"Olivia, how are you?"
Dr. Kent welcomed her into his office at the hospital with Tyler trailing behind her. Shaking her hand and his, he ushered them to come have a seat across from him. The last of the therapy sessions ended the day before and Tyler took her home to rest.
"I'm fine, slept wonderfully. Tyler said I have an appointment with you to recheck my legs. They seem okay," Liv told them and took the seat.
"Good, I'm glad to hear it. No wobbliness? Tingling? Numbness?"
"None of those. I feel great."
Playing it off as he could, "how's your sleeping? Any restless legs?"
"Nope, slept like a baby all through the night."
"Wonderful to hear! Then I think we've solved the problem. Just needed to get you some sleep," Dr. Kent smiled at her. "Just to be sure, I'd like to run a quick ultrasound on your legs; make sure that the blood flow is moving properly. Think that would be okay?" Seeing her nod, he buzzed for the nurse to come in and escort her down. Waiting for her to be out of the room completely, he gave his attention to Tyler. "She slept through the night completely?"
"She did. Never woke up once. I stayed up all night just in case. But nothing happened. She slept like the dead," Tyler half laughed. "I don't think she even turned."
Nodding his understanding, Dr. Kent leaned back in his chair. "I'm glad it worked. She doesn't seem to have lasting effects from the drugs I gave her. I think the most important part now is making sure she believes Stephen had a heart attack. We don't want her mind to repopulate what actually happened. If she did, we'd have to do this all over again and there's no guarantee it would work. You can only trick the mind so many times. Who all knows the way he really died?"
"Four people as far as I know that would say something to her. I can call them and let them know what's been done. I think they would go along with it. For her benefit they would. The thing with that is they don't know where she is. Honestly, I'm not even sure they know who I am. And she made me promise not to tell them where she is."
"But she's better now. She shouldn't have a need to hide from them where she is."
"I'm not sure being better is what her reasoning was. I know it has something to do with her ex-boyfriend. They're worried about her and have called non stop since she stopped answering the phone. I locked her phone away last night before she came home. I wanted to be sure that the therapy worked before letting her talk to them and having them destroy what's been solved."
"That was a good idea. We don't know how deep the suppression of his actual death is. It could be buried in her subconscious, or it could be just below the surface. For now, take her home and let her go about her regular day. She might need some more rest before being fully functional after the medications. Don't let her drive."
Agreeing to his assessment, Tyler waited for Liv and drove her back to the house. He helped her spend another hour looking for her cell phone until he had noticed the clock. Any minute now, one of the four men would be calling her again. He couldn't risk having her answer the phone until he spoke with them.
"Liv, try going for a run. Clear your head and maybe it'll come back to where you put it. We'll find it though. Just don't think about it and you'll remember."
"Good idea. I'll go for a run down to the bakery. I could definitely use something to eat that isn't cereal."
Standing in the living room, Tyler watched her out the window disappear along the sidewalk. After a couple minutes of her being gone, he heard the ringtone go off in his bedroom upstairs where he hid her phone and ran up to get it.
Catching it on the last ring, he answered it quickly. "Jerry? You there?"
"I'm very tired of this game, boy. Where is Livia? Put her on the phone," Jerry shouted at him.
Sitting in the den of the house with Verna discussing the last-minute details for the wedding, Jerry had called to get her thoughts on a few things, only to hear the same man answer the phone.
"I'll let you talk to Liv when she comes back. Don't go freaking out again. You need to know somethings before you can talk to her though."
"Excuse me? I need to know where she is and what she's doing. I need to know that Livia is safe."
"Jerry, calm down, you'll give yourself a stroke," Verna scolded him.
"Oh good! Verna's there? She's Liv's psychiatrist, right? Put me on speaker so she can help you understand," Tyler told him.
Confused, Jerry moved over to the couch with her and put the phone between them. "Alright, we're both here. Verna was Livia's psychiatrist. How do you know that?"
"I told you before, Liv is a good friend. Now besides that, I need you to listen and to understand before I let you talk to Liv. We've been working very hard to fix her."
"What the hell do you mean 'fix her'? She's not broken!" Jerry yelled. "What did you do to her?"
"Bad choice of words. No, she's not broken. And she's not damaged like your asshole son called her. Liv's been trying to get her life back in her control. She's spent the last week in an intense in-patient therapy session. So, I'm going to need you to agree to follow the directives of her new psychiatrist that way we are all on the same page and can keep her the way she is now."
"Who is her new psychiatrist? No one has sent me a request for her file," Verna asked him.
"That would defeat the purpose of you not knowing where she is, wouldn't it? And I'm also not giving you the doctor's name. Just know that Liv was comfortable enough to confide information and go through the therapy."
Rolling her eyes, Verna kept asking him questions. "What kind of therapy are you talking about? You said in-patient. She would have had to have voluntarily admit herself to the hospital. Olivia would never do that. And the only person that can have her committed hasn't spoken with her in a week or seen her in almost two months."
"Liv went voluntarily. She did this for herself. Jerry, your son had her so convinced that she was as damaged as he said she was that she went through all of this with only me by her side."
