The Warning

Chapter 4 | Remembrance: A Re-Writing

Sep 30, 2023

Welcome to Remembrance!

I’m thrilled to have you here. This is the fourth chapter in my serialized novel. If you’re new ‘round these parts, you can check out the Table of Contents here. The first five chapters of this novel are free to read; to read the rest, upgrade to a paid subscription for the cost of an ebook:

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Previously, Leah was confronted about her unfriendly behavior and attended her rescheduled neurology appointment.

In this chapter, Leah receives a mysterious warning about her treatment and faces a decision regarding who she thinks she can trust.

a bottle filled with pills sitting on top of a wooden table — Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

“Ms. Harvey?” she heard behind her. It was Natalie again. “Make sure you read that printout carefully. Looks like Peter left you some detailed instructions as part of your missed treatment protocol.”

“I will. Thank you, Natalie.”

Leah fought the desire to sprint down the stairs two at a time and bypass the pharmacy entirely. As she waited in the longer-than-expected line to pick up her medication, her foot began tapping rapidly on the ground in a futile attempt to release some of the nervous energy building up in her bones.

She glanced at her watch. 3:07.

The man in front of her and the woman in front of him both turned around several times, looking down at her feet, their expressions a mix of annoyance and pity.

Another glance at the watch. 3:09.

Phone out. Scroll through social media. Nothing of interest. Phone away.

Watch. 3:11.

Why is this taking so long?

Once again, Leah was ready to abandon the line entirely, but for the miniscule hope remaining that her anxiety and paranoia were symptoms of medication withdrawal. She took a deep breath: in through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. The frantic need to move her body began to subside, giving way to, if not peace, at least stillness.

3:15.

Finally, after another ten agonizing minutes, Leah walked out the door of the clinic, medication in one hand and notes in the other. She opened the door of her car, threw her things onto the passenger seat, and closed her eyes for a moment. The engine revved and a voice reverberated around her:

“…bringing you the latest update on the case of Jorge Rodriguez, who disappeared from Scarlet Bay Correctional Facility last year…”

She pushed the power button for her car’s audio system. For a moment, silence reigned in the car. Then, like an addict trying to satisfy a craving, she grabbed desperately for the bag from the pharmacy and ripped it open. As she turned the cap on the bottle, her eyes breezed past the take-home notes that Natalie had given to her on her way out.

“Make sure you read that printout carefully.”

Written in all-capital letters across the top of the printout were the words: “DO NOT RESUME MEDICATION.”

She did a double-take, almost dropping the bottle in shock. Carefully replacing the lid, she set the orange bottle in her car cupholder and picked up the sheet of paper. A sigh escaped her chest as she began to read.

DO NOT RESUME MEDICATION
Patient missed appointment due to auto accident. Unplanned but welcome opportunity. Treatment delayed. Several days of missed medication. Patient experiencing intense withdrawal symptoms: anxiety, paranoia, restless sleep. Console technician recommended ceasing medication use. Withdrawal symptoms expected to wane within 24-48 hours of appointment. Continuance of treatment to be reevaluated at next visit.
Follow-up Scheduled: Saturday, 9:30am, The Coffee Spot @ Ron Green Park

“Is… is this my printout?” Leah said aloud, to herself, alone in her car. “None of this is familiar.”

She scanned the page until she found what she was looking for

Patient Name: Leonora Harvey
Technician: Peter Bennett
Scribe: Peter Bennett

Surely this is a mistake. This is… the exact opposite of everything Dr. Pierucci said to me. But that’s my name right there. Should I call the office back and see if there’s been a mistake?

Her heartrate responded with an emphatic “no” and she realized with surprise that the contents of the printout hadn’t caused any anxiety at all. It wasn’t until she had considered fact-checking that her body had responded with alarm.

Interesting.

It may have been the power of suggestion—and the irresistible hope that this rapid-onset, debilitating anxiety would soon pass—but Leah no longer felt… controlled by the fluctuation of her heartrate and breathing. She wasn’t certain whether she was simply learning to manage, or whether the symptoms themselves were lessening, but she felt less shipwrecked and more curious.

Leah meticulously double-checked the lid on the orange plastic bottle resting in her cupholder and slipped it back into its paper bag.

There will always be the chance to take it later, but there’s no un-taking medication.

The thought consoled her slightly. She slipped her phone out of her purse and pulled up her conversation with Sarah, re-reading the most recent message her neighbor had sent her:

Leah, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said as Connor and I were leaving on Friday night, about my constant checking in and the anxiety it caused. I’m sorry that the sudden attention felt stifling. Connor reminded me today that this isn’t the first time I’ve jumped into “helping mode” without asking whether the help is wanted. I know you’ve tried to write off the anxiety as just a physiological response to some thing or other that’s happened in the last few days, but I think it’s based in a real feeling and I want to be respectful of that. You know that I’m always here if you need me, but I’ll try to back off a little, especially now that you’re feeling better.

Sweet Sarah.

As she had walked them to their cars, Leah had mentioned, almost off-hand, the way that Sarah’s “I’ll check back in this afternoon” comment in her note had triggered the nth anxiety spiral of the day, and she had almost immediately regretted it.

“Oh, Leah, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” Sarah’s face had fallen, her expression hinting at an unusual sadness.

“No, no, how could you have known? I only mentioned it because it seems so laughable now.”

“I guess so.” She’d stepped one foot into her car already, and pulled the other foot in before offering a quick wave. “Good night, Leah. Sleep well. I’ll plan… Let me know if you need anything this weekend.”

