Death of Connor Sanderson: Chap 1:Part 1

London, 1910. Abraham Stoker’s Dracula had made barely a ripple in the pool of human consciousness and it would be another 12 years before Nosferatu breathes life into a vampire on the big screen.

Chapter One: Part 1
Doctor Connor Sanderson rolled over in his trestle bed, hearing the creaking beneath his weight and not knowing for certain if it were the juddering of the bedsprings...or his bones, grating through his skull. It seemed louder than usual. The sweat stained padding of his cot fell far short of comfortable. The meager hospital accommodation encouraged a body to keep moving until exhaustion was complete.

Settling his shoulder blades back onto the sagging mattress, he peeled his eyelids back and stared at the mustard colored ceiling. The cracks decorating it appeared to have laid down a labyrinth of new shoots overnight. They reminded him of a family tree, and he had always thought of himself as a ripe plum hanging on the thickest branch. But this morning he felt drained, and more fitting to a prune. I feel so lethargic, what the hell is wrong with me?

The thought percolated. A memory danced around the edges of his tired brain, but the more he stretched out weary fingers to snatch at it, the faster it raced away. His mother’s adage, along with a sepia-tinted picture of her delicate features, came to mind, “Memories are like love...stop looking and they’ll come find you.” Complete rubbish, but hell, what else have I got?

Connor heaved a sigh and trapped the breath inside...along with the word, “Ouch!”

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed and moving awkwardly to sitting, he lifted his lawn nightshirt and craned a stiff neck to peer down the length of his hard, ridged abdomen. Everything looked normal; an edifice of boulders covered in the rough velvety texture of peach-toned skin...but the process of breathing had that pressure inside, as though his lungs were full already and ready to burst.

T.B., pleurisy, pneumonia? His speculation was tempered with the certainty that the symptoms did not fit the bill. I can't become ill now, I'm just getting somewhere with Sir John...he has just noticed me.

Planting his feet hip width apart, he put his palms on his knees and straightened his spine. Closing his eyes, he ran over the familiar territory of his body, attending to the tension in every muscle, in an inventory of how he felt. Everything feels...unusual.

Connor laughed gently and shook his head. Get a grip. What did you expect? He had just worked sixteen hours straight, and had spent the remainder of the night on a cot that only allowed sleep when he was too tired to think anymore. By the time night had fallen and he had rolled onto the down-filled mattress his thigh muscles had ached as though he had been wading through molasses, and his bones were weighted with rods of iron.

The Royal Eye Hospital in London’s St George's Circle had only been a teaching hospital for four years and competition was fierce. Connor would be twenty five next birthday and was too busy operating on eyeballs to gaze into any with romantic intent, but, he at least had a promising career. Home and hearth will come later. I’m not losing my place on the team, not now.

Opening his eyes, he manipulated his neck in a hard clasp, digging in to ease tight muscle as he stretched out his back and rose to his feet. Suddenly six-foot and three-inches seemed far too lofty a height for the pumping station of his heart to manage. Flecks of burning ash, like white-hot wisps dancing around a bonfire, clustered in front of his eyes.

He sat down again...fast.

“Damn. Low blood pressure? Vertigo? What on earth...?” Connor dragged his hands down over his tight face, freezing as his fingertips faltered over a hardened network of capillaries under his skin.

Confusion drove him towards the mirror for a closer inspection. Burying his fingernails into fists, he pushed himself up from the bed with care this time. He moved forward, testing the ground as though he feared his world would drop way from under him.

Nothing behaved as it should, and he felt like a paraplegic rediscovering the use of a forgotten limb. He enjoyed the spike of satisfaction at having made it when his hands folded over the pitted enamel rim of the small porcelain sink.

He looked into the mirror, and finding a clean spot on the tarnished silver-foil coated surface trapped between two sheets of glass was a challenge.

The early dawn of another gray day in London struggled to cast daylight into the room through the rippled, hand-crafted panes in the window. Finally Connor got the angle right, and there were enough beams reflected in the mirror for his eyes to gather them, and build an image.

Turning his cheek to one side and then the other, the silver threads under his skin taunted him as they etched and faded as he moved. Connor leaned forward and, stretching his cheeks in a ghoul-like expression, peered hard into his rattled gaze. Unnerved by the brittle jet black glitter of anxiety in his wide pupils, a cold sweat blossomed on his clammy skin.

“Are they paler?” he muttered, feeling foolish as the thoughts escaped his mouth.

Mr Banks, the guy with the haemorrhage inside his eyeball...the blood clot darkened his eye-color to navy, tinting the lens. Connor had also seen pigmentary glaucoma. That disease made eyes appear lighter...but the onset would not be this fast.

He stared into his irises, assessing their startling light-blue color, with striking cobalt rims, and wondered aloud, “Are they lighter?”

His black hair lay in a disheveled feathered edge that cut across his forehead, and his chin wore a covering of dark stubble that needed the urgent attention of a cut-throat razor if he was going to make it to Sir John Creedy’s study by seven a.m., and the longer he stared at his tight, blank features the more ridiculous he felt.

“For goodness’ sake man, pull yourself together.”

Heaving a sigh that made his ribcage ache, he stood tall and pulled his nightshirt over his head, and a puzzled frown settled his black hair lower on his brow as he noticed a greasy brown stain smeared over his chest and shoulders.

Striking a match to light a candle, Connor held it aloft and rubbed at the space below his clavicle with a wet finger. A cleaner patch confirmed it was not a shadow. “What in God’s name?” Confusion chilled his spine as the hole in his memory rattled like bones in the closet. What happened last night?