Read Online Claire's Head by Catherine Bush - Free Book Online Page B

anyone else have any theories about what had happened to her sister? She was having trouble with her migraines, Claire said. She sensed that this was not what Detective Bird was after. She also sensed that he was busy, Rachel was one among a crowd of missing people out there.
    Claire tried calling the various editors in New York, whosebusiness cards she’d brought home with her. None had heard from Rachel in the last few months. She tried again to reach the neurologist, Dr. Pierre L’Aube of the Montreal Neurological Institute, whose phone line, whenever she attempted to call, rang busy in an irritatingly old-fashioned way. After a few more busy signals, she finally reached Dr. L’Aube’s receptionist. A lot of journalists call, the receptionist said. Not called, Claire reiterated, came in person. In March. And hasn’t been seen since. Could she check with the doctor? Consult his appointment book? Could she please ask the doctor to call Claire? This was Thursday morning; she heard nothing back all day. Friday the doctor’s office was closed. Over the weekend, Claire went in to work. On Monday, she tried the doctor again. More busy signals. Trying to reach the doctor by phone was getting her nowhere.
    Exasperated, she called Stefan at the lab. “What am I supposed to do?”
    â€œYou could do nothing. You could wait. Keep calling.”
    â€œWhat am I obliged to do, under the circumstances?”
    â€œOr you could go to Montreal.”
    â€œMaybe I should go to Montreal.”
    She walked through the warren of desks and down the hall to Charlie Gorjup’s windowed office. He beckoned her in. The window looked west, out over the intersection of Yonge and Dundas, the southeast corner penned in by billboards, awaiting redevelopment; on the southwest corner loomed the white bulk of the Eaton Centre. She asked him if she could take a day off. Headache? Not today, Charlie, I’m hoping to take the day after tomorrow. What’s up? She might have explained that she hadsomething else to map, and in some fashion Charlie would have understood this. Without meeting his gaze, overcome all at once by a self-consciousness that bordered on shame, she told him that her sister seemed to be missing. Charlie knew her parents were dead and how they’d died. Neither of them made the obvious joke about what extraordinary bad luck it was for another family member to have vanished. Go, Charlie said, waving his hand. Take the time you need. Hey, Claire, most missing people show up.
    She called Stefan back and told him what she was planning. She’d take the train. She booked herself a room overnight in the Hotel du Parc. The next day, Tuesday, after work, she caught a cab to Union Station and boarded the five o’clock express.
    Some years earlier, shortly after she moved to New York, Rachel had sent Claire a copy of the McGill Pain Questionnaire, the first codified attempt to give patients a tool to describe their pain. Professor Ronald Melzack of McGill University in Montreal had formulated the famous questionnaire, using words gathered from pain sufferers themselves. (Is it flickering, quivering, pulsing?) Possibly Rachel had gone to Montreal to track down Ronald Melzack, although surely she didn’t need new ways to measure her pain, only to be released from it. Perhaps writing an article had been a ploy to get herself seen by someone at the renowned Neurological Institute, where doctors would understand something of the migraineur’s dilemma, the invisibility of the pain, how few obvious traces it left, how difficult it was to diagnose or describe.
    Claire tossed her bag into the overhead rack and settled herself into a seat by the south-facing window. She’d bought herself a notebook, blank as yet, and slipped a photograph of Rachel inside the cover, Rachel laughing – her long face, the sheen of her dark hair. She carried other versions of Rachel with her, too, visions