Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S1

He wipes the vomit from his brother’s face, cleans him as best he can, first with his hand – wipes the blood and vomit on the pillar and the ground. Then he uses his T-shirt.

He stands on shaky legs and walks over to his mother, who from a distance appears lifeless.

“Mama?”

At first she shows no sign of having heard him. Maybe she too is dead, he thinks, but then he sees a faint twitch of a smile on her face. “My dearest Da…” she whispers.

“I got him to sleep,” Dano says, trying hard to keep his voice calm, to not fall apart. “I rocked him, like you usually do.”

Her breathing is even shallower, he thinks. And she seems to have vomited again. Dark blood, Dano sees.

“You have to keep going,” she whispers to him. “You have… the address, right? And the number?”

He nods. “Yes,” he says. “But Mama…”

“Maybe… your father’s brother… maybe he’s…” She coughs and makes a face. “Just try.”

He is quiet. Tries to gather his thoughts. “I promise.”

“Place Bilal on my chest,” she says. “I want… I want him with me.”

“But Mama, he’s sleeping...”

She raises one arm, only a few centimetres, but it’s enough to make him understand and stop talking. “I know he’s dead,” she says.

In that moment, Dano’s world collapses in its entirety. The tears explode from deep inside and he cries like he has never cried before. He places his brother’s lifeless body on her chest, lifts her arm and helps her hold her dead child.

“Will you stay with me?” she asks. “Will you sit with me until…” but before she can finish Dano has rested his head beside his brother’s, safe in his mother’s arms one last time.

Iris and Sigrid run across the ring road. Iris has a tight grip on Sigrid with her good hand and is forcing her onwards faster than she can really manage. They have to get home. Now.

Everywhere vehicles are honking, people are driving too fast, too aggressively. Two cars have crashed into each other. Two dented grills and two women arguing over whose fault it is. The first punch lands just as Iris and Sigrid pass on the pavement.

“Mummy, why are they hitting each other? It’s bad to h…” Sigrid starts, but Iris yanks her forward. Sigrid whimpers and Iris instantly feels guilty. Iris bites her lip. They must get away, they must get home. They’re taking too long. A woman with a broken arm and a little child, it doesn’t feel safe outdoors anymore.

Everywhere the same shiny faces and strained expressions. Tops wet with sweat and vomit, people screaming at each other, sitting on the ground whimpering, burning, collapsing on the pavement, shrieking at everyone close and no one in particular.

They rush on, hurry, run away from everyone, away, away, away. Iris wants to get home and hide Sigrid in a wardrobe with a plate of sandwiches, a glass of chocolate milk and an iPad with a fully charged battery. She wants her away, until everything is back to normal.

“Mummy, is your arm better?” Sigrid asks, and Iris attempts a sprightly smile. “Not entirely, but a little bit. We’ll have to see what the X-ray says when they’re ready. Come on,” she says and presses on faster, urging her daughter forwards, homewards. They turn right onto the cycle lane towards Rosenlunds Park. It should be quieter in Skånegläntan; people don’t hit each other in playgrounds.

They rush into the park and pass the large climbing frame. It’s strange to see it empty, admittedly the number of children playing on it falls dramatically around five when it’s time for dinner and the start of the bedtime routines, but it’s rarely empty and the older children and teenagers have usually arrived by six to turn the asphalt into basketball courts. But not tonight.

She notices the wistful look in Sigrid’s eyes as she gazes over at the slide and then expectantly up at her. She turns her focus quickly back ahead without saying anything, as if her six years of experience tell her that this isn’t the time or place to pester.

Sigrid releases Iris’ hand. “Look, not everyone’s gone home.”

Iris’s gaze follows her daughter’s pointing finger. A child is sitting on the edge of the sandpit in one corner of the park. The swings and slide for younger children are surrounded by a fence. She can see the back of a brown T-shirt and a mass of curly shoulder-length hair. They approach the fence. The child hears and turns. A little boy of around two, Iris guesses. Snot is running into his mouth in thick strings and his eyes are red.

“Hi,” says Sigrid. “What are you doing?”

The boy looks at Sigrid, then Iris, and turns back. “Daddy,” he says.

“Where’s your daddy?” Iris asks.

The boy points down to his side with his spade, “There,” he says.

Iris lets go of Sigrid’s hand and takes hold of the fence, which barely reaches her waist, steadies herself and climbs over. No, she thinks. No, no, no.

But her fears are realised. There, in the sunken sandpit, lies a man on his stomach, his face turned towards the boy.

Iris’ first thought is to try to help him, turn him the right way and check his breathing, but then she sees that the boy has shoveled sand on him, a game she has played with Sigrid many times. A game that should have been cute. Except that the boy has dumped sand on the man’s face and in his open and impassive eyes.

“Daddy…” the boy says again.

“Your… your daddy is…” Iris says and reaches clumsily to stop the boy who has filled his spade with yet more sand and is preparing to deposit it once again over his father.

“No…” she says. “He might… we… we can put the sand here instead.” She steers the boy’s shaking hand to a bucket beside him and together they pour the sand into it.

“Mummy?” Sigrid asks. “What’s wrong with his daddy?”

“Hold on,” Iris says, half turning so that she can see Sigrid as well as the boy. “We have to… he…”

She stops. This isn’t happening, she thinks, as her pulse thunders in her ears. This can’t happen. Fathers don’t die in sandpits, leaving young children alone with no one to care for them. There are people cycling past them on the bicycle lane so this can’t be happening, not here. It doesn’t work like this.

“We have to… he has to…” She can’t get her brain to function. What should she do? She can’t just take a child from a playground. But she can’t leave him here either… Can she…?

“Is he dead?” Sigrid asks, her voice cracking. “Is his daddy dead?”

Iris looks at her pale face. Sigrid is clutching the flaky paint of the fence. Iris wants to say something calming, make a joke or at least say something to smooth it all over, but the only thing she can think about is that the fence Sigrid is clinging to will never be painted again. She is certain. This is the beginning of the end.

“Come on,” she says to the boy. “Can you stand up?”

He does as he is told and Iris carefully brushes the sand from his trousers. “I’m going to lift you up now, OK?” she says, and places her right arm under the boy’s bottom, presses him against her and hoists him into her arms. Without her other arm to steady her she almost falls, but she finds her balance and stands up.

“Can you look after him for a second?” she says to Sigrid as she places him on the other side of the fence. “I have to check something.”

She goes back to the sandpit and crouches down beside the man. His face is covered in stubble, he is sunburned and looks a few years over thirty. A trickle of blood has run from his mouth. Maybe the child was trying to cover it up, make it go away, by pouring sand over his face.

She feels in his pockets, it makes her nauseous just to touch him, but luck is on her side. She can feel something hard in his back pocket and after a bit of fumbling pulls out an iPhone. She presses the home button. It’s locked, but she can see that he has several missed calls and two text messages from someone called Magda. She can’t see what they say, but she swipes the name on one of the missed calls, takes a deep breath and closes her eyes as the ringing blares in her ear. Sigrid is trying, without success, to get the boy to tell her his name.