The click of the key is wrong. My fingers know the password, the muscle memory is there, but the screen flashes red. Invalid. Again. A small, tight message appears: ‘Your account has been locked for security reasons. Please try again in 29 minutes.’
Which account? The one for the sprawling university hospital network, the independent radiology clinic, or the specialist’s private practice portal that looks like it was designed in 1999? My mother’s neurologist appointment is in less than two hours, and the MRI results-the entire reason for the visit-are trapped behind one of these digital walls. I feel a familiar, useless heat rising in my chest. I give up.
The Tangible Anchor: A Worn Blue Folder
Reaching for the worn blue folder, the one with the coffee ring on the cover and permanently bent corners, feels like a surrender. Inside, a chaos of printouts, sticky notes with hastily scribbled questions, and lab reports I printed in a panic from three different systems. This crumpled, analog mess is somehow the superior technology today. This is my real job: being the broken API between nine different healthcare systems that refuse to speak to each other.
The physical folder: chaotic yet unified.
The Digital Ghost: Fragments and Contradictions
Each portal holds a fragment of her, a shard of her story. The primary care portal has her vitals from last week
