Chapter 244: Memory Recovery

Chapter 244: Memory Recovery
The clinic Brad chose was not truly a clinic anymore.

It sat outside the city on a bluff above the sea, once a private rehabilitation house and now mostly used for low-visibility consults that required silence more than prestige. The building was pale, almost colorless in the morning light, with wide windows facing water so relentlessly blue it looked unreal after weeks of rain, smoke, and old rooms full of lies.

Charlotte hated it on sight.

Maybe because it was too clean.
Maybe because she knew exactly why Brad had chosen it.

No interruptions.
No relatives.
No corridors crowded with sympathy.

Only truth, if she could bear it.

“I can stop this at any point,” Brad said for the third time as he adjusted the recorder on the side table. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You may remember nothing useful.”

“I know.”

“And what comes back may be sensory. Fragmented. Out of order.”

Charlotte gave him a look that made him exhale through his nose.

“Right,” he said. “You’ve had enough fragmentation.”

James was not allowed into the room.

That had been Brad’s condition from the start. Emotional anchor or not, James carried too much intensity, too much history. If Charlotte felt him react, she might chase his response instead of her own memory.

He had not argued much.

Now he stood outside on the terrace beyond the glass wall, jacket off, sleeves rolled, one hand in his pocket and the other braced on the railing. Every few minutes his gaze shifted back toward the room.

Charlotte saw him every time she looked up.

Brad waited until her breathing slowed.

“Start with the body,” he said quietly. “Not the story. What do you feel?”

Charlotte closed her eyes.

“At first?” she whispered. “Weight. Pressure. Exhaustion. I remember being so tired I thought if I closed my eyes for one second, I might disappear.”

Brad nodded. “Good. What else?”

“Cold.” Her fingers twitched in her lap. “Too cold for a delivery room. There was… metal. Something at my arm. A tray, maybe.”

“Do you hear anything?”

She frowned.

Sound came strangely, like shards surfacing through water.

“Machines. Not many. Someone telling me not to panic.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

The answer came instantly, carrying more force than she expected.

“Why?”

“Because I ask for the baby.” Her throat tightened. “No. The babies. I ask and no one answers me directly.”

Brad said nothing.

The room around her faded.

Salt from the sea gave way to antiseptic and the phantom hum of fluorescent light behind closed eyes.

“I hear crying,” she said, and her voice broke on the last word. “One cry. Sharp. Then another—no, wait. Someone says the girl is unstable. Someone else says to separate records. I keep trying to lift my head.”

Her breathing shortened.

Brad lowered his voice. “Stay with it. You’re safe.”

“No, I’m not.” Her fingers gripped the chair arms. “I’m held down. Or strapped. I say let me see her. I know I say it because my throat hurts. I keep saying let me see my daughter.”

Outside the glass, James went completely still.

Brad saw it and kept going. “Who answers you?”

Charlotte’s face tightened. “A woman first. Efficient. Not kind. She says the girl may not survive. Then… another voice. Male. Calm. Too calm.”

Harlan.

She knew it before the name formed.

“What does he say?” Brad asked softly.

Charlotte’s whole body shuddered. “He says, ‘Proceed under directive.’” Her breathing hitched. “And then someone says there are two boys. They weren’t expected in the same way. The charting is wrong. Someone is angry.”

Brad leaned forward slightly. “Do you know who?”

“No. But there’s another presence later.” Charlotte’s brow furrowed. “Perfume. My mother’s. Or maybe I only want it to be.” A tear slipped free beneath her closed lashes. “No… she was there. Not before. After. In the corridor maybe. Voices behind glass. She’s arguing. She says, ‘You promised one line, not all of them.’”

Brad’s eyes sharpened.

“Can you hear the answer?”

Charlotte swallowed hard. “A man tells her there is no revision now. The girl is already assigned.”

The word cut through her.

“Assigned.”

For a moment Brad thought she might lose the thread, but she stayed with it, trembling.

“The boys?” he asked carefully.

“Confusion,” she whispered. “Someone says they aren’t in the authorized count. Another says to hold them until the trust instruction clarifies.” Her lips parted on a shaky inhale. “Then noise. Too much noise. I lose time.”

Brad waited a few seconds.

“When you come back,” he said, “what do you feel?”

“Empty.”

The word landed like a stone.

“Physically empty. Not just after birth—empty wrong. And I know something has been taken.” Tears were falling now, silently. “They tell me my daughter is gone. They don’t let me hold her long enough to know it’s a lie. They tell me to rest. They tell me I’m confused.”

James’s hand tightened white on the terrace railing.

Brad glanced once toward the glass, then back to her. “Anything else?”

A long pause.

Then, faintly:

“Someone squeezes my hand when I’m half-awake later. A woman. Not my mother this time.” Her brow knit. “She says, ‘I’m sorry. I could only move two.’”

Brad’s breath left him.

Maris.

Charlotte opened her eyes with a gasp, as if surfacing from deep water.

The room returned in pieces—the pale walls, the recorder light, Brad’s lined face, the impossible blue sea beyond the glass.

On the terrace, James was already moving.

Brad stood just as the door opened.

James crossed the room in three strides and stopped just short of touching her, every line of him taut with restraint.

“Charlotte—”

“She was there,” Charlotte said, looking at him as if the world had tilted. “My mother was there. She bargained. She failed. And someone else—Maris—Maris took the boys. She told me she could only move two.”

Her voice broke fully then.

James dropped to one knee in front of her and gathered her cold hands into his without asking permission this time.

“They lied to you,” he said, each word roughened by fury and grief. “For years, they lied to you.”

Charlotte looked at him through tears she could no longer hold back.

“I remember enough now.”

Brad quietly switched off the recorder.

Enough was all they needed.


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