Richard remained outside.
At one point, I heard him arguing with a nurse.
“She’s my wife!”
Then the nurse answered firmly, “She is also our patient.”
Something about that sentence changed me.
For nearly half a century, “wife” had swallowed every other part of who I was.
By late afternoon, the doctor returned with a grave expression.
He sat down.
“Margaret, the medication Richard gave you today is not something you should have been taking this way without proper medical supervision.”
My stomach dropped.
He explained carefully that the medication could cause heavy drowsiness, confusion, weakness, and memory problems in some people.
Suddenly, pieces of my life began falling into place.
The mornings when I woke up unable to remember conversations.
The days Richard told me I had agreed to things I didn’t remember agreeing to.
The occasions when he told our children, “Your mother gets confused.”
I had believed I was disappearing.
Maybe Richard had helped convince me that I was.
Then Claire asked a question.
“Do you have children?”
“A daughter. Emily.”
“Would you like us to call her?”
I hesitated.
Richard had spent years telling Emily that I was becoming forgetful.
What if she believed him?
Still, I nodded.
Emily arrived forty minutes later.
Richard reached her first.
I could hear his voice in the hallway.
“Your mother is having one of her episodes.”
Then Emily entered.
She looked frightened.
“Mom?”
I had prepared a hundred explanations.
But when I saw her face, only one sentence came out.
“Your father has been giving me pills for forty-nine years.”
Emily froze.
Richard pushed toward the doorway.
“That’s enough.”
The doctor stepped between us.
