The Woman in the Hospital Photo Was Me
by Mira Lang
A missing woman's file had a hospital camera photo from last Tuesday, and the woman in it was me. I never left my house that day.
I scan things for a living. Nine to five, a two-lawyer office on Culvert Street, and everything that comes through our door gets stamped and numbered and put in a file, and I am the one who does it. So when a mother brought in a green folder about her missing daughter, I did what I always do. I got to page one fourteen and I stopped. It was a photocopy of a security camera frame from the east entrance of Merrick County General, timestamped last Tuesday at 9:41 at night, and the woman standing in that doorway was me. My coat. My haircut. The way I stand with my weight off my bad knee. Underneath it somebody had written my name, because that is the name in the visitor log. Here is the thing. Last Tuesday I never left my house. I sat on my own couch and started the dryer twice and went to bed at ten. I know that the way you know your own kitchen. My husband says I went out. My coworker says she saw me. And when I finally called my insurance company, just to be careful, a very nice woman read me a list of eleven hospital visits I never made, and then she congratulated me on my baby. Whose life am I paying for?
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