Once more he crept closer to see the woman’s name on the open wings of the leather wallet.
Two men’s voices suddenly spoke from the side of the building, growing louder as they approached. They would certainly catch Radu red handed with the stolen goods, so he shoved the card and key into his pocket with the money and he jumped up, bolting around the corner as fast as his legs could carry him. Unfortunately, in his haste he neglected to take his sweater.
Chapter 4 — Déjà Vu
Nina waited for the doctor in his office. Her skin still hurt from the pricks of needles and the unpleasant bruising that came from over-hasty hospital staff who could not give two shit about their patients, because they never got into the private health care facilities. Sure Nina had the money to go to private clinics and such, now that she was the object of her boyfriend’s financial doting, but she did not care for the exuberant charges to get the same procedures done. It had always been a festering boil on her logic and sense of justice that these medical professionals employed their capitalist gluttony on the needy and the terminal. There was no way she was going to be part of their fat pay checks or their spoiled undeserved riches. Instead she supported the local clinics in Edinburgh who were decent enough to run an efficient ship, yet catered to the working class people of the city.
The office was unusually cold where she sat looking at all the wall mounted pictures of pregnancy, the effects of smoking on a bona fide lung and some displays of hideous skin disorders. This was not altogether a fun place to sit with nothing to do while your skin burned from awkward attempts to draw blood and your body shivered from the cold atmosphere in the old building with its pale walls and exterior plumbing, painted in the same leaded paint from the 60’s. Nina blew her breath out hard through her pursed lips and sounded oddly like a horse just as the doctor entered.
“Dr. Gould,” he jested, “shall I refer you to a good veterinarian?”
Nina laughed and the doctor, a lean and attractive Pakistani man of her age, smiled as he rounded the desk to sit down. He was always absurdly calm and Nina often hoped he would be around if she ever had a heart attack. Not only did he know his stuff, but his mellow demeanor, she imagined, would be a psychosomatic blessing on anyone panicking in the throes of impending death.
He sat down with his folder and had a look at the details presented by the lab. Nina hated this part. The foreboding silence while the professional came to a verdict in the company of the buzzing luminescent tubes fixed to the ceiling. She imagined this was what a corpse felt like — if it could feel — on the cold steel slab of the morgue just before they switched on that bone saw.
He let out a scoff, but kept his eyes glued to the paper.
“What?” she asked quickly. It was a natural response to the sound, after all. He looked up.
“Oh that was not a bad news grunt, Dr Gould, don’t fret,” he reassured her before returning to his scrutiny. “It’s just that, for one thing, we still cannot identify this strain and secondly, we cannot seem to figure out how your body is combating it.”
Oh god, here we go again, Nina thought. Now she would have to act dumb and be vigilant about her words.
“Were you born one of twins?” he asked unexpectedly. Nina almost swallowed her tongue at the uncanny question which proved the man’s expertise. But she could never tell what the blood platelets in her veins meant. Not only would it open a whole trunk of rattlesnakes, but it would become the focus of a worldwide medical spill and she would no doubt end up a captive test subject.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she chuckled in amusement, acting uncharacteristically indifferent.
“Hmm,” he replied as he read further, “that is strange. But nevertheless, your treatment is helping, I see. The unknown arsenic based strain seems to be regressing, disappearing rapidly now. Have you been having spells of dizziness, confusion, hallucinations?” He looked her dead in the eye, so certain of what he wanted to know that the unshakable Dr Gould oddly found herself slightly intimidated by another human being for a change.
“Now and then I get a little light headed, but then, I have been working on a dissertation and had some late nights,” she replied, trying to sound as un-crazy as possible. She dared not tell him about the foul nightmares, because that would certainly force her current treatment into a psychological direction. And that was a dangerous path for any unstable adventurer to be found on. It would be the shortest path to ending her much loved freedom for good.
While he was explaining the effects of the treatment on the poison in her system, Nina found her mind dwelling towards this morning at the mansion. It was difficult to remember what had happened, but she recalled waking from a particularly wicked dream the details of which eluded her now. In fact, the entire morning was a blur, apart from the good cigarette she had after walking through the dark house at a desperately early hour.
Finally the doctor sighed from the last part of the report he had read and gave her a concerned, but composed look.
“Nina…” he started in an earnest tone of voice, and Nina felt her heart drop to the floor. It sounded typically like the speech TV medical professionals gave terminal patients, while the somber score played its piano melody in the background.
Oh my god, please don’t tell me I’m dying. I have too much to do, still, Nina begged behind her poker face.
“… your charts are looking good…” he continued.
“But?” she chipped in quickly, more because she needed to interrupt him to not have to hear the news yet, but he lifted his open hand to silence her.
“… but, I am afraid a part of this compound had made its way to your brain and you might find yourself being very confused, perhaps, maybe you will forget what you did or where you parked your car, things like that. This compound has caused what we call a mild form of delirium tremens.”
“Delirium?” she snarled, but her anxiety trumped her intolerance with their ineptitude at telling her like it was. This he could see. His petite patient was terrified of the repercussions, as anyone would be.
“Well, either it is surfacing now because it has progressed into your sensory receptors, or….the good part is that your mind might be pestered by confusion or time mix-ups only now, because it is the tail-end of the malady,” he explained. His calm tone did not fool Nina. She was the sharp kind of patient, the one whose common sense could not be impaired by reverse psychology or a smooth delivery. His voice was his method of lightening the blow, she was certain.
“Bullshit,” she said under her breath, looking down at her badly bruised forearm where the damned circular scar mocked her. The Black Sun’s medical freaks wanted her to see that emblem every day for the rest of her life, what was left of it, because she dared defy them. But if she had voiced this, she might have been seen as paranoid or delusional.
“You think I’m lying to you?” he smiled.
“Yes, doctor,” she said with a measure of gloom in her reply. “I think you are sugar coating a turd and asking me to lick it like an ice cream cone, frankly. Just tell me the truth.”
“I am. Do you want to hear bad news?” he asked.
“How can you not know if this thing is killing me or withering away? It is a pretty important thing to know, doc!” she exclaimed, trying not to shout.
“We don’t know, because we have never seen the likes of it before. I mean,” he sighed, his hands stretched open in defeat, “we know that it is arsenic, but that means nothing if we don’t know what the rest of the chemical consists of, Nina.” He sighed again, thinking of a better way to make it clear to her. “Look, what we have here is yellow. But that is all we know. We don’t know if it is yellow because it is fire or if it is yellow because it is a sunflower. Am I making sense here? We don’t know if it can be contained or if it is absolutely destructive, just because we know one of its components. Do you understand our predicament?”