Chapter 7: Discharge into Distance
I was discharged into Meredith’s care on the fifth day.
Dad signed the hospital papers for Olivia and left with her in a rideshare. He told the nurse he would check on me later. He did not. The omission required no interpretation. The ranking announced on Riverside Drive had simply continued into ordinary logistics.
Meredith drove carefully, avoiding the stretch of road where the Lincoln had failed. At her house she installed me in the ground-floor room that had once been her office, within easy reach of the bathroom and the kitchen. The arrangement was practical. It was also permanent in a way neither of us stated out loud. I would not be returning to the house where Dad and Olivia reconstituted the family without the daughter who had kept it functioning.
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The preliminary vehicle notes arrived through the patient portal’s linked incident file and through Meredith’s contact. Residual solvent-type odor had been flagged. The fuel-system inspection was marked for further review. No conclusion of tampering had been reached. No conclusion was required yet. The sequence remained: Olivia discloses the acceptance letter and deposit; Dad learns I am leaving; I report a smell and am told to stop being dramatic; the engine fails; at the scene he ranks us for the paramedics. I added the new inspection notes to the private archive and left them there without commentary.
Olivia sent a message asking when I was coming home. I replied that I was recovering at Meredith’s and would be there for the foreseeable future. She answered with a short apology that still circled her own guilt rather than the words Dad had spoken while my leg was pinned. I did not correct her focus. Correction would have required energy I was using to keep the record clean.
