Betrayal

Loraine St Clair

Description

Fast moving story of a rare immune disease and a woman’s struggle to effect a cure using the perpetrator’s own stem cells
Betrayal is a fast moving story of intrigue set in New South Wales, Australia . Initially the story moves off in Sydney with publishing exec Ariel Janadis reporting to her Immunologist Ian Chalmers for some test results. These two people are lovers. It becomes clear that Ariel is stricken with a rare immune system. She journeys to the mid north coast of NSW to rest and recuperate at Ian Chalmers holiday home on the beach at Lake Cathie. It appears as the story unfolds that she has contracted this rare disease from an old lover Jurgen Mueller. He is an international engineer who happens to be bi-sexual. He also runs a cocaine smuggling operation out of Thailand and his clients are elite Sydney siders.

Sujets

• Sídney
• Tailandia
• Thailand
• Immunology
• Sydney
• Fiction
• Thaïlande

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press AU
• Date de parution: 22 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781982296766
• Langue: English

Extrait

BETRAYAL







Loraine St Clair










Copyright © 2023 Loraine St Clair.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.



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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-9675-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9676-6 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/09/2023



Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve



Chapter One
The phone rang persistently, arousing Ariel from a deep sleep. Fumbling for the receiver, her fingers eventually grasped the handset. Bringing the device to her ear she attempted to speak-her voice a bare whisper.
“Hello.” Silence. “Who’s speaking?”
More silence. She repeated her question more assertively. Still no reply. Dropping the receiver onto the bed she moaned loudly in frustration at being disturbed. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she began distinguishing the bedroom fixtures. She made out 12:15am, 13 th September on her digital clock. A voice stirred her sluggish brain. It was calling her name. She wondered briefly if she was in the early stages of bipolar, but soon dismissed the notion as the voice assumed masculine tones.
Rolling over she looked at the telephone receiver lying a few inches from her head. The voice, although distant, had a familiar quality to it. She answered.
“Yes I’m still here.” Silence boomed. “It would be nice if you’d tell me your name!”
Ariel waited. Breathing deeply, she pulled together those threads of reality still available to her in a world shadowed by nightmarish realities. Seconds ticked by. She huddled beneath the blankets and closed her eyes in an attempt to seal off her outer life. The voice returned, this time with more resolve and extended vocabulary.
“Ariel, we have to talk. I....I’m....I don’t know where to start. I’m not good at this sort of thing as you know.”
The voice trailed off. Ariel felt her throat constrict. She threw the covers back as adrenalin began pulsing through her body. Thoughts that she was loath to acknowledge flooded her mind. The disembodied voice came gain.
“This is not the way I intended to explain the...aahh, situation. But I haven’t got the guts to tell you face to face.
Oh God...I wish it were different, Ariel. I wish I could be there with you, holding you in my arms.” He paused, his voice choked with emotion. “It’s a terrible mistake Ariel my darling and you must believe I never meant to hurt you.”
Initially she cried out, begging him to leave her alone. Caught between the cryptic meaning of his words and her own worst suspicions, she summoned the potency to respond.
“If you were here now consoling me Jurgen, I’d probably stab you in the back the way you’ve stabbed me. Only I’d use my best German steel knife and I’d stab you over and over again until the blood surged from your body-the way my life is surging from mine. Goodbye Jurgen and thanks for the death sentence!”
The pathology results had come back from the lab the day before. The hematologist contacted Ariel at the office asking her to call by his clinic after work. Ian Chalmers was a wealthy, middle-aged doctor with an art collection Christies would kill for. They exchanged warm greetings as he admitted her to his suite. Situated on the 20 th floor of one of Macquarie Street’s elite medical establishments, his clinic was bathed in the amber glow of the afternoon sun. It was warming in an otherwise austere clinical environment.
As she lowered herself into a leather lounge chair the aroma of quality hide enveloped her senses. Ian offered her a drink as he strode across the wide expanse of his office to the liquor cabinet. His voice reverberated off the alabaster walls. He inquired:
“Ariel, have you given any thought to our last conversation? I suggested that you take a long holiday. Go north perhaps, spend some time resting and catch up on some reading. Even do a little Yoga and meditation and learn to relax a bit.” His voice gave little away.
Ian Chalmers was a master of the non-alarmist school of medicine to emerge in the seventies. He continued his focus on the dry martinis he was concocting with every bit of precision a brain surgeon used in his work. Ariel stared at his back. An elegant grey linen jacket hung casually from his broad shoulders toned impeccably with a pair of beige slacks. His body was in excellent shape for his fifty-seven years. He worked at it! In fact, everything in Ian Chalmer’s life was worked at. They’d shared an off again/on again relationship for several years. She wondered uneasily at his overly casual manner. They both knew she was sick and he had the results back from pathology.
“Well, his body language doesn’t give much away” she mused.
“What’s he got up his sleeve though? Not a life threatening prognosis I hope!”
She replied enigmatically:
“No Ian, as a matter of fact I’ve barely had time to clean my teeth lately. Dear old Benson is still in the States, leaving me with two board meetings and an annual report to finalize by Friday. And the stockholder’s meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday–you can imagine the chaos?”
“Well, in view of the circumstances I thought the old bull might give you some time out. You haven’t been well for weeks now. The strain must be hell. Put your foot down Ariel. Tell him you’ve got a life too!”
She watched him saunter back across the room like a panther in Gucci loafers. He was disturbed! She smiled inwardly as he handed her a cocktail glass filled with icy gin and vermouth- complete with a green olive threaded neatly on a toothpick. How pedantic he was. They uttered “cheers” and drank.
The cushion hissed as he lowered himself onto the lounge, infusing the air again with erotic leather aroma. Taking another gulp of his martini before placing it on the granite table between them, he looked her squarely in the eyes and said:
“The news isn’t good Ariel. I’ve had Fielders double check the initial results. I’ve been over every aspect of the tests and I can’t find an error. I’m afraid you’ve got a rare blood disease. And when I say rare, believe me, it is!” He paused, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes, then continued. “It’s got the interesting name of `Macrophagesemia.’ I had to look up my medical books to get the prognosis–that’s how rare it is. I’ve only seen one other case in thirty years of practice. God Ariel, we knew from your symptoms you had something unusual but we weren’t quite prepared for anything this exotic!”
His attempt to make light of a grave situation was touching, but Ariel saw straight through the ruse. Her mind immediately engaged in processing all the negatives and his following sentence did little to ease her despair.
“Ariel, in everyday language, some of your white blood cells called macrophages have turned cannibal and are devouring your precious T-cells. The T-cells as you know, are paramount in defending the immune system against attack.”
Behind his glasses his eyes were bloodshot and watery. Ariel sensed this statement was more difficult for him to say than she first realized. She remained stoic, quietly sipping her martini. He went on:
“The best way to describe what’s happening inside your body Ariel is that your immune system is rapidly being destroyed.”
These words ran through endless corridors of her mind echoing the same message over and over:
“Your immune system is rapidly being destroyed.”
She emptied the remains of the martini down her throat in one large gulp. Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back, unwilling to display the waves of fear that surged through her. As she opened her mouth to speak Chalmers said loudly, almost in an attempt to silence her.
“I’m so sorry Ariel. It’s always challenging to tell a person they have a terminal disease, especially when that person is a woman I love very deeply. But I know you’d rather have the facts as they stand. Macrophagesemia is like AIDS in that they both stem from viral infections, only MPA is far more virulent. Medical science knows very little about these ‘retroviruses’ and no dr