Someone took me by the arm.
“What’s wrong?” asked the chair.
“Dizzy.”
“Have a seat.”
She pulled me into her office and pushed me down onto an uncomfortable chair that had probably been manufactured to encourage whoever sat there to get up and leave as soon as possible.
“I’m going to call your husband,” she said. “What’s his number?”
I enunciated what I thought his number was.
“He’s on his way,” she informed me a moment later. “I have to go to a meeting with the dean, but you can just sit here until your husband gets here. If you have to throw up, I recommend you do it in this trash can.”
“I don’t think I’m going to throw up.”
“No, but I think we’ll put it right here, anyway. Take a sick day tomorrow.”
I nodded.
“Fine,” she said and gave me a firm pat on the shoulder.
She was hardly out the door when I started vomiting. It came out like a projectile and landed in the trash can with a splash. Then it happened again. The third time, I could hear people swarming in the hallway.
“Is someone not feeling well?” I heard them wondering.
“I think it’s Hildegunn,” another chimed in, and an instant later at least three people burst in on me at the same time.
“Hi.” I smiled wanly. “It’s just me. I’ve got a little touch of something, but my husband is coming to pick me up, so it’ll be fine.”
“Does Hildegunn know you’re in here?” a woman from the Religious Studies Department asked, her face skeptical.
“Yes.”
“Oh, really?”
I could feel her eyes on me until she and the others abruptly withdrew and shut the door. Out in the hallway people were clearly still gathering.
“What’s going on?”
“I thought I heard someone being sick.”
“Is Hildegunn sick?”
“Relax,” the religion lady said loudly. I could picture her holding up her hands to ward off all the comments. “It’s not Hildegunn. It’s only that . . . What’s her name again?”
Several people suggested names.
“Nygaard?”
“Larsen?”
“Andersen?”
“No . . . the other one . . . Winter! It’s her.”
Someone mumbled, “Oh, right.” And then I heard feet shuffling away and doors closing along the whole length of the hallway, and I closed my eyes. I could have been dead and none of them would have cared.
But Bj?rnar cared. He drove me straight to the doctor, who stated that this was what happened when you didn’t eat enough meat and developed a B12 deficiency.
“I don’t eat meat,” I mumbled with my eyes closed, “because of the turtles.”
“What?”
“She said she doesn’t eat meat because of the turtles,” Bj?rnar repeated.
“What?”
“We visited a turtle hospital last summer,” he explained, and I noticed that he sounded tired. “And she saw one of them being operated on and it looked so much like a human that she decided to become a vegetarian.”
“It looked like my grandmother,” I added.
“What?”
“It looked like her grandmother.”
“OK, but grandmother or not, you have to make sure you’re getting enough vitamins. Do you want to feel like this for the rest of your life?”
“No.”
“Then you have to eat meat. And we’ll step up your B12 treatments.”
Bj?rnar got me home and into bed, and when I woke up the next morning, he was sitting on the edge of the bed watching me.
“Every morning is gray,” he said.
“I know that.”
“It didn’t used to be like that.”
“No.”
“I’m scared it’s always going to be like this.”
“Yes.”
“You need to pull yourself together. All these . . . quirks of yours. You can’t always live them out so intensely. When you start buying houses for eight million kroner and walk around talking about heart attacks and urinary tract infections and stress cancer and have dizzy spells—then it’s not OK anymore. You have to think about the kids. And about us as a family. Everything is revolving a little too much around you right now.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to work now. And I won’t be home until late. I’m preparing for a trial.”
“OK, have a good day. And sorry.”
He got up and walked out of the room. I thought about calling out, “To be or not to be,” but it didn’t feel like I had permission. Besides, I wasn’t up to it. And I certainly wasn’t up to getting out of bed and taking care of the kids. I wished the doctor had admitted me to the hospital and not just sent me home again. If only she could have given me morphine or anesthesia or something that would let me lie totally still in bed and sleep. Or put me in a coma. Just for a few days or a couple of weeks. Until all this was over.
14
Saturday morning Bj?rnar took the kids to the library, while I stayed home to get the house ready for yet another open house.
The doorbell rang twenty minutes too early. I was still squatting over the mop bucket. I cursed private showings in general and mopping in particular and then stashed the bucket behind the washing machine and opened the door with my widest smile.
But it wasn’t the people for the showing.
It was a man, scruffy and odd, with long, greasy hair and wearing the world’s widest tie. He stood there smiling back at me. I realized right away that he could easily be a serial killer, and decided not to let him in under any circumstances.
“Tjenare,” he said, greeting me in Swedish. “Or hello.”
“Are you here for the open house?” I asked.
“Yes . . . maybe?”
“Either you are or you’re not.”
“It’s a nice house. But maybe it’s missing something?”
He took a few steps toward me, and I clutched the doorknob harder. I didn’t like this. He had crazy eyes. Plus he was Swedish.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have an alarm?”
“No.”