I don't like to remember how it all started. It's hard to think about how quickly it spread, how unprepared we all were.
We thought we were at the top of it all, Kings and Queens of the world.
We were wrong. We were so wrong.
Mother Nature made sure to put us right back where we belong. To her? We were nothing but court jesters in her palace, relying on her good will and amusement to survive.
Too bad we pissed her off.
But like I said. I don't like to think about how it started, it hurts too much. Instead, we'll focus on what happened after.
I knew the basics of survival, that I needed shelter, protection, water, and food- almost precisely in that order. Everything else became a luxury, something that somewhat baffled me in the beginning.
I didn't grow up wealthy, I knew what it ment to struggle without running water and electricity, but there was always someone or something to fall back on, a friend or a human resource center that would provide help.
Now something that, as an adult, I always swore to never rely on again became the very thing I longed for.
Forget the diamonds, the fat bank accounts, the red silk to match the rich, red wines I drenched my liver in. Suddenly I was back at square one, in fact I was off the damned board. Everyone was.
Leaving all of those things behind hurt a little bit, all the effort to obtain a damned Ph.D, all the work to drag myself to the top, to become the Dr. Claudia Wilde, most sought after surgeon this side of the fucking universe... All of it, everything that I bled for, cried for, did the impossible for, was gone in a matter of weeks.
So yeah, it hurt a little. But, as I watched my beautiful townhouse get ransacked by those bastards who want to build Alexandria, I grinned.
Mother Nature might be a bitch of the highest pedigree, but I'm still Dr. Claudia fucking Wilde and I came from absolutely nothing once before.
I sure as hell can do it again.