The Italian School for Assassins: Peril. Passion. Pasta.

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Ooh! Have you ever wanted to go to assassin school for your birthday?

Me neither. Luckily, Octavia (“V”) Ling is crazy enough to do it for you.

Italian Assassins cover POD front-FINAL

When Octavia “V” Ling spots the ad for The Italian School for Assassins, she figures that it sounds like a crazy workout, better than pole dancing, and exactly the kind of nuttiness she craves for a birthday that ends in a zero.
Except, when V lands in Florence, the other assassin students seem…awfully serious about this whole execution thing. As in, V’s roommate tells her, “If I catch you breaking into my locked weapons cache, I will eat you.” And she ain’t joking.
Plus the orientation consists of the students attacking each other.
So who can blame V for sneaking out for a drink with a hot young Italian guy? The only problem is, V wakes up the in morning with a teeny hangover and a huge problem: someone killed her Scary White Female roommate. And the rest of the school kind of blames V.
Uh oh.

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Sneak preview follows.

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Prologue

My roommate Rebecca’s alarm kept ringing.
Not just any alarm, but a recording of “Für Elise.”
Now, I like Beethoven as much as the next woman, but not at 4:30 a.m. Italian time, or any time, for that matter. I dragged my pillow over my head, rumpling my bird nest hair more than I managed to cover up my ears. It was a very thin pillow, though. Do Italians not like pillows as much as Canadians do, or is crappy bedding part of the preparation to become an assassin?
In case I forgot to mention it, I’m training to become an assassin. In Florence, Italy. For fun, not for serious.
Anyway, the bit of cotton batting hardly blocked out the tinny keyboard recording going nu-nu-Nu-nu-Nu-nu-nuuu…
I cleared my throat.
It kept playing.
“Rebecca,” I rasped. My temples ached. While everyone else had crashed last night, worn out from all the assassin drills, I’d snuck into Florence proper and discovered a bottle of red wine with my name on it.
Nu-nu-Nu-nu-Nuu-nu-nuuu…
I didn’t want to fight with my roommie. First of all, she’s tall, blonde, and fearsome, kind of like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, only more humourless. Rebecca told me that if she caught me breaking into her locked weapons cache, she would eat me. I was like, “Um, you mean in a gay way? I don’t actually play for that team.” And then she hissed. Yes, actually hissed. From Uma to African rock python in 2.2 seconds.
I did ask Mr. Anderson if I could switch rooms, but he just stared at me with his dead grey eyes. And considering that he’s ex-IRA, ex-CIA, and ex-actly as scary as Rebecca of Murderbrook Farm, if not more so, I just chirped, “Never mind! It’s fine!” and vowed to spend as little time in my room as possible.
I don’t know what I was expecting from assassin school. I guess I had it all wrong because it was in Italy. You know, the country shaped like a boot? I thought they made everything fun here. Well, not Mussolini, but fashion, art, language, opera, and foooooooood. And wine. I can vouch for last night’s wine. Not to mention the hot young Italian dude who drank it with me.
But you know, even Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t just stay in Rome and eat for a year. She did spiritual stuff in India, and—what was she doing in Bali again? Besides humping the real-life version of Javier Bardem? Anyway, I decided I should have a mission for my fortieth birthday. Not just “Hey, let’s go downtown and pay strippers for a lap dance”—not that there’s anything wrong with that, and my best friend, Jen, did exactly that for hers—but it’s predictable, you know? Happy fortieth, do something fake naughty like ogle naked men with Day-Glo penises. Happy 18th, drink. Happy 65th, retire (or whatever it is you do when you’re 65).
So when I saw the little online ad for a school for assassins in Florence, I was like, Wassup? That sounds like a crazy workout, better than pole dancing, and exactly the kind of nuttiness I need for a birthday that ends in a zero.
So maybe it’s not so surprising that I had the teeniest bit of a hangover on Day 2. And I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the workouts, especially since Psycho Rebecca got her alarm mindlessly playing “Für Elise” over and over and over, in the middle of the night. Oh, sorry. The pre-dawn, was what she called it. “I arise at pre-dawn, in order to accomplish my exercises,” she said last night, staring down her nose at me. The woman had to be six feet tall in sneakers.
“Cool,” I lied. What else was I going to say, even though I’d rather stay out until dawn instead of rise and shine it?
At this moment in time, I’d gotten three hours of sleep. You know what Zyang Ziyi says is the best thing for skin? Not cream that’s you couldn’t afford if you sold your left kidney. It’s sleep. And if you saw her radiant skin in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you’d be hitting the sheets pronto.
So that was what finally made me sit up in bed. If Rebecca the Directa (I know that makes no sense. I’m out of jokes. It’s 4:39 in the morning! I’m going bananas from Beethoven!) got up to exercise before shutting off her alarm, then I’d have to do it for her.
Yep, I’m that kind of woman. Don’t mess with me.
Even in the middle of the night, thanks to the moonlight and possibly an outside porch light, I could make out the black outline lump of her blankets, and her little bedside table only had a few objects on it, one of which must be her phone or her alarm. Most people don’t use travel alarm clocks anymore, but the music was so annoying, I figured Rebecca had made an exception.
Nu nu nu Nuuuuu, nu nu nu Nuuuuu…
The wind stirred the paper-thin curtain at the window between our beds. Crickets chirped. And a train Dopplered in the distance.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. How was anyone supposed to catch Z’s around here?
And then, as the sleep seeped out of my brain, I watched the curtain stir a third time and remembered that I’d closed the window last night, when I came back from drinking. I get cold easily, even in Italy, and this is a stone building. Damp and cold are the operative words. And Rebecca had already activated the ceiling fan. So I’d figured I’d close the window but leave the fan on, risking her ire, plus I was drunk and happy from making out with the Italian guy, so I shut and locked the window.
Now the window was wide open. Or at least open enough to make the breeze blow.
My heart thudded in my chest almost as much as my brain felt like it was hammering against my temples.
Okay. It was possible, even likely, that Rebecca had woken up and opened the window again while I was passed out. But I turned to stare at the unmoving lump of blankets in Rebecca’s bed.
All we were issued was a wafer of a brown wool blanket, a white sheet, and a meagre square pillow, which was why I was wearing my trusty red fleece jacket to bed, plus full-length pyjamas.
That small amount of bedding would not account for the full-sized bump in her bed.
Rebecca was still here, either dead asleep, ignoring the siren call to exercise, or…
She was just plain dead.
I held my breath and stared at the lump. I waited for a twitch of limb or a little sniff to indicate that she was animate.
Da da da Dah, da Dah da Dah.
Right. There was no way I’d catch her clearing her throat, with all of this racket, and even with my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I’d be driven crazy donkey shapes before I figured out yes, she was alive (yay?) or no, she was dead (boo, I guess).
I’d have to turn the light on.
If she was alive and I woke her up, she would kill me. Probably with something sharp out of that weapons cache she kept locked in a steel box in our shared closet.
If she was dead, she was…dead.
Which one would be worse?
Nu-nu-Nu-nu-Nuu-nu-nuuu…
Okay. The worst was me and Beethoven, frozen in indecision forever.
I took a step toward the light.

