Martin opened the door, but let Elena enter Anouk’s isolation cabin first.
‘Everything okay, darling?’ the doctor asked anxiously, but there seemed to be no cause for concern. Anouk had barely changed position.
She was still sitting cross-legged on the bed, but had stopped scratching. Although she was still refusing to look at Elena or Martin, her lips were moving very slightly.
‘Are you trying to tell us something?’ Martin asked, moving closer. And then the girl actually opened her mouth. She looked a little like a patient trying to form letters for the first time again after a stroke.
Martin and Elena remained as quiet as mice, just like the cartoon ice age mammoth on the muted television screen above their heads.
Cautiously, Martin approached the bed, but he couldn’t understand what Anouk was trying to say.
Why did she press the worry button?
Deciding to take a gamble, he sat beside her on the bed, ready to move away again immediately if she took this as an unacceptable invasion of her privacy, but Anouk remained calm.
Her mouth opened again, and now it was quite clear. She was whispering something, trying to form a word, and to understand Martin leaned in so closely that he could smell the apple fragrance of her freshly washed hair and the ointment applied to treat her wounds.
He was secretly anticipating that what she was trying to tell him would have no significance, or if it did, then he wouldn’t realise it to begin with. A made-up word, perhaps, something from baby language, to which traumatised children readily resorted. For example, they might say ‘nana’ for ‘banana’, or ‘tato’ for ‘potato’.
But when he was so close that her breath was tickling his earlobe, he didn’t have the slightest problem understanding the one and only word issuing from her mouth.
That can’t be right. It’s impossible, Martin thought, leaping up as if he’d been stung.
‘What’s wrong?’ Elena said, horrified, as Martin slowly retreated from Anouk’s bed.
‘Nothing,’ he lied.
He felt sick, but it had nothing to do with the rocking of the ship.
First the teddy. Now Anouk…
What on earth was happening here?
‘What’s wrong all of a sudden?’ Elena asked. Now she was whispering again. ‘What did Anouk say to you?’
‘Nothing,’ Martin lied once more and told her that he needed a little break to get some fresh air on deck – which wasn’t a lie.
The needle that had caused him so much pain in Gerlinde’s cabin yesterday now pierced his head again. And this time the bolts that flashed through his brain were even more agonising.
His eyes streaming tears of suffering, he hurried from the patient’s room, Anouk’s voice still echoing in his head.
The one word, the only word. As quiet as it was disturbing. ‘Martin,’ she’d whispered.
Even though he’d introduced himself to her by his surname only.