Radioactive contamination?
Skou-Larsen forgot all about the pill organizer, sideburns, and bridge games for a moment.
“There was something about that on the news at six, too,” Helle said. “But they haven’t figured out where it came from. Have you heard anything?”
“No,” he grunted, watching as an expert who looked more like a professional soccer player than a nuclear physicist explained about background radiation and radon, which was “the most common source of radioactive contamination in buildings.” A fence and a couple of gas pumps and two men in bright-yellow protective suits were visible, walking around holding devices he assumed were Geiger counters. And then of course they showed the footage from Chernobyl again, even though Skou-Larsen couldn’t see what that had to do with any of this. There was a world of difference between a nuclear reactor melting down and radon contamination, but as soon as anyone said the word “radioactivity,” the media always went into a frenzy.
“I’m sure it’s just underground seepage or emissions from construction materials,” he said, irritated that the cameraman was focusing on the protective suits instead of on the buildings, which were somewhat more relevant.
“Seepage?”
“Yes. It can be a real nuisance if the building is built on moraine clay. All the way up to six hundred becquerels per cubic meter. That could easily make you sick.”
The camera moved to a new expert, this time a less photogenic one from Risø Laboratory.
“Then why are they suddenly talking about cesium now?” Helle asked. “That’s not the same thing as radon, is it?”
“No,” Skou-Larsen mused.
“Does that seep up from underground, too?”
Skou-Larsen shook his head slightly. His mouth still felt pasty and terribly dry.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
Nina swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tentatively put her feet on the floor. She felt her pulse explode in a wild frenzy as she slowly transferred her weight onto her feeble legs and took a couple of steps into the room. Things worked, she thought, relieved. She was functional again. She cast an irritated glance at the IV bag and stand she was still tethered to. Then she turned off the drip and pulled out the Venflon mechanism taped to her left hand. She didn’t have any Band-Aids and had to make do with pressing a paper napkin from the nightstand drawer against the back of her hand until the bleeding stopped, but now she was free.
She walked across the floor with faltering steps to the bathroom and peed with the door open. She felt a single drop of sweat trickle from her temple down her cheek and neck. Her heart was racing, and she sat for a few minutes fighting the nausea churning in her stomach. But so far so good. She had conquered the bathroom, she thought, doing a sarcastic little fanfare for herself in her head. Now all that remained was the rest of the world.
She got up, washed her hands and face in the cold jet from the faucet and slowly started staggering back across the floor. It felt like walking on cotton.
Then she stumbled.
One of her feet simply gave way beneath her as she went to take the last step over to her bed. She landed hard on her hipbone on the mottled gray floor, and the sudden pain made her hiss between her teeth. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and glared furiously at her right foot, cursing her own clumsiness. She had seen plenty of patients do exactly this. Flail around on their own before they were strong enough, fall, and end up in an even worse state than when they first arrived at the hospital. Luckily her hip still worked. The pain had already faded to a dull throb, and the fall would result in a bruise at most, but it still hurt. Nina took hold of the bed and hauled herself to her feet, with her heart pounding frenetically beneath her hospital gown. A sound from over by the door made her stop in mid-motion. A sort of drawn-out sigh. She turned her head and saw Morten.
He was standing in the doorway with his arms dangling weirdly, hanging too straight from his shoulders, as if they had stopped working. She hadn’t even noticed the door opening. How long had he been standing there and had he seen her fall? There was something about the look on his face that made the last of the strength in Nina’s legs give way, and she plopped down onto the edge of the bed and pulled her arms around herself and the limp hospital gown.
“Let me help you.”
Morten came over to her, carefully raised her legs onto the bed, and tucked the blanked in around her.
“I tried calling you,” she said, reproachfully. “Several times.”
She followed his movements with her eyes. He didn’t look at her, and his hands kept stroking the blanket as if he were smoothing out invisible wrinkles in the bedding. He was trying to smile, she could tell, but it wasn’t really working. Suddenly Nina felt afraid. What had happened? Was there something Magnus hadn’t told her after all?
“Is it Ida?”
Morten looked up for a brief instant.
“She’s upset, but.…” He cut himself short. “How are you doing?” Nina felt a sense of relief along with a touch of confusion. Why was he asking her about it like that? Politely. As if he were a co-worker, or a distant relation. She reached out with her hands and cautiously tried to pull him a little closer, but he resisted. At first it was subtle, a faint counter pressure, a tension in his neck muscles, but when she didn’t let go, he suddenly yanked himself free and backed away. And then he made eye contact for the first time. He looked tired and haggard. As if he had been crying, but Morten almost never cried. He got mad and swore, but he didn’t cry.
“Excuse me.”
A health care assistant in a white coat slid into the room with a broad smile. She closed the curtains, then stood by the window for a minute, shuffling her feet before she decided to fill Nina’s water glass. She took the glass and went to the small bathroom, and Nina could hear the water running. Morten didn’t say anything. He glanced impatiently at the open bathroom door in irritation.
“They don’t usually fill the patients’ water glasses in the bathroom.”
Nina said that more to herself than to Morten, and he didn’t respond. The assistant made a clattering noise with something or other in the bathroom, and Nina and Morten sat for a long moment waiting for her to finish up and leave. Then Morten gave up and started up the conversation again.
“I’m going to say something now,” Morten said, looking resolute. “And afterward I’ll leave so you can have some peace and quiet to … rest.”
Nina nodded slowly, attempted to smile, but a chilling fear begin to spread beneath her breastbone. This didn’t seem like one of the dressing-downs that Morten usually dumped on her when he was angry. This wasn’t like anything she had seen before.
“Ida was home by herself Saturday night,” Morten said, and his voice trembled a little. “She was home alone in the middle of the night in an apartment in Østerbro because her mother was in hospital.”