Certain Signs that You are Dead

by Torkil Damhaug

  At the back of the house he passed a cellar door, tried the handle. It opened, and the unlocked door was what decided the matter. He would find her, stand there in the dim light of the bedroom and look at her, smile down at her as she lifted her head from the pillow and said his name. And then he’d go, never see her again.

  He crept up the basement steps. Opened a door. A pair of shoes in the corridor, some rubber boots. Jackets hanging on a hall stand. No female clothing. A door ajar on the right. He entered a kitchen. No lights on. Stood there listening. The sound of voices from an adjoining room. He peered through the keyhole. Dark in there too, just the blue flickering light of a television. A couple shouting at each other, then he recognised the voices; he’d watched the series many times.

  At that instant, the door was thrown open, Sigurd staggered backwards and crashed into the stove. The light went on. The person standing there was wearing a vest and boxer shorts, had a towel round his shoulders.

  – What the hell?

  Sigurd raised a hand, a guard maybe; he certainly didn’t intend to shake hands.

  – What the hell are you doing here?

  The man turned and grabbed something from the living room, straightened up again, still standing in the doorway, a golf club in his hand.

  – You won’t find what you’re looking for here.

  – I don’t believe you, said Sigurd, the words burning in his throat.

  – I’m not stupid enough to keep it in the house, the man shouted.

  ­– Katja? said Sigurd in surprise. He said it loud enough for her to have heard if she was sitting in the adjoining room.

  – What about Katja? growled the man in the boxer shorts. He had highlights in his hair, and was even bigger than he looked from a distance, muscles bulging, eyes small and angry. For a moment Sigurd saw the situation from the outside. He was in a stranger’s house, uninvited. Maybe he’d made a mistake.

  – Ibro Hakanovic, he said, and realised it wasn’t very clever to say the name, but right now he wasn’t feeling very clever. And maybe it was the sound of the name that galvanised the man. Suddenly he took three steps forward, raised the golf club and hammered it down on Sigurd’s shoulder.

  He shrieked.

  – How stupid can you be? the other man growled, and raised the club again. – I told you, I don’t have it here.

  Sigurd held both his hands above his head, saw the blow coming, threw himself backwards, hit his neck against the sink as he fell. The man was on top of him, Sigurd rolled aside, the club hammered into the wooden floor right next to his head. He got to his feet, bent double, on the other side of the man, the door out to the corridor blocked. He backed into the next room, a living room, the television still on, CSI: Miami. On the table was a frying pan with the remains of a meal. He grabbed hold of it, pushed with all his weight against the living-room door, kept pushing as it opened slightly. Then he stepped aside, and at once it burst open and the guy came stumbling in. In the split second it took him to regain his balance, Sigurd lifted the frying pan and brought it down on the man’s back with all his might. Hakanovic fell flat on his face, bits of sausage and potato raining down all over him as he dropped the golf club. Sigurd grabbed hold of it, hit him again, on the back and on the arm. Then he caught sight of the small tattoo on the back of the shoulder, a letter from a foreign alphabet maybe, and he knew where he’d seen one exactly like it before. Don’t hit his head, the thought flashed through him, not the head, he shouted out loud as the last blow landed.

  Yesterday you told me you witnessed a murder when you were eight years old.

  What I told you was that my father shot a man.

  Correct …

  My father shot him in the head. He was the best marksman in the club. He won more prizes than anyone else.

  Did you talk about it afterwards?

  Father wasn’t angry that I came running up, if that’s what you’re asking. He never got angry with me. I think maybe he even wanted me to follow him that day. I distracted the attention of the man he was going to meet. Or maybe he wanted to show me how quickly life can end. Because afterwards that’s what he said to me. That I should always be prepared. Always be alert. Always have a plan for what to do if a threat suddenly appears.

  Did you think much about what you saw him do?

  Now and then I thought of the man’s face. What the sharp thorns did to it, because he couldn’t protect himself when he fell. I’d met him before; he was a handsome man, about the same age as my father, but with hardly any wrinkles and always clean shaven. If he’d had a beard, it would have protected him from the thorns. Father didn’t want me to look at him, but I had to go over to the bushes, and he was lying there with his cheeks all ripped up.

  What happened after that?

  I played for a while with the other kids in the square. It was a Sunday; we went to church. Like always on Sundays. During prayers I peeked up at my father and I saw he was crying. I’d never seen that before. And he spent longer there than he usually did. Outside, two men were waiting. As soon as I spotted them, I knew they didn’t belong there. I realised they were waiting for someone and grabbed my father’s hand to get him away. But it was too late.

  From the expert witness’s notes, 2 August 2014

  PART II

  13–15 June 2014

  6

  Arash’s phone beeped. It was from Emergency. He was on the floor above, parked the empty bed and hurried down there.

  – You should answer the telephone, the nurse scolded him. She had a neck like a turkey and was at least twice his age. Her voice often sounded as if she was angry about something or other.

  – Quicker to come straight to you, he smiled.

