Chapter 86: Fifteen Dollars
The Cook County Clerk keeps vital records on a ground floor on Clark Street, behind a rope and eleven chairs.
I went on the eighth of January and was forty-first in the queue at nine in the morning. The people in that room are mostly there for a passport or a pension.
A man ahead of me had a folder with a photograph of a woman clipped to the outside of it.
You fill in a short form. Name of decedent. Date of death. Your relationship. Your reason.
Under relationship I wrote none. Under reason I wrote records request in support of a physician’s enquiry, which is what Moreno told me to write and is true.
The clerk did not read it. She read the name and the date and asked how many copies.
Fifteen dollars for the first and four for each after.
I bought four, paid nineteen dollars in cash, and kept the receipt. It took nine minutes.
Fifteen months of a house, and everything the State of Illinois has to say about it costs less than a haircut.
I did not open it in the building.
I walked to a coffee place on Randolph and sat in the corner with my back to the wall.
I kept my hand flat on it for about a minute before I turned it over.
I am going to give you the boxes in order, because the boxes are the point.
Ana Sofia Reyes-Blackwood. Female. Age 29. Born fourth of March 1996. Birthplace, San Antonio, Texas.
Usual occupation: translator. Kind of business: self-employed. Married. Surviving spouse: Victor J. Blackwood.
Place of death: residence. Date: ninth of December 2025. Time pronounced: 07:52.
Informant: spouse.
Then the medical section, which is nine lines and four boxes and the whole argument of the rest of my life.
Part I. Immediate cause. RESPIRATORY ARREST. Interval between onset and death: MINUTES.
Line b, due to: blank. Line c: blank. Line d: blank.
Part II. Other significant conditions contributing but not resulting in the underlying cause: blank.
Item 32. Was an autopsy performed. NO.
Item 33. Were autopsy findings available prior to completion of cause of death. Blank. Not a no. Blank.
Item 34. Manner of death. NATURAL.
Item 35. Was the case referred to the Medical Examiner. YES.
I read thirty-two and thirty-five together about six times.
Together they say something it took me another month to understand properly.
Somebody was called. Somebody came. And then nobody looked.
Under that: disposition. BURIAL. Twelfth of December 2025. Mount Carmel Cemetery, Hillside. A funeral home on Harlem Avenue.
Then the last block on the page, which is where I stopped.
CERTIFIER. To the best of my knowledge death occurred at the time, date and place and due to the cause stated.
Stephen R. Kolar, M.D. Licence 036-114772. Date signed: eleventh of December 2025.
I did not know the name.
I wrote it on the back of the receipt and typed it into the State license lookup at that table with a cold cup in front of me.
Kolar, Stephen R. Physician and surgeon. Specialty on file: obstetrics and gynaecology. Licence status: inactive. Retired, 2026.
I sat there for a while.
Ana had no doctor of her own in this state. She used a walk-in list on Michigan Avenue and she used it twice.
Neither of those physicians signed anything.
The man who signed was somebody else, he was not an internist, and he had not seen her in either month she was ill.
I did not work it out at the table.
I worked it out in Berwyn that evening, with Ethan’s file open for an entirely different reason.
A pediatric chart opens with a birth summary, transcribed from the hospital discharge. That is simply how they begin.
Second page. Delivery: spontaneous, thirty-nine weeks and two days, twelfth of July 2025.
Attending: S. Kolar, M.D.
I sat in a stranger’s ironing room with a hand over my mouth, which is not a thing I do.
I called Marco and read him both lines. He made me read them twice.
“So he saw her in October,” Marco said.
“Six-week postnatal. That is the only time he would have seen her.”
“And the next thing he does with her name is sign for how she died.”
“Yes.”
Marco said a word I am not going to write down.
Then he said the practical thing, which is why he is worth six of anybody else in that house.
“Write what you know. Not what it looks like.”
So I did. Two lines, in the index, in blue.
Certifier of certificate dated 11 Dec 2025: S. R. Kolar MD, obstetrics. Same physician attending delivery of E.B., 12 July 2025.
No evidence of any contact between certifier and decedent after October 2025.
Then I capped the pen.
The man who wrote down how Ana Reyes-Blackwood died is the man who delivered her son.