After a little while Lova and Sara’s faces appear above her. She grabs Sara’s sleeve.
“Remember,” she croaks. “Stay inside the cabin. Keep the door shut and put on your snowsuits and all the blankets. Sivving and Bella are coming in the morning. Wait for them. Are you listening, Sara? I’m just going to have a little rest.”
Nothing hurts anymore. But her hands are ice cold. She loses her grip on Sara’s sleeve. Their faces drift away. She is sinking down into a well; they are standing at the top in the sun, looking down at her. And all the time it’s getting darker and colder.
Sara and Lova crouch down on either side of Rebecka. Lova turns to her older sister.
“What did she say?” she asks.
“I thought it sounded like ‘Will you receive me?’ ” replies Sara.
The winter wind was tearing frantically at the spindly birch trees outside the hospital in Kiruna. Pulling at their gnarled arms, reaching up into the blue black sky. Snapping their spindly, frozen fingers.
Måns Wenngren hurtled straight past the intensive care reception desk. The cold glare of the fluorescent lights bounced off the polished surface of the floor and the pallid cream walls of the corridor, with their indescribably ugly pattern in wine red. His whole being was revolted by the impression. The smell of disinfectant and cleaning fluid mixed with the stale, creeping stench of crumbling bodies. The constant clatter of metal trollies delivering food, samples or Lord knows what.
At least it isn’t Christmas, he thought.
His father had had his final heart attack on Christmas day. It was many years ago now, but Måns could still see the hospital staff’s unfortunate and unsuccessful attempts to create a festive atmosphere on the ward. Cheap, mass-produced ginger biscuits served with afternoon tea on paper serviettes with a Christmas motif. A plastic tree at the far end of the corridor, its needles pointing the wrong way and squashed flat after a long year in its box up on a shelf in the storeroom. Odd baubles dangling from the branches on a piece of thread. And beneath the lower branches, gaudy packages that you knew had nothing in them.
He shook off the memories before they got as far as his parents. Swung around without pausing, his wool coat streaming out behind him like a cloak.
“I’m looking for Rebecka Martinsson,” he roared. “Is anybody working here, or what?”
That morning he had been woken by the telephone. It was the police in Kiruna, wondering if it was true that he was Rebecka Martinsson’s boss. Yes, it was true. They hadn’t managed to find any records of close relatives. Perhaps the firm knew if she had a partner or boyfriend? No, the firm didn’t know that. He had asked what had happened. The police had finally told him Rebecka was undergoing an operation, but they refused to part with any more information.
He had phoned the hospital in Kiruna. They hadn’t even been prepared to confirm that she’d been admitted. “Classified” was the only word he could get out of them.
Then he’d phoned one of the two female partners in the firm.
“Måns, darling,” she’d said, “Rebecka is your assistant.”
In the end he’d taken a taxi to the airport at Arlanda.
Halfway down the corridor a nurse caught up with him. She followed him, a torrent of words spilling out as he opened various doors and looked in. He registered only fragments of her babble. Classified. Unauthorized. Security.
“I’m her partner,” he bluffed as he carried on opening doors and looking in.
He found Rebecka alone in a four-bed room. Next to the bed was a drip with a plastic bag half full of clear fluid. Eyes closed. Face deathly white, even her lips.
He pulled a stool up to the bed, but didn’t sit down. Instead he turned and growled at the little woman who was pursuing him. She disappeared at once, her Birkenstocks clattering frantically down the corridor.
After a moment another woman wearing a white coat and white trousers came in. In two strides he was right in front of her, reading the small name badge pinned to her breast pocket.
“Right, Sister Frida,” he said aggressively, before she’d even managed to open her mouth, “would you be so kind as to explain this to me?”
He pointed at Rebecka’s hands. Both were securely tied to the sides of the bed with gauze bandage.
Sister Frida blinked in surprise before she answered.
