Danielle – ‘Daniel’ – de Koster is dead. She died unexpectedly two years ago, an event her younger girlfriend Jodie cannot understand. Daniel had helped patients –particularly women – diagnose their historically under-researched diseases. To some she was a hero; others thought her mad. Jodie, haunted by grief, tracks down Daniel’s friends and former lovers in an attempt to untangle her past.
It’s the late ‘80s: Daniel is as a twenty-year-old psychology student. She falls into a passionate relationship with Barbara, a medical student five years her senior. Where Barbara is ambitious and determined to become a GP, Daniel doesn’t know what she wants in life and has difficulty connecting with the other students. Sparks fly when Barbara finds out that Daniel has quit her studies: the two have an intense fight followed by rough sex and the next morning, Daniel goes missing. She leaves a note to say she’ll be back before dinner, but she doesn’t return. A day later, Barbara learns that Daniel has been found next to a boulder in the woods. She slipped and crushed her coccyx and has a crack in her skull. Over the following months, Barbara uses her medical knowledge to care for her – but in doing so, finds herself feeling less attracted towards her. When Daniel’s condition doesn’t improve, Barbara breaks up with her, leaving Daniel heartbroken.
During the years following her accident, Daniel makes a slow recovery. As Lucille O’Connor, an older, attractive physiotherapist, teaches her to walk again and the two become very close. Daniel is forced to leave her student housing and Lucille invites her to stay in a house she lets to her gay son Sjoerd. Sjoerd is looking for a new housemate, but he isn’t pleased with his mother’s decision. It’s 1994 and the Aids crisis is in full swing, having lately claimed his housemate: so, how come Daniel deserves his room? Slowly, however, a friendship blossoms, and Sjoerd helps Daniel find a job as a call handler at a local HIV charity. Here, Daniel learns to navigate the ‘HIV Net’; a precursor of the internet connecting HIV patients across the world. It’s the first place Daniel feels truly at home and where she meets the young HIV patient named Julia.
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