Now that same anxiety was beginning to wrap its tendrils around her chest once again—lighter, decidedly, and marginally more rational—and she desperately wanted someone to talk to. She had, almost without thinking, made the decision to trust Sarah when the choice was before her, and in spite of some lingering paranoia, she was trying to reframe her neighbor as a valued confidante rather than a threat.

Even if… even if she is somehow involved, it can’t hurt to keep an eye on her… can it? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, or something?

Leah almost felt guilty just for thinking it, in light of the way her intense physiological responses were lessening as the days went by. But she wasn’t ready to totally abandon the hypothesis just yet.

She typed out a message to Sarah, but hesitated for a moment before hitting send: “Can I give you a call?”

Almost immediately, the read receipt appeared, followed by the little bubble that showed she was typing.

“Yes.”

Leah winced. It could have been her imagination, but Sarah’s reply felt terse, distant. She hoped that this call would smooth things over between them, and not pour salt on the wound.

Sarah picked up after a couple of rings, and her tone was certainly quieter than normal. “Hey Leah. How are you?”

Perhaps overcompensating, Leah tried to imbue her response with enthusiasm: “Sarah, you’re not going to guess what just happened at my neurology appointment.”

“No, what?”

“The appointment itself was pretty run-of-the-mill. I had a ton of anxiety picking up my prescription, but I made it. And then I sat down in my car and saw that the first line at the top of my printout—you know, the one they give you with the notes?—in big capital letters is “Don’t take your meds.”

“What?” Leah could tell that Sarah was hooked. She was glad to hear a familiar upbeat note return to her friend’s voice.

“Yeah! Every single thing in my take-home instructions is the exact opposite of what Dr. Pierucci told me to do. Doc said, ‘Absolutely resume your medication. No question of dropping out of the study early.’ He seemed affronted at the very thought. But the scribe wrote down in my notes, ‘Recommend to cease medication use and reevaluate continued participation in clinical trial.’”

“That’s bizarre.”

“And that’s not even the weirdest part! I have my regular appointment next month, but the follow up listed on the sheet? This Saturday. At a coffee shop.”

“A coffee shop? On Saturday? What is this, a date?”

Leah laughed out loud at this possibility, which she hadn’t even considered. “Gosh, I hope not!”

There was a momentary pause before Sarah resumed the conversation.

“So what are you going to do?”

The remainder of her laugh tapered off. “That’s… why I called you. I’m not sure what to do. One of the notes that the tech left was to call my car accident an ‘unplanned but welcome opportunity’. On the one hand, that does seem to justify at least some of the paranoia I felt over the weekend, so I’m a little scared. Maybe there really is some sort of conspiracy. But on the other hand, I’m not feeling as anxious now and am intrigued at what this might mean.”

“Unplanned but welcome opportunity?”

“Exactly.”

“No, Leah, I’m not joking. This seems concerning. Have you considered calling the office back to see if you can get a hold of the technician from your appointment?”

“I considered it… Well, I considered calling the office to confirm whether the printout was intended for someone else, but then I saw my name at the top of the page. Thinking about calling the office caused more anxiety than reading the actual printout, so I didn’t follow through.”

She paused, lost in thought. “The receptionist who gave me the printout told me specifically to read it carefully. What was her name? Natalie, I think. She’s the woman I spoke with on the phone on Friday to reschedule this appointment. Did I tell you about that phone call?”

“No, what about it?”

“That was what really started the anxiety, actually. Natalie put me on hold, but she just put her hand over the phone receiver, so I could still hear everything she was saying. It sounded like she ended up cancelling someone else’s appointment to make sure I could get in today.” Leah wracked her brain for the specific words Natalie had used. “She said they were ‘monitoring me closely’ and that this would be their chance to ‘assess’ something, presumably something about me.”

“Okay, that… wow. That puts a lot of things into perspective.”

“But I was desperate, so I showed up anyway, and everything seemed pretty normal. There was some talk of filling out a survey with data about the anxiety and the paranoia and everything, which seemed reasonable given that it’s a clinical trial, and I was hoping that maybe it was just withdrawal and I’d be back to normal as soon as I took my meds. But then I saw this, so I haven’t taken my meds yet and I’m already starting to feel more normal, and I guess I’m just wondering if I should feel more scared instead of less.”

“I think the answer to that is a definitive and obvious ‘yes’.”

Leah sighed, struggling to articulate her thoughts. “It should be. It definitely should be. But… I don’t know, Sarah. There’s something deep in my gut that says to follow this one. There’s something going on here, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop without getting to the bottom of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to explain. Just… an intuition. This weekend had left me feeling like someone had pulled up my anchor, and with no wind in my sails, I was just floundering. This is the wind I’ve been waiting for.”

“And what if it’s nothing? Or worse, what if it turns out to be something terrible?”

“If it’s nothing, then I’ll just resume my medication and nothing will change. But I’ll at least have peace of mind about it. I won’t be left wondering what could have been.”

She paused for a moment.

“And if it’s something terrible… I don’t know, Sarah. I don’t know what I think or what I would do.”

Leah put her car into gear and eased out of the parking lot. Behind her, a blue sky shone out, but in her front windshield, the sky was darkening. A storm was brewing.

Stopping in the intersection where the lot’s exit met the street, Leah looked both ways and pulled her car forward. Out her window, a young man dressed in a button-down shirt and dark jeans. His black hair rustled in the wind that was picking up, the forerunner to the rain. Leah lifted a hand in greeting, an unconscious and habitual acknowledgement of his presence. She glanced away to focus on the street before she had time to notice the shock of recognition on his face.

As she made her turn and headed for home, she said to Sarah, who was still on the line: “I’m going to do it. I’m going to go.”