Please Forget Me - Chapter 368

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

The old woman—who was surely thinking what’s so wrong with using it—said something entirely different aloud. It seemed the doctor didn’t know she had already been feeding me d***s.

“I don’t want to go that far either. But Dana is…”

“I’ll try speaking to her myself. Please step outside for a moment, Mother.”

“Phineas.”

At the suggestion that he wanted to speak with me alone, my grandmother’s face went pale. She was afraid that I would tell him what she had done to me.

“What conversation do you think you can have with her? You can’t talk to this child. All day she’s been babbling nonsense no one can understand. Phineas, please accept it already. Dana is a patient with a head injury.”

She tried to turn me into a raving lunatic before I could say anything. I became someone whose words could never be trusted. She even squeezed out tears as she clutched at him.

“I’ll decide that myself, as her doctor.”

For once, the doctor didn’t yield to his mother. Sensing something different about him today, she grew desperate.

“Phineas, no matter what she says, don’t let her sway you. She’s already the Marchioness. Talking about breaking her vows, what is she, a three-year-old? And what about your hospital? With all the madness she’s caused, we should be bowing to the Mansfield family in gratitude. Please, you at least. Think clearly and keep your head.”

“I understand all that. Now please, step outside for a moment.”

At last, she gave in. But not before planting lies for him in advance.

“She’s been lying nonstop for days. Saying the Marquis beat her, that we drugged her. Don’t believe everything she tells you.”

The door closed. We were alone.

He sat across from me, studied my face with a heavy gaze, and asked quietly,

“Is it true that the Marquis beat you and drugged you?”

“No. Grandmother did.”

Was this the first time he was hearing that she abused me? He looked utterly bewildered, as though I’d spoken in some foreign language.

“Dana…”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I’ll admit, it’s hard to believe.”

He defended his mother, saying that while she was old-fashioned and stubborn, she wasn’t the kind of person who would beat or d**g her granddaughter.

“Then what about just now, when she told you to give me medicine?”

“She must have been panicking. People make mistakes. She scolded your uncles loudly when they were young, but she never once raised a hand. It was the same with her grandchildren.”

“You don’t really know her.”

“I know my own mother better than you do, especially now that you’ve lost your memory.”

At that point, any lingering hope I had, born from how firmly he’d stood up to her earlier, began to fade.

“Before you lost your memory, you were very close to your grandmother. She treasured you more than any of the other grandchildren. You don’t remember that, do you? You liked her more than you liked me. When I called you over, you wouldn’t come, you clung only to her.”

It wasn’t because I liked her. I must have been afraid that if I grew close to my father, she would hurt me more. Now I understood why my past self had never told him about the abuse.

‘If I told him the truth, whose side would he take?’

It wasn’t that I lacked the courage to find out. I already knew the answer.

“So, the Marquis didn’t beat you or d**g you. Then what happened just before you bit off his tongue?”

He hadn’t believed my first answer, yet he kept questioning me.

“Was everything you published in the papers true?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I asked,

“Doctor, if you don’t believe anything a ‘crazy woman with a head injury’ says… why are you even asking?”

I no longer wanted to expose anything. The more I spoke, the worse it became for me. Everything I said would be dismissed as lies, and I alone would be labeled a pathological liar inventing events I couldn’t even remember.

“Dana…”

I was the one who had been hurt, yet he looked like the wounded one.

“I’m your father.”

“If you want to be treated like a father, then start acting like one.”