They Chose Her Over Me—Then Begged Me to Remember Them Chapter 06
“She told you she wouldn’t reitember anything afterward.”
She begged you to come get her.”
“And what did you say?
No one in the hallway answered.
“You said… ‘once you behave, we’ll get you.””
The nurse’s tears spilled over. She wiped them away, hard.
“She was already well-behaved enough.”
“Ninety-nine days. Not one outburst. Not one tear. Not one conflict with anyone.
“The most well-behaved patient on the entire ward.”
“And you never came.”
Mom sank against the wall, hands pressed over her face, shoulders shaking.
The man stood frozen, hollowed out.
Miles leaned against the wall, the flowers slipping from his hand to the floor. He didn’t pick them up.
Finally, it was the man who spoke first, his voice barely holding together.
“We’re taking her home.”
Dr. Whitman nodded.
“She can function independently for now, but she’ll need long-term care.”
He paused. “One more thing.”
“You can try showing her old photos and videos. Familiar places, familiar objects.”
“Theoretically, memory doesn’t return after a prefrontal lobotomy. But clinically there are rare cases-
under sustained, intense emotional stimulation-of fragmentary memory flickers appearing.”
“The odds are very low.”
“But not zero.”
On the drive home, I sat in the back seat.
Buildings and trees slid past the window. I watched them.
Not familiar. Not unfamiliar either.
The woman beside me cried the whole way.
She held my hand, gripping tight.
I didn’t pull away, because it didn’t hurt.
I didn’t hold back either, because I didn’t understand why I would.
We arrived somewhere. They said it was home.
I walked in.
A living room. A couch. A coffee table. A wall of framed photos.
In one, a girl was laughing, her eyes crinkled with joy.
Standing beside her were the people I’d met today.
“That’s you,” the man said, pointing at the photo, his voice shaking.
That night, they took turns sitting at my bedside.
The woman held me, burying her face in my hair.
“Rosalind. I’m sorry. Mom is so sorry…”
I didn’t move.
I didn’t know what “sorry” meant.
I didn’t know why she was crying.
The man sat at the edge of the bed, saying my name over and over.
“Rosalind. Rosalind. Rosalind…”
Late that night, everyone else had gone.
The door creaked open a crack.
The girl about my age slipped in.
“Rosalind, can you hear me?”
“You’re a nobody now.”
“No different from a corpse,
She laughed once.
“I won.”
