Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online Page A

other.
    And so the sisters played a waiting game. Each day they would ask each other if that would be the day they would be cured of their maladies. The wall supporting the uterus would strengthen, the irritated stomach would be soothed, its lining smooth and fresh, and strength overall would take the place of weakness.
    Each day, after the broth, after their enemas, they would play the game.
    “Though we feel weak, we are getting better,” Dora confided to Claire one afternoon. “I notice I am getting cleaner.”
    “I am, too,” Claire answered, managing a smile.
    Dora could never figure out quite when the moment came, but at some point during the early days at the Buena Vista she developed a stronger feeling of belief in the treatment than she had at first. The early days of the treatment had brought her a weariness, but also a kind of euphoria unknown to her. The regimen was making sense to her in a way she could not fully understand.
    “I do believe we are better now, even with the fast just begun, than we were when we first arrived in Seattle,” she told Claire.
    Claire, who had always been partial to the treatment, far more so than her sister, concurred. Dora’s acceptance served to fuel her desire to make a go of the treatment. She wanted to see it to the end. To achieve unsurpassed health.
    “I believe you are right,” Claire answered.
    Letters written to friends and family members highlighted their good health. None, however, detailed exactly what treatment they had turned their bodies over to, or under whose care they had placed themselves.
    The Williamsons decided their perfect health would be their testament to Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard’s beautiful treatment.
    Almost from the first week at Buena Vista, something seemed amiss. Even though neither sister had fainted once in their lives, fainting became so common around the Buena Vista that neither seemed to give it a second thought. Dora heard her sister fall to the floor in the kitchen one afternoon, but she didn’t feel well enough to get up to look after her.
    Many came to the Buena Vista to see the sisters during their treatment. All were sent by Linda Hazzard. A young nurse named Sarah Robinson assisted briefly, though it was not the kind of work to her liking and when she found a good excuse, she departed for another job. Another visitor, a more frequent one, was a personal friend of Linda Hazzard’s—a young, amiable fellow named James Watson Webb. Webb always arrived with stacks of books on Spiritualism and Theosophy in tow. He watched as Dora tottered on the brink of consciousness while he read select passages aloud to her. Claire seemed to sleep most of her days away.
    “Look how much better I am,” Dora said one time as she stood up to walk to greet Webb. “I can walk! I can walk!”
    The instant she stepped forward in her joy of getting better, she keeled over and fell flatly against the hardwood floor.
    Over time, more than the exercise, more than the scant nourishment of the fast, the internal bath became the most taxing ordeal. The sisters were required to take six quarts of warm water after stripping down to their chemises and doubling up in what the doctor termed the “knee chest” position.
    “Knee chest, ladies! Knee chest!”
    At the beginning of the fast, the internal bath took just under a half hour. As the days passed the duration increased. One hour. Two hours. Three hours.
All day?
The enemas were a painful blur. Dora even fainted in the midst of one. After that, canvas yardage was stretched over the rim of the bathtub in a hammock which allowed the sisters to continue even when supporting their own weight knee chest style was too difficult.
    Dr. Hazzard insisted that without the aid of the internal bath they would not achieve their desired results.
    “We must eliminate the poisons, dear girls!”
             
    A S THE spring weather drenched the muddy roads of Seattle, sending coffee-colored water roaring down