Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO THOUGHT HER MOTHER HAD ABANDONED HER
Natasha begged me not to drive directly to the hospital.
“Food first.”
She said it with the urgency of someone asking for oxygen.
We stopped at a diner twenty minutes from the farm.
She ordered chicken soup, bread, and water.
Then ate too quickly.
“Slow down,” I said.
She froze.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She stared at the bowl.
“I don’t know.”
That answer frightened me.
When I asked about her family, she said her mother had stopped speaking to her six years earlier.
“Diane?”
Natasha nodded.
“She said she was done with me.”
“Did she say that to you?”
“Brock told me.”
I looked at her.
“When did you last speak directly to your mother?”
“Six years ago.”
That distinction sat between us all the way to the hospital.
Natasha was admitted.
Dehydration.
Severe nutritional deficiency.
Multiple bruises at different stages of healing.
Old rib fractures that had healed without proper treatment.
Scarring around both wrists.
Then the physician returned with toxicology results.
“Natasha, are you currently prescribed any sedating medication?”
“No.”
“Anything for sleep?”
“No.”
He named a benzodiazepine-class medication.
Natasha stared.
“I don’t take that.”
“The level we’re seeing is not something I’d dismiss as incidental.”
She began crying.
Then whispered:
“The tea.”
I leaned closer.
“What?”
“Brock makes me tea when I get upset.”
For nearly three years, Natasha had experienced what Brock called episodes.
Heavy limbs.
Slurred speech.
Memory gaps.
Falling asleep suddenly.
Waking confused.
He filmed them.
Sent clips to doctors.
Relatives.
Anyone whose opinion might matter later.
He told her she was unstable.
Unsafe to drive.
Unable to manage money.
Eventually she believed enough of it to leave nursing school.
She stopped using the car.
Stopped handling bank accounts.
Stopped making medical decisions without asking Brock.
Then she told me something worse.
“Brock said you agreed with him.”
“With what?”
“That women like me destroy families unless someone stronger takes control.”
I felt physically sick.
“I never said that.”
Her face changed.
For years, my name had been used as evidence against a woman I had barely spoken to.
I had always asked Brock:
How is Natasha?
Never once had I called Natasha and asked:
How are you?
That night Brock called me.
“If you report this, Natasha loses everything too.”
I assumed it was another threat.
Then he added:
“She has land in Nebraska. If this becomes a competency fight, everybody loses.”
I ended the call.
May you like
At the time, I thought he was trying to scare me.
Later I would understand he had accidentally told me what the entire thing was about.
