Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S1

She looks down at her mobile and dials. Come on, answer. But it keeps ringing. No breathless “Hello?” followed by a, “I was in the shower”.

Damn.

She checks the till is locked, presses escape twice on the keyboard to log out and grabs the library phone. Juan is at his desk in the office. He looks up as she enters. “Not you as well.”

“What?”

“You want to go home.”

She can’t help but smile. People often say she’s hard to read, but Juan has always been able to see right through her.

“It was the nursery, they have to close. The teachers are all sick. They just called.”

“Can’t your husband collect her?”

“We’ve all tried calling him, me and the nursery, but he’s not answering.”

Juan sighs and looks up at the clock on the wall. Twenty to twelve. “The café is closed. Wait five minutes for me to buy a salad on the second floor. I’ll eat at the front desk.”

Seven minutes later, Iris is riding over Norrbro Bridge on her way to the Old Town. She turns left towards Skeppsbron. The clasp on her helmet is rough against the underside of her chin. In all the stress she tightened it too hard and now she’s heading south with what feels like a noose around her neck. Why didn’t he answer? Was he feeling unwell this morning? Did he say anything?

She awoke at quarter to six this morning because Sigrid had started whining about “bwekfast” as she insists upon calling it despite knowing full well how it should be pronounced. She got up, showered, and they ate together, the three of them, and then she left at seven thirty after reading two chapters of Nelly Rapp and Frankenstein for Sigrid before she got bored and started watching Inside Out on the iPad for the fourth time in as many days.

Did he say anything? Her cheeks grow hot as she realises she can’t actually remember them having exchanged a single sentence this morning. Pathetic.

The traffic is calmer now, but still she nearly crashes into a bus that has braked suddenly to avoid a cruise ship tourist crossing on a red. “They shouldn’t do that, Mummy,” Sigrid would have said indignantly. Iris manages to swerve at the last moment, down to the right and into the gutter. A bicycle messenger pulls out in front of her from a side alley and gives her a dirty look. She just about manages to stop herself from giving him the finger.

Up the hill at Slussen, the lights turn green as she approaches, to which she thanks her lucky stars, she hates having to start on a slope. Just then, a woman with a walking frame steps into the road without looking.

“Noooo!” Iris shouts just as her wheel smashes into the frame. The woman stares at her in shock as Iris dives, manages to extend an arm towards the frame so that she changes direction, misses the woman, and hears the bicycle smash to the ground to her left as her head cracks against the tarmac – thank God for the helmet – followed by her shoulder OW!, then her back, OW! OW! OW! Her body is still going as her underarm – the one that just broke her fall against the walking frame – now slams into the sharp edge of the pavement.

“OOOWWW!” The pain beams instantaneously through her body. “Shit shit shit that hurts!” she screams and tries to lift her left arm, to bend it, but white lightning blinds her, she bites her tongue and tears burst in her eyes.

A man leans over and starts to say something, when the sound of crumpling interrupts him and she watches as the bus she just missed turns her bicycle into scrap.

“Shit,” she says with surprising calm, considering the pain pulsing through her body. “Sigrid.”

“Huh?” the man says.

“My daughter,” Iris says through gritted teeth. “I have to collect her from nursery.”

The woman is still staring at her walking frame. Then she turns to look at them, the alarm plain across her face. What is she thinking? That Iris is going to hit her? With her injured arm?

“I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but this looks broken,” the man says and nods at her left arm just as the bus driver climbs down, his face flushed red. She doesn’t dare look, she hates seeing mangled body parts, even in pictures. She stares instead at the bus. The number 2. The passengers are standing, crowding the windows, all eyes are on her. Luckily, there are only seven or eight people on it this morning.

“You need to go to hospital,” the man says.

She shakes her head. “Or…” she changes her mind, “maybe I do if it’s broken. But I need to get my child first,” she says, her lips pressed hard together.

She sits up, tries not to move her arm, holds her breath, gets to her knees, holds onto the traffic light with her other hand and slowly pulls herself to standing. Waves of pain are transported to her shoulder, up through her neck and straight to her skull.

“Oh Jesus, it hurts,” she says. The woman is still staring at her, she still hasn’t said a word. The tick of the pedestrian crossing starts as it turns to green, the woman looks forward and obediently starts crossing, seemingly unconcerned that the blue bus is blocking the way a few metres ahead.

A police car pulls up and stops. A broad-shouldered officer aged around forty climbs out and takes in the scene with a concerned look.

“What’s all this then?” he says in an overbearing tone, like something out of a cartoon.

“The woman walked straight out into the road, I rammed into her walker with my bike, fell, broke my arm and the bus crushed my bike,” Iris answers in as contained a tone as she can muster. The pain is alternately a dull rumble and lightning sharp. “And now she’s trying to escape,” she adds lightly, and looks at the woman who has had to stop because of the bus, her nose now almost pressed against the metal.

“Hello there,” the policeman says, turning to the woman just as his colleague, a slender woman in her thirties, steps out of the driver seat and approaches. “You there, with the walker. Let’s…”

“Excuse me,” Iris stops her, “can we just scrape my bike off the road and forget about this. Everything’s fine, apart from my arm. The old lady there did walk out into the bicycle lane when her light was red admittedly, but I have to get to my daughter’s nursery. The staff are sick and no one else can collect her. Maybe you can drive me?”

The officers look at her. They exchange glances. The lady is still staring at the right side of the bus, Iris can hear her snort faintly.

“All of them?”

“Excuse me?” Iris said.

“The nursery. All of the staff are sick?”

Iris’s eyes flicker between the officers. She’s surprised at the speed at which their focus has been redirected.

“Yes. They phoned and said they were sick and that I have to come and pick up Sigrid because...”

“Is she also sick? Your daughter?”

Iris looks at them. Her arm has stopped hurting. Or she just doesn’t care anymore.

“No, she’s fine. Some of the other kids are sick, but not her. At least, that’s what they said.”

The officers exchange looks again. The older of the two opens his mouth to say something, but stops himself.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Iris asks.

“We have to…” A car starts honking its horn behind the bus and the officer turns towards it. The woman wrinkles her brow, composes herself and straightens her back. Authority reassumed.

“Hold on, what’s going on? What about the staff getting sick?” This time it’s the man who pointed out Iris’ broken arm. “I’m not feeling well either, I’m heading for the pharmacy.”

The police react instinctively. For a moment they look lost, before coming to their senses. It’s the kind of stupid reflex that makes Iris reach for her forehead without thinking, with her left arm. She nearly blacks out as the broken bones rub against each other beneath her skin. The pain! She almost wishes the police would shoot her instead.