Gillian Galbraith - Dying Of The Light

‘You need to go to Accident and Emergency right now, Alice,’ he ordered.

Still feeling shocked, her bandaged hand tucked protectively under her other arm, she asked, ‘What may I have picked up… from the needle, I mean?’

‘Probably nothing,’ he reassured her.

‘Yes, probably nothing,’ she repeated. ‘But if I were to be unlucky, what would the something be?’

Doctor Zenabi sighed. ‘The main possibilities would be HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, I suppose, but you’ll be OK. A and E will give you prophylactic treatment for the HIV. Preventative treatment.’

‘And for the Hepatitis B and C?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s available. But, don’t worry, I’ll take some blood from the body and get it cross-matched for infectious diseases. Much speedier than waiting for you to develop something. Which you won’t!’ he added quickly, his brown eyes fixed on her, no argument to be countenanced. As if the outcome of the risk has anything to do with our discussion, she thought bleakly.

‘How long before I’ll know… whether the body was clean or not?’

‘Two days at most. I’ll make sure the hospital gives it priority. And we’ll see if the woman’s medical records suggest she’s clean. And don’t forget, even if she isn’t clean, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have caught anything.’

Returning to Broughton Place from the Royal Infirmary in a taxi, plastic pill containers clinking in her bag, Alice found that she was no longer in control of her thoughts. They ran free, tormenting her, defining and refining her fears, exploring dreadful possibilities or, worse, probabilities, then ruthlessly following the chain of consequences to the most awful conclusions: chronic invalidity ending in premature death. She wondered what she should tell her parents, and Ian, before deciding that nothing should be said. Even if she was now on tenterhooks, there was no reason for them to join her swinging on them.

Examining his passenger’s anxious face in the rear-view mirror, the taxi driver said cheerily: ‘It may never happen, hen!’

Alice nodded, flashing a weak smile, unable to summon a suitably light-hearted response. It already had.

Back home in the flat, she rifled amongst her CDs for something to raise her spirits, lighten her mood, eventually settling on a collection of songs by Charles Trenet. The laughter smouldering in his voice would surely do the trick, and his French vowels would glide meaninglessly over her, soothing and relaxing as they flowed. Thinking about it coolly, dispassionately, here she was in the middle of a murder enquiry with two days off, and thus far, the threatened side-effects from the prophylactic drugs had not appeared. In fact, it was a perfect opportunity to take Quill for a walk, and in the high, blustery on-shore wind, the waves at Tantallon should be a sight to behold. And what could be more exhilarating, more life-affirming, than the sight of those endless breakers pounding the rocks, crashing skywards in all their bright majesty.

Pleased to have found a distraction, she walked towards the front door, intent on collecting Quill from Miss Spinnell, but found that she was bumping, unexpectedly, against the wall. She straightened herself up and took a few more steps, only to find herself colliding with it again. As she glanced down at the floor it began to incline upwards and then recede, then suddenly reared up once more. She shook her head forcefully, blinking hard, trying to restore normality and her balance with it. But the minute she opened her eyes again, the corridor began to revolve, enclosing her. She fell to her knees, edging on all fours towards the bedroom, stopping every so often to catch her breath, shoulders flat against the wall.

Once in bed, eyes tightly closed, she tried to calm herself, slow her own heartbeat, breathing in and out deeply and deliberately. The spinning sensation continued regardless, its rhythm now becoming disturbed, unpredictable, lurching her with dizzying speed first in one direction and then another. Bile flooded into her mouth and, in seconds, she was violently sick.

Eight hours later she was woken by the sound of a key in the lock, accompanied by a series of thuds as Quill pranced exuberantly around Ian, celebrating his release from his eccentric custodian and his return home.

Ian bent over her as if to plant a kiss on her cheek, but hesitated momentarily, taking in her pale face and exhausted eyes. Looking at him she mumbled something about a virulent sick bug at work, remembering to tell him to keep his distance in case he should catch it. At once he recoiled theatrically, taking a few steps back from the bed, and the loss of his presence by her side, fleeting as it had been, brought tears to her eyes. His joke was not funny. If she had caught HIV from the corpse then this might be the pattern for any future that they might share. The thought of losing him, of the closeness, the intimacy that they had so recently found, dismayed her, allowing a sob to escape. Any one of those alphabetical diseases, never mind death, could do that.

‘Christ, Alice,’ he said, surprised by her reaction. ‘What on earth’s the matter? I was just joking.’

‘Oh, just this sick bug thing…’ she replied, unable to say more. But however hard she tried, she could not halt the tears which continued to stream down her face, wetting the pillow and her hair on it.

‘Darling, it can’t just be that.’

Hearing the tenderness in his voice and the unfamiliar endearment, she sobbed again. He had never called her ‘darling’ before, and now joined the precious few she knew who meant the word. His concern undid her, crumbling her resolve so that when he repeated his question she told him the truth, managing a fairly clinical account of what had happened.

He listened, nodding occasionally, and then applied his mind to the problem. Doctor Zenabi had said he thought it improbable that she would catch anything, and he was the medical expert. He was the man they should trust and believe in. So she would not catch anything. But suppose, at the very worst, she had contracted HIV. Drugs were now available making the disease treatable, and its presence need make little difference to their lives. Couples all over the world lived with it. Also, he knew a few people with Hepatitis C and they appeared to lead completely normal lives too. He seemed so confident, so unperturbed, by her news that she began to wonder if it was, after all, so very serious. Perhaps she had been melodramatic, had overreacted. All might indeed, as he had predicted, be well; and they had faced the worst together and he had not run away.

With the subtlety of a practised butler, present but unobtrusive, he caused freshly laundered night clothes to appear, her jug of water was filled regularly and innocent enquiries from her parents were fended off. However, the lure of the studio proved as irresistible as ever, and once he returned from it clutching in his icy hands a sketch of Quill, done from memory, to appease her for his day-long absence. But when, early on Monday morning, the phone rang and Ahmed Zenabi broke the news that the victim’s blood had shown nothing, Ian jumped onto their bed and hugged her, laughing out loud and, she noted, every bit as relieved as she was herself.