Chapter 2 - THE PRESCRIPTIONS I NEVER RECEIVED
The emergency room ceiling passed above me in white flashes.
Voices moved around the stretcher.
Blood pressure.
Heart rate.
Oxygen.
Medication history.
I tried to answer questions, but the mask covered my mouth and my thoughts moved too slowly.
Naomi remained beside me until the hospital team took control.
“You are at St. Luke’s,” she said. “You are safe right now.”
Right now.
She did not promise more than she knew.
Doctors gave me medication to support my heart rate and breathing. My pulse stabilized gradually, but I remained under continuous monitoring.
Daniel arrived with Caleb twenty minutes later.
Mom did not come with them.
Police had kept her at the house.
Dr. Hannah Patel entered my room carrying the toxicology report.
“You had a beta blocker and a strong sedative in your bloodstream.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Could that combination cause what happened?”
“Yes. It can slow the heart and suppress breathing, especially in someone who was not prescribed either medication.”
“I never took them,” I said.
Dr. Patel nodded.
“The concentration suggests they were dissolved in something you drank.”
Caleb lowered his head.
“The lemonade.”
A detective named Lena Morales sat beside the wall taking notes.
She did not immediately question him.
She asked whether he wanted Daniel to remain.
Caleb nodded.
“Tell me exactly what you saw,” she said.
“Mom took the bottle from her purse. She put pills inside a towel and crushed them with the bottom of her wineglass.”
“When?”
“Before dinner.”
“Did she see you?”
“No. I was in the pantry.”
“Why were you there?”
“I was looking for peanut butter.”
The answer was so ordinary that my chest hurt.
A twelve year old searching for food had watched our mother prepare poison.
“Did she put the powder into Emma’s glass?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone else touch it?”
“Uncle Ray moved it closer to Emma’s plate.”
Daniel looked toward him.
“Ray was in the kitchen?”
“He came through the back door.”
My uncle had left before I began washing the dishes.
I remembered his beer on the table.
His voice saying I always became dramatic when work appeared.
He had watched me drink.
“What did Valerie say to Ray?” Detective Morales asked.
Caleb swallowed.
“She said the first dose only made Emma tired. Ray said this one had to look like an accident.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
I stared at him.
“The first dose?”
Over the previous six months, I had experienced headaches, dizziness, memory gaps, and sudden exhaustion.
Mom said college applications caused stress.
She arranged online therapy appointments and brought me vitamins.
I had never questioned what was inside the capsules.
Dr. Patel opened my electronic medical record.
“There is another concern. These drugs were prescribed under your name.”
“I have never received a heart prescription.”
“The first order was filled six months ago.”
“I was seventeen.”
“The prescribing physician listed a cardiac arrhythmia and severe anxiety.”
“I have never been diagnosed with either.”
The doctor’s name was Nolan Price.
I had never met him.
Daniel recognized it.
“Price works with Cedar Home Support.”
My mother managed billing for Cedar Home Support, a private company providing medication delivery and in home care to older patients.
Uncle Ray supervised transportation.
Dr. Price served as medical director.
Detective Morales asked for a complete pharmacy history.
Twelve prescriptions had been filled under my name.
Sedatives.
Heart medication.
Painkillers.
All collected from the same independent pharmacy.
The pickup signatures looked like mine.
I had not written them.
Daniel sat beside my bed.
“Why would she use your identity?”
“To obtain medication without connecting it to Cedar Home Support,” Morales said. “Or to create a medical history explaining an overdose.”
The word overdose entered the room.
If I had died in the kitchen, the records would show months of prescriptions and psychiatric care.
Mom could claim I secretly took too many pills.
Caleb began crying.
“I should have stopped her.”
I reached for him with the hand not connected to the monitor.
“You called for help.”
“I watched her put it in.”
“You are twelve.”
“So?”
The anger in his voice sounded older than he was.
“So the adults were responsible.”
Daniel looked toward the floor.
That included him.
He had defended Mom for years whenever I said something felt wrong.
She forgot conversations.
She moved my belongings.
She opened my mail.
Daniel always described it as worry.
“She loves hard,” he once told me.
I understood now that control often arrived using the vocabulary of care.
Detective Morales received a call from the officers at our house.
Mom denied touching the drink.
The medicine bottle carried Daniel’s prescription label.
His name.
His dosage.
His fingerprint.
Daniel went pale.
“I have never seen that bottle.”
Morales looked at him carefully.
“The prescription was filled three weeks ago.”
“My doctor stopped that medication last year.”
“Someone renewed it through an online portal.”
Mom had access to Daniel’s insurance information.
She had placed his name on the bottle she left beside the glass.
If Caleb had not spoken, police might have believed Daniel poisoned me.
Morales continued listening to the call.
Then her expression tightened.
“What happened?”
“Your mother has been released pending further investigation.”
Caleb stood.
“She is going home?”
“There is not yet enough physical evidence to hold her.”
“She will clean everything.”
He looked toward Daniel.
“Not the glass.”
“What do you mean?” Morales asked.
Caleb wiped his face.
“The glass in the kitchen was not Emma’s.”
Every adult stared at him.
He explained that after Mom walked away, he switched the poisoned glass with a clean one.
He hid the original inside his toy chest before calling 911.
The evidence bag collected from the sink contained only residue from the bottle.
The glass carrying Mom’s fingerprints, crushed pills, and my saliva remained inside the house.
Then Daniel’s phone vibrated.
A message from Valerie appeared.
COME HOME ALONE.
May you like
WE NEED TO FIX WHAT CALEB THINKS HE SAW.
Continue to the next part: Daniel returns to the house with police listening while Valerie explains how Emma’s death was supposed to save the family.
