Chapter 6 - Forty-Eight Missing Hours
The next morning I called Dr. Alan Mercer.
He had been my family doctor since I was seventeen.
He had treated my father, my mother, Lucas, Olivia, and me.
He agreed to meet at his private office in Brentwood.
When I showed him the Harbor Ridge authorization, his hands started shaking.
“Where did you get this?”
“That seems to be everyone’s favorite question.”
He sat down.
“Ethan, you need to understand how unstable things were then.”
“Olivia was unstable?”
“I’m talking about you.”
I stared at him.
Mercer opened an old electronic file.
“You came to me two days before Olivia disappeared. Severe migraine, confusion, agitation. You said you had lost several hours.”
“I don’t remember seeing you.”
“I know.”
“What did you give me?”
His silence was the answer.
“What did you give me?” I repeated.
“A sedative.”
“What kind?”
He named a medication I knew only from hospital forms.
“Why?”
“You were panicking.”
“About what?”
Mercer looked toward the closed door.
“You said Olivia had accused Lucas of moving money through your accounts. You confronted Lucas. Then you found Olivia packing Sophie’s things.”
My heart began pounding.
“And?”
“You thought she was taking Sophie away.”
“Did I hurt her?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
Too quickly.
I leaned forward. “Did I?”
Mercer’s eyes filled with shame.
“You grabbed her arm. She fell against the table.”
I stopped breathing.
“She hit her head?”
“No. She was fine. Angry, but fine.”
“Then why was she declared dead from a crash two days later?”
Mercer closed the laptop.
“Because that was the safest story.”
I stood.
“What does that mean?”
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a sealed envelope.
“I promised Olivia I would give you this if you ever came asking about those forty-eight hours.”
I opened it.
Inside was a toxicology report with my name on it.
The blood sample had been taken the morning after I supposedly signed Olivia’s psychiatric hold.
There were two substances in my system.
The sedative Mercer admitted giving me.
And another drug.
One associated with memory impairment.
“I didn’t prescribe that,” Mercer said.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at the report.
The sample had been collected at Carter House.
By a private nurse.
Name: VANESSA BLAKE.
I felt sick.
“You knew her then.”
Mercer nodded.
“She was assigned by Lucas.”
I grabbed my phone.
Mercer stood quickly.
“Don’t call him.”
“Why?”
“Because Lucas wasn’t the one who hired her.”
I stared at him.
Mercer lowered his voice.
“Your mother did.”
Mercer tried to take the toxicology report back.
I folded it and put it inside my coat.
“That stays with me.”
“You don’t understand what happens if that becomes public.”
“People learn I was drugged.”
“They learn a Carter executive signed eight financial instruments while impaired.”
I stopped.
“Eight?”
Mercer looked sick.
“The psychiatric hold wasn’t the only document.”
“What else?”
“I never saw them.”
“But you knew they existed.”
He nodded.
“Your father told me you were completing an emergency restructuring.”
“My father?”
Mercer’s eyes dropped.
“He was the one sitting beside your bed when I arrived.”
I remembered nothing.
Then Mercer added, “And he kept repeating the same thing.”
“What?”
“That by morning, Ethan would thank him for saving Sophie.”
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