“You were lucky.” The ward doctor looks up from the clipboard holding my patient chart, and puts it down at the foot of the bed I’m sitting on, all dressed and ready to go. Lucky? That seems like an absolute mockery, given the chaos of the past few days.
“All in all, your blood levels are OK. Your paperwork is being prepared as we speak, and after that you’re free to go. I’ll write you a sick note for the next two days. You should use the time to recover.”
He gives me a firm handshake. Then I’m by myself again.
I can go. Leave this room with its whitewashed walls that threw back my thoughts like an echo when I was staring at them, for hours on end, searching in vain for answers. .
But I’m still reluctant about the prospect of leaving the hospital. About leaving Joanna, who’s lying in a room only a few doors down from mine.
If I leave now, I won’t be able to protect her. From … from what, really?
From herself? From me?
What if it’s not Joanna who has mental problems, but me? How can I be so sure her head is the one that’s out of whack? She’s fighting the idea that something’s wrong with her just as desperately as I would be. As I am. But maybe it really was me who plugged the boiler’s vent, and I just don’t remember it? I do know where you’d have to stuff the scarves to block it, at least.
“OK, Herr Thieben, here’s your sick note and the letter for your doctor.”
A rotund nurse is holding an envelope out toward me. I get up and take it from her. “Thanks,” I say, and I truly do feel thankful. Because she showed up at exactly the right moment and pulled me out of these frightening thoughts.
“And that’s all. You can go now. Get well soon.” She gives me an encouraging smile, and a moment later she’s gone. Next patient, next smile.
I leave the room, turn to the left, and walk to the room five doors down. I decide not to knock.
Joanna seems to be asleep as I carefully shut the door behind me and go over to her bed. I stand there and look at her. The oxygen mask over her pale face, the tubes, the monitor next to her bed. Three jagged lines, one underneath the other. Green, blue, white. Some numbers as well. Blood pressure, oxygenation, ECG, heart rate. She looks so incredibly helpless, so fragile. I scream silently on the inside. I desperately want to take her in my arms, hold her against me. Whisper into her ear that everything’s going to be OK. That I love her more than words can say, that we’ll get through everything together. Everything.
If only I could at least hold her hand.
But I leave it. She needs her rest.
Get well quick, I think. I’ll be back later. I leave the room on tiptoe. Hallway, elevator, foyer, and reception. I register them all as though they were props in this nightmare I’m stumbling through, this horror film in which I’m inadvertently playing the leading role.
I get into a taxi and tell the driver my address. Stare out the window as we drive off in silence, leaving the hospital behind us. The concrete faces of the suburban houses gawp at me with cold indifference.
I’ve been put on sick leave for two days, but I don’t want to sit around the house, especially not now, when things are quite clearly going off course for me at work.
On the other hand, it would give me the chance to look after Joanna without having to invent any stories. Stories that would give Gabor, or Bernhard, even more reasons to speculate.
“You want me to drive up there?” The driver points at our driveway.
“Yes, please.”
I pay, get out, and pause in front of the spot where the cockatoo had been standing until two days ago. Already it seems so long ago that our world still made sense. I realize now how we always took it for granted, never wasting a single thought on how it could all be different one day.
I close the door behind me and slump back against it. The house seems empty to me, almost like it belongs to a stranger. It was only on rare occasions that Joanna wasn’t in the house when I got back. And even then I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d hear the door click into the lock and a cheerful “Hi, darling, I’m back.”
Will I ever hear that again?
Frau Schwickerath from HR explains to me over the phone that it will be fine if I bring the sick note with me when I come back to the office; it’s only two days, after all. Then she wishes me a speedy recovery.
I make myself some coffee and sit at the kitchen table, the steaming cup in front of me. Again and again I go over the events of the past two days, desperately searching for just a hint of an explanation. But all that comes to my mind is irrational nonsense.
After a while, my mind wanders to G.E.E. and Gabor. Not a very pleasant subject either, right now, but still I follow the train of thought. Because it’s something different, at least. What had made Gabor exclude me from this huge contract? All the projects I’ve headed over the past few years have gone well. Of course there were delays here and there, which we simply couldn’t have reckoned with during the run-up. But that’s normal, and it happens with all the larger contracts. It was certainly no reason to give me the cold shoulder all of sudden if something big was coming in.
Maybe Bernhard has something to do with that? After all, he called Gabor from the airport and told him about what happened at our house.
If I was you, I’d think twice about coming into the office tomorrow morning, he’d said to me, pretending to be concerned. Asshole.
By now my coffee’s just lukewarm swill. It seems I’ve lost my sense of time as well.
