Claire’s day had been a tedious one, littered with notions of how she might better have spent it. Truth be told, though, she would most likely be doing little more than she currently was, lying in her hospital bed, and she had come that day to the clinic not so much through any sense of urgency regarding her nose bleeds (though certainly she’d long intended to have something done about them), but rather because she was at a loss as to how to spend her day off, a luxury she was seldom afforded, and had thus grown unaccustomed to. Of course it’s the case, and has presumably always been the case, that one prefers to have control over the precise nature of one’s inactivity, and for this reason Claire was somewhat frustrated, for the first few hours at least. A change in her outlook was induced, in time, by Nurse Gertrude, at the behest of Dr Rudolph, by means of a mild sedative, as was common practice (by Dr Rudolph) in those days.
As a side note, while we’re here, and because no one will stop us, I shall tell you a little about the nature of Dr Rudolph’s relationship with the aforementioned Nurse Gertrude. This will be of particular significance to those with an interest in the dynamics of Dr Rudolph’s later relationships with assistants and apprentices; although his brand of influence, bordering on control, did not emerge fully formed, it is interesting to note the more primitive form of it at work, and it may shed some light on the often seemingly opaque reasons, in later years, for the compliance of assistants, usually safely below the genius threshold, in procedures that to the average human would almost certainly, for all their apparent cruelty and depravity, demand consecutive life sentences on general principle. Circumstances are seldom so clear cut, however, and very little of this is elucidated by the nature of Dr Rudolph’s relationship with Nurse Gertrude.
The sedative, though mild enough to permit worry, was strong enough that, try as she might, Claire could no longer string together indignant thoughts of the restrictions of hospitalisation sufficiently to distract her from her growing concern over the potential seriousness of a condition that she had hitherto found a nuisance at worst. Death rattles from a little beyond her curtain helped matters not at all. Claire’s scant consolation was that, for the duration of the afternoon, after her initial examination, she didn’t once bleed from her nose. That was something. The ceiling, though, was riddled with shadows; most consolation is mitigated by hospital conditions. Something in the lighting, or in the air quality, or the incidental sound, made Claire’s dirty-blonde hair feel like a plague of miscellaneous, unremittant snakes; a hospital fulfils only a fraction of its purpose if it does not inspire in its patients the very real sensation of illness, and its attendant dread, and by extension the hapless, exhausted belief that one is being treated by people who know what they’re doing and that, hopefully, through the sheer force of their benevolent professionalism, one will be cured.
Claire almost slept for it’s hard to say how long, but not very long, until, in what might otherwise have been a momentary lapse into full consciousness, Dr Rudolph eased open the curtain that had, for the course of her stay thus far, been, one might ill-advisedly choose to say, a veritable wall between Claire and the ugliness that might be borne by the near future. And it was ugly, what Dr Rudolph had to say;
“We can’t be sure until we perform a couple more tests,” he said, reassuringly, “But we suspect, quite strongly, that what you’re suffering from is Exponential Nostril Death.”
Claire was startled, “Wh… what does that mean?”
That was the extent of her initial articulation. Dr Rudolph was quick in response,
“It’s a… fairly rare syndrome. Essentially, if not treated properly, it results in the death of your nostrils. It’s an exponential process. Quite lethal, sometimes.”
