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Oh fuck.
The words “cognitive confusion” and “memory gaps” jump from the page. My fingers grip the page so tight it almost rips as I scan notes voicing concerns about Ella’s “frequent blackouts and time gaps”. Her “inability to recall bursts of emotion.”
“Holy Christ—”
“Don’t worry it’s bullshit,” Kristoff growls quietly. “It’s not what you think and she’s not crazy. Though, believe me, I had the same look on my face as you when my team found this.”
He sighs slowly.
“We looked into it. The in-house psychiatrist at Hemlock was taking bribes from every pharmaceutical rep in the UK to push anything and everything on those poor kids—all state-funded, too. Half of them were on Adderall, and a third of them were on antidepressants they probably didn’t need. And he wasbigon pushing memantine, too.”
He scowls.
“That’s an NMDA receptor antagonist, and if you have no fucking clue what the hell that is, like me—”
“They use it to treat Alzheimer’s.”
He nods slowly.
“Correct. This guy saw the family history with Cassandra’s aunt and saw an opportunity with Ella. Plus, the side effects are confusion and depression, so there’s another few drugs he could try and prescribe for some extra kickbacks.”
I swallow thickly.
This is bad. It might be complete bullshit, but this is going to play insidiously well into the prosecution’s narrative about Ella killing Cassandra. The drug treatment, the reformatory school, and now the fact that she was being prescribed drugs for memory loss?
My teeth grind.
They’re going to bury her with—
“Now that you’ve seen it, go ahead and toss that into the fireplace.”
I frown.
“Just do it, Noel.”
My hand curls into a fist, crunching the bullshit report into a ball before I toss it into the flames.
“Good, now it’s gone forever.”
I raise a questioning brow.
“I had every single trace of that in the old records at Hemlock erased, twice over. And it was found on an old drive that hadn’t been accessed in a couple of years.”
He eyes me coolly.
“The prosecution hasn’t, and won’t, see it. And you just burned the last trace of it in the world.”
My jaw sets as I eye my old friend.
“Thank you,” I growl quietly.
“For Thomas,” Kristoff says, raising his glass.
“For Thomas.”
“Oh, and before you start dreaming up ways to inflict pain and suffering on that shrink—”
“Too late,” I grunt.
