Invisible Murder

INA WOKE UP to the sound of trays clattering in the corridor outside. Nurses’ heels striking the floor with a rhythmic clack. What time was it? She must have been asleep, but for how long? They had packed all her clothes and other possessions into a yellow plastic bag, her watch included, and it took her a few seconds to focus on the clock over the door. 9:10 P.M. Her head felt better. Razor sharp, actually. Nothing hurt anymore, and she could stretch out to her full height without being afraid of throwing up. They had also finally removed the tube from her nostril. The nausea was still there, lurking, she noted, but distantly. She decided to pretend it wasn’t there anymore.

Nina swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tentatively put her feet on the floor. She felt her pulse explode in a wild frenzy as she slowly transferred her weight onto her feeble legs and took a couple of steps into the room. Things worked, she thought, relieved. She was functional again. She cast an irritated glance at the IV bag and stand she was still tethered to. Then she turned off the drip and pulled out the Venflon mechanism taped to her left hand. She didn’t have any Band-Aids and had to make do with pressing a paper napkin from the nightstand drawer against the back of her hand until the bleeding stopped, but now she was free.

She walked across the floor with faltering steps to the bathroom and peed with the door open. She felt a single drop of sweat trickle from her temple down her cheek and neck. Her heart was racing, and she sat for a few minutes fighting the nausea churning in her stomach. But so far so good. She had conquered the bathroom, she thought, doing a sarcastic little fanfare for herself in her head. Now all that remained was the rest of the world.

She got up, washed her hands and face in the cold jet from the faucet and slowly started staggering back across the floor. It felt like walking on cotton.

Then she stumbled.

One of her feet simply gave way beneath her as she went to take the last step over to her bed. She landed hard on her hipbone on the mottled gray floor, and the sudden pain made her hiss between her teeth. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and glared furiously at her right foot, cursing her own clumsiness. She had seen plenty of patients do exactly this. Flail around on their own before they were strong enough, fall, and end up in an even worse state than when they first arrived at the hospital. Luckily her hip still worked. The pain had already faded to a dull throb, and the fall would result in a bruise at most, but it still hurt. Nina took hold of the bed and hauled herself to her feet, with her heart pounding frenetically beneath her hospital gown. A sound from over by the door made her stop in mid-motion. A sort of drawn-out sigh. She turned her head and saw Morten.

He was standing in the doorway with his arms dangling weirdly, hanging too straight from his shoulders, as if they had stopped working. She hadn’t even noticed the door opening. How long had he been standing there and had he seen her fall? There was something about the look on his face that made the last of the strength in Nina’s legs give way, and she plopped down onto the edge of the bed and pulled her arms around herself and the limp hospital gown.

“Let me help you.”

Morten came over to her, carefully raised her legs onto the bed, and tucked the blanked in around her.

“I tried calling you,” she said, reproachfully. “Several times.”

She followed his movements with her eyes. He didn’t look at her, and his hands kept stroking the blanket as if he were smoothing out invisible wrinkles in the bedding. He was trying to smile, she could tell, but it wasn’t really working. Suddenly Nina felt afraid. What had happened? Was there something Magnus hadn’t told her after all?

“Is it Ida?”

Morten looked up for a brief instant.

“She’s upset, but.…” He cut himself short. “How are you doing?” Nina felt a sense of relief along with a touch of confusion. Why was he asking her about it like that? Politely. As if he were a co-worker, or a distant relation. She reached out with her hands and cautiously tried to pull him a little closer, but he resisted. At first it was subtle, a faint counter pressure, a tension in his neck muscles, but when she didn’t let go, he suddenly yanked himself free and backed away. And then he made eye contact for the first time. He looked tired and haggard. As if he had been crying, but Morten almost never cried. He got mad and swore, but he didn’t cry.

“Excuse me.”

A health care assistant in a white coat slid into the room with a broad smile. She closed the curtains, then stood by the window for a minute, shuffling her feet before she decided to fill Nina’s water glass. She took the glass and went to the small bathroom, and Nina could hear the water running. Morten didn’t say anything. He glanced impatiently at the open bathroom door in irritation.

“They don’t usually fill the patients’ water glasses in the bathroom.”

Nina said that more to herself than to Morten, and he didn’t respond. The assistant made a clattering noise with something or other in the bathroom, and Nina and Morten sat for a long moment waiting for her to finish up and leave. Then Morten gave up and started up the conversation again.

“I’m going to say something now,” Morten said, looking resolute. “And afterward I’ll leave so you can have some peace and quiet to … rest.”

