Chapter 1
One may say that friendship
is an integral and important part of a person's life. The existence
of a friend to confide in and to share secrets with, someone that
accepts us as we are and make us feel loved is something most people
love, cherish, sometimes take for granted, but are always aware of
its significance. Most people, but not all. Such is the case of
Catherine Montenegro. A bright young woman, intelligent, very pretty
and cold as a fish. She is of the opinion that friends, friendship or
the spending of “quality time” with other people when not
discussing topics that expands the human mind in an efficient and
academic way is just not worth it. Although her fellow classmates and
people in her age group always say that these years are crucial to
finding themselves through experimenting, it wasn't the sort of
experimenting she was willing to participate in. And she was sure
that those were the only experiments they were conducting. Therefore,
as every young, ambitious and already very successful woman with her
goals and head screwed on the right way would do she ignored them.
All of them, she couldn't bother.
It was a dark, grizzly
Tuesday in late November, zero hours of sunlight, Catherine checked
before leaving the house eight hours earlier. She was sitting on the
city bus heading back home to the more suburban and wealthier part of
town where her aunt and legal guardian owned her stylish and modern
four bedrooms, four bathrooms (two of those with jacuzzi bathtub and
en-suite), centre-isle kitchen, fully finished basement, large
backyard and a two-car garage house. Catherine was a single child,
her parents died in a car accident on their way back from Banff. They
left Catherine with said aunt for a two week romantic retreat in a
desperate attempt to safe their failing marriage after both
participated in extra marital activities. Dr. John Montenegro and
Prof. Camilla Montenegro, successful as they were, weren't capable of
keeping their professional lives separate from their private lives,
Consequently, Dr. Montenegro found himself helpless in the arms and
voluptuous bosom of the head of the paediatric department, whereas
Prof. Montenegro found the fire and stamina of a grad intern
irresistible. The unhappy and guilt ridden couple booked a cozy
chalet hidden in the heart of the Rocky Mountain winter wonderland to
give themselves time and opportunity to “figure things out”. On
the day of their departure they drove their rented car back to the
rental lot when the doctor lost control on an icy road, plunging
their midnight blue Mercedes into a creek, killing both.
That was 15 years ago.
Catherine is now 25, for anyone who asks her if she still remembers
her parents, she gives a slight nod of the head with eyes turned to
the floor. According to societal protocol that is what one is
supposed to do when asked personal questions about deceased family
members. It doesn't matter if the person asking is out of line or not
close enough to the surviving relative to ask such questions,
Catherine has ascertained that in such delicate manners the right for
privacy is nullified. Catherine also noticed that no one is actually
interested in the truth. When faced by death, the dying or the fact
that we all die, people seek comfort in the surreal, sometimes even
in the absurd to make sense of the unshakable and inexplicable truth
of the conclusion of life as we know it. Catherine did not really
care. Her knowledge was based in scientific facts. Matters of the
here and now. Her parents lived, gave her life, raised her until
their death and made sure that she was cared for in case of the
unforeseeable. She was then raised by another very successful
offspring of the Montenegro clan, Dr. Joan Hamill, once married, once
divorced and sister of the deceased Dr. Montenegro. Catherine's
education was of the finest. It was rooted in elementary physics and
chemistry with her favourite subject being biology. The top of every
class she ever took (excluding the nonsensical requirement of
physical education), she was motivated, supported and pointed in the
right direction, the path of a great and bright future as an academic
genius. In Catherine's view her parents were fine people, who did
their best, giving her the genetic foundation of great intelligence
and success and for acquiring legal guardianship from another great
mind that understands and values the importance of nurturing
intelligence.
With her tote stuffed to
the brim with books, Catherine stepped off at her usual bus stop at
the corner of Morningside Dr. and Aspen Lane Park and slowly walked
through the remaining leafs still stuck to the wet sidewalks that the
wind has not yet blown away. It was a quarter past three o'clock and
it was almost as pitch dark as late at night. Thankfully the street
lights started to illuminate the street with their warm orange glow
and the automatically timed Christmas lights began to pop up along
the familiar strip of Aspen Lane Park, as Catherine took this walk
for the last time.
“I'm here!” Catherine
called through the empty house, with the echo coming back hollow and
cold.
“In the kitchen!” came
the equally hollow and cold reply from the back of the main floor.
“How was your appointment? And the Library?” Joan asks as she saw
her niece approach. She noticed a slight slouch in her walk and a
defeated look on her face.
“Fine. Kind of pointless,
since I won't be going back. The library was not bad. Unfortunately,
they still haven't caught up with time yet. Not enough outlets for
laptops, nor seating in general and they lost the books I put on hold
while having lunch in the nearby plaza. Of course, that was my
fault”, Catherine could feel her blood pressure rising again at the
stupidity she had to endure from the sleepy looking librarian before
embarking on the search for her books by herself.
