After His Betrayal, I Erase Our Past

Chapter 4

MECT was short for modified electroconvulsive therapy. It was originally a treatment for severe depression. One of its side effects was extensive loss of memories formed before treatment.

Someone on an online forum shared her experience—after the treatment, she completely forgot all the people and things that once made her want to die. After that, she got to live life all over again.

I turned off my phone and sat on a bench until the snow stopped.

On my way home, I stopped at a convenience store and bought an envelope and a pen.

That night, I downloaded a divorce agreement template from the internet.

When I opened it, my hand hovered over the keyboard for a long time.

In the column for property division, I wrote: None.

Over the years, James gave me a bank card, and the balance in it was enough for me to live on for a very long time.

Everything else—the apartment, the car, his company... None of it was something I wanted.

I signed my name, put the agreement in the envelope, and addressed it to James's company.

I mailed it before dawn.

I carried one suitcase out of this apartment.

When I walked out the door, I looked back.

A photo sat on the shoe cabinet in the entryway—James had his arm around my shoulder, and was smiling gently.

I turned the photo face down.

It was already afternoon by the time I got to the next city.

The doctor who saw me was a young woman. She asked me again, "Why do you want MECT?"

I said, "I want to forget everything that happened in the past ten years."

"All of it?"

"Yes."

She paused for a few seconds. "This treatment may cause you to lose most of your long-term memory. It won't just be the painful parts—your happy memories will disappear too. Are you sure about this?"

'Happy memories.' I thought about it.

Happy memories... James bought me a necklace with the money he earned from part-time work. It was thirty dollars, from a street stall. The chain would tarnish, but I wore it for four years.

On our wedding day, he got drunk, held me, and said, "The greatest luck of my life was meeting you."

When I was pregnant, he pressed his cheek to my belly to listen to the heartbeat and said, "Grow slow, kiddo. Daddy will earn you a good life." And then I lost that baby.

I said, "I'm sure."

She asked me many more questions: Any suicidal tendencies? Any sleep disorders? Any recurring flashbacks or hallucinations?

I checked every single one.

She flipped through my spine exam report, then closed it.

"Your first course of treatment is scheduled for three days from now. Use these three days to think if there is anything you do not wish to forget. If there is, write it down, and you can get to know them again after the treatment."

I shook my head. "There's nothing."

Three days later, I arrived in the pre-op room, which was very quiet.

The nurse helped me secure my arm and inserted an indwelling IV needle into the back of my hand.

She said, "Relax. Once the anesthetic kicks in, you'll just fall asleep, and you might have a headache when you wake up. That's all normal."

I lay down, letting the anesthetic flow into my vein.

My body slowly grew heavy, and my fingertips started going limp. That numb, dull feeling spread from my right hand to my left, then to my limbs and my torso, and finally to my brain.

Just as my consciousness was about to fade completely, the phone on the bedside table buzzed.

The screen lit up, and I saw the caller's name clearly.

It was James.

The phone kept ringing.

I closed my eyes.

The last thing that surfaced in my mind was not James's face, not the words he said to me in the car.

It was that tiny, blurry image on the ultrasound report.

The doctor said it already had a heartbeat by then.

But before I got the chance to hear it, it was gone.

'Mommy is going to forget you, too. I'm sorry.'