AN: Here we go, another little chapter here!
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl sipped the cooling coffee and rubbed his fingers and thumb into his eyes. He hadn't stayed up this late pouring over any kind of documents since he had taken the test for his job and studied everything he could think of out of fear that he wouldn't be able to pass the test.
But he'd passed the test. And he was reading everything in the thick folder he'd been provided like it might contain the secret to life.
And if it didn't contain the secret to life, maybe it would at least make his life easier.
He'd spoken to Randy about Carol's medication…about what he knew about her treatment…about anything that he, being one that often handed out meds, might know that Daryl needed to know.
But Randy hadn't been there since she'd been admitted. What he could tell Daryl was that he thought her dose might be too high…it might be overkill. He could tell him that his best strategy was to reduce her dose, by a half a pill at a time, one week per reduction. And he wouldn't see much of a change for at least a week as the drugs kept slowly reducing themselves in her system.
She might become hysterical. She might become disoriented. She might become depressed…or angry…or violent. She might react in a number of ways, it was all left to be seen. She might remember everything that she'd forgotten…she might remember it slowly, or it might hit her all at once…she might not remember a single thing.
But slowly she would start to become less the human puppet and more the…human.
Daryl had noticed a few changes in her since he'd been home, though Josephine Greene didn't report much of a change in the woman. She hadn't wanted to talk to her beyond telling her about Daryl…all the things that she knew about him, which couldn't have been much beyond a few things that he'd told her while they'd spent his breaks together at Sunny Meadows.
But when they'd finished dinner, Daryl hadn't had much trouble in convincing Carol that the dishes needed to "soak" for a while and she didn't need to wash them immediately. And then she'd surprised him by making a request of her own…her first real request. She wanted to take a bath.
So Daryl had taken his shaving razor from the bathroom and then he'd gotten her everything she needed. While she was bathing, he'd washed the dishes.
And when she'd started to protest the action upon discovering that they'd been washed, he insisted that he enjoyed such things sometimes…and that since he found pleasure in the activity, he didn't think he should be denied those things in his home.
And he'd convinced her to read a book while he'd taken care of a few things and then she'd requested something to sleep so he'd given her half of one of the sleeping pills and she'd retired to bed, thus leaving him the opportunity to read through the folder.
It wasn't as informative as he would have liked, but it was more than he'd had thus far. He'd sorted through documents that meant nothing to him to find that she had indeed been admitted and discharged to a home for women…a home for young mothers.
He'd seen the document where she was admitted, her signature on the paper…the person admitting her a "cousin" by the name of Edward Peletier Jr. He'd seen the document that she'd signed, essentially giving up any and all claim to the child that she would birth. But there was nothing else mentioned about the child beyond a report on the birth that focused more on her health during the process…the child's information gone from the file if it had ever held a place there like it had shared a place inside her body.
She'd been discharged from the home and her discharge dates from there matched with her admittance to Sunny Meadows.
She'd been transferred from one location to another, admitted without choice.
Terms scribbled on the sheet were some of the same that he'd seen before: Hysteria, Mania, Depression, Psychotic Break.
Daryl sighed and scribbled on the legal pad he had. At the top he wrote Orphan…circled it twice…wrote Alone.
Because she was really alone. She wasn't alone like he and Merle had been left alone after their mother had passed. She wasn't alone with someone else in the world. She was simply alone. Hershel Greene had given him that information.
Then he wrote Fiancé on the paper. This Edward Peletier Jr. had been her fiancé. He'd been her cousin when she'd been pregnant, apparently. He'd been her cousin long enough to admit her to a hospital to do away with the child that he'd likely convinced her to have.
Because Daryl thought the drugs might do a lot of things, but he had a feeling that some of how she was now…some details of it…were hers before the drugs.
And he thought an eagerness to please might be one of them. He also thought that her belief system on pleasing a husband might be another. Clearly it would be her duty, as a wife, to please her husband…but Edward Peletier Jr. might have had his own list of requirements for what he expected from her…might have even had a list of what she had to do to finish the "trial run" before she became his official wife.
