Page 24 of Unnatural
No, the woman who birthed me.
I didn’t take any Lucy in the Sky. I almost did, but he slapped me right before I was about to inject it.
The woman’s words came back to her as she breezedout the front door of the building, turning the corner and stopping, pressing her back against the bricks. She closed her eyes, a few tears escaping and, along with them, the dream, the longing to believe that she’d been wanted. The scratchy surface abraded her palms as she dragged them along the wall, helping to keep her grounded. The hot tears continued to stream down Autumn’s cheeks for several minutes. She’d spent her life wondering…hoping, and the reality she’d just been faced with was a harsh slap to the face.The soul.She took a deep, shuddery breath, raising her head, wiping the tears, and standing tall. Grief was a barren land of shadowy what-ifs. She’d allowed herself to go there, but she wouldn’t allow herself to stay.
Autumn walked back onto the main street, her gaze pulled upward. Even though it was just past midday, she could see a translucent sliver of moon in the pale, sterling sky. Whether it was full or not, the moon always made her think of him, and she welcomed that now. The boy she’d once believed to be nothing but a dream. Her moonlight monster. The name seemed silly now, but in that moment, the thought of him brought her an odd comfort she couldn’t explain.
She looked back to the street, raising her hand to hail the cab coming toward her and then stepping toward the curb.
As the city streets streaked by, Autumn gazed out the window, unseeing. She pictured that slap from decades before and the faceless man who’d delivered it. In her mind’s eye, she saw Deborah flying backward, the needle in her hand dropping to the floor.
How could you be thankful for something like that? Yet she was. She was thankful that man had slapped her mother, even if it had been done in cruelty. Because it was the slapthat had saved Autumn’s life.
But now, more than ever, Autumn wanted answers. She wanted to know why she’d been placed at Mercy Hospital if she’d never been sick. There was only one person she could think of that might be able to offer clarity, and she worked a few miles away.
***
“Hi, Autumn, come on in,” Chantelle Rogers said, not even attempting to hide the weary note in her voice.
Autumn entered the social worker’s office and took a seat in the chair she’d sat in so many times.
“Autumn, I’ve told you over and over that I can’t give out information about the whereabouts of—”
“I’m not here looking for my friends this time,” she said. She’d already tried in vain to find the others she’d known well at that hospital, not only to reunite with them but to see if they could offer more in the way of the shared dreams they’d had…and to find out if they were even still alive. Genie had crushed most of that hope with the information she’d given about Mercy’s closing, and the few friends Autumn had found on her own had annihilated the last of it, because the place she’d found them was on grave markers. She was one of the lucky ones. Only it wasn’t luck, and that was what she was here about this time. “I found my mother,” she said. “She said that I shouldn’t have ever been at Mercy Hospital. She never took the drug. So…I was never an ADHM baby.”
Chantelle’s face registered surprise. “How did you find your mother?”
Autumn waved the question away. She’d cajoled the information that had helped her find her mother from a few kind clerks and newly hired social workers. She wasn’tgoing to rat them out. “I just got lucky. Anyway, it was her. I was already pretty sure, and then I went to see her. She’s my mother.”
Chantelle studied her for a moment, sitting back. Chantelle wasn’t unkind. She was just overworked and underpaid and couldn’t understand why Autumn wouldn’t just leave things well enough alone when she’d found such happiness in her life. The woman was never going to be able to put herself in Autumn’s shoes because she wasn’t interested in doing that. And to be fair, Autumn supposed that that was as much a coping mechanism as anything when working the type of job Chantelle worked. If she constantly put herself in the shoes of the kids she placed, she’d surely end up emotionally devastated. “This woman you’re sure is your mother, she could have been lying about not taking the drug. It’s what junkies do. They lie.”
“Yet I’m one of the only ADHM kids who made it past sixteen?”
“There are others.”
“Three percent,” Autumn said quietly. “Three percent of ADHM babies survived.” There were only a handful of them across the country. And because the drug had been a new phenomenon that swept in unexpectedly and created a horrible epidemic, it had taken time to realize the effects and then banish it completely. There were still cases, but by and large, they were in poor, urban areas where drug abuse, in general, remained a problem that ruined lives.
“You’re among that three percent,” Chantelle said.
“Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that I’m one of the rare few who made it past sixteen and my mother told me from her own mouth that she never took the drug? The woman couldn’t have cared any less about impressing me,trust me.”
Chantelle sighed. “Listen, Autumn, I hope you’re right, okay? I hope that there was a misdiagnosis or some other error in paperwork and that you in fact weren’t born with ADHM in your system, because even for those who make it past sixteen, we don’t know the long-term effects, if any.” What she was saying was,Great for you for making it to sixteen and then beyond, but I can’t say for sure that the three percent of you won’t all be dead by the time you’re thirty.
“But how does a misdiagnosis of that degree happen?” Autumn asked, raising her arms and dropping them in frustration. “Fourteen years of my life, Chantelle. I was deathly sick, not from the disease but from the medication!”
I thought my death was all but imminent for fourteen years. Do you have any idea what that does to a person’s soul?And although she hadn’t had much time to process what her mother had said, she felt anger brewing, her entire life flashing before her eyes through a completely different lens.Who misdiagnosed my blood results at birth? Who signed off on committing me to years at Mercy Hospital?
And who the hell began shoveling the cocktail of drugs down her throat? Drugs that she’d never needed at all.
A knock sounded, and Autumn looked up to see a man peeking into Chantelle’s partially open door. He pushed it open a bit more, and Chantelle turned in her chair.
“Er, Ms. Rogers, sorry to interrupt. Can I get your signature on some forms? It will only take a few minutes, and I need them before court in an hour.”
“Sure. Excuse me for a minute, Autumn,” Chantelle said, standing and following the man from the room.
Autumn sat back in her chair with a frustrated sigh, hergaze moving to the file cabinets across the room.
The file cabinets that might contain the answers she’d just been denied.
