“I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”
Unfortunately Elsa doesn’t hear the last bit, because the veterinary surgeon comes through the door with a look on his face that creates a surging noise inside Elsa’s head. She has run past him before he has even had time to open his mouth. Elsa hears them shouting after her as she charges down the corridor and starts throwing doors open, one after the other. A nurse tries to grab her, but she just keeps running, throws more doors open, doesn’t stop until she hears the wurse howling. As if it knows she’s on her way and is calling for her. When she finally storms into the right room, she finds it lying on a cold table, a bandage round its stomach. There’s blood everywhere. She buries her face deep, deep, deep in its coat.
Britt-Marie is still there in the waiting room. Alone. If she left right now, probably no one would remember that she’d been there. She looks as if she’s thinking about that for a moment, then brushes something invisible from the edge of the table, straightens a crease in her skirt, stands up, and leaves.
The wurse closes its eyes. It almost looks as if it’s smiling. Elsa doesn’t know if it can hear her. Doesn’t know if it can feel her heavy tears dropping into its pelt. “You can’t die. You can’t die, because I’m here now. And you’re my friend. No real friend would just go and die like that, do you understand? Friends don’t die on each other,” Elsa whispers, trying to convince herself more than the wurse.
It looks as if it knows. Tries to dry her cheeks with the warm air from its nose. Elsa lies next to it, curled up on the treatment table, as she lay in the hospital bed that night when Granny didn’t come back with her from Miamas.
She lies there forever. With her Gryffindor scarf buried in the wurse’s pelt.
The policewoman’s voice can be heard between the wurse’s breaths as they grow slower and the thumping on the other side of the thick black fur gets more and more drawn out. Her green eyes watch the girl and the animal from the doorway.
“We have to take your friend to the police station, Elsa.” Elsa knows she’s talking about Wolfheart.
“You can’t put him in prison! He did it in self-defense!” Elsa roars.
“No, Elsa, he didn’t. He wasn’t defending himself.”
And then she backs away from the door. Checks her watch as if pretending to be disoriented, as if she has just realized there is something extremely important that she has to get on with in an entirely different place, and how crazy it would be if someone she was under very clear orders to bring to the police station would not be watched for a moment so that he could talk to a child who was about to lose a wurse. It would be crazy, really.
And then she’s gone. And Wolfheart is standing in the doorway. Elsa flings herself off the table and throws her arms around him and couldn’t give a crap about whether or not he has to bathe in alcogel when he gets home.
“The wurse mustn’t die! Tell him he mustn’t die!” whispers Elsa.
Wolfheart breathes slowly. Stands with his hands held out awkwardly, as if someone has spilled something acidic on his sweater. Elsa realizes she still has his coat at home in the flat.
“You can have your coat back, Mum has washed it really carefully and hung it up in the wardrobe inside a plastic cover,” she whispers apologetically and keeps hugging him.
He looks as if he’d really appreciate it if she didn’t. Elsa doesn’t care.
“But you’re not allowed to fight again!” she orders, her face thrust into his sweater, before she lifts her head and wipes her eyes with her wrist. “I’m not saying you can never fight, because I haven’t quite decided where I stand on that question. I mean morally, sort of thing. But you can’t fight when you’re as good at fighting as you are!” she sobs.
And then Wolfheart does something very curious. He hugs her back.