Nina nodded. It made sense what he said. His comparison was quite effective and she felt defeated all over again.
“Dr. Gould,” he said gently, almost whispering. “If you know what this is, you have to tell us.”
“What makes you think I know? I am a historian, not a micro-biologist,” she frowned, but inside her she could feel the truth probing.
“You have to know where you got this,” he argued, “because it was a surgical procedure that put it there. It is not some accidental ingestion, it is not a prick from an exotic plant during a hike… it was done deliberately by people you have seen, people you had firsthand contact with. Now who is sugar-coating the turd, hey?” The doctor gave her that piercing stare of imploring. His words were not mockery or retort to her earlier remark, but genuine interest.
‘Tell him. It could save your life,’ she thought to herself. ‘Yeah, but what if you are recovering already? What if the arsenic is almost gone and now you tell them that it was put there by Nazi scientists to kill you? You’d screw yourself royally and get locked up.’
“I don’t know when it happened. They must’ve roofied me, doc,” she replied casually.
“Where did you wake up, then?” he asked.
“I woke up in my car in the parking lot,” Nina lied. Her doctor nodded, but she could see that he was not buying it. “I have another appointment soon. I have to go. Is that all, doc?” she asked.
“Yes, just make an appointment with Jackie in front and come see us in a month, alright?” he said as Nina opened the door. “Oh, and Nina,” he called after her just before she left, “I don’t care what you are hiding. If things get bad I want you to call me. Call me, no matter how trivial you might think.”
“Thanks, doc,” she said and pulled the door shut before he read her mind any further.
Another nightmare had Nina yelping like a pup as she was jerked from its dark realm into the uncertain security of her bedroom. The last image of her dream, an old woman with pearly eyes and no jaw under the roof of her bleeding mouth, fell in perfect sequence with a particularly shattering crash of thunder. It rattled her windows as she sat up in the dark, grateful that she had left her curtains drawn wide open to let in the outside street lights to clarify her surroundings. In black shadows and blue light the hues danced against her walls and ceiling, over her covered legs under her bedding and on her drenched face.
Nina looked around for remnants of her dream, but fortunately it was an entirely different world she had escaped from and not a single item in her bedroom resembled the evil atmosphere of the striped tent or the witch inside who read her palm. Only the stripes in the shape of her window’s burglar bars fell askew across her room while the hard rain clattered against the glass. The melting shadows of splattered droplets that ran down the outside of her window gilled the parts in between the stripes in rippling movement that Nina found quite pretty. It reminded her of those old toys, made of cut paper into a merry-go-round, the pictures inside animated by the movement of shadow and light as it twirled.
Her clock said 5.45am, but the weather and the season bought the darkness more time in Edinburgh. Nina had never been afraid of thunder, having grown up in Scotland and lived briefly in Ireland and England. It had always been part of life, but this morning in particular, the thunder made her uneasy. It felt as if the rumble in the heavens above her was the portending of something hideous to come. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag on the filter, watching the darkness momentarily illuminate from the glow of the burning tobacco.
Nina sat down in the quiet that played host to the roaring clouds and the patter of the water against the window and switched on her laptop.
Suddenly the intercom buzzed and jolted her body backward in a start.
“Jesus!” she exclaimed.
She took the last part if the cigarette and shoved the butt hard into the soil of the potted plant. With heavy feet she limped over to the device on the wall. She knew it would be Security. Somehow Nina knew that she had a female visitor.
“Dr Gould, so sorry to wake you,” the security guard said over the hissing signal, “but there is someone here to see you.”
“Is it a woman, perhaps?” Nina said sarcastically, wondering if she was dreaming again or if this was what her doctor was talking about — an episode of temporal disorientation? “Yes, Dr Gould. The lady says it is very urgent. She needs to see you before…”
“She leaves for an Amazonian expedition?” Nina finished his sentence.
He reacted with a moment’s pause. “Yes, madam….precisely.”
Nina could not believe what was happening, but she intended on riding it out nonetheless until she started being wrong. So far she was spooking Security quite a bit.
“Does she have a title, like Doctor or Professor? Um… with….with with a… wait….like an Eastern European name?” Nina asked in a shaky voice. Now she was beginning to scare herself. ‘Déjà vu,’ she heard from her inner voice, and with it came a crash of thunder as if to emphasize her observation.
“I am Professor Petra Kulich, Dr. Gould,” she heard a strong woman’s voice over the speaker and Nina collapsed to her knees.
“Dr. Gould?” the voice of the woman spoke again over the radio connection. “Are you there?”
From the deep blackness three voices echoed loudly through Nina’s skull. A deep scowl crossed the historian’s face from the sharpness of their words in her still waking mind.
“Easy! Easy,” she moaned before even opening her eyes. Nina inadvertently held her hands over her ears and curled up like a fetus. “Keep your voices down, for God’s sake!”
“Shhh…” she heard a man hush the others. Then a scuffling and the feeling of hands hooked under her arms and a cold washcloth on her face. All the while she could hear the woman with the heavy accent direct the two security men to place Nina on the couch.
“Professor, I’m afraid I am going to have to stay here with you. I can obviously not allow you to be alone with Dr. Gould as long as she is unfit to permit you herself,” Nina could hear the security guard explain in a whisper.
“Of course. I understand,” Professor Kulich agreed softly.
After a cup of tea and another steeping on the counter of the open plan kitchen on the second floor, Nina was feeling more focused. Her eyes had become clear again and her mind crisp while she poured the second cup for her and the middle aged blond woman with the staring grey eyes who sat across from her.
“I am so sorry to bother you this time of the morning, but…” Professor Kulich started, but Nina interrupted her.
“Let me guess,” she said calmly as she lifted her cup, “you are on your way to the Amazon?”
“How did you know?” the guest asked, but Nina figured she already knew, because her facial expression was a mix of curiosity and affirmation.
“Déjà vu,” Nina replied casually, and sank her nose into the cup to slurp the hot tea, her gaze dropped.
The professor nodded slowly. She sipped her tea and looked at her hostess with a look of sincere interest.
“Dr. Gould, tell me, what is your experience with the occult?” she asked, straight and clear.