Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online Page B

to Puget Sound, the sisters became anxious about their recovery. Though they didn’t doubt the fasting treatment or their doctor, they doubted themselves. It was a slow, sinking feeling that made them question whether they would be cured as quickly as they had hoped. Perhaps they suffered a greater illness than that of which they had been aware. Dr. Hazzard had given the women the name and telephone number of a nurse who could be called upon in the event they felt they needed more care.
    Dora took it upon herself to make the call. By then, Claire was too weak to do much of anything. Dora could see the treatment had weakened her sister to an extent that she had not expected. It frightened her a little. She dialed a number for a nurse named Nellie Sherman.
    “Nurse Sherman,” she began, her voice slightly quavering with hunger and worry, “Dr. Hazzard suggested you might come to care for us. My sister is very ill. I’m afraid we can’t manage on our own.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m too busy now to take on your case.”
    Dora Williamson implored her to come, if only for a day or two.
    “I’m certain we will be well soon, but for now we cannot manage.”
    The nurse said she had other affairs and couldn’t break away. She apologized again and suggested they seek out another nurse.
    “We know of no other. Dr. Hazzard said you would come. Please.”
    Nurse Sherman very reluctantly agreed. She would call on them, but not for any length of time.
    “Come at once,
please.
” Dora used both hands to lift the telephone receiver back to its hook on the wall. It weighed less than a pair of coddled eggs, yet it seemed beyond her strength. Her bony hands caught a shard of metal from the hook and she started to bleed. Blood polka-dotted the floor.
    “Oh, look at the dreadful mess I have made. Dr. Hazzard shall be completely disappointed in me,” she told her sister.
             
    B UENA VISTA neighbor Mary Fields couldn’t sleep. The noise coming from the Williamson girls’ apartment was not only disturbing in its volume, but its nature was even more unsettling. Though she could not make out words, Mary Fields clearly understood the message. The girls were groaning and moaning in obvious agony. Soft, then louder, soft again. Mary tried a pillow over her head to muffle the noise. It still did not abate it enough to give her the respite from the noise to fall asleep. Part of the problem was the way the two apartments had been arranged. Mary had a wall bed, which she raised into a closet out of view during the day. The closet wall, where Mary’s head would rest when she lay down, separated the head of Dora’s bed in her apartment.
    The Buena Vista was modern, but it was not soundproof. The tenants in the apartment below announced the status of their marriage through the ceiling, through the floorboards above. An air shaft separated Mrs. Fields’s room from the Williamsons’ apartment, and her hall window faced the English ladies’ kitchen. With such an arrangement it was natural that there would be some spilling over of sound. At first she could hear the women talk, their voices childlike in excitement. Other times talk overlapped as if three or more were carrying on in the apartment.
    But as the weeks went by, it was the nightly noises that alarmed her.
    “It seemed as though somebody was in great distress,” she said later.
    The change in sisters’ physical appearance was so sudden, it jarred a number of the residents at the Buena Vista. Claire and Dora’s weight had dropped shockingly so. Mrs. Fields estimated that, though clothing obscured their figures somewhat, Dora likely weighed about one hundred pounds and her sister Claire, slightly more robust, weighed in the low one-twenties. As the days and weeks passed they shed their weight, pound by pound, day after day, and began to take on a hideous appearance. Mrs. Fields began to avoid them. Deep, dark lines etched the area around their mouths; their rheumy eyes