‘You’d better come with me,’ the nurse said. ‘So we can have you examined properly.’
I went into a room nearby, she asked me to wait, a few minutes later another nurse came, she made the same movement with my arm, I screamed again.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But I can’t help it.’
‘No problem,’ she said, gently removing my tracksuit top. ‘We’ll have to take your shirt off as well,’ she said. ‘Do you think that’ll be OK?’
She pulled at the sleeve, I screamed, she paused, tried again. Took a step back. Looked at me. I felt like an overgrown child.
‘We’ll have to cut it off.’
Now it was my turn to look at her. Cut up my Argentina shirt?
She came back with some scissors and cut up the sleeves, then asked me to sit on a bed once the shirt was off and stuck a needle in my lower arm just above the wrist. She was going to give me a bit of morphine, she said. After it was done, although I noticed nothing, she pushed me in a wheelchair into another room, perhaps fifty metres deeper into the labyrinthine building, where I was left alone to wait for an X-ray, not without some dread because I thought my shoulder must have been dislocated and, if so, I knew putting it back would be painful. But it was a fracture, the doctor confirmed. It would take between eight and twelve weeks to heal. They gave me some painkillers, a prescription for more, tied a bandage in a taut figure of eight over and under the shoulders, hung my tracksuit top on me and sent me home.
When I opened the door to the flat Vanja and Heidi came towards me at a run. They were excited, daddy had been to hospital, it was an adventure. I told them and Linda, who followed with John on her arm, that I had broken my collarbone and had a sling, it was nothing major, but I couldn’t lift or carry or use my arm for the next two months.
‘Are you serious?’ Linda asked. ‘Two months?’
‘Three at worst,’ I said.
‘You must never play football again, that’s for definite,’ Linda said.
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘So that’s your decision, is it?’
‘It’s me who has to put up with the consequences,’ she said. ‘How am I going to take care of the children on my own for two months, if I might ask?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Relax. I’ve broken my collarbone after all. It hurts, and it’s not as if I did it on purpose.’
I went into the living room to sit down on the sofa. I had to make every movement slowly and plan it in advance. Every little deviation sent a pain through me. Agh, Ohh, Oooh, I said, slowly lowering myself. Vanja and Heidi watched with saucer eyes.
I smiled at them while trying to put the big cushion behind my back. They came up close. Heidi ran her hand across my chest as if to examine it.
‘Can we have a look at the bandage?’ Vanja asked.
‘Afterwards,’ I said. ‘It hurts a little to take clothes off and put them back on, you see.’
‘Food’s up!’ Linda shouted from the kitchen.
John was sitting in his baby chair banging his knife and fork on the table. Vanja and Heidi stared at me and my slow, laborious movements as I sat down.
‘What a day!’ Linda said. ‘Martin didn’t know a thing, only that you’d been taken to A & E. He brought us home, luckily, but when I was opening the door the key broke. Oh my God. I visualised us having to stay with them tonight. But then I double-checked my bag, and there it was, Berit’s key. What a stroke of luck! I hadn’t hung it up. And then you come home with a broken collarbone…’
She looked at me.
‘I’m so tired,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’ll probably only be the first few days that I can’t do anything. And then one arm will be perfectly OK.’
After eating I lay down on the sofa with a cushion behind my back watching an Italian football match on TV. In the four years we’d had children I had only done something like this once. At the time I was so ill I couldn’t move, I lay on the sofa for a whole day, saw ten minutes of the first Jason Bourne film, slept for a bit, saw ten minutes, slept for a bit, threw up intermittently, and even though my whole body ached and basically it was absolutely unbearable, I still enjoyed every second. Lying on the sofa and watching a film in the middle of the day! Not one single obligation! No clothes to be washed, no floor to be scrubbed, no washing-up to be done, no children to look after.
Now I had that same feeling. I was not in a position to do anything. However much my shoulder burned and stung and ached, the pleasure at being able to lie in total peace was greater.
Vanja and Heidi circled round me, coming close every so often and gently stroking my shoulder, then they went out of the room to play, and came back. For them this was probably unprecedented, I mused, me being completely passive and still. It was as though they had discovered a new side to me.
When the match was over I went for a bath. We didn’t have a holder for the showerhead, we had to hold it in one hand, and that option was out of the question now, so all I could do was run the bath and climb into the tub with difficulty. Vanja and Heidi watched me.
‘Do you need any help with washing, daddy?’ Vanja asked. ‘Can we wash you?’
‘Yes, that would be nice,’ I said. ‘Can you see the cloths there? Take one each, and then dip it in the water and rub some soap into it.’
Vanja followed the instructions precisely, Heidi copied her. And they stood there, leaning over the edge of the bath and washing me with their cloths. Heidi laughed, Vanja was serious and business-like. They washed my arms, neck and chest. Heidi was bored after a few seconds and ran into the living room while Vanja stayed for a while longer.
‘Is that good?’ she asked at length.
I smiled. That was what I usually asked.
‘Yes, it’s great,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you!’
She brightened up, and then she ran into the living room as well.
I wallowed in the water until it turned cold. First football on TV, then a long bath. What a Sunday!
Vanja came in a couple of times to see. I supposed she was waiting for the bandage to be put on. She spoke Swedish of course, still with Stockholm intonation patterns, but when I had been with her for a morning or an afternoon, or she felt close to me for some other reason, words from my dialect appeared more frequently in her conversation. Very often she would say mæ instead of the Swedish mig, me. ‘Lyft upp mæ!’ Lift me up, she would say, for example. I laughed every time.
‘Can you go and get mummy?’ I said.
She nodded and ran off. I got out of the bath gingerly, and had dried myself by the time she came back.
‘Could you put the bandage on?’ I asked.
‘No problem,’ she said.
I explained how it was supposed to be, and said she had to pull it hard, otherwise it wasn’t doing its job.
‘Harder!’
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’
‘A bit, but the tauter it is the less it hurts when I move.’