‘Hey, Dad! Come and have a look!’ I cry.
My feet are up against the trunk of the linden tree in the garden. My head is packed with blood, but I want to stay upside down until Dad sees me.
It’s surprisingly hard to do a handstand and shout at the same time.
Dad’s beard becomes hair, his hair becomes beard, and his ears spin on the spot. The wrong way round, Dad looks lighter, as if he had risen up into the air just a tiny bit. The sunglasses become funny, black cheeks.
‘Dad, the wrinkles on your forehead are a mouth!’
I want to laugh. Suddenly, I collapse. I hear a crack and my shoulder hurts badly. ‘Aaaaah!’ The crack came from my shoulder.
Dad’s feet are back on the ground. He runs to me and tries to lift me up. But that really hurts!
‘What happened? Saara, what happened?’
I can’t sit up. I’ve collapsed like a clothes horse. I’ve gone crooked; I don’t know how to unfold myself. My fingers move, but otherwise I’m in a totally bizarre position.
‘Saara, Saara, Saara…’ Dad’s panting.
‘Help, Dad! It hurts!’
Dad manages to turn me round so I’m on my knees and then, slowly, so I’m in a sitting position. I didn’t know you needed a shoulder to sit up. My feet are stuck because my shoulder’s poking out.
‘How come it’s there? Why did you do that? You should never…You should have asked me to prop you up…’ Dad mutters, pressing my shoulder.
‘Aaaaah!’
The cry sounds so strange that Auntie comes outside, too. She looks at Dad first, and only then at me, a flattened clothes horse. Dad is small and helpless on his knees by my side. Once again, he failed to protect us from danger. I feel my shoulder with my right hand, and, yes, it’s poking out in a strange direction. The world swung my shoulder out of its hole, and Dad couldn’t do a thing about it.
‘Hello, Saara,’ the doctor says.
We’ve driven to the hospital, emergency lights flashing. The doctor is a hairy man. Apart from curly hair on his head, he’s got stubble and hair on his neck and hands. But he has kind eyes and even though he’s touching my shoulder, it doesn’t hurt.
‘So you were learning to do handstands,’ the hairy doctor says.
‘Yes, against a tree.’
‘How far did you count?’
‘Thirty-seven.’
Then the doctor switches on the wall-cabinet light and shows me the X-ray.
‘Here’s your shoulder,’ the doctor begins. ‘This ball should be in that hole, where it goes round. But now it’s popped out, see?’
‘I didn’t know there was a ball like that,’ I say, taking a closer look at the picture. Everything has its place, even under the skin. I think of my shoulder, then of my elbows, fingers, knees, thighs, toes and the point where the head joins the skeleton. Was it really the case that any one of them could pop out of its place at any time, if your gait’s a bit off, that you could just collapse like a clothes horse? I never realized a human being was so fragile.
It’s lucky I’m covered by skin! What would hold all the hands, fingers and other things together otherwise? They could just break and fall out. Without skin, everything could disintegrate. A broken arm, stomach, even the heart or liver!
‘So, Saara,’ the hairy doctor says, taking hold of my arm. ‘Now, I’ve got an important question. Tell me your favourite thought.’
Every now and then, you meet grown-ups who take children seriously. They ask interesting questions and listen to your answers. You can be straight with grown-ups like that. You can ask them things and they give proper answers, and they also tell you if they don’t know. I decide to test this doctor.
‘I like to think about time,’ I answer.
Just then, the doctor yanks my arm with terrible force. My shoulder lets out a cracking sound and my mouth lets out a cry. The doctor looks on with his calm eyes.
‘Time? That’s a splendid answer. Try and twist your hand now.’
‘Saara? Saara?’ Dad’s shouting behind the door, rattling the door handle.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ I tell him.
The rattling stops.
My shoulder moves normally in its socket. The pain has gone, too. I wonder for a moment if I should be angry, or thump the doctor on the nose, but this time thing interests me enough for me to decide to let it go.
‘What is it about time that you find particularly interesting?’ the doctor asks.
I wait for a moment, to see if he’s planning to grab anything again, but as he’s not touching me, I decide it’s a genuine question.
‘That time moves backwards, like this.’ I show him with my arm, which is now back in its place. ‘Here is now, and here are the things that happened a long time ago. And it moves like this.’
The doctor nods his curly head.
‘But sometimes, pieces come loose and they don’t move with time but instead stay here, always,’ I go on. ‘Everything else moves backwards, but those pieces stay here. You can forget them, but when you remember them again, they’re just as close as they were at the beginning.’
‘Right,’ the doctor says.
‘Have you got pieces like that?’ I ask.
‘Of course,’ the doctor replies.
I wait, and he goes: ‘One could be when I first held my daughter.’
‘Any others?’
‘Another one could be when my son started cycling without stabilizers, and I let go.’
I try to imagine the hairy doctor letting go of the bike and watching the boy cycling off. Then I say, ‘I’ve got pieces of my mum. They’re clear but they’re loose.’
‘I don’t think it matters,’ the doctor says.
‘Really?’
‘I think you can let the pieces be as they are.’
‘OK,’ I answer. ‘I’ve also got a medical question. It’s about blood.’
‘Let’s hear it,’ the hairy doctor says.
‘Why does blood look blue through the skin but red when it comes out?’
‘That’s a very good question! Blood running through systemic veins is blue as long as it remains inside the vein. When it flows out and gets oxygenated, it becomes red. And in the same way, the heart makes the blood red because it adds oxygen to the blood.’
‘Wow,’ I answer. ‘I’ve got another one: can an eye pop out of its socket if you don’t blink often enough?’
The doctor looks at me, and, perhaps because of my question, blinks his dark eyes several times.
‘Not really. But I specialize in X-rays – I’m not an eye expert.’
‘There are no bones in the eye,’ I say, nodding.
‘Exactly,’ the doctor replies.
‘What if you sneeze hard? Can the eye come out then?’
‘You can’t sneeze with your eyes open,’ the doctor answers.
‘I know! I’ve tried.’
I show the doctor how I’ve tried to use my finger to make my eyes stay open.
‘And did it work?’
‘It didn’t,’ I answer.
The doctor winks at me.
Before I go, the doctor gives me the X-ray to take home. My popped-out shoulder glows there, blue and clear.
‘You could frame it,’ the hairy doctor says.
In the manor house, Auntie Annu puts the image in a golden frame, and I hang it up in my room. Not many girls have a picture showing their own skeleton.