I walk into the living room, without really knowing what I intend to do in there. So I go back out into the kitchen, then the hallway. The boiler pops into my mind and I climb the stairs, my heart thumping.
It looks like a bomb exploded in the bathroom. There are towels lying on the floor, some of Joanna’s cosmetic products scattered among them. The bottles and small tins on the shelf next to the sink have fallen over. What exactly were the firefighters up to in here?
The lower section of boiler has been bared; the cover is lying on the tiled floor in front of it. The tangle of copper tubing, fittings, and wires looks like a body that’s been cracked open, ready for autopsy.
Had someone been here who tampered with it, or was there another explanation for the scarves in the exhaust vent? And who were they trying to get at? Joanna? Me, maybe? Or didn’t it matter?
Which once again brings up the crucial question of why. I walk down the stairs and stop in the hall. Stare at the door. It’s possible that a stranger was in our house. In our most intimate place. It feels like an act of desecration. Maybe he was in our bedroom as well, touching the covers we’d pulled over our naked skin after we … No, he didn’t. If he did, he could only have touched Joanna’s covers, as mine are no longer there. It’s enough to drive someone insane.
I go into the kitchen again. This turmoil inside me; I feel like I’m losing my mind. I look at the clock and try to figure out how much time has passed since I got out of the taxi. Although, for that, I’d need to know what time it was when I got out. And I have no idea.
“Fuck it.”
Did I just say that out loud? Yes, I think I did. Does that count as talking to myself? A sign that my mind’s giving up?
I can’t bear to be in this house anymore. It feels wrong to be here while Joanna’s lying there in the hospital, poisoned. Left all alone with the terrible fear she must be feeling.
She’s going to need fresh clothes. Underwear, towels.
Half an hour later I’m behind the wheel and on my way to see her.
* * *
That afternoon and for the next two days, I’m with Joanna most of the time. I only leave the hospital in the evenings to sleep and at some point during the day to go get food.
I tell her a lot about us. At first, my sentences always start with the words, “Do you remember…?”
She silently shakes her head every time. After a while I decide to stop using that painful introductory question.
Sometimes I just sit by her bed in silence and watch her sleep. Or pretending to sleep. I can tell the difference from the way she’s blinking, but I let her rest.
As for Joanna, she only speaks very little, apart from on one occasion when she tells me about Australia. About her childhood and her friends. She barely mentions her father. I don’t interrupt her; I simply listen.
On the afternoon of the second day, when I get back from a walk through the small park next to the hospital, Joanna is sitting in the chair where I’ve spent the majority of the past two days. She’s dressed.
“I’m allowed to go,” she says. She doesn’t say I’m allowed to go home.
I take one big step toward her and pull her into my arms. I can’t help myself. I expect her to push me away, but that doesn’t happen. She doesn’t hug me, but neither does she resist being close to me. I close my eyes. It’s amazing how little you need for a simple moment of joy when there’s no longer anything you can take for granted.
We don’t talk much during the drive. Joanna sits there looking out of the window on her side, and I’m scared that a single unmindful word could destroy the small moment of joy I just experienced.
Finally we’re home. I carry the bag with her things and instinctively put my hand on her back as we’re walking. She doesn’t push me away this time either, but I can feel her body tensing up, and quickly drop my arm again.
Joanna tells me she’s very tired and wants to go lie down for a while.
Half an hour later, she’s back down in the kitchen with me. She can’t sleep, she says, even though she’s so tired.
I suggest I cook something nice for the two of us. “Are you good at cooking?” she asks.
“I’m best when you’re helping,” I say, but she shakes her head and sits down. “No, please, it’d be nice if you cooked something for us. I’ll watch you.”
I agree. The notion of cooking something for her feels good, like something that could help break down the distance between us.
Our freezer is in the pantry. I’ve just pulled out a large ice-cold bag of shrimp when the doorbell rings.
When I come out of the storeroom, Joanna has got up from her chair. I recognize fear in her expression. “Who could that be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone else from work who’s deleted a file from their laptop,” I say dryly.
Joanna follows me as I leave the kitchen, but stops in the passage to the hall and holds on to the doorframe as if afraid she could topple over.
I open the door and stare in surprise at the person opposite me for some time before finally finding my ability to speak.
Standing on our doorstep, with a smile on his face, is Dr. Bartsch, the company psychologist at Gabor Energy Engineering. I say hello haltingly and feel anger rising up inside me. Is this another attempt to give me the boot?
“Good evening, Herr Thieben,” he says, grinning ever more broadly. “I just wanted to drop by briefly to check if everything was all right with you. May I come in?”