When she’d eaten her fill and successfully suppressed the night’s impending vomiting session, she stepped outside for another fag. It must have been Mrs. Patterson’s mention of the domestic ructions that made it clearer, but Nina noticed that the lights were still on at the Dean’s residence about three hundred meters from her cottage. With her ears now tuned to the argument, she could hear the vague sounds of heated voices coming from inside the large house.
“No wonder they’re fighting, with that bitch Christa living there,” Nina scoffed as she drew the smoke deeper in, deeper than she usually did, deep enough to constitute deliberate harm. But this time she got more than she bargained for. As if her fading body were retaliating, her lungs convulsed in a coughing fit. She felt like an amateur smoker — she was coughing just like had when she’d started at the age of sixteen after Jimmy Harrison dumped her.
Finally Nina’s attack subsided, leaving her weeping in pain. The cigarette had fallen from her fingers and it rolled rapidly toward the edge of the steps that led down to the lawn. Against the wall outside her front door she leaned hard against the coarse paint while clutching her chest, but it was her back that was on fire. The region underneath her right scapula especially seemed to tear from the surrounding tissue every time she coughed, and it stung so badly that she cursed through her tears.
But what followed was a nightmare for Nina Gould. From the crying spell she sank to her haunches, burying her hands in her hair, trying not to draw her breath too deeply. Her scalp felt loose, in a way, when she lifted her head and her hands fell to her knees.
“Oh Jesus!” she cried. “No, no, no! Oh Jesus, no!” she mumbled insanely as tufts of hair stayed behind in her palms. The pain in her back was suddenly not her worst agony, as she felt around her head only to discover that her hair had started falling out. In disbelief, Nina looked at the result of even the gentlest run of her fingertips over her hair. “Christ, no!” she kept repeating from a whisper to the crescendo of her emotions where she screamed hysterically into the cushion on the sofa inside.
She knew it was true. She knew she had to expect this sooner or later, but now that it had actually happened for real, she couldn’t deal with the shock. Nina refused to believe what she knew was real. There was no denying the clumps of hair in her hands. For the past two weeks she’d been shedding more than the usual amount of hair when she brushed her tresses, but she’d chosen to ignore the obvious portent.
Muffled in the cushion, the sobs of the historian would never be heard through the noisy gales outside. Yet her frantic wails of despair were deafening inside her and around her, the final clout of reality too much to bear. Maybe she should have told Sam, or even Purdue. Maybe she should’ve counted on their support before she deciding selfishly to exacerbate her condition out of some kind of spite toward the cruel deities that punished her. But now the hour for such things was late. The small fraction of treatment she’d allowed, or could afford, was now depleted and she was on her own in every way.
Nina had never been so alone.
Chapter 5
Kirkwall, the sleepy Scottish town on the Orkney Islands, was suffering a terrible storm that, according to the weather station, threatened to remain indefinitely. Just a few kilometers from the Bay of Weyland, the exclusive clinic, owned by Purdue’s holding company, had their generators on to brave the power outage. Power cuts had been plaguing the town since the night before, two days into the unexpected tempest that had approached from the northeast over Everbay and clean across Balfour.
The townspeople had had little warning, but they managed well enough with what they had. They knew to stay indoors while the rain pelted the landscape. Unfortunately for some of them, like Evelyn Moore, work was far too important for the greater good. She still had to commute from the western region to the clinic, where she served as an accounts administrator. The highly qualified accountant-come-business executive had been employed by David Purdue since 2011. By doubling her salary and including a nice townhouse in Kirkwall, he’d effectively lured her away from her old job in London. And Evelyn did not regret it for a second.
At the clinic she was allowed, even encouraged, to work the financial administration of the establishment in the best way she saw fit. Not only was this good for her, but the teams of specialists, scientists, and medical staff she was fortunate to work with made her job more than a living. They were a close-knit family at the clinic, not only because of their pleasant personalities, but because they all shared the same confidence.
Under the ownership and management of Scorpio Majorus, an affiliate of the mighty Brigade Apostate, all staff members at the Orkney Institute of Science were contractually bound by a non-disclosure agreement. Because of the privileged capacity of the research and patients admitted, all personnel were to keep their work to the confines of the clinic perimeter. With the generous benefits supplied by the holding company, the agreement was not difficult to maintain.
Evelyn had had stressful situations, naturally, but all in all she was working her dream job with a group of people she could trust with her life — in every way. The rain had continued even with reports that it could diminish slightly, and Evelyn was already late for work. Moats of muddy water had blocked her way out of the garage this morning. It had taken her over twenty minutes to get her car out of the garage and successfully locked up before she could leave for work.
With her dark hair in soaking disarray and her make-up hideously un-made by the downpour, Evelyn was cussing under her breath as she drove through the grayed-out vernacular-styled houses. She knew full well that speeding even a tad over the limit here could cause almost certain trouble, but she had a meeting with a prominent member of the board and couldn’t afford to be late.
Her VW Polo took to the road with little effort and she was grateful for the new tires she’d put on the month before, even though it had cost her a lot in one go. Times like these were why she’d had the new treads fitted, gripping the road under the wet onslaught of the rain. Nervously she clutched the wheel past the giant structure of St. Magnus Cathedral, but she had to admit that she was relieved most people had elected to stay home today. Thanks to them the road was even emptier than the small population usually took up.
After some annoyingly slow crawling due to traffic lights and children’s crossings, Evelyn was freed from the grid-like navigation of town and could speed up a bit on the country road towards the clinic. Carness Road wound in obscured turns through the fog and low-hanging clouds.
“Finally!” she sighed, and dared to push the accelerator deeper than usual, vowing to herself to hold the steering wheel extra tightly for the speed she was going. Her windshield wipers worked at optimal speed to clear her view ahead as she sped up, leaving the houses, churches, and stops behind. To her left the ocean camouflaged itself by turning the same gray as the clouds that covered it, and to her right there was only flat green country as far as her eyes could survey.
Fifteen minutes after she’d shaken off the more constrained parts of her journey, she finally came to the turn-off toward the clinic. While stationary at the T-junction, Evelyn checked her watch. “Oh shit! Shit!” she moaned out loud. The face of her watch declared that she was, in fact, now three minutes late for work. That meant three minutes late for her important appointment. Without wasting another moment, she turned into the small road and sped forward.