Chapter 294 The Bruise Within His Skull
To be honest, David didn't welcome Alexander coming to the clinic.
David didn't know what ridiculous request Alexander would make this time. As a doctor, David couldn't bear to watch him continue suffering, but David also didn't want to make decisions that might push Alexander's future in a more dangerous direction just to ease his temporary pain.
So David had always been conflicted.
Sure enough, Alexander rushed up to him and grabbed David's wrist hard.
"Hypnotize me! Quick, hypnotize me!"
David had already guessed he would say this.
He took a deep breath and decided to refuse no matter what this time.
He tried to keep his voice steady. "Mr. Hamilton, I've already hypnotized you many times before, mainly to deal with your insomnia. You've seen the results yourself - you can reunite with Mrs. Hamilton in your dreams, but in reality your mental state keeps getting worse. Mr. Hamilton, I can't do this anymore. It's for your own good."
"No, I don't want hypnosis to see Caroline again." Alexander's answer was unexpected.
"I want you to hypnotize me to help me recover a missing memory!"
"Missing memory?!" David was stunned too.
He never knew Alexander had any so-called memory gaps.
His first reaction was that Alexander was under too much stress and was already having hallucinations, so he asked directly, "Sir, what exactly happened? Tell me everything from the beginning."
Alexander told him what Mark had found out, and also mentioned the memory fragments that suddenly popped into his head. After listening, David fell silent too.
This did seem like amnesia, and Alexander's memories were slowly coming back.
But why had no one ever noticed before?
David's expression became serious. "Sir, we're not sure what's causing the amnesia. I suggest going to the hospital first for a complete checkup to see if there's any external injury, and also check if there are factors like medication history."
Alexander nodded carelessly.
He wouldn't refuse, and didn't dare refuse. He was afraid that if he missed this chance, he would never remember what had happened between him and Caroline back then.
David immediately took Alexander to the hospital and went through the emergency process to give Alexander a complete physical examination.
Finally, Alexander's brain CT report made David stop.
"This hematoma is..." David squinted and looked carefully at the results, then looked up at the doctor in charge.
"Mr. Hamilton has a physical exam every month," the doctor said. "This hematoma was caused by head trauma when Mr. Hamilton was kidnapped at age twenty. Because its location hasn't caused any obvious effects, surgery was never performed."
David frowned.
He had them pull out all of Alexander's monthly checkup reports from the past, including the examination after the injury, and spread them all out to check page by page.
The reports showed this hematoma had indeed always been there. Although David wasn't a brain surgeon, he sent the images to his neurosurgeon classmate. His classmate's previous judgment was also consistent, believing this location wouldn't normally cause obvious effects on Alexander and there was no reason surgery was necessary.
But after looking at the latest scan, his classmate's response changed: Alexander had likely suffered another external injury recently, causing this hematoma to shift position.
Combined with Alexander's current situation, David made a more daring inference.
This hematoma might not just be from that attack at age twenty - it might have existed even earlier.
If that was true, then someone might have tampered with Alexander's examination reports, suppressing the earlier abnormality so it was never exposed. When the kidnapping at age twenty happened, "trauma-induced hematoma" became a reasonable explanation, so the existence of this hematoma seemed natural.
If the hematoma had been there all along, it might not have been "without effect." It might have been pressing on some nerves for a long time, causing Alexander to lose part of his memory.
Before the truth was revealed, someone had forcibly hidden the source of the hematoma, and Alexander never realized there was a problem with his memory, so the matter stayed buried.
Hypnosis might help Alexander retrieve some content, but only if this shift was minor - and hypnosis might have very limited effect.
The best solution was surgery to remove the hematoma. But because the position had shifted, the surgery difficulty increased dramatically, and the success rate wasn't one hundred percent.
The choice was placed before Alexander.
David wasn't surprised - Alexander chose surgery.
Alexander sat on the bench in the hallway, eyes downcast, and said to David, "I have to remember what I missed."
David sighed. "But Mr. Hamilton, you need to understand, this surgery is very risky. My classmate just said you have a 5% chance of not making it off the operating table, and a 20% chance of paralysis."
"But doesn't that mean there's still a 75% chance those two worst outcomes won't happen? Those odds are already pretty good." Alexander smiled.
"David, do you know what's most painful for me?"
David didn't dare respond.
He had always thought the answer was Caroline's death, her passing, and everything Alexander had caused with his own hands. That was the thorn in Alexander's heart that could never be pulled out - David knew that better than anyone.
But this time, Alexander gave a different answer.
"I've discovered that I might have truly loved Caroline once. But I forgot all of it. I said the most vicious things to the woman I loved, tortured her, didn't even give her any choice, and forced her to become someone else. But during that time, Caroline might have remembered everything that happened between us all along."
She might have carried those memories alone, struggling through year after year.
Until in the day-to-day torture, she gradually wore away those beautiful things, even forgot them completely.
So when she bought that drug from Charles back then, was it really just to make herself think of him as Edith?
Was there a possibility that Caroline wanted to erase those memories of her and Alexander from her mind?
If fate was determined to tear apart people who loved each other, why leave those beautiful memories behind to hurt people over and over again?
A tear suddenly slid down from the corner of Alexander's eye.
"David, I have to get to the bottom of this." He paused. "If I can't remember, I'll never have peace for the rest of my life. Even if I did wrong things, even if the truth will make me suffer more, I have to know why I'm suffering."