Betrayed: She Took My Son novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Day Room

Philip visits once and calls the baby his and Lacey's. Every time Melanie says my son the dose goes up, until a night nurse tells her how to hide the pill.

Philip came to Larkmont once.

It was the second Sunday, and an aide led me into the day room in paper slippers.

Eleven patients sat around the room. Two played cards. One watched the television with the sound off.

Philip stood by the window in his good gray coat.

He did not hug me. He did not come closer than the length of a table.

"You look better," he said.

"Where is my son?"

He pressed his lips together and looked at the aide, who stood by the door with her arms crossed.

"I'm going to say this once, Melanie, because the doctor thinks it will help," he said. "I lost a son that day. It's the worst day of my life."

"You didn't lose him. You were in the hall. You let them lie to me."

"Lacey delivered that night too." His voice shook. "Her baby lived. He's six pounds now and he's healthy. We named him Beckett."

I stared at him.

"Her baby," I said.

"Our baby. Mine and Lacey's. I'm not proud of how it happened. I'm trying to do right by him."

"That is my son."

"Yours didn't make it, sweetheart."

"You signed me in here. You let Lacey sign as a witness."

"Because I was afraid for you." He lowered his voice, and the card players glanced up. "You found us, you went into labor, and you came out of it screaming at the doctors. If I hadn't, you'd be sitting in a cell."

"A cell would have a lawyer."

"The doctor says six months. Maybe more. I'll pay for all of it."

I stood up.

The chair scraped. The television watcher turned her head.

"Philip, look at me," I said. "Look at my face. Say that he's yours and Lacey's. Say it while you're looking at me."

He looked at me.

He did not look away.

"He's mine and Lacey's," he said. "I'm sorry."

He believed it. I saw that he believed it, and I did not yet understand what that meant.

I only saw that the man I had married was telling me the cruelest thing he could think of, in a gentle voice, with his eyes wet.

I picked up the card table by its edge and threw it.

Cards sprayed across the floor. A woman started to cry.

Two aides had my arms before the table landed.

"Let go of me!" I shouted. "He took my baby! My daughter has my baby! Somebody call the police!"

Philip backed toward the door.

"I'm sorry," he said to the room. "She isn't herself."

Nobody in that room doubted him.

I did not see him leave.

The needle went into my arm in the hall, and when I woke I was in the room with no corners and my hands were strapped to the rails.

The doctor with the gray beard stood at the foot of the bed with his clipboard.

"Violence toward other patients," he said sadly. "We'll adjust your medication."

"I want to see Philip's signature on that."

"Of course."

"I want to speak to a lawyer."

"Every time you say my son, Melanie, I note it," he said. "It tells me how far along the delusion is."

He wrote something.

By the third week the pills had taken the edges off everything.

I slept fourteen hours a day. Mornings were gray, and the clock on the wall did not move.

I stopped saying the words out loud.

I thought them instead, over and over, so I wouldn't lose them.

Liam. Liam. Liam.

One night I woke up and a man was sitting in the plastic chair beside my bed.

The only light came from the hall. He wore navy scrubs and a badge turned backward on its clip.

He was tall, with short brown hair and tired eyes, and he held one knee out stiffly in front of him.

I tried to sit up. The straps on my wrists caught.

"I'm the night nurse," he said quietly. "Clayton. I won't touch the restraints. I just wanted you to hear this while the day staff are gone."

"What do you want?"

"Your chart says you've asked about your son forty-one times," Clayton said. "Every time, your dose goes up."

"Because I'm sick."

"Maybe. Or maybe a woman can cry for a baby without it being a symptom."

I stared at him.

"I'm not telling you I believe you," he said. "I haven't heard enough. But I don't like what I'm reading."

He leaned in and lowered his voice until it was almost nothing.

"Tomorrow, when they give you the pill, put it under your tongue and swallow the water. Pull it out when they've gone. I'll be looking at the ceiling."

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