Nina nodded slowly, attempted to smile, but a chilling fear begin to spread beneath her breastbone. This didn’t seem like one of the dressing-downs that Morten usually dumped on her when he was angry. This wasn’t like anything she had seen before.

“Ida was home by herself Saturday night,” Morten said, and his voice trembled a little. “She was home alone in the middle of the night in an apartment in Østerbro because her mother was in hospital.”

Nina raised her hand halfway to protest. It wasn’t correct that Ida had been home alone because Nina was sick. If Nina hadn’t gone to the Coal-House Camp, she would have been spending the night in a foul-smelling scout cabin with Anton. Ida was supposed to be spending the night with Anna. That was the agreement.

Morten brushed her aside with a tired motion.

“Ida’s mother wasn’t home because she had come down with radiation sickness. On multiple occasions, as I have learned, she visited a flock of sick Eastern Europeans in Valby even though she had promised not to do that kind of work while I was in the North Sea.”

Morten’s tired eyes, red from crying, caught hers and held them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Not Ida’s mother, you. You promised, Nina.”

She cringed under his gaze. The nausea was coming back now, and there was a faint rushing sound in her ears.

“While you were in the hospital, three men broke into the apartment, where Ida was alone with a boyfriend I’ve never heard of. They beat him, and Ida, who was half naked.…”

Nina looked down at her hands. Please, would he stop soon? Could she stand to hear any more?

“They took pictures of her. They humiliated her. Our little girl.”

Morten’s eyes looked exhausted, lifeless.

“I have no idea if the break-in was related to what you were doing in Valby. But, do you know what? I couldn’t care less, Nina. It doesn’t interest me anymore. Our apartment has been sealed off because of potential radioactive contamination. As has our car.”

Morten flung out his arms, almost helplessly, Nina thought, feeling something hard and painful lodged itself like a lump in her throat. Then he took another step away from the bed.

“If it was just you and me.…” he said. “But it isn’t. And I simply can’t understand … I simply can’t let you bring Anton and Ida along with you into … into that permanent war zone you insist on living in. We’ve moved down to my sister’s for the time being. That’s what I came to tell you.”

For the time being, she heard. For a while. Maybe he could live with this, maybe they would be okay again.

But he kept moving toward the door, and then he opened it, and he was almost all the way out in the corridor before he turned around and looked at her with an unrelenting determination that destroyed her illusion.

“This is it for me, Nina,” he said quietly. “It’s over.”

NINA WOULD HAVE called out to him, but she couldn’t think what to say to make him stay. He stood in the doorway for a microsecond. As if he wanted to give her a mental snapshot for the family album. His long, slightly stooped silhouette. His shoulders, which along with his narrow hips formed a perfect V under the loose T-shirt. She knew that body down to the smallest detail, and images of Morten from their sixteen years together flickered through her mind. How he had stood at the foot of their bed a thousand times, tiredly pulling his T-shirt up over his head. The birthmark under his right shoulder blade, the soft armpits, the long muscular legs, and the soft, dark hair that covered his chest, arms, legs, and groin. His smile when he turned around and looked at her. But this time he didn’t turn around.

He didn’t even look back once as he turned down the corridor. Her diaphragm contracted painfully. As if she had been smacked in the stomach by a ball Anton had kicked. The realization that he was leaving her, that he had already left, struck in a single brutal blow.

In the bathroom the laggardly assistant clattered around, cleared her throat, and then finally reappeared with a full water glass in her hand that she passed to Nina.

“They don’t fill patients’ water glasses in the bathroom,” Nina said mechanically, and turned her sluggish eyes toward the assistant’s freckled face. She looked strangely guilty, Nina thought. As if she knew she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to. And her coat was white, not yellow. A faint suspicion crept to the front of Nina’s consciousness. Why was she even in the room? There was no reason for her to close the curtains. Nina hadn’t asked for any water.

The woman cleared her throat and pulled the corners of her mouth up into an expression that was supposed to resemble something halfway between perky and kindhearted.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “My name is Lone Walter, and I’m a journalist with Ekstra Bladet. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?”

A little red spark of rage shot up through Nina. A journalist! Of course. No real health care worker had time to waste the way this woman had just done. Nina looked over at the empty doorway where Morten had disappeared.

“Did you get all that?” Nina tried to make her voice sound cool and collected as she turned her eyes to the woman by her bed again.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The woman’s fake smile persisted, unflappable, and Nina finally felt the nausea regaining the upper hand. She reached for the basin next to her bed and vomited in long, pink jets. Blackcurrant juice, Nina thought, and looked up at the now slightly flustered journalist.

“Get the hell out of here,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anyone.”