burned the back of her throat. Someone was standing over her, holding a bottle under her nose and she turned, raising her hand at the same time to bat it away.
‘Hey, take it easy. You’re OK. It’s just smelling salts.’
She blinked and looked back into the gentle eyes of the Italian doctor.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘You passed out.’
Liv tried to get up but he laid a hand on her shoulder and firmly eased her back down. ‘You should stay here for a while, get some rest. I’ve put you on a saline drip to get some fluids into you and there’s some Perfalgan in there too to get your temperature down: you were up at forty degrees – not good. I also took the liberty of stealing a little blood.’ He pointed at a small plaster in the crook of her arm.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Giorgio Giambanco – hell of a mouthful, no? You can call me George if you like. What’s yours?’
‘Liv – Adamsen,’ she added, defaulting to formality in the face of a medical professional.
‘OK, Miss Adamsen, talk me through your fainting episode, was it sudden or did it come on gradually?’
‘It was the heat I think. I started to feel feverish so I headed inside.’
He tilted her head up, checking the glands in her neck with his fingertips. ‘Any nausea?’
‘Yes, a little, and the ground felt like it was moving. I started getting tunnel vision. There was a smell too, like lemons.’
He frowned, checking her blood-pressure readings from a cuff. ‘When did you notice the smell?’
‘When I was still outside, though it was stronger inside the building. In fact I can still smell it.’
He was about to respond when one of the new people stepped into the room and placed a small tray on the countertop. It contained two small vials filled with blood and a piece of paper with various results written on it by hand. The new doctor shot her a smile that was hard to read then was gone. George ripped the Velcro of the pressure cuff from her arm. ‘Sounds like heat exhaustion,’ he said, turning to the blood results and picking up the piece of paper. ‘You need to rehydrate and take it easy. No more demolition work in the midday sun for you.’ He studied the results and frowned. ‘You said you experienced nausea?’ He looked up at her in a way that made her feel vaguely nervous.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you vomited at all?’
She shook her head.
‘And you said you smelt the lemons while you were still outside the building.’
‘Yes, I can still smell them.’
‘And does the smell also make you feel a little sick?’
‘A little.’ She felt panicky. ‘What is it? Am I having a brain haemorrhage or something? I read somewhere that people smell things before having a stroke.’
‘No, no – it’s nothing like that. What you’re smelling is just some disinfectant we brought with us that they’re now using to swab out the canteen. It’s got some lemon scent in it, not much – I can’t really smell it at all. But you smelled it way off when you were still outside the building.’
Liv’s heart continued to race at the prospect of whatever was wrong with her.
‘There are many things that can cause hyperosmia,’ he said in a gentle way that wasn’t helping. ‘That's just a fancy word for an enhanced sense of smell. And your blood tests confirm that the reason for yours is very common.’
Liv relaxed a fraction. At least whatever she had wasn’t exotic and therefore more likely to be treatable. ‘What do I have?’
He smiled and the skin crinkled around his eyes. ‘It’s not so much what you have as what you’re going to have. You’re pregnant, Miss Adamsen. You’re going to have a baby.’
VI
And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?
Daniel 12:8
88
Shepherd parked the Durango in long-term parking and headed for the ticket office.
Charlotte/Douglas International Airport was the usual cavernous barn of a building and was in total chaos when Shepherd stepped through the door. There were long queues snaking away from every ticket desk and the whole building vibrated with noise and stress. A lot of it was coming from the large crowds of people gathered round the TV sets dotted around the waiting lounges and Shepherd felt sick when he saw what was on them.
It was the countdown Shepherd had seen in Douglas’s cabin, the same one that was installed on