Certain Signs that You are Dead

by Torkil Damhaug

Arash bent down and picked up the plastic bag from the tray under the bed. There were some clothes in it, shirt, jacket. There was a wallet in the jacket pocket. He handed it to the man, who struggled to raise his hand.

  – Okay, I’ll put it somewhere safe for the time being, said Arash, and slipped it into his own pocket. He pushed the bed up against the wall next to the lift, put the brake on and went back to reception in Emergency.

  – There’s enough going on as it is, the nurse scolded him when he put his head round the door.

  – The papers are usually on the table; sometimes they’re in the bed, said Arash without raising his voice.

  She handed him an envelope. – Not this time they weren’t. Pay attention and we won’t have any more cock-ups.

  And again he managed to produce a smile. This was not his final destination. This was a station along the way. It helped, to think that. With a little bow he took the envelope, walked back along the corridor, pulled on the string; the door opened with a noise that made him think of a choir of the dead whose souls had just departed their bodies. It was almost twelve o’clock. He’d said yes to overtime: another two hours to go before he could crawl in under his duvet.

  The phone rang, his own this time. He fished it out of his back pocket. She had insisted on ringing him, even though he had told her he would be working late.

  – Hi, Marita. Aren’t you usually asleep at this time?

  He could hear her smile.

  – I’m sitting here with a glass of wine. Alone.

  Arash stopped, flattened himself against the wall as one of the other porters came by wheeling a bed.

  – Alone?

  – He’s already left.

  – With the shooting club?

  – Gone all weekend. This is about the first time I haven’t had to go along with him.

  – What are you going to do?

  – Meet you.

  He stared at the corridor wall on the other side. A picture hung there. Flowers beside a lake.

  – Is that wise?

  – I’m not wise. You’re wise. And you said we should have a cup of coffee together.

  Yes, he had done. It was a week ago. After the lesson, he’d stayed behind in the classroom. She usually came in as his pupils were making their way out, pulling the trolley with the buckets, a mop in her hand. The first time he was surprised when she started a conversation with him. The next time he was slow packing away his books; she was obviously waiting until they were alone in the room. And once they were, they’d talked more. It was on the fourth occasion that he’d said this about having a cup of coffee together. After that, they called and sent each other text messages every day.

  – I want us to meet tomorrow.

  – Marita, he said, happy at the chance to say her name. It was lovely. She was lovely. Her eyes were grey-green and mournful, even when she smiled. He wanted to say this to her. He was not the least bit afraid of telling a woman straight out that she was lovely. But he didn’t; she was married.

  When he’d hung up, he felt calmer. He rounded the corner, stood there looking down the empty corridor. Had to smile. The thought of meeting her had caused him to go in the wrong direction. He’d been training himself not to let his thoughts occupy his mind so much. But she was more than a thought. Your path begins on the other side.

  He went back through the doors, back down towards Emergency. Stopped by the lift where he’d left the bed, hurried on, peered down the next corridor, stood there trying to think. Someone from the lab came by, pushing a trolley, rows of clinking test tubes.

  – Here you are then, she said.

  – Here I am, he muttered, confused.

  – Right, then, she said.

  – Have you seen a bed with a patient in it?

  She looked around, under the trolley with the test tubes; finally she looked in the pocket of her jacket. – Not there either. Suddenly she put her head back and laughed loudly. – Have you lost your patient? Then we better organise a search party.

  He half ran up to the orthopaedic ward. The duty nurse was sitting in the staffroom.

  – Any new patients?

  – Lots of them.

  – I mean just now, a few minutes ago.

  – Who are you talking about?

  He pulled out the wallet. Inside was a credit card and a driver’s licence. He put the licence down in front of her along with the admission papers. – His name is Ibro Hakanovic.

  – He was booked in an hour and a half ago, the duty nurse confirmed.

  – But someone from here must have fetched him and taken him up to the ward, Arash insisted, his voice a little louder than he would have liked.

  – Well that’s your job.

  – Yes, he said. – It is my job.

  He raced down the stairs and back to Emergency. It is my job, he repeated to himself.

  The nurse with the neck like a turkey was on the phone, but she hung up when she saw him.

  – Did you deliver the patient with his papers this time?

  He wiped his forehead. – I delivered the papers.

  – Good. We can’t run a hospital like that.

  – But not the patient.

  She wrinkled her brow, then gave a strained smile.

  – I haven’t got time for jokes right now. She turned to the computer.

  – I have delivered the papers, but not the patient, Arash blurted out.

  She spun round on the chair, stared at him, put on the spectacles that were dangling in a loop around her neck, stared again.

  – You’re messing me about now, Arash, aren’t you? You’re messing about with a country lassie.

  He explained. The spectacles came off and went on again, her eyes getting smaller and bigger by turn.

  – Well then off you go and find him, man, don’t stand around here gawping. This is a casualty admissions I’m trying to run here, not a lost-property office.

  At that moment Zoran entered. – High voices mean high blood pressure, he said. – Not good for you, Brita.

  – I’ve seen a lot of things go on here, she sighed, blushing, – But never porters who manage to make patients disappear.

