Chapter 6
Six
I’d made reservations at one of the poshest restaurants in Edinburgh for Iain and his family.
But while they spent their lunch hour there, I spent mine getting several vials of blood drawn from an efficient nurse before I met with Dr. Keller to discuss next steps.
I listened politely as he talked about “making me comfortable” and how I should get my affairs in order and perhaps start meeting with an end-of-life counselor.
But when he asked if I had any questions, I pushed past my general meekness to reply, “How long can I go without doing any of this?”
“Any of this?” the doctor repeated, his brow lowering with confusion.
“You know … the bloodwork, the check-ins. The ‘comfort’ measures.” I made air quotes around comfort since we both knew that word was merely a euphemism for keeping me so drugged up I didn’t mind or register my life coming to an end.
“I’d like to travel to my father’s homeland in New Zealand. And then go other places and see things and …” I trailed off. I definitely didn’t need to tell Dr. Keller about my “finally have sex” bucket list goal.
Instead, I decided out loud, “The only drug I want is something to help me keep going until I can’t anymore.”
The doctor tilted his head thoughtfully. “Well, in that case …”
A short while later, I walked out of the doctor’s office with a low-dose starter cocktail of a new narcolepsy drug, an anti-depressant, and a medication usually prescribed for people with ADHD. Turns out there wasn’t one cure-all drug for the toll cancer took on your body.
“See how you do with side effects, and we’ll revisit in a week,” Dr. Keller told me.
So, I was back in that awkward dance where I had to deal with the side effects of the drugs I had to take to treat the side effects of the disease ravaging my body. Well, dying beggars can’t be living choosers.
I bought a Vimto fruit soda at the first Doner Kebab stand I came across and swigged the three pills down without a second thought.
And maybe it was just the placebo effect, but as I made my way back into the AlgoFortune offices, I was already beginning to feel stronger, and strangely light-footed—as if nothing was wrong with me.
An even better feeling came over me as I returned to my square fishbowl outer office. Iain’s door was open. That meant he’d already left for his meeting with the GUI team, and I wouldn’t have to look at his handsome but insanely inconsiderate face for the rest of the afternoon.
As usual, I had plenty to do—the typical day-to-day stuff, plus Iain had sent me several AlgoFortune 4.
0. related assignments: coordinating the teams that would have to come together to make a new product launch possible, sending the finalized “new upgrades” list over to PR—those and several other tasks kept me busy well past my usual three o’clock quitting time.
Not to mention, I’d sent Linda in HR the job description for my position two days ago, and now there were already nearly 100 resumes for me to look over.
It turned out not to matter whether my cruel boss was there or not.
By the time he returned, I was fully engrossed in my work.
I barely murmured a hello when he walked past my desk and into his office, closing the door behind him.
The good news was that the drugs seemed to be giving me a much-needed energy boost. I easily stayed on task without having to battle the usual end-of-day fatigue.
The bad news? I’d developed a mild headache by 3:00 P.M.
My fellow co-workers had already begun scurrying out of the office, taking advantage of Iain’s closed door to start our long weekend early.
With the headache radiating in the back of my head, I thought about heading out, too.
But then instead of IM’ing Iain to say I was leaving for the day, I decided to push through.
I was determined to review the first wave of resumes, even if it took hours—which it did.
Have to say, I was mildly amused by how many people had applied for the job I found so onerous.
I’d only made it through, like, fifteen minutes of that Steve Jobs movie, starring Michael Fassbender because it had been too triggering.
But apparently, there were a ton of people out there who were eager for the opportunity to assist a notoriously difficult financial software genius.
Despite the high number of applications, it was a fairly straightforward cull. After three years, I had Iain’s list of standards memorized, and in the end, only six of the applicants met them.
So, I got the job done, but it took a while—well past 9:00 P.M. By the time I sent those six resumes on to Linda in HR, she and everyone else in the office had already knocked off for the long weekend.
Yet I could still hear Iain click-clacking away in his office. That guy was a beast when it came to his work. But I was more than ready to throw in the towel for the day.
My headache had gone from mild to booming, blurring my vision so bad, I had to yank off my glasses along with my hairband and ponytail holder to relieve all the pressure points on my head.
That worked … kind of. The headache immediately began to subside.
But soon after, my body became suffused in a heat so volcanic, I could feel myself visibly sweating.
Not only that, but my skin had begun to tingle with an all-over ache. Crap! Fever and body aches could only mean one thing: I was sick.
As I’d discovered during my first tango with the L-word, it came with all sorts of lovely and debilitating types of pneumonia and infections …
There would be no taking the train home today. After barely managing to send Iain an IM to let him know I was heading out, I decided to use some of my precious travel funds for a rideshare.
I grabbed my phone and slowly rose from my chair—only to immediately fall back into it.
My phone landed face down on the carpet, and I didn’t even have enough strength to reach for it.
I was suddenly too weak to stand, and my entire body was taken over by a tingling, completely debilitating ache. What the …?
This sickness was different from before, I realized.
The fever and body aches had gone from bad to unbearable in a matter of seconds.
I stripped today’s purple cardigan off, hoping to cool down.
But that hardly made a dent in my discomfort.
My silk blouse felt like chain mail on my feverish skin.
In a fit of sheer desperation, I took my blouse off, too.
Then my pencil skirt. But even my remaining cotton camisole and panties felt like too much in the burning heat of this fever.
My entire body tingling, I ended up tugging off my underwear.
The part of my brain that wasn’t completely in thrall to the fever was deeply distressed that I’d removed my clothing with my boss only a few feet away on the other side of a closed door.
My actions were shocking and highly inappropriate.
But I honestly felt like I’d die right there in my swivel chair if I didn’t get out of my restrictive clothes immediately.
And that was when things took a turn for the truly bizarre. As soon as I removed my underpants, a strange, acrid smell hit the room. It was an odor unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. Sharp and pungent and completely overpowering.
As soon as it arrived, it was as if there was nothing else in the room. All I could feel, see, hear, or smell was the strong scent, which was …
I audibly sniffed. Curious but not necessarily unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all, actually.
My nostrils flared in and out, taking more of it in on some primal instinct. And then I was assaulted by a new sensation …
One I’d almost never had outside my bedroom when I felt lonely in my sad 25-year-old virgin bed. I looked down slowly to find my naked sex visibly clenching in and out. Like an animal gasping for air.
Oh, my God, what was happening to me?
Before I could even register what I was seeing, my hand reached down seemingly of its own accord to touch my wildly clenching sex.
I was soaking wet. Like, wetter than I’d ever been in my life.
To the point that I could actually feel the hot sticky arousal on my vaginal mound.
I started rubbing myself, first in slow circles, then in hard, desperate plunges.
But my ministrations brought no relief, in fact, they only seemed to make things worse.
The neatly trimmed curls atop my sex now glistened with my arousal.
It was as if the more I touched myself, the more my core wept.
Not enough … the words dropped into my head with an ominous thunk. Your touch isn’t enough—
A door clicked in the distance, and suddenly the sound came back on in the room.
Then Iain … oh God, my boss, Iain appeared in his office doorway.