They Regretted It After I Gave Up Chapter 04

They Regretted It After I Gave Up Chapter 04

Finally, I took out the small bottle.

Beckett had left it behind the last time he’d come over.

He’d told me it was a concentrate for the experimental injections and asked me to hold onto it for him.

There was a chemical label on the bottle.

At the time, I didn’t know what it was.

Later, I Googled it.

Ethylene glycol.

The main ingredient in antifreeze.

Colorless, with a slightly sweet taste. After ingestion, the body’s organs fail one by one, until you die of acute kidney injury.

The process was excruciating, but the person often remained conscious.

I held that bottle in my hand all night.

I didn’t hate Mom and Dad.

When they were young, they had just immigrated from Italy. Life was hard. They couldn’t afford to raise two children, so they had given one of their twin daughters—my sister—up for adoption.

They had lived with that decision every day since.

They always felt they owed the daughter they had never met.

They always felt they had to make it up to her somehow.

And Beckett gave them a way.

It didn’t cost money.

It didn’t require them to face any real trouble.

All they had to do was let me “disappear” for one year.

On the morning of the surgery, Mom and Dad took me to the hospital.

Mom’s eyes were terribly swollen, as if she hadn’t slept all night.

Dad’s lips kept trembling, but he still forced a smile for me.

“Kat, don’t be scared. You’ll be fine once this treatment is over.”

“Okay,” I said.

Beckett came, too.

He wore a polo shirt and carried a backpack, looking like he’d rushed over straight from class.

“You’ve got this, Kat. When the surgery is over, I’ll take you to see the ocean.”

“Okay,” I said.

The nurse moved me onto a gurney and wheeled me into the pre-op area.

The hallway was long, the lights stark white.

Mom followed me to the point where family wasn’t allowed.

“Katerina, Mom will be waiting for you right here.”