Mats longed for a sink. A toilet bowl would work – he just needed some way to spew out all the revulsion he felt for himself. But he couldn’t exactly get up and leave Kaja alone with the video here in the living room while he threw up in the Sky Suite bathroom.
She had kept her word and had come. Now she sat in one of the armchairs placed together and watched the monitor Mats had turned to channel 13/10.
‘That’s not me,’ Kaja whispered, her eyes fixed on the screen in the cabin wall, slipping into that phase of self-denial typical of trauma patients attempting to distance themselves from the nightmares of their past.
Kaja was actually right in one respect. She wasn’t that person in the video any longer. Not that rebelling, writhing woman. First lying under her torturer, then squatting before the rapist. So brutally at his mercy. Exposed to such raw violence.
Back then, twelve years ago, Kaja was not simply a completely different person than she was now; she’d also found herself in a nearly insane state that was definitely driven by instinct. She had unthinkingly and wholly reflexively switched into survival mode and blindly did anything she deemed necessary.
She had endured his blows to her behind. And sucked on the gun barrel as well, just like the boy had apparently ordered her to.
Mats stopped watching Kaja, who kept staring at the monitor as if in a trance, and took another look at his phone. At the most horrific of the photos, the one showing Nele’s eyes with all their horror and complete hopelessness. And he recalled something the blackmailer had said: ‘… the guy who’s looking after her isn’t exactly a trained obstetrician. Rather the opposite, if you know what I mean. He will not hesitate to kill your daughter and the baby should you not fulfil your task, Dr Krüger.’
Task.
Such a trivial description of the mental contamination he was practising right at this moment.
On the video the school shooter clawed at Kaja’s right breast, practically tearing her nipple right off. The video had almost no sound at this part, yet Mats heard his panting and her screaming. It was nearly as unbearable as the question Kaja now so agonisingly whispered: ‘Do I really have to watch this?’
The correct answer would’ve been: ‘No, of course not. It’s highly damaging to reactivate your trauma, Frau Claussen. No reasonable person would expect that of you. Only I would, me, Dr Mats Krüger.’
The plane was gliding along comfortably again. Mats still expected a jolt at any moment as the tension inside him was swelling by the second. His skin suddenly felt stretched too tight on his body, and he felt feverish, as if suffering from a sunburn all over.
‘It’ll be over in a second,’ he fibbed to Kaja, since he well knew what was to come: the worst of it. It had completely thrown even him off. The images she’d seen so far would already haunt her permanently. For years, Kaja had kept them mothballed inside a crate where she could forget them, yet now they lay back out on a platter for her to see all too clearly. Ready to grab at her, there to remind her, anytime she wanted to suffer. Seeing the rape video again now after all this time was like going back on hard drugs after years of abstinence. They always said: the longer a person stayed clean, the deeper the fall.
‘You swear to it?’ he heard Kaja ask. Her voice trembled. Tears sparkled like dewdrops in the corners of her eyes. ‘You swear it’s all going to be all right?’
In his panic he nearly burst out laughing.
Swear to it?
Mats couldn’t help but recall the Declaration of Geneva, that modern version of the Hippocratic oath which guided present-day doctors.
He had given his solemn vow. Of my own free will and upon my honour. Never to harm the patient. Never to violate human rights. Not even under threat. Those were the words verbatim.
And now this!
Now, at this moment, the school shooter let go of Kaja. Pushed her away. And turned from her.
He left her in the middle of the locker room, distraught, trembling, and was pivoting, his face directed at the hidden camera, his eyes, however, lowered pensively towards the floor.
Kaja ran off. She fled for the locker room door and down the gym hallway. Only on the video, however.
Here, in reality, Kaja remained sitting in the armchair, unmoving. Her eyes wide open, barely blinking. Her fingers clawing at the folds of her uniform skirt. She had to be waiting for that surge of memory in her head to stop. This poorly oiled, squeaking conveyor belt dragging all the horror past her eyes once again.
‘Now what?’ she asked softly, then she winced, similar to the way Mats too had winced before. When the video didn’t stop as expected but a floor tile was suddenly visible onscreen instead. The focus changed, a blurry pan of the camera. The secret cameraman must’ve taken a step out of the shower to better capture the scene.
The images shook and all looked washed out and far too dark, but after observing Kaja and the school shooter together for nine agonising minutes, it was instantly clear what the camera was now capturing. What was unclear was why.
‘Where did you get that?’ Kaja asked. The horror in her voice was so great, the shock in her eyes so intense, that Mats was certain she was seeing the evidence here for the very first time.
‘The real question is: why did you do it?’ Mats replied ruthlessly. Now, seeing it in flashback, he even suddenly understood why Johannes Faber, Kaja’s ex-boyfriend of all people, had made the video public. Nevertheless, and surprisingly, Johannes had left out the final seconds of video. ‘Peer Unsell threatened you with a gun, took you hostage. You let him rape and abuse you to save your life and those of your schoolmates. So why in heaven’s name did you go back after he let go of you?’ While Mats spoke, he stepped around her to remain in her line of sight. ‘Were you trying to stop him from shooting himself?’
Kaja stared right through him, her cheeks sunken and her jaw slightly forward, which lent her ashen face a dim-witted, somewhat moronic expression.
Her lips formed a ‘no’, but no sound came out of her mouth.
‘Were you friends?’
Another vague shake of the head.
‘So why did you return to the locker room? First you took his hand, then you hugged him?’
Mats was relentless. He pointed to the now black screen as if that final disturbing scene he was describing were still playing. ‘Christ, you even ran your fingers through his hair as if you’d just fallen in love – and gave him a long, deep French kiss while you were at it.’