Chapter 3 - THE $155,000 WASN’T A HOSPITAL BILL
I spent the afternoon with an attorney.
Her name was Rebecca Sloan.
She had handled the closing when I sold my condo, which meant she already understood why there was nearly $180,000 sitting in my savings account.
I sent her photographs of every page in the folder before Travis managed to take it back.
Rebecca called within ten minutes.
“This is not hospital financing.”
“I know.”
“It’s a business guaranty.”
“For what?”
She read the first page aloud.
NorthSound Recovery Group LLC.
I had heard the name.
Barely.
Travis had started it eighteen months earlier with Dr. Thorne and two passive investors.
Their plan was to open a private outpatient recovery and physical-rehabilitation center outside Seattle.
Not a hospital.
Not an emergency facility.
A medical business.
Travis had no clinical background.
He handled operations and growth.
Dr. Thorne was the medical director.
Mom called it Travis’s “real chance.”
She had put money into it.
I never asked how much.
That suddenly seemed stupid.
Rebecca flipped through the images.
“This guaranty references a bridge facility.”
“English.”
“NorthSound borrowed money.”
“How much?”
“Looks like originally two hundred forty thousand.”
“And now they need one fifty-five?”
“That appears to be the current payoff or cure amount.”
I sat very still.
The exact number from Travis’s phone call.
One hundred fifty-five thousand dollars.
Not surgery.
Debt.
Rebecca continued.
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
“The guaranty says you already approved the obligation electronically last week.”
“I didn’t.”
“I assumed.”
She zoomed into the signature.
“Do you recognize where this signature might have come from?”
I did.
After twenty minutes of staring at it.
Two years earlier my mother refinanced the small house she had owned since my father died.
I attended the closing because Mom wanted one of us there.
One document required my acknowledgement that I had no ownership claim.
I signed:
Shannon Foster.
The capital F had a distinctive long lower stroke.
The forged guaranty used the exact same shape.
Mom had kept a scanned closing packet.
So had Travis.
I felt sick.
Rebecca asked:
“Did you ever personally agree to support NorthSound?”
“No.”
“Invest in it?”
“No.”
“Loan your brother money for it?”
“No.”
“Did he ever ask?”
“Yes.”
That surprised her.
“When?”
“Last summer.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“And?”
“I said no.”
Why?
Because Travis had already started three businesses before he turned twenty-eight.
A mobile detailing company.
A meal-prep service.
A sports supplement website.
Mom invested in two.
Both disappeared quietly.
Travis never called them failures.
He called them learning experiences.
When NorthSound appeared, I told him I loved him but would not invest.
He stopped speaking to me for two weeks.
Mom told me I was jealous because I had “chosen the safe route.”
The safe route was apparently working in corporate financial planning for eight years and paying my own mortgage.
Rebecca asked:
“What do you want to do?”
The first answer in my head was:
Destroy him.
I didn’t say it.
“I want my name off this.”
“Good.”
“And I want to know if anyone has used it anywhere else.”
“Better.”
That afternoon we notified the lender in writing that I disputed the guaranty and had never authorized it.
I froze my credit.
Changed passwords.
Placed a fraud alert.
Preserved copies of the documents.
Then Rebecca asked whether I wanted to make a formal identity-misuse report.
That felt bigger.
Permanent.
I thought about Mom saying:
May you like
You were going to sign anyway.
“Yes.”
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