‘Hi! Sorry I’m late. Damn car was playing up again.’ The next DJ in the schedule had arrived without Margeir realizing. The man’s loud greeting startled Margeir and he had to take a deep breath before answering.
‘I was just going to put on a pre-record.’ Margeir put down the caller-ID gadget. ‘My outro music is still playing, so you have a few seconds.’
‘Who was that nutjob at the end? I was listening to it in the car. Man, I hope he doesn’t take your advice and call me too.’
Without knowing why, Margeir felt sure that wasn’t going to happen. His instinct told him the caller thought he had business with him, not the other hosts. He felt uneasy as he walked out to the dark car park. In his mind the abhorrent thought took hold that he knew exactly what the caller had been talking about, and as soon as he was in his car he quickly locked the door.
‘Is she asleep?’ Svava put down the pen and took off her reading glasses, happy to be able to take a break from peering at the small print. She had chosen the glasses at random in a petrol station and their strength was not right for her at all. She couldn’t put off making an appointment with the optician any longer.
‘Who?’ The young woman was one of the temps who moved from department to department, covering sick leave and holidays, so it was hardly surprising she didn’t know who Svava meant.
‘Room 7, the girl who was just admitted.’
‘To be honest, I didn’t look in on her. I was checking the drip in Room 3. It was running out, so I changed the bag.’
‘No problem.’ Svava stood up. ‘I guess I’d better check on her.’ She placed her glasses on her forehead in case she needed them; they didn’t make that much difference, but they were better than nothing. She smiled at the temp; it actually didn’t matter whether she’d checked on the patient, as Svava liked to keep an eye on the new patients and try to learn a bit about them. Often you could detect when a patient was about to go downhill, through signs you wouldn’t necessarily notice unless you knew them. Only by learning what was normal for a patient could you identify abnormalities.
She walked from the staffroom down the corridor to Room 7. Her route took her past several rooms, and from each open door she could hear slow breathing and the electronic beeps of monitors and other equipment. Everything seemed normal, or as normal as could be expected, and as she approached Room 7 she heard nothing to make her quicken her pace. Assuming the girl was asleep, she tiptoed into the spartan white room, almost empty apart from the huge bed. No attempt had been made to disguise the hospital bed as something more homely; the chrome frame was clearly visible.
Svava had never given it much thought until this young woman was admitted, since there seemed little point. Most patients weren’t in the department for long, and their illnesses ended with them either going home or being carried out in a coffin, which would at least be spruced up with a satin lining. It was a different matter for this girl, who was a young woman really. She had spent many years of her short life in hospital beds, and would be in one until it ended. She was completely paralysed, which confined her to the bed for the larger part of each day. The only change came when she was moved – with great effort – into a specially modified wheelchair and allowed to go out for a breath of fresh air with an orderly. This was not a service provided by the hospital; she was seriously ill and it was not considered safe to move her. Svava wished the room could be made more comfortable somehow, but she thought any attempt to do so would be like hanging Christmas lights on a shotgun. The girl wouldn’t be in the room for long no matter what, so it was futile to make any kind of effort doing it up; Svava’s role, like the others’ in the department, was to nurse and heal, not to play interior designer.
As Svava entered the room she noticed something odd. The sterile smell that generally overwhelmed everything was contaminated with what smelt like body odour. She went to the girl’s bedside and saw that her forehead was damp. Grabbing a flannel from the bedside table, she wiped off the girl’s brow before laying her hand across it to check whether she might have a temperature. This didn’t seem to be the case; the girl was rather cold to the touch, if anything. Still, there was something wrong, because the girl’s eyes were wide open and moving back and forth as if she were having some kind of attack. Maybe she was suffering from cramps, though of course her body lay motionless, as her muscles were no longer under her brain’s control. Her EKG showed a rapid pulse, far too rapid, although her systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings appeared normal. If the girl was simply feeling off colour she might be a bit panicky. Svava had plenty of experience in dealing with the physically disabled, but it was rare to see someone this seriously affected, who was unable to express herself except with her eyes.
‘Did you have a bad dream?’ Svava leaned closer to the girl’s face and followed her eyes closely. She thought she’d been told that the girl would blink once for yes and twice for no but had never tested this out, so it could very well be the other way around; Svava couldn’t remember. The girl blinked twice and Svava decided to stick to her first instinct. ‘Are you thirsty?’ Again the girl blinked twice. Svava hoped she’d guessed correctly; it would have been awful if the girl had woken from a nightmare dying of thirst and was given nothing to relieve it. ‘Are you… are you awake?’ A ridiculous question, but it was the only one that Svava could think of to test out the answer. The girl blinked once. So Svava had got it right: one blink was yes and two was no. But although she had worked this out, they’d be here all night if she didn’t ask the right questions.
‘You can use the cards.’ She looked up and saw the locum nurse in the doorway. ‘I’ve worked in departments that take care of people as acute as her, and I learned a bit about communicating with them. There’s computer equipment that’s a lot more sophisticated, but nothing like that seems to have come with her, if she even knew how to use it.’ She looked at the girl, then back at Svava. ‘Not that I know how to use that kind of thing myself, so I wouldn’t have been much help. But I’m pretty good with the cards, which should be here somewhere…’
‘What cards?’ Nobody had told Svava.
The girl walked in and looked around. She bent down to the bedside table and picked up some plastic cards, each of which was divided into a number of squares with pictures or symbols. She positioned one of them directly in front of the girl’s face and started pointing. The girl used her eyes by blinking or looking left or right, seemingly directing the nurse to the right square. After doing this for some time and working through several cards, the girl suddenly shut both eyes and didn’t open them again. Only then did Svava dare to say anything – she hadn’t wanted to disturb this primitive, almost alien communication. ‘Did you make any sense of that?’
The woman shrugged and looked puzzled. ‘I’m no expert at this so I may have misunderstood her, but what I did get wasn’t exactly helpful.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Hot. Burning.’ The woman shrugged apologetically. ‘Something like that.’
‘Burning?’ Svava didn’t think the cards were much use if this was the result. ‘She doesn’t seem hot to the touch; but maybe I need to change her duvet for a lighter blanket.’ She put her hand on the motionless girl’s leg; yes, if anything, it felt rather chilly. ‘I guess the best thing would be to advise the morning shift to get a developmental therapist in to speak to her. Someone who can communicate with her properly.’ She looked at the young woman, who appeared to be sleeping – though that wasn’t very likely – and noticed that she had an earphone in one ear, plugged into the radio. She pulled it out carefully and held it up to her own ear. It was set to one of the talk-radio stations; she recognized the theme music that was playing. ‘Wouldn’t it be nicer for her to listen to something a bit lighter? Although whatever’s playing, it’s not ideal to sleep with that in your ear. Maybe she just wanted to block out the noise.’