The Risk of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

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    “You think she’s gaga, don’t you?”
    “I would never, ever use that expression about anyone.”
    “OK, what would you say she was?” He was angry.
    “The illness has reached her brain now and she is very confused, though there may be flashes ofawareness. She is also very frightened for most of the time—fear is a symptom of variant CJD at this stage. I want Lizzie to be in a place of safety so that she has as little to frighten her as possible. She also needs physical care. Her bodily functions are no longer under her control. The ataxia will increase so she will fall over all the time, she has no motor …”
    Max Jameson screamed, a terrible howl of pain and rage, his hands pressed to his head.
    Lizzie woke and began to cry like a baby, struggling to sit up. He went on bellowing, an animal sound.
    “Max, stop that,” Cat said quietly. She went to Lizzie and took her hand, encouraging her to lie down under the blanket again. The young woman’s eyes were wide with fear and also with the blankness of someone who has no sense of their surroundings, of other people or even of their own selves. All was a terrifying confusion.
    The room was quiet. In the street below someone went by whistling.
    “Let me make the call,” Cat said.
    After a long pause, Max nodded.
    It had been less than three months since Lizzie Jameson had come to the surgery. She had been walking too carefully, as if afraid she might lose her balance, and her speech had seemed slow. Cat only remembered seeing her once before, on a birth-control matter, but had been struck then by her vibrant beauty and her laugh; she had scarcely recognised the unhappy young woman coming into her room.
    It was not difficult to diagnose severe depression but neither Cat nor Lizzie herself could find a cause. She was very happy, Lizzie said, no, there was nothing wrong with her marriage, nor with anything else. Work had been going well—she was a graphic designer—she loved the apartment in the Old Ribbon Factory, loved Lafferton, had had no shocks or illness.
    “Every day I wake up it’s blacker. It’s like sliding down a pit.” She had stared at Cat hollow-eyed but there had been no tears.
    Cat had prescribed an antidepressant and asked to see her weekly for the next six weeks to follow her progress.
    Nothing had changed for over a month. The tablets had barely touched the surface of her misery. But on the fourth visit, Lizzie had presented with a badly bruised arm, and a dislocated finger where she had tried to stop herself falling. She had just lost her balance, she said.
    “Has this happened before?”
    “It keeps happening. I suppose it might be the tablets.”
    “Hm. Possibly. They can cause mild dizziness but it usually passes within a few days.”
    Cat had got her an appointment with the neurologist at Bevham General. That night she had talked to Chris.
    “Brain tumour,” he had said at once. “The MRI will show more clearly.”
    “Yes. Could be very deep.”
    “Parkinson’s?”
    “That crossed my mind.”
    “Or maybe the two things are unconnected … look at the depression and the lack of balance separately.”
    They had gone on to talk of something else, but the following morning Chris had crossed the corridor from his own consulting room to Cat’s.
    “Lizzie Jameson …”
    “Idea?”
    “How was her gait?”
    “Unsteady.”
    “I just looked up variant CJD.”
    Cat had stared at him. “It’s very rare,” she’d said finally.
    “Yes. I’ve never seen it.”
    “Nor have I.”
    “But it checks out.”
    After her last patient left Cat had put in a call to the Bevham neurologist.
    Max Jameson had been widowed five years before meeting Lizzie. His first wife had died of breast cancer. There had been no children.
    “I was mad,” he had said to Cat. “I was crazy. I wanted to be dead. I was dead, I was the walking dead. It was just a question of getting through the days and wondering why I bothered.”
    Friends had