‘It isn’t what you think.’
Marc spun round and looked into his brother’s face. Benny was cautiously approaching him, favouring his left leg.
‘Beat it!’ The automatic swung in his direction.
‘Put that gun down and let me explain.’
‘No, get lost!’
They were now on their own in the lobby. Anxious faces were pressed against the glass doors flanking the reception area and several people were jabbering excitedly into their mobile phones.
‘Please. I’ll take you to Sandra.’ Benny hobbled towards him with his arms outstretched. ‘Please,’ he implored again, in a voice drained of emotion.
Marc gulped and ran a hand over his face. His legs started to tremble and he felt sick. He was so exhausted he could hardly hold the pistol straight.
‘You’re lying,’ he said, in tears now.
‘No,’ said Benny. ‘Come on, there’s still time.’
66
Glaucoma surgery, coloproctology, minimally invasive surgery, gastroenterology, oncology – Constantin had considerably expanded the spectrum of treatments available at his hospital in recent years. Originally designed as a facility for specialized surgical operations, it now housed a rheumatology department, a plastic-surgery department, and the obstetric wards to which Marc’s brother was now conducting him.
It took them a long time to climb the three flights of stairs. Benny seemed to be suffering from concussion as well as dragging his right leg, but Marc kept the pistol jammed into his back. His brother had deceived him long enough. First rejection, then his offer of assistance and reconciliation, and now, perhaps, he might be faking his injuries.
They reached the top floor of the flat-roofed building and opened the glass door leading to the wards.
A blue notice board said ‘Perinatal Centre’ in white lettering. The arrow pointed to the right.
‘Where are we?’ Marc asked as they set off along the corridor. The walls of the children’s ward he’d once inspected with Sandra had been hung with colourful pictures including photos of happy babies in the arms of even happier parents expressing their thanks to doctors and nurses. Wherever possible, an attempt had been made to mitigate the typical characteristics of a hospital, for instance with orange walls, hospital gowns adorned with appliquéd Disney motifs and soothing classical muzak in the passages.
Childbirth isn’t a disease, Constantin had always said, but his motto didn’t appear to extend to this part of the hospital.
‘This isn’t the delivery room,’ said Benny.
‘No?’
Marc looked at another sign: ‘OP III/Neonatal Intensive Care Ward.’
‘This is where the problem cases come.’
‘Good God, he doesn’t even know there are complications…’
‘What sort of problem cases?’
Marc’s question went unanswered, because at that moment a door straight ahead of them swung open and a hospital bed was wheeled through. And, on it, his wife.
67
Sandra.
She was deathly pale. Her eyelids were half closed, her hands folded as if in prayer on her mountainous belly. Tubes led from her arms to some medical apparatus attached to the bed frame. The nurse wheeled her on down the corridor.
‘Wait!’ Marc called. He hurried after the bed to make sure, but she was no more of a hallucination than she had been when she opened the door to him yesterday.
Sandra.
He recognized the lips he had so often kissed and the curve of the eyebrows he had so often traced with his finger that the time he’d spent doing so could have been measured in hours.
‘Who are you?’ the nurse demanded, alarmed by the sight of the gun in his hand. She reached for her bleeper.
‘It’s me, Marc,’ was all he said, gazing fixedly at Sandra.
Is it really me? Am I standing here, looking into the eyes of my late wife, or don’t I exist at all? Am I living in a horrific world of illusion?
He started to sob. Putting out his hand, he parted her lips with his forefinger as if trying to help her to speak, because she seemed to find it a superhuman effort to open her mouth. At last, after what seemed like an eternity, he heard the words he longed to hear.
‘I love you, Luke.’
Boundless relief surged through him.
‘I love you so much.’ Her speech was slurred and her gaze glassy. She smiled like someone on drugs.
Tears sprang to his eyes. He raised his arms in a helpless gesture and turned to Benny, who had been watching them both in silence. Then he dropped the gun unheeding and gripped the metal frame of the bed, which the nurse was now wheeling further along the corridor. He was incapable of articulating even one of the countless questions that were striving to cascade from his lips all at once. Why are you still alive? What have you all been doing to me? What’s wrong with our baby?
‘Why?’ was all he managed to say.
‘Please leave her alone. She’s already been given her pre-meds. I must get her to the theatre.’
Marc scarcely heard what the nurse was saying, but he made no further attempt to delay her. He walked alongside and bent over Sandra, whose lips were moving silently.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
They were now only a few metres from the glass doors beyond which the sterile area began.
‘We went too far.’
‘Too far in what way? What did you do?’
The drugs inside her body were numbing her from within, bearing her away from him and into oblivion. Her tremulous voice sank to a whisper. ‘But we had no choice, understand? We couldn’t let you remember.’
She made a last effort to sit up, but the nurse gently forced her back on the bed. Marc felt a hand on his shoulder pulling him backwards – backwards and away from his wife, whose bed was being wheeled through the airlock and into the theatre.
‘We couldn’t let you remember,’ Sandra repeated despairingly before she disappeared from view.
For ever.
As the double doors closed behind her, Marc felt that he had lost his wife for good.
‘Come,’ said the voice belonging to the hand that was holding his arm in a vicelike grip. ‘It’s time. I’ll explain everything.’
Turning round, Marc gazed into his father-in-law’s drawn, weary face. Constantin Senner had never looked so old.
68
‘She’s alive!’
‘Yes.’
‘So there never was an accident?’
Constantin had ushered Marc and Benny into a spacious consulting room. Standing as far apart as possible, they formed the extremities of an invisible right-angled triangle.
‘Yes, but it wasn’t fatal. Sandra escaped with superficial injuries. Your airbag, on the other hand…’ Constantin was breathing heavily. He pursed his lips before going on. ‘…your airbag failed to inflate. You hit your head and passed out instantly.’
Benny pulled up a swivel chair and sat down with his back to a full-length glass door. Beyond it lay a spacious terrace running the full width of the new hospital block.
‘We brought you here to the clinic,’ said Constantin, who had remained standing in front of the desk with Marc facing him across it. ‘When you recovered consciousness you couldn’t remember the last few hours before the accident. That was our chance.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? What chance?’ Marc was overcome with ice-cold rage.
‘We had to make every effort to maintain your partial amnesia until today, but we realized that the trauma you sustained in the accident wasn’t severe enough to suppress your memory long-term. So we decided to give your brain something else to occupy it.’