
He did not need to.
Élodie’s phone contained a draft email addressed to me. It had never been sent.
Marc,
I know you think I am asking you to choose between your mother and me. I’m not. I’m asking you to see what she is doing before our son is born.
She has contacted my doctors pretending to speak for us. She has asked questions about whether I could be declared medically incapable after delivery. She has told people I am refusing treatment when I have never refused anything.
I found copies of evaluations I never attended. I think she plans to use them if I challenge her access to the baby.
There is something else. I found old records in the nursery wall after the contractor removed a damaged panel. They belonged to Camille.
My sister.
Camille had died when I was twelve.
My mother told me she lost control of her car on a wet road outside Libourne. She was twenty-six and seven months pregnant.
I remembered the funeral.
The closed coffin.
My mother standing beside it without shedding a tear until the photographers arrived.
I looked at Dr. Vernet.
“Do you know anything about Camille Delcourt?”
He frowned.
“The name sounds familiar.”
“She was my sister.”
He studied me.
“Was she pregnant when she died?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Vernet’s face changed.
“Mr. Delcourt, during my residency, we studied an internal case from a private maternity clinic that closed more than twenty years ago. A pregnant woman suffered severe preeclampsia at home. Her family delayed calling emergency services because they believed she was being dramatic.”
The corridor seemed to tilt.
“What happened to her?”
“She had a seizure. She fell down a staircase and sustained a fatal head injury. Her baby did not survive.”
“My mother said it was a car accident.”
“I cannot tell you whether it was the same woman.”
But he no longer needed to.
A nurse approached and told me I could see my son briefly.
I followed her through two sets of locked doors.
The neonatal intensive care unit was dim and warm. Machines hummed beside rows of incubators.
My son lay beneath a clear plastic cover.
He was impossibly small.
A breathing tube covered his mouth. Wires crossed his chest. One tiny hand rested open beside his head.
I placed my finger through the opening in the incubator.
His fingers did not close around it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have protected both of you.”
The neonatologist explained that he had suffered oxygen deprivation. They would not know the full effects immediately. The next twenty-four hours were critical.
A nurse entered the room quickly.
“Mr. Delcourt, hospital security needs you outside.”
“What happened?”
“There is an issue involving your son’s records.”
I returned to the corridor.
The security supervisor stood beside a hospital administrator.
Between them was the forged authorization.
“Someone used this document forty minutes ago,” the administrator said.
“To do what?”
“To request that your son’s guardianship designation be changed in the hospital system.”
My blood went cold.
“Was it my mother?”
“The request came from a terminal in the foundation office.”
Françoise had not gone home.
She had gone downstairs.
“She tried to take control of him while my wife was still in surgery?”
The administrator hesitated.
“There is more. The person who entered the request also scheduled a neonatal transfer.”
“Transfer where?”
“To Saint-Aurèle Private Clinic.”
I recognized the name from the false medical evaluations.
Before anyone could stop me, my phone rang.
My mother’s name appeared on the screen.
I answered.
“What are you doing?”
Her voice was calm.
“What you are too emotional to do yourself.”
“Cancel the transfer.”
“No.”
“You are not taking my son anywhere.”
“You still believe this is about control.”
“What else could it be?”
For the first time, she allowed anger into her voice.
“It is about survival. Camille tried to expose this family too. Look what happened to her.”
The line went silent.
“Mother?”
Then Élodie’s surgeon stepped into the corridor.
Her face told me the news before she spoke.
“We had to remove your wife’s uterus to stop the bleeding,” she said. “She is alive, but she remains in critical condition.”
My mother was still on the phone.
She had heard every word.
May you like
And in the silence that followed, she whispered something that destroyed the last part of me still capable of calling her family.
“At least now there won’t be another child for her to use against us.”
