Spitting it Out

I swallowed the water, tipping my head back, feeling the cold rush down my throat. The capsule sat heavy on my tongue, pressed against the roof of my mouth.

Harrison nodded, a tight, satisfied jerk of his chin. "Your heart rate will drop in about twenty minutes. Call me if you feel dizzy."

He picked up his leather bag, the brass clasps clicking shut, and walked out the back door. The heavy thud of his car door slammed in the driveway.

The moment his tires crunched onto the street, I spat the white capsule into the stainless steel sink. It lay there, a perfectly manufactured instrument of control, rapidly dissolving in a small puddle of tap water.

I turned on the faucet, washing the white powder down the drain. The metallic taste remained.

I locked the back door and pulled my laptop from the island drawer.

If Harrison was prescribing something outside standard parameters, he was leaving a trail. He was arrogant, but he was also a doctor bound by pharmacy regulations. The bottle had a long alphanumeric string printed below the date.

I opened an incognito browser window. I didn't use the house Wi-Fi; I tethered the laptop to my phone's cellular data. Arthur and Harrison had installed the estate's network. I assumed every keystroke was logged.

I typed the alphanumeric string into a pharmaceutical database I used for designing medical facilities.

The search icon spun for a few seconds. The screen populated with a wall of dense medical text.

*Propranolol/Midazolam Compound. Off-label application.*

I scrolled down past the chemical breakdown, my eyes scanning the clinical usage notes. The text blurred slightly. I forced myself to focus.

*Primary Application: Severe, treatment-resistant PTSD. Phobias.* I kept scrolling. The next paragraph made my stomach lurch.

*Mechanism: Disrupts memory reconsolidation. Administered post-trauma or post-recall to chemically blunt the emotional response and permanently alter the structural integrity of the traumatic memory.*

Harrison wasn't treating my anxiety. He was treating a specific, targeted memory. He was chemically blunting my brain so I wouldn't remember what I saw. He was erasing the winter of 1998.

I closed the laptop, the screen going black.

The house settled around me, the old timber groaning.

I stood up, gripping the edge of the granite counter. A memory isn't just an image. It's a physiological response. If the drug suppressed the emotional terror, what was left? Just the hollow facts. Just the heavy sleeping bag. Just the dripping snow.

I walked toward the hallway, my steps slow and deliberate. I needed to see the void again. Not through a drill hole. I needed to get inside.

I stood at the bottom of the back stairs, staring up into the shadows of the second floor. The master suite waited at the top. The cedar closet. The sealed wall.

They had altered my brain chemistry to keep me from knowing the truth. They had built a physical wall to hide the evidence.

What trauma had she suffered that required chemical erasure?