Page 32 of The Perfect Poise

Janice was about to reply when Pierce continued.

“But I take your point,” she said. “A drunk driver who hits and kills someone isn’t absolved of what they’ve done just because they can’t remember having done it. Their victim is still dead, whether the drunk driver had some temporary blackout in the moment or just passed out at the wheel.”

Janice was impressed at the concession, which she hadn’t anticipated.

“Do you ever wonder if that’s what is happening to you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“That all this might be just a temporary blackout, and that you’ll start to have flashes of recollection at some point?”

“The thought terrifies me,” Pierce said.

“Why?”

“Because if I start to remember what I did—these brutal acts that ‘I’ committed, then I worry I won’t have a leg to stand on anymore. What if the only thing that lets me sleep at night is the fact that I can’t remember these vile crimes, that I have no connection to the person responsible for them? But that's not the worst part."

“What is?” Janice asked, leaning in.

“It’s one thing to remember the crimes,” Pierce said. “It would be awful, but I suspect it would be like seeing a video of what I did instead of reading a transcript. But if I remember my crimes, does that mean I'll also remember who I was when I did those things? I don't think I want to meet that person, to look in the mirror and know that we're one and the same."

“But you are one in the same, Ash” Janice reminded her.

“Not to me,” she said softly.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Janice Lemmon left the hospital room twenty minutes later.

As she did, Ash Pierce watched her go.

She hadn’t wanted to mention it, but about halfway through their conversation Ash had developed a terrible headache. She didn’t want to say anything for fear that it would look like she was being manipulative and attempting to shortcut the interview.

But now that it was over, the throbbing in her head was unbearable. She’d never experienced anything like this in any of her other interactions, whether with the detectives on the case, the prosecutors, her own lawyers, or the other psychiatrists who’d questioned her.

Not even when Hannah Dorsey came to speak with her did she have this reaction. Of course, at the time of that chat, she hadn't realized that Dorsey was the young woman who had stabbed her in the neck, which left her in a coma. She still wasn’t sure why the girl had come. Dorsey could have rushed over to her bed and attacked her before the guards stopped her. But she only asked questions, albeit under false pretenses. Was she just here to see if her tormenter was telling the truth?

It was only later that Ash pieced together that Dorsey was also the girl she’d apparently hunted down and nearly killed in the boiler room of this very hospital, only to be stopped by the teenager and Katherine Gentry, a private detective that she was informed she had tortured within an inch of her life.

She knew all of these things were true, even if they didn’t feel true to her. But somehow talking to Dr. Janice Lemmon had affected her in ways no other conversation had. Maybe it was because Lemmon, unlike everyone else that Ash had dealt with, seemed to honestly be open to the idea that she had lost her memory. She neither accepted nor rejected the proposition. Maybe Ash just wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with that kind of genuine curiosity.

“Can you please get the nurse, Leah?” she asked Officer Michaelson. “That thing with Dr. Lemmon really took it out of me. I’ve got a brutal headache, like migraine level. I need some serious meds.”

Michaelson nodded and left the room. Once she was gone, Ash closed her eyes, hoping that might help ease her pain. But instead, bright images of light flashed in her head, like a strobe light she couldn’t turn off. She thought she might throw up.

And then, amid all the flashing, a fractured, confused image appeared in her brain. It was of her standing triumphantly over a bruised and bloody woman tied to a chair in the middle of the desert. Then darkness briefly swallowed Ash, followed immediately by more lights. Then another image.

She was still in the desert, still with the woman she now knew had to be Katherine Gentry. But this time, in the static-y video in her skull, she caught a glimpse of herself in the side-view mirror of a nearby pickup truck. She saw the lips of the person she used to be form into a cruel smile. She didn’t recognize it as her own, but she knew it was.

And then suddenly the pain in her head was too much and she retched, too weak and disoriented to prevent the mess from landing on her floral hospital gown.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They didn’t have to wait outside Parker’s office this time. She called them right in.

Jessie didn’t even bother to sit down. Standing beside her, Ryan had the rebellious posture of a high school kid who’d been called into the principal’s office for an offense he didn’t commit.

Jessie did her best not to follow suit. She tried to remember that Captain Parker was under just as much pressure as they were. But unlike them, she wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. She just had to trust that they would get the job done. It must be incredibly frustrating. And yet.

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