‘River of life? What was he talking about? Something spiritual?’ Cissi’s big eyes shone.
‘Maybe, but I think he was mainly talking about the water; that’s how I understood it later. When the water doesn’t flow like it should…’
‘I get it,’ Cissi said and looked worried. ‘Climate change. The glaciers are melting; the tundra is drying out, too little water in the rivers.’
‘Yes. Kogi Mama described it as Mother Earth is sick and the world is out of balance. “When death comes to the top of the world, it continues downward too.” And it isn’t just superstition. They have problems with their harvests; they’re finding it harder and harder to feed everyone.’
‘Yeah, it’s scary how dependent we are on one another, how much we influence one other. And them too, even though they’ve tried to hide themselves on a mountain,’ said Cissi thoughtfully.
‘Mmm… When I did some more online research I found a coalition of Indigenous Americans. There was stuff about Koyaanisqatsi, and then everything fell into place. I understood that I had been given a task that morning with the Kogi Mama.’
‘Koyanis… what did you say?’
‘Koyaanisqatsi. It’s a word in Hopi that means life out of balance – an insane, unsustainable lifestyle.’
Cissi considered Vera over her teacup. ‘Oh. You think you got an assignment, a mission?’
‘Kogi Mama asked me, “Little brothers and sisters, what are you doing?”‘
Cissi looked quietly at Vera, thinking, before she finally said, ‘A big question.’
‘Yes. And what we’re doing has to do with money, so now I need to study economics.’
Cissi smiled crookedly, ‘But that clear-cut area he asked about, maybe it was to grow drugs?’
‘Yeah, most likely. Forty years of war, millions of refugees, everything seems to be about controlling the drug trade.’
‘Listen, that guerrilla attack, how did you manage to survive it?’
Vera felt a tingling sensation through her body. How many times had she brooded over all those questions. Did anyone survive? Eliza? Pierre? Stuart? Camilla? Was it a difficult end? Why was I spared? How can I repay the debt?
Vera swallowed. ‘Pure luck. I was in bed, but awake. We girls slept upstairs, and that gave me a little time. I jumped out of the window, hurt my knee, hit my head on the side of the building and fainted. I was found later by some colleagues from town who came when they couldn’t contact us.’ She shivered again, down to the bone. Violent strangers had kidnapped the people who had become her closest friends, and she had lain there, injured and helpless, in the dark, protected by a small tuft of grass.
‘What about the others?’
‘The guerrillas took them. They’re still missing. Maybe dead in the jungle? I don’t know.’ Vera looked down.
Pure luck. And of course Pierre.
Seven weeks after she had come home to Sweden, it was time for a follow-up appointment with the orthopedic specialist. Vera lay barelegged and freezing on the paper-covered bed in the doctor’s office. She looked down at her stiff left leg and then up at the doctor in the white coat.
‘Yes, it’s still quite swollen…’ The 60-year-old man’s hairy fingers squeezed her left knee in practised fashion. He shifted his hands quickly to the right knee, squeezing and comparing it with the left. Then he tried pushing her left knee downwards towards the bed. The pain caused Vera to jerk her right foot beneath her other leg to protect it.
‘Ouch!’
‘Okay, okay. Take it easy. It’s going to be difficult if you don’t let me examine you properly.’
He pulled her right foot out and moved the healthy leg out of the way. ‘What about this direction?’ More carefully this time, he tried to bend Vera’s knee by pushing her lower left leg backwards. That didn’t work either. ‘Are you sure you can’t straighten out your leg or bend it either?’ The doctor looked at her in concern and felt the fluid-filled joint yet again.
‘No, I can’t.’
‘And you’re still using crutches.’ He turned towards the computer screen and read from it. ‘After almost eight weeks?’
Vera heard the doubt in his voice. ‘Yeah, I know, it’s strange. But it’s healing really slowly.’
‘You can stand up. Show me. What happens when you try to walk on it?’
‘I can support myself on it a little bit, like this.’ She stepped cautiously and fumblingly forward on her bent, stiff leg. ‘But I know that it isn’t normal; maybe we need to do an MRI to find out what’s wrong?’
The doctor looked disapprovingly at her.
‘Or maybe laparoscopic surgery?’ she tried, but she could tell by his body language that this wasn’t the right thing to say either. Vera suddenly remembered a messy situation that had occurred about six months ago. The team had been faced with several difficult-to-diagnose patients who had fled from the South. Camilla had pulled her off to the side and warned her against drawing too many of her own conclusions around the doctors. ‘You take care of anesthetics; let them do the diagnosing.’ Then Camilla had whispered kindly, ‘Not because you can’t, but they’ll soon figure it out for themselves; you’ll see.’
‘No, an additional examination is not appropriate at the moment,’ said the doctor firmly.
‘But there’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ pleaded Vera.
He told her to get dressed and turned towards the computer. She wondered what he was writing in her medical records. He ended the appointment with a quick handshake, and his white coat rose on his chest as he sighed. ‘Once the swelling has gone down you’ll be able to move it. You’ll see. I’ll put you down for another visit on November 5th, but my guess is that you won’t need it. I suspect that by then you will have trained the knee and regained stability on your own.’
Vera understood that the doctor was trying to cheer her up. Or, as Pierre used to say in his charming French accent, ‘The foremost duty of a médecin, is to amuse the patient, while she will naturally heal herself.’
But Vera was not amused. The doctor’s decision gave her a sick feeling in her stomach. The fifth of November! She left obediently, staring down at the yellow tape on the vinyl floor that led her to the next stopping point, the well-meaning physical therapist. She gave Vera a sheet of paper containing pedagogically illustrated exercises to do. Vera knew that she couldn’t even do half of them.
Vera was surprised. Her mother usually slept late after a night shift at the nursing home. But today Gunilla had set the table with four kinds of bread, three different sandwich fillings, tea, yoghurt and cereal.
‘How did it go at the psychologist’s?’ asked Gunilla.
‘Oh,’ Vera said evasively, ‘I’m finished with that. Finished working through the trauma.’
‘Are you sure? I agree with Erika. You aren’t yourself at all!’
Erika, Vera’s athletic best friend since school, had graduated from college with a degree in information technology