Chapter 5 - “Why?”
“At first because you said the flashes were unbearable. They triggered panic. You begged me to make them stop.”
I stared toward his shadow.
I didn’t remember begging.
Maybe that was the cruelest part of grief.
You could survive entire versions of yourself and later have no memory of them.
“How long was ‘at first’?”
“Months.”
“And after?”
Hale’s voice trembled.
“I should have stopped.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I convinced myself stability was kindness.”
The answer made me angrier than any conspiracy would have.
Not money.
Not hatred.
Not some elaborate scheme.
Certainty.
Control.
The same disease I had built my own life around.
Hale continued.
“You finally slept. You started working again. You stopped asking every morning whether vision might return. I told myself I was protecting your recovery.”
“By preventing it?”
“I did not understand the cumulative effect soon enough.”
“You were a consultant for Northstar.”
“Yes.”
“Did they know you were giving me the compound?”
“No.”
“Did they pay you for treating me?”
“No.”
Daniel entered from the adjoining room.
“You expect us to believe that?”
“I have records.”
Hale did not raise his voice.
“Every consulting payment predates or relates to trial design work. Grant was never part of a study.”
Daniel said, “Then why was the medication billed under a nonstandard code?”
“Because it was compounded.”
“That doesn’t explain fourteen thousand dollars a month.”
“No,” Hale said. “That amount included private neurological monitoring, pharmacy preparation, and consultation fees.”
“Monitoring that never included retinal scans?” Hannah asked.
Hale went silent.
She continued, still calm.
“You measured bloodwork. Neurological function. Inflammation. But you didn’t repeat the one test that might have shown improvement.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because by then I was afraid of what I might find.”
That sentence changed the room.
I stood slowly.
Hale did too.
I could tell because his shadow rose.
“You suspected.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“About eighteen months after the explosion.”
The exact period Daniel had described.
The red glow in the conservatory.
The increased dose.
My throat tightened.
“You knew there was a chance.”
“Yes.”
“And you did nothing.”
“I told myself another six months wouldn’t matter. Then another. By the time I understood what I had done…”
His voice failed.
“…I had no good way to tell you.”
I felt anger.
Real anger.
But beneath it was something stranger.
Recognition.
I had spent five years refusing every change in my home because uncertainty frightened me.
Hale had done something far worse with the same excuse.
He had mistaken control for care.
I walked toward the window.
The world beyond it remained indistinct.
Pale sky.
Dark ground.
A faint glitter that might have been water.
“Hale, leave.”
“Grant—”
“Not forever.”
He stopped.
“I need time.”
“All right.”
“You’ll give Lang every record.”
“Yes.”
“Unedited.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll answer every question.”
“Yes.”
“And you will not make another decision about what truth I can handle.”
His voice broke.
“No.”
He left.
Daniel said, “That’s it?”
“For today.”
“You’re not going to sue him?”
“Maybe.”
“Report him?”
“Possibly.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
I turned toward Daniel’s dark outline.
“To decide what I want justice to look like when I’m not furious.”
Daniel fell silent.
Hannah said nothing.
But later that afternoon, while helping me practice walking through the garden, she said, “That was difficult.”
“Yes.”
“You handled it well.”
“I’m still angry.”
“You’re allowed to be.”
I stopped beside what I thought was the fountain.
The sound of water confirmed it.
“I don’t know whether I hate him.”
“You don’t have to decide that today.”
Again, Hannah somehow found the smallest useful truth.
Weeks passed.
My vision improved.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Faces remained impossible.
But I could distinguish doors from walls.
Large letters from blank paper.
Trees from sky.
One Sunday morning, I stood in the kitchen while Lucy colored at the table.
I had begun practicing object identification.
Hannah placed three mugs in front of me.
“What do you see?”
“Three blurry cylinders.”
“Excellent.”
“Your teaching standards are low.”
“Colors?”
I concentrated.
The first was dark.
The second lighter.
The third—
“Yellow.”
Lucy shouted, “Mine!”
I laughed.
Then I looked toward her voice.
Something small sat at the table.
A pale oval above a yellow shape.
Darkness across the top.
Hair.
I stopped breathing.
“Lucy?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t move.”
Hannah became silent.
I moved closer.
The image remained blurred.
No eyes.
No nose.
No details.
Only the shape of a little girl.
Alive.
Safe.
Swinging her feet under the chair.
I gripped the edge of the table.
“Grant?” Hannah whispered.
“I can see where she is.”
Lucy waved.
“Can you see this?”
Her hand became a tiny moving patch.
“Yes.”
She gasped.
“You can see me!”
“Part of you.”
“What part?”
I swallowed.
“Enough.”
Hannah turned away.
I heard her crying quietly near the sink.
That afternoon, Dr. Lang called.
She had received the final hospital archive.
“There’s something you need to see,” she said.
“Another altered report?”
“No.”
Her voice sounded different.
Gentler.
“Something Caroline signed.”
My entire body went still.
“What?”
“Three days after the explosion, before she died, the hospital asked her to authorize release of your scans to outside specialists.”
I could not speak.
Caroline had survived three days.
Those days were mostly missing from my memory because I had been sedated and undergoing surgery.
Lang continued.
“She signed the authorization.”
“That’s not unusual.”
“No.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Because she wrote a note beside her signature.”
My hand shook.
“What did she write?”
Lang took a breath.
“Please keep looking. Grant gives up on himself when he thinks he is protecting us. Don’t let him decide there is no hope before he knows.”
I lowered the phone.
For years, I thought I had buried hope with Caroline.
But she had left some behind.
Not in a grand letter.
Not in a secret message meant to change my life.
Just a sentence scribbled beside a hospital signature.
Please keep looking.
I stood by the kitchen window later that evening.
The sunset was only a field of gold and gray to me.
No horizon.
No boats.
No detail.
Hannah stood nearby.
“What do you see?” she asked.
I thought of Caroline.
Emma.
Lucy’s yellow socks.
Daniel’s loyalty.
Hale’s failure.
My own stubbornness.
“Not enough,” I said.
Then I smiled.
May you like
“But more than yesterday.”
And for the first time in five years, that was enough.
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