“Mmm, you’ll like it. I made you pumpkin soup today, fresh with lots of cream, just the way you like it.”
Aiden turned to the woman, surprised at her tone. She sounded as if she were talking to a child. He got out of her way and moved to the other side of the table when she carried two bowls with steaming hot soup and set them in front of the couple.
“There,” she said. “How about some fresh rosemary bread with that?”
Leila’s mother nodded. “And butter. Don’t forget the butter. You always forget the butter.”
Aiden caught how the housekeeper rolled her eyes. “I never forget the butter, Ellie. Don’t you remember how I put it on extra thick this morning?”
“You didn’t give me bread this morning,” Ellie protested.
Her husband shook his head. “I didn’t get bread this morning either.”
Ellie tossed him a chiding look and waved the housekeeper closer. In a whisper, she spoke to her. “Do I have to always eat with him? Nancy, why doesn’t he go home?”
Nancy sighed and sat down on the empty chair. “But, Ellie, that’s George. You know George, don’t you? Your husband?”
Ellie’s eyes darted toward him, looking him up and down. Then she bent closer to the housekeeper once more. “I don’t think that’s my husband. He’s old. I married a handsome young man named George.”
George only grunted and started eating his soup.
Aiden watched the exchange with surprise. Something wasn’t right here. Was there a chance that the demons had already gotten to Leila’s parents and somehow distorted their sense of reality?
“Why don’t you start your soup, Ellie, and I’ll get you your meds, huh? Maybe you’ll feel better afterwards.”
Nancy lifted herself from the chair and went over to the kitchen counter where an array of medicine bottles and containers took up an entire corner. She took two long plastic containers, which were embossed with the days of the week and Ellie and George, and went back to the dining table.
Aiden didn’t follow her. Instead, he stared at the medicine bottles and read the labels. Since he wasn’t a doctor, he didn’t know what any of them were for, however, he needed to find out. Something he couldn’t explain compelled him to. He pulled out his smartphone, switched it on in silent mode, and entered the name of the first medication. A few second later, search results were back. He clicked on the first, read it. A knot started forming in his chest.
He entered the next one, and more results came back. Again, he read the first, and again, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He perused the bottles, noticing that both Leila’s parents took almost identical medication.
Shocked, Aiden stalked out of the kitchen and fled into the front of the house where he found the living room and let himself fall onto the couch.
Both Leila’s parents took medication for the treatment of Alzheimer’s.
Now everything suddenly made sense: the determination Leila showed in her research, the single-minded purpose that reflected in her private life or the lack thereof, her devastation when she’d found her research destroyed. She did all this for her parents. She wanted to save them.
She wasn’t looking for the recognition of her peers and humanity at large to become the inventor of the first Alzheimer’s drug that would halt the disease. All she wanted was to cure her parents and reverse some of the damage the disease had done to their minds.
Aiden felt shame radiate through him. He’d callously demanded that all copies of her research be destroyed, would have destroyed them himself had somebody else not beaten him to it. And all the while, her dreams destroyed, her hopes squashed, Leila had kept her true pain hidden from him.
No wonder she hated him and his kind. It was a miracle, she hadn’t tried to give him any more resistance, or tried to escape a second time. Now that he knew what was really at stake for her, he wouldn’t even blame her if she tried. Wouldn’t he do the same? Wouldn’t he try to do everything to save his parents if he had the means to do it? Would he care that by doing so, he would jeopardize the entire human race?
Could she be so selfless in the end to put humanity’s needs before her own? If she could do that, if she could look beyond her own desires, all he could do was admire her for it. Because it would mean she wasn’t weak. She was strong, stronger than any