He really ought to ignore it. Jog back across the street, just as he had planned, lock the door behind him, and settle down with his books. There must be fifty apartments in the block, so it was hardly likely that whoever was in the car was interested in him. Even so, he still couldn’t help going closer.
He stuck to the far edge of the sidewalk, setting one foot down in the snow on the grass to stay out of the cones of lights beneath the streetlamps as best he could.
When he was ten metres away he heard a noise. An electric whirring sound followed by a little click, as one of the windows was opened slightly. He didn’t stop, just looked down at the sidewalk and carried on. He could make out movement inside the car now. The outline of someone sitting in the driver’s seat, then someone else who seemed to be moving between the front seats. Five metres, four, three …
He passed the car and glanced cautiously inside it. He heard someone groan through the gap in the window and realized all of a sudden that this was something quite different from what he had thought at first. He carried on toward the door, almost grinning to himself.
But then he realized that the woman in the car seemed familiar. The jacket, tight leather trousers, the long, platinum-blonde hair that could do with having its dark roots bleached.
Suddenly he wished he hadn’t been so damn curious.
Sarac could see the white-coated woman’s mouth moving. He could make out the occasional word and realized that he was nodding in agreement, as if they had been talking for a while. His head felt strange, as if it had been filled with sludge. Heavy heartbeats in his chest. Fear. Who was this woman? Where the hell was he? This last question was easily answered. Grey plastic floor, textured yellow wallpaper, speckled plaster tiles on the ceiling. The distinctive smell of hospital, impossible to disguise, no matter how hard anyone tried.
‘We’ve met several times now, David. Do you remember?’ the woman in the coat said.
Sarac’s head went on moving up and down. He stared at the woman, trying to focus. High forehead, long, greying hair, dark-framed glasses, a tiny scar on her upper lip. Probably about fifty years old. Her appearance looked familiar, but he couldn’t locate a memory to match it against. His thoughts were still sluggish, as if he had been fast asleep and had just opened his eyes.
‘Do you remember my name, David?’ the woman asked.
‘N-no, sorry,’ he said.
The words sounded clumsy, as if he were sounding out each letter instead of joining them together.
‘My name is Jill. Jill Vestman, and I’m a senior consultant in the neurology department here. Do you remember why you’re here?’
‘Er … no.’
His body was still out of reach, but he managed to perform a brief check. His rib cage ached; his left arm was hanging limply in a sling. His chest and stomach felt tight, as if they had been strapped or sewn up. And then there was the headache. A rumbling, pulsing headache, the like of which he had never experienced before. It was making his thoughts fuzzy.
Dr Vestman pulled a stool over and sat down beside the bed. She took a small notebook out of one of her top pockets.
‘You suffered a minor stroke almost two weeks ago now, David. A hemorrhage in the left side of your brain. You were driving at the time and lost consciousness. You had a crash, in the Söderleden Tunnel.’
Sarac tried to straighten up but his body refused to obey him. What the hell was she saying? A stroke? No, no. Strokes happened to old men. Christ, he was only … only? His headache got worse, muddying his already hazy thoughts. The doctor seemed to note his reaction.
‘The impact was severe,’ she said. ‘You’d probably have been killed if you hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest and weren’t already unconscious.’
‘Drunk driving,’ Sarac said out of nowhere, without really knowing why.
‘What do you mean, David?’
He had to stop for a few seconds to think. He tried to trace the train of thought back from his mouth and up into his foggy brain.
‘Drunk drivers almost always survive,’ he said slowly, tasting each word. His voice still sounded odd. As if it weren’t really his. Dr Vestman nodded.
‘That’s right, relaxed muscles don’t get damaged the same way tense ones do. It’s interesting that you remember that.’ She made a note in her book.
‘H-how?’ Sarac muttered. ‘I mean, when …?’
Things ought to be getting clearer now, but instead everything seemed to be going the wrong way. He was feeling sick, and his headache was getting worse too. And he was starting to feel frightened.
A stroke – a brain haemorrhage.
‘Like I said, it was almost two weeks ago,’ Dr Vestman said, but stopped when Sarac tried to say something. Then she went on when he didn’t actually speak.
‘When you came in you were in a very bad way, David. We kept you sedated for over a week to stabilize your condition. To start with we concentrated on the most acute problems, releasing the blood and easing the pressure inside your head. Then we dealt with your other injuries. You’ve broken your left collarbone and ruptured your spleen. Several of your ribs are cracked and you’ve got severe bruising. But, considering how bad the impact was, you’ve actually been extremely fortunate.’
She paused and looked down at her notebook, as if to give Sarac a few seconds to digest the information.
‘On Monday we performed another operation on your head,’ she went on. ‘We removed the remaining blood clots. You and I had our first conversation the day before yesterday.’ She smiled at him, a gentle, sympathetic smile that she probably learned when she was training and had been refining ever since.
What the hell was she talking about? Awake, for three fucking days! He shook his head, harder this time, as if to shake that irritating smile out of it. His anger came out of nowhere.
‘No way,’ he snarled, and tried to sit up again. A fierce, burning pain made him put his hand to his head instinctively. His pulse was pounding in his temples. His right hand slid about, unwilling to do what he wanted it to. A double layer of gauze bandage, tightly wrapped around his skull. His hair! They’d shaved off all his hair. He must look terrible.
‘The swelling in your brain is slowly subsiding, David,’ the doctor said. ‘But it’s likely to affect your short-term memory for a while. That’s why you don’t remember the last few days. It’s not unusual, and in all likelihood it will improve.’ Dr Vestman fell silent and opened her notebook again, as if to let him take in what she’d just said.
He had questions, so many questions. An infinite number of questions. Like, for instance … Fuck, fuck, fuck! He had to try to calm down and get a grip on his brain before his headache succeeded in crushing it against his skull.
‘I was thinking of asking a few questions, mostly to see where we are in the healing process. Don’t worry if you can’t answer some of them at the moment,’ the doctor went on.
Sarac still couldn’t manage to say anything. He nodded instead, as he tried to slow his pulse down. It seemed to be working, at least partially.
‘Do you know what month it is, David?
‘How about what time of year?’ the doctor added when he didn’t answer.
He