~

“[S]cintillating…V has a great voice. Combined with the imaginative plot, this is a character who calls out for a series. At once Everywoman and Heroine. A woman through whom we can comfortably live adventures that enthrall, yet which [Yin] make us believe are just a little bit beyond what we ourselves might achieve with a few more trips to the gym, a few less kids, a little less attraction to the couch and the 65” TV. And though I would judge Octavia as directed more toward a feminine audience, I was quite gripped by her adventures, her wit, her insights, and of course her making out, which she carries off in grand style.” –Richard Quarry, author of Midnight Choir

~

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Happy holidays!

Winners of the Code Blues/Devil’s in the Details Contest

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Congratulations to our wonderful winners who completely surpassed my expectations.  I thought people would post little details like “My respirologist has a squeeze toy in the shape of lungs,” but instead, these people offered full-fledged stories!  (You can tell they’re all professional writers.)

First place:  Michael Angel

Second place:  Anonymous

Third place:  Cindie Geddes

Honourable Mention:  Dr. Michael Moreton

And now, on to the stories!

First place:

Michael Angel

My only medical ‘detail’ story is really a small item that many others would miss, as it was about a young doctor, not a device or strange implement.

Back around 1999, I ended up in the emergency room when my ulcers ended up rupturing a blood vessel in the stomach. Once it was determined which end of my GI tract was bleeding, I was prepped for surgery to put a scope and a laser, I believe, down the esophagus to cauterize the leak.

I was very woozy, but remember being by myself in the hospital bed, late at night, feeling all alone. Two doctors, one crusty old resident and one young doctor, came to check on me one last time before I went in. I put on a brave face, but honestly, I was flat-out terrified. I’d never been so close to feeling out of control, completely at someone else’s mercy as to whether I’d make it through the night.

So I shivered. The older doctor noted this, saying something to the effect of “What’s the matter?” I replied, “I’m…just…cold.” He huffed, “It’s not that cold in here.”

The younger doctor didn’t say anything. He saw the look in my eyes, and simply reached out and took my hand in his. The very act, that ounce of compassion, instantly calmed me. He knew I was scared, knew I was shamming the ‘cold’, and let me know that though I wasn’t out of the woods, they were going to do their best.

