I freeze partway out my hospital room door before twisting my torso to face him.
He smiles at the unease on my face before he mutters, “For what it’s worth, I would have done the same.” I assume he’s referencing me killing the man who attempted to rape me for the second time but am proven wrong when he adds, “I’m not sure I would have gotten away with stuffing my briefs into his pocket, but I would have given it a shot if it was the only way I could shift the focus to me.”
Protocol is the last thing on my mind when I race back to his side of the room. I throw my arms around his neck and hug him tight before whispering in his ear, “Thank you.”
Grayson holds me as firmly as he did only minutes ago. His hug takes care of any guilt I was wrongly experiencing. I didn’t kill Agent Moses. I merely supported a man who had been wronged by him over and over again.
That’s justice.
I did my job.
“Go do what needs to be done so you can get back to where you’re meant to be,” Grayson murmurs a couple of seconds later.
I command my eyes to dry like the Sahara before I inch back so I can see his face. Words won’t express what I’m feeling right now, so I have to leave the impossible task to my eyes. It’s no easy feat. I’m not known for showing emotions, and it’s clear Grayson isn’t either when he musses my hair like he does Brandon’s when he can’t find the right words to say.
Our heart-mending scene is still spreading warmth across my chest when I walk into the hospital room of what I believe will be a long-term patient manymanyhours later.
Demi’s crystal blue eyes pop up to mine before she cocks a brow. She studies my face for several long seconds before she breathes out in a slow yet precise manner, “Macy, right?”
I grin a proud smile. “Yep! That’s me.”
A giggle rumbles up my chest when the pride on my face jumps onto Demi’s. She looks so much closer to her age now that the strains of her life have been removed from her memories.
With back-to-back head injuries—first the baseball, then the whiplash her brain endured during her single motor vehicle crash—Demi suffered a traumatic brain injury. Blood was practically swarming her brain, slowly killing it. It took a mammoth effort to save her, but the combined exertions of both Dr. Nesser and me on the phone achieved the impossible.
Demi was placed into an induced coma for ten days, but that was more a precaution to ensure her swollen brain couldn’t inflict any more damage. When she came too, her recovery was quite remarkable. She spoke with only the slightest slur, could remember basic points such as counting to ten, telling the time, and her body was receptive to things such as the difference between hot and cold.
It was a miracle no one expected, but the phenomenon didn’t linger for long.
Demi couldn’t remember her name or where she was born. To begin with, Dr. Nesser believed she was suffering from the standard amnesia most patients face after a TBI. It was only when she failed to remember things about her past did Dr. Nesser dig a little deeper into her condition.
Typically, patients with amnesia know who they are, but they have trouble learning new information or forming new memories.
That isn’t the case with Demi.
As displayed just now, she remembers who I am, even with us only meeting a handful of times since she woke from the induced coma. She remembers to brush her teeth morning and night, plays memory games with a competitive edge, and gobbles down a romance book every single day. Her brain function is perfectly normal, it just seems as if the area vital for memory processing was damaged in a unique, often unheard-of way.
It could have been post-traumatic amnesia, but since Demi’s memory loss extends well past childhood, Dr. Nesser was skeptical. There are techniques he could use to enhance memory and psychological support for Demi, but Demi’s case isn’t just unique because of her TBI. The circumstances of her injuries are also one of a kind. Who wants to ‘brain train’ a patient with horrible, second-hand stories of abuse, neglect, and possible sexual assault?
Demi has the scars of an abused woman. Her file at the Bureau is almost as thick as her uncle’s, but instead of it being filled with crimes she had undertaken in her short life, they were brimming reports from when she was the victim.
That saw Dr. Nesser diagnosing Demi’s condition as more a psychological amnesia than a medical phenomenon. Have you ever been hurt so deeply you have no choice but to bury the pain? Children raised in traumatic households often use this technique in adulthood. They blame a lack of memories on poor memory function, where in reality, they don’t want to remember what they went through.
Demi’s abuse wasn’t a one-off incident. She was hit from all sides multiple times. I’m shocked she survived. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about other members of her family. Most particularly, Kaylee.
A little over two weeks ago, the body of a toddler was found in the wall of a home hundreds of miles from Hopeton. The child was identified as being approximately three years old. She was so badly malnourished, forensic investigators initially struggled to identify the cause of her death.
Even with no ligature marks or bruising noted to her neck, it was eventually ruled that she died of asphyxiation. Her injuries were all internal, and the manner as to how she got them made even the hardest criminal investigators’ eyes water.
When evidence emerged that Col Petretti was known to the family, the coroner included his DNA in preliminary tests. It was discovered only days ago that the child in the wall was Kaylee, except she wasn’t just Demi’s sister as believed, she was also her cousin.
Kaylee, along with a handful of other children, were conceived by Monica Lewis at a baby-making farm the Shroud’s hosted in their barn. From what we’ve unearthed, Monica and Demi’s father, Sean, met three months prior to Monica falling pregnant with Demi. Although their relationship moved at the speed of lightning, all appeared well on the home front—until Col intervened.
He forced Sean to pick. The life of his wife or his three-week-old baby daughter.
The aforementioned should indicate who he picked, but I’ll spell it out for you just in case it doesn’t.
He chose Demi.
