John Lindqvist - Let The Right One In aka Let Me In

She could. She even offered Lacke a dry mazarin cake that would have been thrown away the next day anyway. He had eaten it with a lump in his throat, thinking about people's relative goodness, relative evil. Then he went and stood out by the front doors and smoked the second to last cigarette in the packet before he went back up to Virginia.

They had tied her down with straps.

A nurse had received such a blow that her glasses had broken and a sliver had slashed an eyebrow. Virginia had been impossible to calm. They had not dared give her an injection because of her general state and therefore they had strapped her arms down with leather straps, mainly to prevent-as they put it-"to prevent her from injuring herself."

Lacke rubbed a scab between his fingers; a powder as fine as pigment colored the tops of his fingers red. A movement in the corner of his eye; the blood from the bag hanging from the stand next to Virginia's bed fell in drops down a plastic tube, and on down through the catheter into Virginia's arm.

Apparently, once they had identified her blood group, they had first given her a transfusion where they literally pumped in a quantity of blood, but now, when her condition had stabilized, she received it by the drop. There was a label on the half-full blood bag printed with incomprehensible markings, dominated with a capital A. The blood type, of course.

But… wait a minute…

Lacke had blood type B. He now recalled that he and Virginia had talked about that one time, that Virginia also had the blood group B and that therefore he could… yes. That was exactly right. That they could give blood to each other because they had the same blood type. And Lacke had B; he was completely sure of that.

He got up, walked out into the corridor.

Surely they don't make these kinds of mistakes?

He got hold of a nurse.

"Excuse me, but…"

She glanced at his worn clothes, put on an aloof air, said: "Yes?"

"I was just wondering. Virginia… Virginia Lind who you… admitted a while ago…"

The nurse nodded, looked positively dismissive now. Had perhaps been present when they…

"Well, I was just wondering… her blood type."

"What about it?"

"Well, I saw there's a big A on the bag that… but she doesn't have that."

"I'm afraid I'm not following this."

"You see… uh… do you have a moment?"

The nurse looked around down the corridor. Perhaps to check if there was help to be had if this deteriorated into something, perhaps to underscore that she had more important things to do, but she did agree to accompany Lacke into the room where Virginia lay with closed eyes, the blood slowly dropping down the tube. Lacke pointed to the bag of blood.

"Here. This A, it means that…"

"That it contains type A blood, yes. There is such a shortage of blood donors these days. If people knew how-"

"Excuse me, yes. But she has blood type B. Isn't it dangerous to…"

"Of course it is."

The nurse was not unfriendly, exactly, but her body language suggested that Lacke's right to question the competence of hospital staff was minimal. She shrugged lightly, said: "If one has blood type B. But this patient does not. She has AB."

"But… the bag says A…"

The nurse nodded, as if she was explaining to a child that there were no people on the moon: "People with the blood type AB can receive blood from all blood groups."

"But… I see. Then she has changed her blood type."

The nurse raised an eyebrow. The child had just claimed that it had been to the moon and seen people up there. With a hand gesture, as if she were slicing a ribbon, she said: "That's just not possible."

"Is that a fact. Well, she must have been wrong, then."

"She must have been. If you'll excuse me I have other things to attend to."

The nurse checked the catheter in Virginia's arm, adjusted the IV stand slightly, and with a last look at Lacke that said that these were important things and god save him if he so much as looked at them, she left the room with energetic steps.

What happens if you get the wrong kind of blood? The blood… coagulates.

No. It must have been Virginia who couldn't remember correctly.

He walked to a corner of the room, where there was an armchair, a small table with a plastic flower. Sat down, looked around the room. Bare walls, shining floor. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Virginia's bed of metal tubing, over her a pale yellow blanket printed with county

ADMINISTRATION.

This is how things end up.

In Dostoevsky, illness and death were almost always dirty, impoverished affairs. Crushed beneath wagon wheels, mud, typhus, bloodstained handkerchiefs. And so on. But damned if that weren't preferable to this. Slow disintegration in a polished machine.

Lacke leaned back into the armchair, closed his eyes. The chair back was too short, his head slumped back. He straightened up, put his elbow on the armrest, and leaned his head in his hand. Looked at the plastic flower. It was as if they had put it there simply to emphasize the fact that no life was allowed here; here order reigned.

The image of the flower stayed on his retina when he shut his eyes again. It transformed into a real flower that grew, became a garden. A garden attached to the house they were going to buy. Lacke stood in the garden, looked at a rosebush with shining red flowers. From the house came the long shadow of a person. The sun set hastily and the shadow grew, became longer, stretched out over the garden…

He jumped and was suddenly awake. His palm was wet with saliva that had run out of the corner of his mouth as he was sleeping. He rubbed his mouth, smacked his lips together, and tried to straighten his head. Couldn't. His neck had seized up somehow. He forced it to straighten out with a crackling of the ligaments, stopped.

Wide open eyes staring right at him.

"Hi! Are you…"

His mouth closed. Virginia was lying on her back, restrained by the straps, with her face turned toward him. But her face was much too still. Not a flicker of recognition, joy… nothing. Her eyes didn't blink.

Dead! She is…

Lacke flew up out of the armchair and something cracked in his neck. He threw himself on his knees next to the bed, grabbed the metal tubing, and moved his face close to hers as if to will her soul back into her face, from her depths, by the sheer force of his presence.

"Ginja! Can you hear me?"

Nothing. And yet he could have sworn that her eyes in some way looked back into his, that they were not dead. He looked for her, all the way through them, casting hooks from deep within himself, into the holes that were her pupils, in order to reach through the darkness for…

Her pupils. Is that what you look like when you…

Her pupils were not round. They were stretched lengthwise, to little points. He made a face when a cold stream of pain washed over his neck, put his hand on it, rubbed.

Virginia blinked. Opened her eyes again. And was there.

Lacke gaped idiotically, still rubbing his neck mechanically. A wooden click as Virginia opened her mouth, asked: "Are you in pain?"

Lacke removed his hand from his neck, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn't be.

"No, I just… I thought you were…"

"I'm tied down."

"Yes, you… put up a bit of a fight before. Wait a second and I'll…" Lacke put his hand in between two of the bars on the bed frame and started loosening one of the straps.

"No."

"What?"

"Don't do it."

Lacke hesitated, the strap in his fingers.

"Are you planning to do some more fighting?"

Virginia half-closed her eyes.

"Don't do it."

Lacke dropped the strap, didn't know what to do with his hands now they had been robbed of their task. Without getting up he turned on his knees, pulled over the little armchair to the bed-with a new burst of pain in his neck as a result-and clumsily crawled up into it.