Chapter 7 - What Ethan Did Not Remember
The hospital placed Noah in a secure pediatric ward.
Tests showed traces of a sedative in his bloodstream and mild inflammation around the injection site. No tracking device or implant appeared on the scans.
The doctor believed the injection had occurred within the previous forty-eight hours.
“What was she trying to give him?” Emily asked.
“We won’t know until the toxicology report is complete.”
Noah slept with one hand wrapped around Emily’s finger.
Ethan stood by the window.
He had read Margaret’s note six times.
He does not know what happens when he sleeps.
“What does it mean?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never had sleepwalking episodes?”
“Not since I was a child.”
Emily looked at him.
“You sleepwalked?”
“My mother said I did.”
“How often?”
“I don’t remember.”
The answer seemed to frighten him.
Detective Bennett arrived with two uniformed officers.
The toxicology lab had identified the substance in Noah’s blood.
It was not merely a sedative.
It was an experimental compound developed by Hale Biotechnologies.
Ethan knew the project.
“SR-19,” he said. “It’s designed to suppress traumatic memory formation.”
Emily stared at him.
“Why would a five-year-old need his memories suppressed?”
Ethan’s face collapsed.
Noah had been taken somewhere.
Something had happened.
Then Margaret had drugged him to make him forget.
Bennett placed a photograph on the table.
It had been taken from a traffic camera three nights earlier.
Margaret’s car was entering a restricted Hale Biotechnologies research facility at 2:13 a.m.
A child sat in the back seat.
Emily’s stomach turned.
“Noah was sleeping in his room that night.”
“Are you sure?” Bennett asked.
“I checked him before bed.”
“Did you check again during the night?”
“No.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“The cameras.”
Margaret could have replaced Noah with pillows beneath the blanket, then edited the recording.
Bennett placed another photograph beside the first.
A second car followed Margaret through the facility gate.
The driver was Ethan.
Emily looked at him.
“No.”
Ethan picked up the photograph.
The image clearly showed his face behind the wheel.
“I was home.”
“Were you?” Bennett asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember waking during the night?”
“No.”
“Do you take sleep medication?”
“No.”
Emily remembered something.
Three mornings earlier, Ethan had complained that his shoes were wet. Margaret said he had left them beside an open window during the rain.
The shoes had been muddy.
Ethan sat down heavily.
“What did they do to me?”
Bennett asked him to submit to a blood test.
The results revealed traces of the same memory-suppressing compound.
A lower dose.
Repeated exposure.
Ethan stared at the report.
“My mother drugged me.”
“Possibly,” Bennett said.
“For how long?”
“We can’t tell from one test.”
Emily thought about all the mornings Ethan had complained of headaches.
All the nights Margaret brought him tea.
All the occasions he remembered conversations differently.
Maybe the gaslighting had not been entirely psychological.
Maybe his memories had actually been altered.
The hospital conducted a neurological examination.
Ethan showed no major cognitive damage, but scans revealed unusual activity around the hippocampus and amygdala.
The neurologist explained that repeated use of SR-19 might interfere with memory storage and emotional association.
“Can the memories return?” Ethan asked.
“Fragments may return under the right conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“Sounds. Smells. Places. Strong emotional triggers.”
Emily remembered the music box from locker 317.
The melody.
When she mentioned it, Ethan became pale.
“I’ve heard it before.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Detective Bennett brought the music box to the hospital.
The moment it began playing, Ethan’s body stiffened.
His eyes lost focus.
Then he was no longer in the hospital room.
He was nine years old.
Bare feet on cold concrete.
A woman crying somewhere behind a door.
Margaret gripping his shoulder.
Robert Hale standing beside a metal table.
Victor Lang holding a syringe.
Young Ethan asked, “Why is the boy asleep?”
Victor answered, “Because he remembers too much.”
The memory vanished.
Ethan gasped and nearly fell.
Emily caught him.
“What did you see?”
“A laboratory.”
“When?”
“I was a child.”
“Who was there?”
“My parents. Victor.”
He pressed both hands against his temples.
“And another boy.”
“What boy?”
“I don’t know.”
Bennett leaned closer.
“Was he alive?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
Ethan’s breathing became shallow.
“He looked like me.”
That evening, Claire called Emily from an unregistered number.
“I heard Noah is in the hospital.”
“How?”
“Victor has people there.”
Emily moved into the corridor.
“Margaret left a note saying not to trust you.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She also said not to trust Ethan.”
Claire was quiet.
“Do you know why?”
“Yes.”
Emily waited.
“Ethan was not the only baby born to Anna.”
Emily’s grip tightened around the phone.
“What are you saying?”
“Anna delivered twins.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
“Where is the other twin?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he the boy Ethan remembers?”
“Possibly.”
“Why wasn’t he in the ledger?”
“Because Victor kept one child for himself.”
Emily looked through the glass wall at Ethan sitting beside Noah’s bed.
“Which child did Margaret take?”
“No one knows.”
“What does that mean?”
“The babies were identical.”
May you like
Claire lowered her voice.
“Ethan may not be the child Margaret believed she stole.”
