Excerpt from The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Night Guest

Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same—have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she's walked over 40,000 steps in the night…

What is happening when she's asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won't anyone believe her?

1

"Can you describe your symptoms?"

I clear my throat. "I'm just so… tired all the time."

"Not sleeping well?"

"No, no. I fall asleep and even sleep through the night. But when I wake up, I feel exhausted. My legs, my arms…"

As if they were evidence, I extend both arms. My hands dangle limply, and I have the bizarre impulse to shake them in the doctor's face. But she nods. When I lower them, they drop into my lap like dead pieces of meat.

"I don't feel like I'm waking up rested but more like I've been out on a rampage all night. My muscles are worn out. Not soreness like after working out, but sort of like when you've been slogging away at something and can tell that the next day you're going to really feel it, you know?"

"And it's only in the arms and legs?"

"Not only, but mostly there. I'm tired all over. Even my jaw."

The doctor nods again.

I like her. She's probably ten years younger than I am. If I had to guess, I'd say she probably hasn't finished her residency yet. Which means she's being very thorough. She will not let acute lymphocytic leukemia or some horrific neurological disease slip past her. She's going to check out every possibility. Which is precisely what I want and what the previous doctor the health center assigned me to—some old, gray-haired prick— refused to do.

That guy had clearly had enough of women with unexplained symptoms. Hysterical women. I seriously wanted to lecture him about all the diseases women have had that have been misdiagnosed over the years— and how medication (not to mention everything else in this world) is designed for the male body—but I just didn't have the energy for it. Or maybe I was chicken. Or maybe that's the same thing because it's a lot easier to gather your courage when you're not dead tired.

When I left the prick's office with orders to go home and "take it easy" for two weeks (he didn't even suggest seeing a therapist, probably because he's too old to believe in psychology), I made a beeline for the health center's reception desk and asked for an appointment with a female doctor.

"Someone young," I said. The receptionist looked at me like I was off my rocker but still gave me an appointment with this new doctor.

Her name is Ásdís, and she has blond hair and two pimples on her chin that she's done her best to cover with concealer. "Has this been going on for a long time?"

"A while, yeah. And getting worse."

"Have you had the flu recently? Any kind of cold?"

"No."

"Have you been under a lot of stress lately?"

I think about Stefán and how he had hissed at me that I was a bitch right before slamming the door in my face. How I had trembled like a twig in the wind and hadn't been able to bring myself to move for over an hour after he left.

"No." Stefán is a lousy guy, but I'd be giving him way too much credit if I blamed this on him.

"Do you eat a variety of foods?"

"Yes. I'm a vegetarian, but that's not new. And I take B12, omega-3, and iron."

Excerpted from The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir. Copyright © 2024 by Hildur Knútsdóttir. Excerpted by permission of Tor Nightfire. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.