The name was a woman I’d never heard of, but the clerk said she’d been using the card four or five times a week since 2019. I asked whether there were any other records attached to it, and she said there were hundreds of trips in the system. Almost every trip ended at the state hospital. I told her I had never had any reason to go there, and she said the cardholder’s file included a medical transportation note. Then she read me the emergency contact number. It was my old home phone number, the one we disconnected after my husband died.
I asked the transit office to check the original application. The employee said the second card had been issued three months after my husband passed, and someone had submitted a copy of my utility bill along with the other woman’s identification. I asked who had signed the application. She said the signature was mine. I told her I’d never signed it, and she pulled up the scanned image. It looked enough like my handwriting that I understood why nobody had questioned it. But underneath the signature was a witness name. That name belonged to a woman who had worked at the state hospital.
I called the hospital and asked whether they had a patient under that name. The records clerk wouldn’t confirm anything, but she asked why I was calling. I told her about the transit card. There was a long pause, and then she asked whether I’d ever received mail from the hospital addressed to someone else. I said no. She told me the woman had been registered there for years using my address as her permanent residence. Then she gave me the date of the first admission. It was in 2019, exactly three months after my husband’s funeral. And when I asked who had brought her there, the clerk said, “The person listed as her emergency contact was your husband.”
