✅ A Dose of Humiliation

27. A New Plan

"I'm afraid we can't do that," the pharmacist stammered nervously. Becker didn't serve customers himself, he was too fond of telling people what to do, so we'd thought it was best if we could get the antidote done without involving the head pharmacist in person.

"Why not? She's paid the fine, so the citation isn't a valid reason to humiliate her. You can transfer her treatment to another pharmacy if it needs the head pharmacist to agree."

"No, it's... there's a time limit. It's not safe to give the reversal dose until the original settles down. That's usually two to three weeks, but doubled in the case of the Refine additional option. That's why the declaration asks if there is any chance of her showing remorse and making payments. If the expected damages are something she would be able to pay promptly, the dose would never be allowed."

"Damn," Serena muttered. "I noticed that on the forms, but I didn't know there was a medical reason behind it."

"Now, I can give you the paperwork. But I'd have to make a record that you're applying for the reversal shot in... less than a week. That might be a reason for an investigation, to make sure everything was done properly. I mean, if she could pay for the damage so quickly, why didn't she use that get-out before getting the shot? Mr Becker would have made it very clear before getting the final shot that it's her last chance to opt out, and that once it's given there's the cooldown period."

"He didn't," I growled. "I said that I don't want it, and I don't consent to this. He knew that I'd paid the damages, and he grabbed me and gave me the shot anyway."

"He shouldn't have done that. And I really hope you can prove it. Because looking at you... There's been a couple of cases where he got an official reprimand from the HumiliX procedure department. Like a letter from the company saying not to do it again. The parents were jailed in those cases. It's weird. The head pharmacist gets a commendation for spotting illegal abuse of the system and reporting them, at the same time as a letter saying he should have spotted it before giving the treatment. And..."

"And looking at her?" Jodie said with a raised eyebrow. "Let me guess. The parents who got jailed are all mixed-race couples. If they were white he'd check the paperwork properly before he gives the shot, and tell them to come back with something that actually meets the rules."

"I wouldn't like to say something like that about the guy who pays my wages. But yeah, that's what it seems like to me. If you were white, I suspect he would have checked the forms properly before it was too late. He might have some... outdated ideas. I'm sorry."

"Is it possible to get her treatment transferred to another pharmacy?" Mum asked. And then the conversation went down a rabbithole of complicated rules and regulations that were way beyond my brain's ability to process in my current state. But I could see that Mum was upset, and she was frustrated. It looked like Becker could report them and have my parents sent to jail whenever he wanted, and the only reason for him to hold back now was that he wanted to torture me further. He got everything he wanted, and none of the responsibility stuck to him.

Eventually we walked back to the coffee shop, and Mum was in tears. I didn't blame her. I was realising now that this wasn't just my parents' attempt to humiliate me for helping others; Becker had spun a complex web of lies, telling them a story about me as an out-of-control hooligan who all the mall staff were terrified of. He'd told them stories about things I'd done at school as well, knowing that the school wouldn't confirm or deny it. The only evidence the school would provide was the attendance record, showing the times I'd been called out of class for meetings of the bullying resolution committee. Nothing to say if I'd been accused or not, just that I'd been at a committee meeting. He'd painted them a big picture, where the school records and the citation from Mrs Yuan's window fitted in neatly and seemed to confirm tiny parts of the narrative. He'd used them, and now he was planning to throw them to the lawyers.

"How can we stop him?" Mum asked, defeated.

"I've got an idea," Serena said. "But it's a gamble. And might need a lot of patience. I'd suggest trying to keep your head down for now. In case we can think of any kind of solution. From what his cashier said, and the other rumours we've heard, it's probably safe to assume that Becker will report you for filling in lies on that form as soon as you're not hurting Lorna. So let him think that you still don't believe her, until we can find a better solution. Until you can find something to prove that he's the one lying."

"So long as Dad's not trying to give me any more of those..."

"I'll talk to him," Mum said. "I think he understands. He's just spent his whole life judging himself by what other people think. To stand up and admit that he changed his mind is very hard for him. He knows he's wrong, but didn't want to be there when we went into the pharmacy. Straight from insisting he was right, to pretending we never talked about it."

"But the big problem," I said. "How do I cope like this? When Mrs Pendleton gave me a bag of pennies, my first instinct was to count it. I'm trying, I have to remind myself that I trust people. For more than a year I've taken it for granted that whatever she gives me is right, give or take the odd foreign coin or lucky charm or something. And now I can't do that, it's like something's messed up in my head. I can't stop thinking about how she could be taking advantage of me. I'm still doing the same as I've always done, because I remind myself that it's important to me. I'm resisting the urge to ask Liam for a receipt showing the activity on my tab, or to count the coins. But it feels wrong. And at school, when Josh offered me a drink from his hip flask, it never even crossed my mind to say no."

"You're still a good person," Mum said. "In your heart, you are a good person. And I have to hope that no drug can change that. You can fight against what this stuff is doing to you. Is there anything we can do to help?"

Serena was looking on her phone; I could see that she was looking at HumiliX manuals and documentation. Could she have something useful?

"For the Punishment Pill, parents are advised that they will need to pay more attention before starting the treatment. It becomes easier to adopt new habits and to break old ones, but there's no chemical way to distinguish between good and bad habits. It makes them more suggestible so they can be taught. So it's up to the parents to encourage the good and punish the bad; even if that means coming down harshly on things that they wouldn't normally see as a big problem. It's a lot of extra work, not a quick fix. Now for the Refine one, it's a lot more powerful, and the neurological changes are heavily biased away from maintaining any existing behaviours; so it would be nearly impossible for the results to be anything but a complete reversal. But maybe if all her friends are helping, we can remind her who she wants to be."

"Please try," I said. I was barely whispering; I'd never felt so weak. For a few days I'd been raging against my parents; unable to believe that they would treat me like this, and then drawing some comfort from the fact that they could face punishment for what they'd done to me. But now I could feel myself slipping away, becoming the monster they wanted. And I could see that even the schadenfreude when I heard they could go to jail wasn't my own thought. This thing had corrupted me, and I knew there wasn't a real way to avoid it. But all my friends were here for me, and my family too. They'd helped me become the person I was today, so maybe they could help to ensure that some trace of that person survived this upheaval.