And those requirements were what likely had led to the child that she'd gotten rid of.
He wrote, below fiancé, Baby.
Because she'd had a baby…whether she'd wanted it or not, she'd had it. But Daryl doubted, while he was considering the whole thing, that Carol didn't want the baby. It had been Edward Peletier Jr…or Edward Peletier Sr., perhaps, that hadn't wanted the baby.
Carol had probably wanted this baby…as much as she wanted all the rosy cheeked babies on the obnoxious collages she made…as much as she wanted the babies she drew in any of the art projects she'd done at Sunny Meadows.
Carol had wanted this baby. And she'd given it up…she'd given it up to please her fiancé/cousin…to please the man who had likely engendered the baby. She'd given it up to please the man who was done with her before she even knew it because she was…what had she said to Daryl? Because she had shamed him.
Daryl wrote below that Left.
Abandoned, rejected, thrown away, used and disposed of…any of them would have worked but he wrote simply "left".
Daryl got up from the table and walked over to the coffee pot, shaking it to check how much was left. He was doubting that he was going to sleep much at all tonight. He might as well finish off the coffee that he'd made.
What had they said? They'd reported hysteria…mania…depression…
And Daryl's mind couldn't help but flash back to Alice and what she'd said.
What if Carol had never been crazy at all? What if she had simply been overemotional?
Daryl thought it wasn't that hard to wrap his mind around when he looked at just the details that he knew and he filled in some of the gaps with things that it wasn't that hard to figure out.
Anyone would likely become so many of those things if they'd dedicated themselves to pleasing some asshole…doing every damn thing he wanted right down to sleeping with him, probably against her better judgement…just to become his wife. If they'd dedicated themselves to doing everything he wanted…and for what? The promise to marry him? The promise to marry him and have his children?
And then agreeing to give up one of those very same anticipated children…so that he would marry her…so that she would be pleasing to him? So that she wouldn't shame him?
But then there was no fiancé. There was no husband and there was no baby. There was just nothing…and she was alone again…but the real kind of alone. The truly alone, alone.
It was enough to cause anyone, especially a woman, Daryl thought, to become overemotional…which could be called all kinds of things…just like hysteria, depression, mania…
And a psychotic break?
Daryl knew enough about those to know that it might have followed it all. It might have followed all those emotions, all the forbidden emotions…it might have followed them because they were too much and nobody cared anyway. She was alone and nobody cared about her emotions…least of all the staff of Sunny Meadows.
And there was no one there to tell them how to treat her. There was no one there to tell them not to take away everything from her. There was no one there to tell them that she was allowed to feel like she wanted to feel about losing her baby, her husband, her dream…about losing everything, all at once.
Daryl sat back at the table and poured over the folder for a little longer, but there wasn't there that he hadn't heard or figured out by now. He had learned, apparently, about all there was to learn. And there was nothing there to tell him what to do or how to proceed from here because there was nothing there to suggest that anyone had ever thought about bringing her back before.
Like Axel had said, she was simply a lifer to them. She was complacent and they could keep her, tucked neatly in a corner forever…and no one would notice or care.
Daryl pulled an envelope from the folder, stuck haphazardly in the pages, and looked at it, but he was too tired to read it. He put it to the side and he organized the folder again, closing it and slipping the deli rubberband around it that was large enough to hold the contents together. He'd put it in his room for when and if he needed it again, but for now he didn't need it anymore. He'd seen all that he had to see for now.
Because no one had cared until now, but he cared.
And he'd step down the dosage and he'd deal with…all of it. He'd deal with whatever it was that Carol had to give him. And if he was right, she wasn't truly crazy. She was simply emotional and she'd been denied those emotions.
He decided that if her memory came back to her, he would handle those emotions with her as best he could, and if her memory didn't come back? He simply wouldn't use what he knew against her. She could start a new life if that's what she wanted to do when the drugs wore off. She could start a brand new life as whoever she was now. They could start it together.
Daryl took the folder and the envelope that he'd separated out and carried it to bed with him, his mind spinning with the weight of it all.