He Counted My Lies Until I Died, Then Begged Me to Wake novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Not Mother, Me

Winslow's POV

I waited until the doctors finished and the ward went quiet.

Rhona sat propped on three pillows with the torn page on the blanket in front of her.

Her voice had come back as a whisper.

She had asked me for exactly one thing since she woke up.

"Sit," she said. "Not near."

I sat in the chair by the window, as far from the bed as the room allowed.

"Start with the pills," she whispered.

I had practiced this for ten days, in the car, in the shower, at her bedside at three in the morning.

None of it was any use.

"Two years ago you lost the baby," I said.

Her face did not change.

"You were seven weeks. You came home from the clinic and you did not sleep for nine nights. You cried until you were sick. You said we had to try again that month, that day."

"I remember."

"You wouldn't eat. You asked me every hour whether it was your fault."

My hands were hanging between my knees.

I made myself look at her.

"I couldn't watch it," I said. "I called the family doctor. He said a mild sedative would take the edge off. You said no. You said you didn't want to be numb, you wanted to grieve."

"I did."

"So I asked him to put the sedative in your stomach bottle."

The monitor beside her gave a small, steady beep.

"I knew it was wrong when I did it. I did it anyway. I put your pills on the nightstand every night with a glass of water, and you slept, and I told myself I was being kind."

"For two years," Rhona whispered.

"Yes."

"I told you something was wrong with them in the first week."

"I know."

"I said they tasted different. I said I woke up with my head full of cotton."

"I know. I wrote it down."

I took the Lie Book out of the briefcase at my feet.

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