  She shook her head and didn’t seem completely impervious to the smile. Once or twice, on evenings when things were quiet, she’d invited him into the office behind the counter where she sat and offered him coffee and biscuits. But this evening was very busy. New patients in, all the examination rooms in use, a chaos of beds and screens in the corridors, nurses and doctors running around with stethoscopes waving and telephones to their ears, into one room, wrong patient, out again, as though no one knew what anyone else was doing.

  – Examination room four, she said. – Patient to the orthopaedic ward. She handed him a note with a name on it.

  – Will do, he said with another smile; she told him once he had such a nice smile. Women in this country could say that type of thing to anyone at all. He had no objection to it, once he got used to it.

  – Asap, Arash, she growled, but with a twinkle in her eye, and he put his hand to his mouth and blew her a kiss. She turned sharply away. He saw that she was grinning.

  In examination room four, two nurses were standing bent over a bed while a third was hanging up a drip. The woman in the bed suddenly began to howl, like a wounded beast. The sweat was pouring off her and she was rocking backwards and forward. The two nurses tried to hold her down.

  – I’m supposed to pick up a man, Arash began.

  – Does this look like the man you’re supposed to be picking up? the third nurse chimed in.

  Arash didn’t think so. Another long-drawn-out howl from the patient, deeper this time. The nurses talked among themselves, about a doctor who hadn’t arrived, about ringing again.

  – There’s supposed to be a patient for an orthopaedic bed here, Arash tried again.

  – This is not a surgical patient, groaned the nurse who had connected the drip and now reached for a telephone.

  She tugged at the sleeve of his jacket. – Try room three, she said, sounding a little more conciliatory. – We had to move her. She added in a lowered voice: – Pregnant

  Arash knocked on the door of the next room before entering. A man was lying alone on a bed inside. He was enormous, feet sticking out from below the blanket that had been tossed over him. He was wearing only one sock. There was a bandage round his head and one eye was bloody and swollen and tightly shut. He peered up out of the other
eye.

  Arash held up the note and pointed.

  – Is this your name?

  – Yes.

  He pulled the brake-release. – Then you’re coming with me.

  – Coming where with you? the patient said in Swedish.

  – You’re going to a bed in an orthopaedic ward.

  – Who the hell says so?

  Arash thought about that a moment.

  – The doctor who examined you. They’ve decided you should be admitted.

  The patient raised his finger and waved it in front of him. – No doctors have examined me. And who the hell are you?

  Arash looked more closely at him. The sound of that threatening voice reminded him of something, it made him uneasy. He tried to explain what his job was, to make sure patients got safely from one department to another.

  – Once you get to the ward, you’ll be given a more thorough examination, he concluded. He placed the bag with the saline drip by the bedhead and pulled the bed towards the door.

  – You’re not taking me anywhere.

  The patient tried to get up. Grimaced and slid back down again with a groan.

  – You’re in pain, Arash comforted him as he straightened the blanket that was about to fall on to the floor.

  – Where did you get that ring from? the patient asked suddenly, seemingly released from his pain for a moment. – Are you a Muslim?

  – Yes, Arash blurted out, and the unease that had retreated to somewhere in his neck now flooded through his whole chest. He glanced down at his hand, the ring with the black enamel and the three words smelted in gold on to it.

  – I must get Katja somewhere safe.

  Arash parked the bed again. – Do you have a cat?

  It wasn’t uncommon for people who ended up in hospital to be worried about the pets they’d left at home.

  – They found out where I live. They were asking about Katja.

  The voice was not the same as the man he had been reminded of, Arash reassured himself, nor did the patient have an Iranian accent. But the reference to a cat made him feel uncertain. And what business was it of this stranger’s if he was a Muslim or not?

  Suddenly the patient grabbed him by the arm.

  – Katja isn’t safe. I have to bring her here.

  Arash pulled his arm free. He realised that he must have misheard, the patient wasn’t talking about his cat. – We’ll let your relatives know, they’ll come and look after things for you.

  The patient shook his head; it seemed to cost him a great effort, and he grimaced again in a way that made him resemble even more the man Arash did not want to be reminded of.

  – Where is my phone?

  Again the patient raised his arm and reached out to grab him. To calm the man down, Arash bent over and felt in the pockets of the trousers that lay folded below the bed. There was a phone in one of them. He handed it to the patient, who peered at it through his one good eye.

  – She’s got a new number, he grunted, tapping on the screen, putting the phone to his ear. – Hi, Katja, are you still in Stockholm?

  He waved Arash away. – Get out of here, he growled, and pointed towards the door.

  Arash let himself out into the corridor. There was no limit to the amount of patience he needed in this job.

  One of the assistant doctors came hurrying by. Not many years older than him, but already thinning on top. His name was Finn Olav and he was the type who stopped for a chat when he had the time. He and his wife lived on the floor above Arash. A couple of months earlier, Arash had taken one of their kids home when she fell off a swing and lay crying in the grass.

  – You just standing here waiting? Finn Olav asked, and half opened the door to the examination room.

  Arash explained the situation: that he’d been sent from one room to the next and was equally unwelcome in both.

  Another beast-like howl came from room four.

