How one day he had snapped at her over some trivial thing, yelled, then apologized, saying it was stress from work. And how she had once accidentally overheard a snippet of his phone conversation.
I need time. I’ll get the money. Give me another month.
Money. The thought struggled through the fog in her mind. He needed money.
Chloe owned a successful advertising agency. Three offices, thirty employees, annual revenue over fifty million. Plus an apartment downtown she had bought with her own money before the marriage.
Another apartment in Los Angeles purchased last year as an investment. Bank accounts. According to the will she had drawn up after the wedding, all of it would pass to James.
He wants to kill me. Horror pierced her, sobering her for a second. But no, not kill. He said she wouldn’t remember her name.
Memory. He wanted her to lose it, to vanish, dissolve somewhere across the country while he gained access to all her accounts, property, and business.
Chloe tried to get up, to call for help, but her body was paralyzed. She could only lie on the hard bed and feel her consciousness slipping further with each passing minute.
Someone entered the compartment. Chloe barely lifted her eyelids and saw the blurry figure of a man. He placed a backpack on the upper shelf and sat across from her.
His face was hazy, as if she were looking through frosted glass.
«Miss, are you okay?» A voice came from somewhere far away. «You’re very pale.»
Chloe tried to answer, but only an indistinct moan escaped her throat. The man leaned closer, and she made out a concerned face, light eyes, short dark hair.
«Chloe?» He suddenly said her name, and recognition laced his voice. «Chloe, it’s me, Anthony. Anthony King. We went to school together. My God, what’s happened to you?»
Anthony King. A memory surfaced on the edge of her mind. A freckled boy who had sat with her at the same desk in seventh grade, helping her with math while she helped him with literature.
He had moved to another city with his parents after ninth grade, and they had lost touch.
«Anthony…» she uttered his name with great difficulty.
«What happened? Are you sick?»
He took her hand, checked her pulse. His fingers were warm, steady, professional.
«Pulse is fast, you’re hot. Wait, I’m a doctor, I’ll take a look.»
He pulled a small flashlight from his backpack and shone it into her eyes. Chloe saw his face change, become serious, focused.
«Her pupils are dilated and respond poorly to light,» he muttered. «Breathing is shallow, skin is pale and clammy. This isn’t an illness, it’s poisoning or an overdose.»
He looked at her carefully.
«Chloe, did you take something? Any kind of medication?»
She shook her head as best she could. Anthony frowned and continued his examination. He checked her blood pressure with a small portable monitor he also pulled from his backpack.
«Blood pressure is elevated, but not critically,» he spoke aloud, thinking. «Symptoms resemble poisoning from psychoactive substances or sedatives. But you don’t look like someone who…»
He fell silent, stared at her intently and asked slowly, clearly: «Chloe, could someone have given you something to drink or eat shortly before you got on the train?»
Coffee. James. The station.
Fragments of thoughts began to form one terrifying picture. Coffee. She barely managed to part her lips.
«My husband… gave me coffee.»
Anthony’s face hardened instantly. He jumped up, looked down the corridor, and called the conductor over.
«The young woman has acute poisoning, possibly of criminal origin,» his voice was authoritative and professional. «We need to call an ambulance to the nearest station immediately. What’s the next stop?»
«Oscar in 40 minutes,» the conductor replied, peering into the compartment with fear. «What’s wrong with her?»
«She was given a potent drug. I need water, lots of water, and the first aid kit, if there’s activated charcoal or something similar.»
The conductor hurried off to fetch the kit. Anthony returned to Chloe and gently lifted her head.
«Chloe, stay with me. Can you hear me? You have to hang on. I’ll help you, but you have to fight. Don’t let yourself pass out, understand?»
She tried to nod, but her head fell weakly onto his arm. Her consciousness was slipping despite all her efforts. The last thing she remembered was Anthony’s worried face above her and his voice repeating again and again: «Hang on, Chloe, hang on.»
And the feeling that someone had, after all, come to help her. Then, darkness.
Chloe opened her eyes and didn’t immediately realize where she was. White ceiling, smell of medicine, quiet humming of some machine nearby. Her head was splitting, and her mouth felt as dry as a desert.
She tried to move and felt an IV attached to her arm.
«Easy, easy, don’t move suddenly.»
The familiar voice made her turn her head. Next to the bed, in an uncomfortable hospital chair, sat a man. He looked tired, shadows under his eyes, his shirt wrinkled.
But when their eyes met, he smiled. And Chloe remembered. Anthony. Anthony King, the one from seventh grade.