I stopped shivering.

As you can guess, I made a full recovery, which included a regimen of drugs to kill H. Pylori. And though I never learned the young doctor’s name (I was too out of it that night to note his tag), I’ll never forget what he did.

– Michael Angel

Second Place (Anonymous)

Make Me a Woman

I recall as a teen contracting The Clap in the early ’70s, back when it was the second worst STD on the scene. (It was more fun to horrify each other with stories of Syphilis-inspired brain rot and madness.)

Although I made light of it, waxing lyrical about the “annoying drip, drip, drip of Gonorrhea”, and singing, “Gonorrhea, Why?” (to the tune of “Cara Mia Why?”) I was actually quite distressed, and I was a very shy young thing, too. I slipped into the VD Clinic as anonymously as possible (as I am now writing this post) and submitted with quiet dread to a pelvic exam given by a retired (back from the dead) male doctor with a hearing problem. Like going to Grampa for an oil check. (Oh, God.)

On my back, blinking at the bright light, trying my best to keep my mind elsewhere, I endured his fumblings with the speculum, which wouldn’t go in. Instead of taking it out and having a peek, he kept pushing on it, rather painfully from my end of things, as I, having analyzed the problem, called out, “I think I have a tampon in! I think I have a tampon in!” The nurse at his elbow lent her voice to mine. “Doctor, she thinks she has a tampon in!”

At last he heard us, stopped trying to shove my cervix up my nose from the inside, and allowed me to take the tampon out. It is no surprise that after the exam, when he got me to stand up and gave me a nice big injection in the butt, that I finally passed out cold on the floor.

Gonorrhea, why, indeed?
–Anonymous

Third Place:  Cindie Geddes

I went to my favorite doctor for an allergy shot. We got to talking and I mentioned some pain I was having in my abdomen. He felt the spot I pointed to and said it was likely some kind of calcium deposit (he probably said something more medical, but I’m not a doctor, so I don’t really remember) on my sutures from a hernia operation a year earlier. He used to be a surgeon. “We can just go in the next room, and I can get it right now,” he said.

“Can I watch?” I asked. I’m always fascinated by how my body works.

“Sure. We’ll use the vasectomy table.”

We went in, set the table so I was nearly sitting up, and went to it. He gave me some numbing injections, cut my ab open and dug around until he found the sutures. Sure enough, he found what looked like little rocks at the ends of my sutures. But cutting them off was going to be awkward because he was the one holding the retractor thingies.

“Can I help?” I was loving the whole thing. Couldn’t feel anything but tugging, but he was giving me the tour of what he was cutting and why, and it all looked pretty damn cool.

“Sure,” he gloved me up and handed me the retractor thingies, and I held them while he snipped the little rocks off. Then he let me feel the little rocks (still gloved), and that’s exactly what they felt like — rocks. Suddenly, my pain made perfect sense.

My recovery was the easiest I’ve had of any ab surgery (I’ve had, I think, nine) because I knew exactly what had been done and understood exactly what was happening during recovery.

I had a similar little surgery two years earlier. Cost: $7,000 (thank dog for insurance). With that one, I was knocked out, had the usual huge staff, waited in pre-op for three hours, post-op for six. Cost for this one: $700. Complete time from entering the vasectomy room to going home: 35 minutes.

My doc gave me his cell phone number to keep him posted on how my recovery was going and insists I use it still for any little question or concern I have.

This is all very very wrong in the US. I don’t use his name because I suspect he could get in big trouble. But it’s my favorite interaction with a doctor ever. And the easiest procedure I’ve ever had. I love this guy.

—Cindie Geddes

Honourable Mention:  Dr. Michael Moreton

Dr. Moreton was gracious enough to contribute two stories.

The call came when I was in the Ante-Natal clinic at the United Family Hospital
in Beijing. It was from the Consular department at the American Embassy. A
pregnant American woman who was working with an aid agency in Tibet had
gone in to premature labor, they had contacted the assistance company to fly her
out but Washington had insisted that an Obstetrician go with the team. A wise
precaution. As, at that time in 2000, I was the only licensed western Ob in Beijing
there was not much choice of who should go.

I picked up an Emergency delivery pack from Labor and Delivery and the
appropriate medications that we were using to relax the Uterus from the
pharmacy and while waiting the SOS team to pick me up, did a little shopping.

We were using a military plane as they were roomier than any other planes. The
Chinese military is very business orientated and their ambulance planes were
available for hire.

We took off and had an uneventful flight and we landed in Lhasa. It was crystal
clear day and after the murky skies of Beijing the intensity of the light gave
everything film-set appearance. Unfortunately there was no time for sightseeing
and we drove to the hospital.

