Emelie Schepp - Slowly We Die

Henrik stepped inside, then Mia followed. Both looked around. The air was warm, and a red handprint was visible on the floor.

“We’ve lifted footprints from Danilo Peña, so we know he got out of bed here—” Anneli gestured to the right side of the bed “—attacked the female nurse here, knocking her unconscious. She fell onto the chair, where we found her.”

“And the other nurse?” Mia asked.

“He was passed out in the bed when we came.”

“In the bed?”

Anneli nodded.

“Naked,” she added.

Henrik shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his gaze toward the door.

“So Danilo Peña forces Mattias Bohed to take off his clothes and lie in bed, then Peña dresses in Mattias’s scrubs, asks the guard to unlock the door and leaves the room.”

Henrik walked slowly to the door.

“So when Peña leaves the room...” he repeated, stepping into the hallway. “He attacks the guard, but doesn’t leave him here.”

“Probably takes him with him because he wants to use him as a hostage,” Anneli said. “But no one has seen either of them. Not yet, anyway.”

Henrik looked up at the ceiling and stroked his hand over his chin.

“So he leaves the ward with the guard’s help, but doesn’t go to the main entrance...”

“No, he likely goes down this fire exit over here,” Anneli said, pointing to the end of the hallway.

“Show me.”

They walked through the ward past a series of rooms and stopped outside the door that was the fire exit.

“We haven’t had time to go through all the elevators yet,” Anneli said, “but look at this.” She pointed to a bloody fingerprint on the doorframe. “But I have to get back now,” she said.

“Okay,” Henrik said. He listened to her footsteps become fainter as he stayed and examined the fingerprint. Then he carefully opened the fire exit door, walked slowly down the staircase to the next level and stood in front of that stairwell door, which he examined just as carefully. As he was about to turn the door handle, he noticed another bloody fingerprint. He slowly opened the door to Ward 9. Down the hallway, a television was blaring an interior decorating show. Henrik heard the show’s music along with the voice of the host, who apparently was teaching viewers how to build a stepladder. Henrik headed in that direction. As he passed the room, he saw an older woman in floral pants sitting on a couch, her gaze fixed on the TV set.

He walked by a number of other rooms, their doors all closed.

At the end of the hallway, he noticed that the door to a storage closet was ajar.

As he surveyed the area, he could still hear hammering coming from the TV as he tried to count how many civilians might be in the vicinity. Suddenly he heard a moan from the storage closet.

He drew his weapon and held his breath for a moment. Then he pushed the door all the way open with his left hand, his weapon pointed straight into the darkness.

“Police!” he yelled, but then lowered his weapon, his heart still pounding when he saw it wasn’t Danilo Peña in the closet.

It was the guard.

* * *

Jana Berzelius didn’t bother waiting for the stoplight to turn green before crossing Albrektsvägen and speeding along Gamla Övägen. As she drove, she mentally replayed the call she had just gotten from chief physician Alexander Eliasson that said her mother was dead.

A dreamlike feeling spread through her body, and she became increasingly surprised at her reaction. Her mother—not her birth mother, but the woman who had adopted her—had been one of the few people with whom she’d had something resembling a relationship.

But had she loved her?

No, maybe not.

When she had first received the news about Margaretha, she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, smash something to pieces. Why couldn’t anyone in her life stay safe! But instead she had stood in her office, quiet and still, as if not to let the pain in, not to grant it space within her. Then, without a word to anyone, she had left her office, gone down the stairs, taken a deep breath of spring air and gotten into her car.

At the main entrance to Vrinnevi Hospital, where the ambulance had taken her mother, Jana noticed a heavy police presence. But she didn’t think much of it as she stepped through the emergency room doors.

A man with a high forehead and a silvery gray beard put his hand out and greeted her kindly.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Alexander Eliasson. We spoke on the phone.”

She introduced herself.

“I’m anxious to know the cause of death,” she said.

“Yes, I understand,” Alexander said in a calm and friendly voice. “Your mother, Margaretha, died of a heart attack. And although the ambulance arrived quickly, the paramedics couldn’t save her life. As I’m sure you know, heart attack is the most common cause of death in Sweden.”

Jana nodded.

“What do you think?” he said. “Should we go...see her?”

Jana nodded again.

They walked down a hallway. She was in no hurry to face what awaited her, but at the same time wanted to get the identification behind her. She walked a few paces behind the doctor. He looked back now and then and tried to smile at her, but she avoided his gaze.

“It’s hard, I know,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s an important part of the grieving process. I’ve heard many people say that seeing their loved one a last time gave them a sense of relief, a release.”

She didn’t answer.

“But certainly, there are many ways to feel, think and act when we’re confronted with the fate that awaits us all. Especially when we’re dealing with a parent. Were you close, you and your mom?”

He made one more attempt at small talk, but gave up after a while when he realized that she wasn’t interested.

Her concentration was fixed on her footsteps; she thought about how each step sent small, imperceptible waves through her body.

“I imagine in your profession you are accustomed to seeing the deceased. But it can affect you differently when it is someone you are close to,” the doctor said when they arrived at the room.

She remained silent, and he mumbled something as he reached his hand forward and pushed the door handle.

The door to the small room opened slowly. He let her go in first, and she felt his searching gaze on her. What was he expecting? Sorrow and nervousness? Or desperation, screaming, pleading?

Instead of meeting his gaze, she stood in the middle of the room without moving a muscle.

The entire room was yellow. The linoleum floor, the walls, the ventilation shaft. There were a table and two chairs, and a print on the wall depicting a blue sky over a valley. Otherwise the room was void of personality.

A room for death.

Her mother, Margaretha Berzelius, lay on a gurney with a white sheet covering her body. Her small, pale hands lay by her side atop the sheet. The tendons were visible under the skin. Her thin-rimmed glasses were missing. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was gaping open. Jana noticed the slight bruise marks on her mother’s nostrils and thought it must have come from CPR.

“I am terribly, terribly sorry,” the chief physician said, pulling a chair forward. Jana shook her head.

“Are we done?” she asked.

“There’s no hurry,” he said. “Take your time.”

Jana felt her jaw muscles tighten.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I would like to leave now.”

* * *

Philip Engström unlocked the door of his single-story house in Skarphagen, stepped inside, flicked on the light and stood there as the door swung shut behind him with a thud.

From the silence, he could tell that his wife, Lina, wasn’t home. Did she have a lecture? Or was she at the library working on her thesis? He couldn’t remember what she had told him when he left for work the day before.