  Zoran turned to Arash. – I knew you were a man of many talents. So now you’ve taken up conjuring, have you?

  He laughed, and Brita laughed too, just briefly, then she puffed out her cheeks and was suddenly not a turkey any more but some bigger bird, ready for a fight.

  – Which patient are we talking about?

  Zoran was probably on his way from one operation to the next, but he took his time. Arash had never seen him rushed.

  Brita peered at the screen. – Ibro Hakanovic, Swedish citizen. Admitted two hours ago, moderate injuries.

  – Heard about him. Broken ribs, back pains, concussion. We’re keeping him in overnight for observation.

  Zoran laid an arm around Arash’s shoulder. He was a powerfully built man with greying hair and even greyer stubble, and eyes that missed nothing. It was thanks to him that Arash had got the job.

  – We’ll get this sorted out. He smiled at Brita, and she sat down again, breathing heavily, but said no more.

  – What do you mean? Patients don’t just vanish into thin air.

  Benjaminsen was from somewhere away up in the north of Norway, and usually when he spoke he sounded so cheerful. Now he sounded more like a tired dog trying to bark into a phone.

  Arash explained once more.

  – Have you spoken to the security guards? his boss wanted to know.

  – They’re waiting. Want to know if they should call the police.

  – Give over, Arash. The guy must be around here somewhere. We can’t have the police running about all over the place every time there’s a cock-up. That would look just great.

  The head porter said nothing about just who was responsible for the cock-up, but there was no doubting what he thought of the whole business.

  – Take one of the guards with you and have a thorough look round.

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nbsp; – We’ve had a thorough look round. All the wards and corridors around the casualty department.

  – Then expand the search, every floor, search the whole place.

  – And if we don’t find him?

  Benjaminsen groaned, a waft of his sleepy exasperation seeping through the line.

  – Of course you’ll find him.

  Arash was joined by one of the security guards, a stocky little man of about his own age. His face was round and featureless, and his huge forearms bulged through the short sleeves of his uniform shirt. The man made his voice deep and spoke in an abrupt bark. They met in the vestibule, and the guard decided they would head off in different directions and meet up in the middle of each floor.

  Half an hour later, they wound up in the security guards’ room in the basement. Arash put the wallet on the table.

  – Are you walking round with his wallet?

  – He gave it to me. I was supposed to be looking after it till he got to the ward. He was scared and full of morphine.

  The security guard emptied it: a credit card, a driver’s licence. – Ibro Hakanovic. Born 1980. Doesn’t sound very Swedish.

  He put the cards back, handed the wallet to Arash. – We won’t mess about with this any more. Best leave it to the police.

  – But we’re supposed to find him.

  The guard rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. – The guy’s done a runner, he said with finality.

  Arash shook his head. – He’s injured, he’s bleeding, he’s full of painkillers, he could hardly even manage to turn over in the bed.

  A low growl from the guard.

  – Maybe we should check the cameras, Arash suggested, nodding towards the large bank of computer screens where the movement of people around the hospital could be followed.

  The guard looked at him a moment. – I’ll be the one to decide that.

  He turned to the instrument panel, pressed a few buttons. Checked the clock, ran the films backwards and forwards for a while. Corridors with nurses and doctors rushing by and, much more slowly, patients in dressing gowns, some with crutches or Zimmer frames. Now and then someone going in or out of the main entrance.

  – Don’t see anything here. But a couple of the cameras are out of order.

  Arash stood up and peered over his shoulder.

  – Stand over there. The guard waved him away with his finger, as though he didn’t want anyone, or at least not Arash, standing behind him. – They’re trying to trace the fault. They’ve been at it a week now and got nowhere, and now here’s the weekend. The matter’s been raised at the highest level, but there’s cuts here and cuts there. Idiots.

  – Where are the ones that aren’t working?

  The guard rewound the film. – Down in the basement. By the ramp.

  Arash leaned heavily against the table. – He can’t have got down into the basement.

  The guard turned and looked at him for a moment. In the sharp light, his eyes took on an indefinable watery colour.

  – Tell me something I don’t know, he yawned. – You who are supposed to be looking after the patient, for example, you tell me what you’ve done with him.

  When Arash didn’t answer, he added: – You better take a look round in the basement while I check everyone who’s left the building in the last hour.

  As the lift door glided shut behind him, Arash stood peering down the basement corridor. First in the direction of the staff entrance and the chapel, then the other way, towards the tunnel and the ramp. Began walking in that direction, past the changing rooms. A few stands with white coats and tops hanging from them along the walls. He stopped at a junction, a corridor leading left; he wasn’t familiar with it, didn’t know where it led to, even though he’d been working there for almost a year. Should’ve brought a compass, he thought, and peered down through the light reflected in the linoleum from the neon strips in uneven grey puddles. At the far end of the corridor a couple of the strips were gone. There, in the half-dark, he glimpsed something that ought not to have been there. Part of a bed was visible. He hesitated a few seconds, then headed on down.