"You aren't answering what therapy she went through," Verna reminded him.
"Confabulation therapy."
"What kind of therapy?" Jerry didn't understand what he was saying.
"Confabulation. Purposeful confabulation," Tyler answered.
"But that's only been successful less than a hundred times," Verna mentioned. "How does she know it would be successful? And there's only a handful of doctors that are licensed and trained with a success rate to do that. What was she trying to change?"
Tyler couldn't hold back the laugh in his throat. "Are you serious? What do you think she was trying to forget, Verna? How to tie her shoes?"
"Listen, boy, I don't know you, but I do know that you will not talk to her like that. She asked you a question, now answer it with a serious answer. And one of you needs to tell me what the hell confabulation means." Jerry started to get rather annoyed and furious with these things that others knew, and he didn't.
Patting his arm, Verna started to explain. "It's a memory changing therapy. The therapy can manipulate the mind to believe something happened a different way. It replaces the true memory with false ones. Or that it never happened at all." Verna rubbed her forehead thinking about it. "Was she trying to change James or Stephen?"
"Who is James?" Tyler asked. "Of course, she was trying to change Stephen. Wouldn't you want to change that?"
"Hold on, hold on," Jerry stopped them, trying to catch up to their conversation. "You're saying Livia went through a therapy session and now doesn't remember that Stephen is dead? Why would she do that?"
"You're half right," Tyler answered. "She went through a week-long therapy session in a psychiatric hospital completely monitored by medical professionals. She knows Stephen is dead. She didn't want to forget that. Liv just wanted to forget how he died. We created a whole fake scenario of how Stephen died, played it out every day for a week, and so far, it's working."
"Olivia knows that he is gone but how does she believe that he died?"
"Stephen had a heart attack."
"What?" Jerry laughed surprised. "She thinks he had a heart attack. How'd you manage to make her believe that?"
"Reenactment and drugs."
"You drugged her? What the hell were you people thinking?" Jerry yelled at him. "You don't know her medical history. What if something went wrong? What if she died? You could have killed her!"
"Easy, Jerry. Liv's fine. She's the one who agreed to this. She knew what the risks were and decided to do it. Liv truly believes that Stephen died from a heart attack. And we need to allow her to think that's exactly how he died. We don't know if the true memory is still in there or if it's been completely wiped out. If someone tells her the real way he died, it could bring her memory back and she'll be right back where we started."
Looking over at Jerry, Verna could tell he was quite angry at this plan. "It's been known to work in almost a hundred cases, Jerry. This could be beneficial to her."
"It's very beneficial. Last night was the first night out of the hospital and off the medications to reform the memory. She did great. Liv slept through the night."
"You spent the night in bed with her?" Jerry asked concerned. "You said you weren't sleeping with her."
"I didn't. I stayed up all night on the couch just in case she needed me. No one was in bed with her. That was the whole point of doing this therapy. Because she now remembers his death as a heart attack away from bed, she won't have the nightmares of waking up and seeing Edison holding a knife or Stephen's throat slashed." Tyler paused to regain his focus, keeping his mind on now rather than the pictures he'd seen at the courthouse during the trial. He cleared his throat before he went on. "Liv was able to sleep through the night. Alone. She doesn't need someone laying beside her now. Granted, this was only the first night. It's going to take a bit of time to be sure that it worked but so far, so good. She's well rested, she isn't exhausted, and no one has been in her bed. Well, I was during the reenactment but that doesn't count since she was medicated. Liv did this for her. Now you need to support her decision. Don't set her backwards. Can you do that, Jerry?"
Giving it a few moments of thought, Jerry tried to understand. "Livia doesn't need someone beside her to sleep. I get that. That's wonderful. But what else is she forgetting? What else did you people change? What about Edison? Does she remember she killed him? Would she remember the trial? Does she know Fitz? Verna? Javier? There has to be some sort of a consequence to making her forget how Stephen was murdered."
"No one disagrees, Jerry," Verna held his hand. "But we don't know yet. She's only one day out of this. There hasn't been time to ask questions."
"The only thing we made her forget was how he died. Liv still knows everyone. She knows Fitz. She definitely knows Javi. She knows about the wedding in a week and a half. Liv only forgot one thing. It's probably confusing for her right now. She does know that she killed Edison. She knows that Edison is the reason Stephen is dead. Those were things that she did not want to forget. Liv also knows that she was having trouble sleeping before. She knew she'd been awake for over a month and just blamed it on coffee and running and anything work or money related. The confusion part for her right now is probably how Edison was able to cause Stephen's heart attack. And from the conversation I've had with her this morning on the way to her appointment, she doesn't want to know. At least right now."
"I don't think this is wise. Livia should have told us this was something she would consider doing. She also should be telling me where the hell she is. If she ends up in the hospital, I need to know where she is. I have her medical power of attorney. How am I supposed to help her if she doesn't tell me where she is?"
"I get you're angry, Jerry," Tyler responded. "But this was all her choice. I tried to talk her out of it and tell at least one of you where she is, but she is stubborn. She's going to be back soon from her run. I need you to tell Cyrus, Huck, and your jackass son about this arrangement."