“At least you ate, we have
a bit of a drive ahead of us.”
“uhm.”
Dr. Joan Hamill, tired of
the city life and exhausted from emergency room shifts and multiple
stabbings and shooting victims, took the advice of an old friend of
hers and decided to join forces with her in a small town two hours
north of the hustling and bustling city she called home all her life.
St. Micheal’s Memorial Hospital is in the picturesque town of
Woodbridge. Catherine claimed it is nothing more than a village. At
the beginning of the year Joan ran into an old friend from her
undergraduate years, at a conference held in the hospital she worked
in and found out that this friend, Patricia Langley, was director of
internal affairs at said St. Micheal's Memorial Hospital in
Woodbridge. Not long after their reunion Patricia was informed of an
impending opening at the hospital in their family planning unit. Joan
had shared her grief of lack of job satisfaction and was encouraged
to apply for the position, if she was serious about starting a new
life. Obtaining the position was the easy part considering the
difficulty Joan faced the day she wanted to break the news to
Catherine. Catherine was hopeful of obtaining a part-time position in
the lab in the hospital and had volunteered many hours in order to
impress anyone and everyone just to obtain some field experience,
preferably in exchange for money. However, these new plans of Joan's
went against all that Catherine was hoping for. One may wonder why a
woman of 25 years of age cannot just move out and start her own life.
Catherine was financially dependent on her aunt, since the
intelligence and foresight of her parents did not extend to their
financial matters. Even after the house the Montenegro family owned
was stripped and sold for all it was worth, there was no money left
to invest in a long lasting trust fund for Catherine. The little bit
money that her parents began to put aside for her educational
endeavours ran dry long ago, as Joan promised her brother before his
death that she would make sure that her little niece received the
best that money could get. Furthermore, having suffered an infected
and consequently ruptured appendix a bit over two years ago resulted
in Catherine missing her final exams and the following two semesters
due to complications during her recovery. She was able to obtain an
aegrotat standing for the semester she attended classes; however, the
time was lost and she missed her seamless transition from
undergraduate to graduate studies. Dealing with such a setback is
more difficult for some people than for others. For Catherine it was
a tragedy and caused her to experience extreme anxiety, lack of
appetite, insomnia and made the life for everyone around her a
complete hell on earth. Based on a preliminary psychological
evaluation she was not really a threat to herself in the sense of
accomplishing severe and permanent damage, but her behaviour with its
main goal being to catch up with the rest of her generation, at least
the intelligent part that was able to continue their studies without
any unnecessary interruptions, was alarming.
Joan was singing along with
the radio loudly as the city, the lights and the noise smoothly
transitioned into picturesque landscapes of Victorian style houses,
four-way stop signs and the first traces of snow that actually stayed
on the ground.
“Jingle bells, jingle
bells, jingle bells rock, jingle bells pop and jingle bells knock...”
she belched out as loud as she could, while Catherine rolled her eyes
in sheer agony and wondered if the stray cat she just saw was about
to walk backwards as even it could hear the horrific sounds Joan
called “singing”.
“Please, Joan, for the
love of God! If you sing along, please listen to the lyrics and try
to stay on key, unless you are declaring psychological war on me. I'm
begging you, please. And besides, who plays Christmas songs in
November?” Catherine was sure this was only the first of many
small, yet overpowering differences between city and country life.
Before too long she would find her overenthusiastic and slightly
mid-life crisis plagued aunt in the kitchen, making apple sauce from
scratch while watching the Martha Stewart channel.
“Relax and who cares if
the words don't match the song, it's fun. You know, you can let down
your hair a bit, too. This is the country, things move slower here.
People still appreciate life and nature and all its beauty and not
just their extra venti soy mocha late. Which reminds me, have you
heard from that one girl that's supposed to be attending school at
the Woodbridge campus?”
“I like my hair in a bun,
it keeps it out of my face. And what girl are you talking about?”
“The one from your
psychology class? The one with the book, the same one you had? You
know?” Joan knew she was testing Catherine's patience with each
additional question, but she hadn't given up hope yet that one day
her niece would actually make a real friend.
“Everyone in that class
has the same textbook, so that doesn't really narrow it down. If you
are referring to the fine arts student, who happened to have the same
copy of “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, her name is Natalie. Yes,
she will continue her graduate work at the Woodbridge campus.”
“Excellent! Maybe you can
get a coffee together and talk about art and literature. You have so
much in common.”
“Sure and Christmas comes
in November here in Woodbridge.”
