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.”