I was apprehensive; I had been to Chinese hospitals on evacuations before where
they were reluctant to release the western patient. Partly as it was a loss of
face but also a loss of a golden goose. This time it went without incident and
the staff were very accommodating. I handed out the products of my shopping,
canned hams, pantyhose and cigarettes always seemed to be useful for this part
of the ceremonies. The patient was pleased to see us and her contractions were
infrequent and mild. After monitoring things for a few minutes we loaded her
onto the ambulance and started for the airport. It was at this point that I started
to feel light-headed and a little breathless. I discounted this feeling that just
thinking about Mountain sickness had caused psychosomatic effects.

When we were on the runway loading the stretcher on which she was lying
was a difficult maneuver. It took four of us to do it as we had to raise it to chest
level to get it onto the plane and I was in a position where I took a lot of the

weight. When the stretcher was loaded, I stepped back and at that point it hit.
A blinding headache, a wave of nausea and a desperate feeling of shortage of
breath overwhelmed me. They bundled me onto the plane, shut the door, gave
me oxygen and within minutes I felt better. Luckily the plane had two beds, so the
patient and I lay alongside each other on the return journey. She was very calm
and reassured me that everything was under control.

Dr Michael Moreton is a Canadian OB/GYN who spent over nine years in China. He is
now the International Medical Coordinator of The Bangkok Hospital, Thailand.

___
The call came when I was in the Ante-Natal clinic at the United Family Hospital

in Beijing. It was from the Consular department at the American Embassy. A
pregnant American woman who was working with an aid agency in Tibet had
gone in to premature labor, they had contacted the assistance company to fly her
out but Washington had insisted that an Obstetrician go with the team. A wise
precaution. As, at that time in 2000, I was the only licensed western Ob in Beijing
there was not much choice of who should go.

I picked up an Emergency delivery pack from Labor and Delivery and the
appropriate medications that we were using to relax the Uterus from the
pharmacy and while waiting the SOS team to pick me up, did a little shopping.

We were using a military plane as they were roomier than any other planes. The
Chinese military is very business orientated and their ambulance planes were
available for hire.

We took off and had an uneventful flight and we landed in Lhasa. It was crystal
clear day and after the murky skies of Beijing the intensity of the light gave
everything film-set appearance. Unfortunately there was no time for sightseeing
and we drove to the hospital.

I was apprehensive; I had been to Chinese hospitals on evacuations before where
they were reluctant to release the western patient. Partly as it was a loss of
face but also a loss of a golden goose. This time it went without incident and
the staff were very accommodating. I handed out the products of my shopping,
canned hams, pantyhose and cigarettes always seemed to be useful for this part
of the ceremonies. The patient was pleased to see us and her contractions were
infrequent and mild. After monitoring things for a few minutes we loaded her
onto the ambulance and started for the airport. It was at this point that I started
to feel light-headed and a little breathless. I discounted this feeling that just
thinking about Mountain sickness had caused psychosomatic effects.

When we were on the runway loading the stretcher on which she was lying
was a difficult maneuver. It took four of us to do it as we had to raise it to chest
level to get it onto the plane and I was in a position where I took a lot of the

weight. When the stretcher was loaded, I stepped back and at that point it hit.
A blinding headache, a wave of nausea and a desperate feeling of shortage of
breath overwhelmed me. They bundled me onto the plane, shut the door, gave
me oxygen and within minutes I felt better. Luckily the plane had two beds, so the
patient and I lay alongside each other on the return journey. She was very calm
and reassured me that everything was under control.

Dr Michael Moreton is a Canadian OB/GYN who spent over nine years in China. He is
now the International Medical Coordinator of The Bangkok Hospital, Thailand.

I was a House Physician at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary in 1964. A
patient was admitted with confusing symptoms and after investigation
it was found that he was suffering from chronic arsenic poisoning, as he
had been exposed to arsenic in his workplace for many years.

Even on the professorial medical service nobody had any experience in
treating this problem. We made rounds and presented the case to Dr
Sutton the junior consultant on the service. When we came to therapy
he turned to me and said “Phone Dr Preble and see if he has any
advice” This was quite logical Dr P was a Consultant Veneriologist and
had had experience in using arsenic in the treatment STDs before the
advent of penicillin. He surely would have seen overdoses and would be
able to advise.

I called him at his private clinic in Rodney St.

‘Good afternoon sir, I am Dr Moreton, a House Physician at the Royal
and I need your advice —- “ He cut me off.

“Don’t say a word on the phone, dear boy. Come and see me this
afternoon”

For more of Dr Michael Moreton’s tales, please read the Medical Post.