Chapter 3 Confabulation?

Her hand was grabbed and pulled back behind her.

“What are you trying to do?” Dylan muttered from behind her.

Amelia’s heart went up her throat.

“Hmph, you still think you have a choice?” Mike snapped. “If you knew your mother couldn't pay, maybe you shouldn’t have let her out of the house, you dare!” Mike moved forward to act but was held back by Dash.

“Make up your mind already?” Drake moved in between her and Mike.

Amelia instinctively stepped back leaning on Dylan, startled by her close proximity to him she took a hesitant step forward.

“Look, tell your boss Bobby I’m still here, my mother is still here, I will not sell my body, and you can’t make me.” Dash frowned, her words sounded like a threat.

The other laughed, not taking her seriously at all.

Amelia lowered her gaze to the ground. Like a leech sucking at every fiber of her being. 

How could her mother borrow money from these people? 

She couldn't help but feel small, and ashamed in front of these people.

“You know…” Dash started his tone taking an undertone “There are other ways to use your body…”  his words laced with threat “…we could sell your kidney, eye, arm… heart. There are so many parts of you to choose from, and we do not need your permission to get that money, however, which way it will come from. We will take it by force.” 

For a split-second, Amelia locked gazes with Dash. He’d meant every word… she knew this.

Her eyes glazed over with tears as Amelia struggled to keep them at bay.

…

That evening Amelia reached home late, she reeled at the mind games played on her—they didn’t want to let her go, not so easily.

Amelia plopped herself down on a bench at home, she was exhausted, they didn’t even have a couch in the living room, it was taking more and more out of her to keep on living this life, and soon her family would be out on the street if she didn’t find a way to pay their rent.

‘All you have to do is spread your legs and let a man fu*k you’ one of the thug's voices came to her mind. If left with no other choice, would she do that? And did she have a choice now?

Amelia sighed, looking up at her ceiling. Life was really taking its toll on her, wasn’t it?

She was tired. Amelia sighed once more, raising her hand to her temple, she closed her eyes and then applied light pressure to ease her pain.

But it didn’t do much, as her migraine had increased over the course of a week.

Still, she didn’t have the time to lounge around.

She had to get a job, fast, to save her mom.

Getting up Amelia went up to the counter and took out two noodles, it was the last food at home.

She cooked the food and served it in two bowls.

“Tiana, it's time for dinner” she called her sister, placing the bowl of noodles on the counter.

But there was no response from her sister.

“Tiana?” she walked to her sister's room with the bowl of noodles in hand “I said it’s time for dinner”

In Tiana’s room, Amelia saw her sister drooling all over her textbook, and she smiled—the first in days.

That’s what you get for studying too much.

She placed the bowl of noodles on the table gently beckoning. “Tiana, wake up. dinner”

Her sister gradually awoke, sitting back on her stool, a letter fell off of her, and Amelia bent to pick it up. “Yale University?” she read out. Her eyes scanned the letter.

Amelia’s gaze darted to her sister’s, reading the content loud and clear “… Congratulations you have been admitted to–” 

Tiana snatched the letter away from her hands hiding it behind her.

Betrayal… this was betrayal.

Amelia’s gaze locked on her sister, then staring at the hand that hid the letter. “What is this?”

Tiana’s hand shook as she squeezed the letter behind her.

“You applied to Yale? Answer me!” Amelia snapped.

“It was… a… scholarship program, my teacher told me to apply.”

“And you did? Without telling me… Yale!” Amelia was stunned, and her heart brimmed with disappointment.

“I k-knew you wouldn’t agree to it, and I w-wanted to tell you, if–when I got the scholarship.”

“So, you got it a full scholarship”

“No, I didn’t get it… I was only admitted”

“Of course, you only got admitted… Reject it”

“What no! sister”

“I said reject it!” Amelia snapped.

Her locked to Tiana’s seeing the hurt in her sister's gaze, and she couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

“I know you’re smart, but who's gonna pay for this? Mom's in the hospital, we have debt on our hands and a target on our backs, and you applied to Yale?... You think that’s an option?”

Amelia held her knuckles to her lips as she bit down on her thumb joint holding back tears.

Again, the sickening feeling of helplessness came to bite at her.

Selfish… they were so selfish weren’t they, her mother, her sister. They only thought about themselves and only themselves.

Amelia turned to leave the room.

“Sis-sister…” Tiana called her tone begging, but Amelia never responded slamming the door shut her way out.

…

Back at the hospital. It’s been hours and they were still performing tests. The chairwoman clutched her arms tightly, as she watched from a glass wall as the doctor performed a series of tests on her son.

 Could something have gone wrong?

‘Where is my wife, mother?’ Her son’s words were stuck in her head.

He wasn’t married. So, what was he saying?

“Ma’am” her head of security came to stand at her side.

And while gazing at everything happening on the other side of the glass she instructed her guard.

“Reopen all investigation concerning the incident 3 years ago, and investigate everyone in the family, where they’ve gone, who they’ve met I want to know everything”

It was no mere coincidence, what had happened. It’s time to get to the bottom of it.

“Yes ma’am” 

“Also get the CCTV footage of my son’s medical room. I want to know who has visited over the past three years.”

“Right away ma’am” the guard left.

“Ma’am” the doctor came out of the room “the test result is out… shall we go to my office” he guided her to his office.

At the office, the chairwoman was filled in on her son’s condition.

“Confabulation?”

“Yes Ma’am, it occurs after a traumatic brain injury, it’s a case where a patient creates false memories; new ones, to replace an existing memory they want to forget”

“And you say my son has this?”

“Yes, he does” The doctor showed her son's brain report from three years ago and the one they took today. “He took a hit in his prefrontal cortex, although the swelling is no more, the effect still remains.”

“So, my son has lost his memories?”

“Not exactly, he still remembers you, there are cases where they don’t forget, but instead add new information to their already existing life, or they may choose to forget some things and replace them with something they desire”

“…”

“I suggest you take it slow with him, with therapy he has chances of recovery, but this in no way affects his way of living”

A knock came through the door and her head of security came in.

“Ma’am I’m afraid you have to watch this.”

The guard pulled out a phone and showed the chairwoman a clip of today in her son’s room.

She watched as a young woman came into her son’s room. ‘Dax’ she’d said.

And the chairman narrowed her eyes, watching as this woman caressed her son so intimately. “Investigate who this woman is”

…

The next day Amelia woke up with bloodshot eyes, with her debtors in mind, and what the doctor said in her heart, not to mention her sister—she couldn’t sleep at all.

Squinting her eyes at the light that filled her, she got up from the bed and gazed at the only functioning appliance in the house—the clock.

It was half past six, she had to go to work.

Amelia went downstairs, her migraine head increased over the course of the night. She was running late.

It had taken her a total of fifteen minutes to get ready and it was her job to open the diner by 7 am that morning.

Downstairs Amelia glanced at her sister getting ready for school, pausing for just a bit, then walking away ignoring her. She headed straight for the door and couldn’t wait to leave.

“Sister” Tiana followed at her back.

But Amelia didn’t say a word, she couldn’t stand to look at her sister, not now. “Just wait” Tiana anxiously said.

Amelia opened the door, not waiting a moment longer, and her heart skipped a beat as she paused on the threshold. The men in black towered over her, their imposing frame filling up the entire doorway.

“Are you Miss Amelia?” The man up front asked, and Amelia's heart pounded loudly in her chest—they knew her name.

Stricken with fear her grip on the doorknob tightened and her eyes darted back and forth between the four men, each looking intimidating in their own right.

Think Amelia, think… Who were these men? Did Bobby come for her again?