Megan's Memory Returns
Chapter 05 - Megan's Memory Returns
Megan sat propped up in the hospital bed, considerably more alert than she'd been in weeks, a specific, unfamiliar clarity settling over her that felt almost disorienting after so long living inside a fog she hadn't fully understood was artificial.
"I remember things differently now," she told Derek, once Jake had fallen asleep curled against her side, exhausted from the day's terror. "Small things. I remember Gloria bringing me tea every morning, insisting I drink the whole cup before she'd let me start my day. I never once thought to question why she was so specific about it."
"The tea," Derek said slowly. "Not just the pills this morning."
"I think the pills this morning were different," Megan said. "More direct, maybe, because she was running out of patience with however slowly the tea was working. I don't know. I'm still putting pieces together myself."
Derek reached for her hand, guilt and fury tangled together in his chest in a way he was still struggling to fully separate.
"Why didn't you tell me," he asked. "Any of it. The exhaustion, the forgetting, all of it."
"I did tell you," Megan said, voice cracking. "Every time you called, I told you something felt wrong. You told me I just needed rest, that motherhood alone three weeks a month would exhaust anyone. I started believing you, honestly, because believing that was easier than believing something considerably more frightening."
Derek felt that observation land like a physical blow, the specific horror of understanding his own reassurance, offered with genuine love and concern, had likely delayed her recognizing the truth for weeks, possibly months.
"I'm so sorry," he said. "I should have come home sooner. I should have asked harder questions instead of trusting my mother's reassurances so completely."
"You couldn't have known," Megan said, echoing Dr. Bloom's earlier assessment, though her voice carried considerably more complicated feeling underneath the words. "I don't blame you, Derek. I'm still working out exactly how I feel about your mother, though. That part isn't as simple."
"Why would she do this," Derek asked, the question he'd been circling since the ambulance ride, still without any answer that made sense to him. "What could she possibly gain from making you sick like this."
Megan considered the question carefully, her own mind still working through months of foggy, half-remembered interactions. "I don't know yet. I keep thinking about how she's always been so careful about Jake, almost possessive, actually, in a way that felt intense but not necessarily sinister. I wonder if this connects to that somehow."
May you like
Derek sat with that, a specific, growing dread building in his chest as he began to consider exactly what his mother might have been building toward, patiently, over months of quiet, methodical harm.
"I need to understand what she's actually been planning," he said. "Before we decide anything else about what happens next."