  The bed was empty. The blanket lay there in a heap. Beneath it blood had stained down into the sheet. The bag of clothes hung from the bedhead. First thought: call somebody, call the guard, call the nurses. He rejected it. The patient was injured and debilitated by all the morphine he’d been given. Best to find him without asking for help. It was his duty to make up for his mistake.

  – Onjai? he suddenly called out in Farsi.

  The corridor swallowed up his shout.

  – Are you there? he tried again.

  He stood there listening. The distant rumbling of the ventilation system. All those other sounds that penetrated down through the enormous building. Even now, at night, the place was full of sound, groans and cries from the floors above, surgical saws and forceps, beds and trolleys being wheeled along, orders and questions, the slapping of footsteps, chat and backchat, the low hum of coffee machines, newspaper pages rustling, the clicking of knitting needles. But in this corridor it suddenly seemed very quiet, a quiet such as he had never known in the hospital before. It reminded him of another basement, in a building filled with sounds that would live in his memory always, voices shouting, the groans and screams of bodies in pain too great for anyone to bear. And suddenly silence. The silence after a gunshot. A silence in which you still don’t know that was a blank in the gun held to your head.

  Arash rubbed at both temples, as though to erase these memories from another time, another place that had suddenly surged up to become part of what he was seeing and hearing now.

  He tried a door just up beyond the bed. It wasn’t locked. A storeroom. Shelves of towels and packs of paper serviettes and cartons of plastic cups, a junction box that gave off a low growling, another door at the far end. He hurried through the room. Exhaust fan, the sign said. He closed his eyes. The image of another room, in that other basement. They called it the cold room. For three days he’d sat there in the dark, naked, as the cold penetrated into every cell of his body. Silence is the surest sign of your death. He blinked hard a few times to rid himself of these shadow thoughts, but it only made them stronger.

  When he tried the latch, it didn’t move. He bent down, peered through the gap. It didn’t look as if it was locked. He tried once more, still it wouldn’t move. He breathed easier, made his way backwards through the room again.

  As he was about to leave the storeroom, he stopped abruptly. Bent down slowly. Two stains on the shelf next to the bottom, neither one bigger than a coin. He touched one with a fingertip.

  Blood, still damp.

  On the floor, another drop, almost brown against the grey linoleum. And along the wall to the left, more drops.

  A cupboard in the innermost corner, the ventilation shaft. The drops of blood led towards it in an almost straight line.

  – Ibro, he called above the drone from the junction box. – Ibro Hakanovic?

  He followed the drops, walking on tiptoe so as not to tread on any of them. Took a step back as he jerked the little cupboard door open. Another step, but not far enough. What had been doubled up inside followed the door out and tumbled over on top of him with a gush of wind, like air escaping from a giant bellows. Arash was knocked off his feet, the half-naked body pressing him into the floor, pushing him through the floor and on further down.

  He screamed, but didn’t stop falling.

  7

  Jennifer had pulled down the blackout curtains and the thick velvet curtains, slipped naked into the bed, put on her sleeping mask, twisted her earplugs into place, wrapped the summer duvet around her and turned so that her face was away from the window. The tiredness was still there, but already it was weaker. An army of thoughts was ready and waiting to roll in over her, take possession of her and drive sleep away. She’d learned a counter-technique that involved directing the attention towards one part of the body after another, starting with the toes and moving upwards. Now
she was concentrating as hard as she could on a point beneath the sole of one of her feet.

  Something moved. A sliver of light had managed to penetrate the fortress walls of the curtain and the rearguard defence of the mask, and from there straight through the thin eyelids. Imagining things, she told herself, but it was enough to disturb her concentration on the sole of her foot. She raised the mask and turned towards the window. Sure enough, a slender beam of evening summer light had threaded its way in through the veranda door and across to the wall. She groaned in exasperation at her own carelessness, closed her eyes again, determined to ignore the strip of light; it could hardly amount to more than a few photons.

  Too late, of course. She would have to get up and deal with it. In a few hours’ time the sun would reach that side of the house and then she’d find herself bathed in light; it penetrated everything. And if she woke at five, it would be completely impossible to get back to sleep.

  She leaned over, tugged at the blackout curtains, so hard that a gap now opened up on the other side. Using an English word, she cursed loudly and shamelessly, then climbed abruptly out of bed. She dealt with the problem, went back to bed again, searched again for that point beneath her foot she had just been concentrating on, knowing all the while that her battle against the superior forces of light was now irrevocably lost.

  She had been living in this country for more than twenty years. The first summers had been magical. She and Ivar in the apple orchard with a glass of wine on the table. The light that never went away. The feeling of not even needing sleep. And when she did finally go to bed, she would fall asleep within minutes. Not until years later did the light start to bother her, in the beginning just the occasional night, but then gradually getting worse and worse.

  For a while she let her thoughts wander around this memory of the orchard, even though it was such an obvious trap. Seemingly restful, the way it recalled the smells of those still summer evenings. Ivar beside her on the garden sofa, always quiet. The boys in bed. Sigurd, who never slept; he’d inherited her restless wilfulness and could never manage to wind down in the evening. Never any problem with Trym. Not until he grew up. And she realised now that this was where her thoughts had been driving her all the time. Into this sticky web of worries about her elder son.