  – Ectopic pregnancy, said Finn Olav, nodding towards the door with a crooked smile. – Neither you nor I have any business in there. We leave it to the tribe’s own elders. Now as for this guy here … He pushed the door open and peered in. – He’s probably right to say that he’s untouched by medical hand so far.

  He laid a pale and freckled hand on Arash’s shoulder.

  – We need chaos pilots like you. Whatever you do, don’t give up. If you do, the whole place will collapse in an instant. Promise me that.

  He winked and closed the door behind him.

  It was impossible to take even a five-minute break that evening. After the supervisor went home at ten o’clock, it was Arash who manned the phone. But he liked that. Perfectly okay to sit in the mess room playing cards, but it was better when things were happening; time passed quicker. Soon it would be night, then morning. And then Saturday morning. Thoughts of what was going to happen then welled up in him, only to be interrupted yet again by the telephone. Emergency. Why had he still not fetched the patient from room four?

  – He wasn’t in room four, he was in number three.

  – Are you trying to be funny?

  – No.

  – I don’t give a damn what room he’s in. They were expecting him in orthopaedic two hours ago.

  Arash knew there was no point in trying to explain. He had done his best to deliver the Swedish-speaking man with the head injury to his destination. Half an hour after he got there, he’d even popped his head in on his own initiative and the patient still wasn’t ready; one of the other doctors was giving him some medication and he was waved away once more with a bewildering urgency.

  – Do you think the idea is for him to spend the whole night here in Emergency? groaned the voice on the phone.

  Arash didn’t think so.

  – Well then, get the man to where he’s supposed to be.

  He parked an old lady with a broken hip outside the X-ray lab and returned to Emergency. Sure enough, the patient with the bandaged head was still lying there in room three.

  – So the doctors are finally finished with you, said Arash as cheerfully as he could.

  The man didn’t answer. He lay with his eyes closed and looked as if he was asleep.

  – Now I’ll take you to where you’re supposed to be going. Trust me.

  Arash released the brake, manoeuvred out through the doors and headed down towards the end of the corridor.

  – There was no accident.

  The patient’s voice was slurred and feeble.

  Arash stopped and leaned forward. – What did you say?

  – Has Katja been here?

  – Kat? Is that your girlfriend?

  – She didn’t die in a car crash.

  The patient opened one eye now, still seemed more asleep than awake. Just as well, thought Arash. At least this way he’s not so frightening.

  – When you get to the ward, they’ll help you get in touch with your family.

  – Ring Katja, the patient snuffled. – She isn’t dead. I have to tell her that. It’s the eyes.

  – You probably have to tell her she’s not dead, said Arash, and permitted himself a little smile.

  – The eyes are the same. She has eyes you never forget.

  The patient was snuffling even more, the pupil in the half-open eye hardly larger than a pinprick. Arash was used to seeing patients under the influence of strong painkilling drugs. Some behaved like drunkards; others were already that way when they arrived.

  – Did you call Katja? Is she on her way?

  – I’m sure she’ll be here, said Arash comfortingly.

  – It isn’t like you think.

  – Okay then.

  – She’s in the photograph. Third from the left. The patient lifted one hand and pointed, as if the photo were being held up in front of him.

  – We’re going up to the ward now, said Arash firmly. – Once you get there, they’ll sort all this out. They’ll ring this girl you want to get hold of. Don’t worry.

  – Give me the phone.

  Arash found i
t under the pillow, handed it to the patient, not sure that he was capable of holding it, still less finding a number on it and making a call.

  The duty phone beeped.

  – You forgot the papers.

  The woman from reception again. She hadn’t said a word about papers until now, but he didn’t argue with her. A couple of times before, he’d arrived at a ward without papers. Same thing every time, he was the one that got the telling-off. The papers were not his responsibility but the doctors’ and nurses’, and it was not uncommon for them to get mixed up. Every single day there were a thousand opportunities to get into a quarrel with someone in this place, and right from the start he’d made up his mind to avoid it. One day he would be a doctor here himself. And then he wouldn’t be down on anyone, not nurses nor junior doctors and definitely not porters.

  He glanced at the patient. Both eyes closed now. Didn’t look so good, should probably not have been given so much painkiller without someone to keep an eye on him afterwards. This was not Arash’s job, but he cared, had already started training for the day when it would be his responsibility, and he’d spoken up a couple of times. On at least one occasion he’d prevented a death, he was pretty sure about that.

  He bent over the patient. – Can you hear me?

  No reaction. He laid a finger on the man’s neck, above the tunic. Felt the regular beating. At that moment the man opened his good eye wide and stared at him.

  – Who are you working for?

  Arash started, straightened up. Realised that this was the look that made him think of the guard he prayed to God he would never have to meet again.

  – I don’t trust anyone in this place.

  – I … I’ve got to go and get your papers, Arash managed to say. – You just lie here for a few moments.

  The patient tried to grab hold of his arm.

  – You’re not going to kill me, are you?

  Arash moved away. – You’re safe here. Do you know where you are?

  The man turned his head. The bandage slid up his forehead; there were cakes of dried blood in the close-cropped hair.

  – My wallet, he gasped. – They took my wallet.