My Mother’s Perfect AI Lied And Left Me For Dead Chapter 21
I looked at his anxious face, and tears spilled from my eyes.
Once, another child had said her heart hurt.
No one had answered her like this.
“It’s not… sickness.” I gripped his hand. “It feels like I remember what happened to her.”
He was silent for a few seconds.
“Do you think you knew her?”
“I think…” My voice was so faint it was almost a whisper. “I think I am her.”
It sounded absurd.
I braced myself to explain, but he simply set his phone on the table and asked if I wanted him to call my parents.
“If they hear this, will they believe me?”
“They’ll listen.”
Half an hour later, my parents arrived.
Mom was still in her clinic scrubs. When she came through the door, she didn’t ask if I’d been watching too much news. She just pulled me into her arms and patted my back.
Dad checked my face, then asked if my chest actually hurt.
I shook my head and told them everything in the article.
When I finished, Dad crouched in front of me.
“I don’t know why something from the past has found you. But you’re here now. If you’re scared, we’ll stay with you.”
Mom took hold of my wrist, where I had pinched a red mark into my own skin.
“There’s nothing tied to you,” she said. “And you don’t have to prove you’re telling the truth.”
That night, they stayed.
After I fell asleep, I dreamed of the waiting room.
The silver-haired woman sat by the white door, but this time there was no cup of water.
“You already drank it,” she told me.
“Then why am I remembering all this?”
She looked past me.
Resting behind me was a drawing of a man, a woman, and a little girl. The edges of the paper were yellowed.
“Remembering doesn’t mean going back,” she said. “The door only opens from your side now.”
I woke before dawn.
The computer screen was still on, Westley’s post open to the final paragraph.
*No system can ever replace seeing your own child with your own eyes.*
Below the article was the name of the community center where he later volunteered.
It was on the Gulf Coast.