I have a character who's pretending to have had a very serious health condition that's drawn her out of circulation. It has to be believable enough that it fools the main characters for a good chunk of time (and when they're actively investigating her).
The setup for the character is that she's a celebrity and has been supposedly keeping this illness secret. She's sequestered herself with a doctor for the past six months and hasn't mixed much in public. The doctor is supposed to have been treating her. The doctor's now dead, and this is all presented as a reason for why the woman shouldn't be a suspect (because she needed the doctor to keep treating her, so would have no motive for killing the doctor).
This illness and its treatment can't cause any salient/noticeable physical symptoms, because (1) she doesn't actually have it, and (2) she can't *fake* having it, because she's been supposedly keeping it secret (when in reality it doesn't exist at all). But it should be something that would believably have interfered with her work enough that she had to lay low for a while while being treated.
Points for there being a drug regimen involved that has to be administered by syringe, but this isn't necessary (the MCs find syringes on her later but Plot Developments proceed too fast for them to look up whether she'd actually need these and whether this should in fact make them suspicious of her, so this is optional).
I hope this post wasn't too confusing. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
The setup for the character is that she's a celebrity and has been supposedly keeping this illness secret. She's sequestered herself with a doctor for the past six months and hasn't mixed much in public. The doctor is supposed to have been treating her. The doctor's now dead, and this is all presented as a reason for why the woman shouldn't be a suspect (because she needed the doctor to keep treating her, so would have no motive for killing the doctor).
This illness and its treatment can't cause any salient/noticeable physical symptoms, because (1) she doesn't actually have it, and (2) she can't *fake* having it, because she's been supposedly keeping it secret (when in reality it doesn't exist at all). But it should be something that would believably have interfered with her work enough that she had to lay low for a while while being treated.
Points for there being a drug regimen involved that has to be administered by syringe, but this isn't necessary (the MCs find syringes on her later but Plot Developments proceed too fast for them to look up whether she'd actually need these and whether this should in fact make them suspicious of her, so this is optional).
I hope this post wasn't too confusing. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
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