“Come out here with me,” she said softly. “Then we can calm down and have a little chat.”
Måns waved his hand in front of him as if she’d been a fly.
“Fetch the doctor who’s responsible for her,” he said angrily.
Sister Frida was attractive. She was a natural blonde. She had high cheekbones, and her mouth was subtly painted with pink lip gloss. She was used to people obeying her soft voice. She was known for it. She’d never been a fly before. She wondered whether to call security. Or maybe the police, in view of these particular circumstances. But then she looked at Måns Wenngren. Her gaze swept over him, from the improbably well-ironed shirt collar, over the gray-and-black-striped tie, to the discreet black suit and the beautifully polished shoes.
“All right, come with me and you can speak to the doctor,” she said brusquely, turned on her heel and stalked out with Måns trailing in her wake.
The doctor was a short man with thick, gray-blond hair. His face was sunburned and his nose had begun to peel slightly. Presumably he’d recently had a little holiday abroad. His white coat was left casually unbuttoned over jeans and a turquoise T-shirt. The pocket of his coat was stuffed with several pens, a notebook and a pair of glasses.
Middle-aged angst with traces of hippie syndrome, thought Måns, standing just a little too close when they shook hands so that the doctor was forced to look upward like a stargazer.
They went into the consulting room together.
“It’s for her own good,” the doctor explained to Måns. “When she woke up she pulled the cannula out of her arm. We’ve given her a mild sedative, but-”
“Is she being held for questioning?” asked Måns. “Or has she been arrested?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Has any decision been taken about compulsory care? Is there a care order?”
“No.”
“Shit, it’s like the Wild West up here,” said Mans contemptuously. “You’ve got her lying here, tied up, with no order from the police, the prosecutor or the chief medical officer. That’s illegal curtailment of liberty. Prosecution, fines and a slap on the wrist from the authorities for you. But I’m not here to cause trouble. Tell me what’s happened, the police must have told you, untie her and get me a cup of coffee. In return I’ll sit quietly in her room and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid when she wakes up. And I won’t make trouble for the hospital either.”
“But the information the police passed on to me is classified,” said the doctor halfheartedly.
“Give some, get some,” Måns replied laconically.
A little while later Måns was leaning back on the uncomfortable chair next to Rebecka’s bed. His left hand was gently clasping her fingers, and in the other hand he had a cup of scalding coffee in a plastic cup in a brown holder.
“Bloody girl,” he muttered. “Wake up so I can tell you off.”
Darkness. Then darkness and pain. Rebecka opens her eyes carefully. On the wall above the door is a large clock. The minute hand quivers each time it jumps to the next mark. She screws up her eyes, but can’t make out what it says, or if it’s day or night. The light stabs at her eyes like knives. Burns a hole of pain into her head. It explodes in a thousand pieces. Every breath is pain and agony. Her tongue is stuck fast to the top of her mouth. She closes her eyes again and sees Vesa Larsson’s terrified face before her. “Don’t do it, Rebecka. You won’t be able to live with yourself.”
Back into the darkness. Down. Deeper. Downward. Away. The pain recedes. And she is dreaming. It’s summer. The sun is blazing down from a blue sky. The bumblebees weave about drunkenly between the midsummer flowers and the yarrow. Her grandmother is kneeling on the jetty down by the river, scrubbing rag rugs. She has made the soap herself from lye and fat. The scrubbing brush moves back and forth over the stripes on the rug. The faint breeze from the river keeps the mosquitoes away. On the edge of the jetty sits a child with her feet in the water. She has caught a water boatman in a jam jar with a hole in the lid. She is fascinated, watching the large beetle swimming around inside the jar. Rebecka begins to walk down to the water. She is strangely aware that she is dreaming, and mumbles quietly to herself: “Let me see her face. Let me see what she looks like.” Then Johanna turns and catches sight of her. She holds the jam jar triumphantly up to show Rebecka as her lips form the word “Mummy.”