Chapter 3 - The Chemical Restraints
By the time the police cruisers pulled into the driveway, their blue and red lights bouncing off the snow, Elena was sobbing on the front lawn. Her parents had peeled out in their sedan, abandoning her to face the consequences alone.
I handed the responding officer a tablet playing the security footage. The officer, a stern-faced veteran himself, watched the video of Elena aggressively shoving my mother into the sleet. He didn't ask questions. He simply walked over to Elena and snapped the handcuffs on her wrists.
But my priority was my mother. I drove her straight to the emergency room at the VA hospital.
Dr. Aris, an old friend of my father’s, met us at the doors. They rushed my mother into a heated trauma bay to treat her hypothermia. I sat in the sterile waiting room for two agonizing hours, drinking terrible coffee, my mind racing through the hell my mother must have endured while I was half a world away.
When Dr. Aris finally walked out, his face was grim.
“She’s stable, Marcus. Her core temperature is back to normal,” he said, sitting beside me. “But there’s something you need to know. You mentioned Elena claimed your mother had dementia.”
“Yes,” I said. “She said Mom was wandering, confused, paranoid.”
Dr. Aris shook his head slowly. “Marcus, I ran a full toxicology panel. Your mother doesn't have Alzheimer’s. She has massive, toxic levels of a heavy prescription sedative in her bloodstream. Benzodiazepines. It’s a tranquilizer.”
The room seemed to spin. “Elena was drugging her?”
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“She was poisoning her,” the doctor corrected. “Keeping her in a perpetual state of chemical confusion to simulate dementia. If she had stayed out in that cold for another hour with that level of sedatives in her system... her heart would have stopped.”
My wife hadn't just neglected my mother. She had systematically, chemically tortured her to steal her life.