«Where am I?» Her voice came out hoarse, foreign even to her.
«In the hospital in the city of Oscar,» Anthony replied and leaned forward.
He poured water from a carafe into a glass.
«Drink a little at a time, small sips.»
He brought the glass to her lips, and Chloe drank greedily. The water tasted like the most delicious thing in the world.
«What… what happened to me?»
«Poisoning.» Anthony set the glass on the bedside table. His face grew serious. «Someone gave you a potent drug. If I hadn’t been there…»
He didn’t finish the sentence, but Chloe understood. Memories flooded back. The station, James with the coffee, his words on the train.
You wouldn’t even remember your own name. The horror of the moment when she realized her husband was trying to… What? Kill me?
«She whispered,» Lie still.» Anthony gently but firmly laid her back down when she tried to lift herself.
«This is a complex substance, a combination of sedatives with drugs that affect memory.» He looked at her carefully. «I’m a toxicologist, Chloe. I was on my way to a conference when I saw you on the train.»
Chloe remained silent, processing the information. A toxicologist. Of all the people on that train, the one next to her happened to be the person who could save her.
«The drug you were given,» Anthony continued, «is used in psychiatry only in very rare cases, and even then under strict supervision. At the doses that were in your blood…» He paused. «You would have lost your memory, possibly permanently. Forgotten who you are, where you live, your entire life.»
«He wanted me to forget,» Chloe whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. «James, my husband. He gave me that coffee at the station.»
Anthony handed her a tissue from the box on the bedside table, letting her wipe her face.
«When you lost consciousness on the train, I immediately knew this was no ordinary illness.» His voice was calm, professional, but his eyes burned with anger. «The symptoms were too specific. I called an ambulance at Oscar Station and went with you to the hospital.»
«The local doctors here wanted to diagnose food poisoning, but I insisted on a toxicological analysis.»
«And what did the analysis show?» Chloe asked.
«Your blood contained a complex synthetic compound in combination with scopolamine and another substance that even the local lab couldn’t immediately identify. I had to send samples to my colleagues in the capital.»
Anthony took out his phone and showed her some charts and numbers on the screen.
«This isn’t a mixture you can buy at a pharmacy. It’s a specially synthesized cocktail. Someone went to great lengths to obtain this.»
Chloe closed her eyes, trying to cope with the nausea that came not from the drug, but from the realization. James had planned this. Not an impulsive decision, not a spontaneous act.
At the moment of the argument, he had been looking for where to get this substance, buying it, waiting for the right moment.
«How long was I unconscious?»
«Almost a day.» Anthony put away his phone. «We performed gastric lavage, set up IVs, administered antidotes. Luckily, the drug hadn’t fully entered your bloodstream yet when I began treatment. In cases like this, the first few minutes decide everything.»
«Thank you.» Chloe looked at him and for the first time in the last twenty-four hours felt she could breathe. «You saved my life, or what was left of it.»
«Don’t thank me too soon.» Anthony stood and walked to the window.
Outside the glass was a typical hospital yard, autumn trees with yellow leaves.
«Chloe, I need you to tell me everything from the very beginning. What your husband did is a criminal act, attempted murder at best. And considering he wanted to erase your memory, there are other charges as well.»
Chloe nodded. It was hard to talk, words stuck in her throat, but she forced herself.
She told him about the past few months. She spoke of how James had changed, his nervousness, strange phone calls, and sleepless nights. She described how he became obsessively attentive, controlling every step she took, and the phrase she accidentally overheard: Give me one more month, I’ll find the money.
«Do you have a will?» Anthony asked when she finished.
«Yes, I made one after the wedding, seven years ago. All my property goes to James in the event of my death. And there’s a prenuptial agreement. In case of divorce everyone keeps their own.»
She continued: «Everything I’ve earned stays with me. And James…» she trailed off, realizing. «He has almost nothing. The business he ran, it’s all registered in my name.»
«The apartment is mine, the cars are mine, even the bank account is joint, but the main funds are in my personal account. So divorce would mean he’d be left with nothing.»
Anthony turned to her.
«And if you disappear? Vanish, lose your memory, and no one can find you? After a while, he could declare you dead and take everything.»
He paused.
«But why not just kill?» The question sounded insane, but Chloe had to understand.
«Because murder leaves traces, examinations, suspicion. But if you just disappear, get on a train, and vanish somewhere across the country—and on top of that, without memory—you could become homeless.»
Anthony continued his thought: «You could die under a fence from hypothermia. You could end up in a hospital for the homeless, where no one knows you. Your body might never be found at all.»