by Marc Elsberg
The doctor continued to stare at him, Manzano met her gaze.
After a few seconds, she broke the silence. ‘Then get out of here. Either that or help these people.’
Manzano wavered. Was this really help? He wasn’t competent to judge the medical condition of these patients, so he had no choice but to rely on the doctor’s assessment. But what about moral responsibility? If he himself were suffering with terminal illness, or facing a lingering, agonizing death, Manzano would have no hesitation in choosing assisted suicide. Yet when it came to ending the life of someone else, someone who couldn’t even give their consent … Thoughts raced through his head in a torrent. But what was happening here wasn’t some academic debate about assisted suicide. The doctor had been clear: either get out, or help these people. Clever woman. She hadn’t said to him, ‘Help us.’ No, she had emphasized the – ostensible – selflessness of what they were doing. This way Manzano wouldn’t have to see himself as an accomplice but as a Good Samaritan. Except he knew he couldn’t do that.
He leaned against the wall for support. Only now did he understand what the nurse must have felt, but also what the doctor was going through.
‘What should I do?’
‘Just be there,’ answered the doctor in a gentle voice. ‘Do you think you can do that?’
Manzano nodded.
She turned to the lonely figure in the bed behind them, only revealed to Manzano now, in the glow of the torch beam. The face belonged to a woman, her cheeks were sunken, her eyes closed. Manzano could detect no signs of life.
‘Hold her hand,’ the doctor instructed him.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Manzano as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Multiple organ failure,’ said the doctor.
Hesitantly, Manzano reached for the patient’s hand. It was a soft hand, with slender, well-cared-for fingers. It felt cold and clammy. There was no response to his touch, the hand sat unmoving in his own. Like a small, dead fish, he thought, though he didn’t like the comparison.
The doctor readied another syringe.
‘Her name is Edda and she’s ninety-four,’ she whispered. ‘Three weeks ago she had a major stroke, her third in two years. She suffered substantial brain damage. She has no chance of ever waking up again. A week ago, pulmonary oedema occurred, and as of yesterday her kidneys and other organs began to shut down. Under normal circumstances I might give her twenty-four hours. But the machines have stopped working.’
She had drawn the liquid from the vial into the syringe. She repeated the procedure with the tube connected to the IV bag that Manzano had already watched in the other room.
‘Her husband has been dead for years, her kids live near Berlin and Frankfurt. Before the power went out, they managed one visit.’
Manzano noticed that while the doctor related this he had involuntarily begun stroking the old woman’s hand.
‘She was a teacher, she taught German and History,’ the doctor continued. ‘Her children told me.’
Images of a younger Edda appeared in Manzano’s mind’s eye. Did she have grandchildren? He caught sight of a framed picture on her bedside cabinet. He leaned over for a closer look. It showed an old couple, formally dressed, surrounded by nine adults and five children of all ages, all dressed up to have their photo taken. The doctor plugged the tube back into the IV pouch. ‘It takes about five minutes,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll go to the others. Do you need one of the torches?’
Manzano said no and watched as they left the room. In the darkness he held Edda’s hand and felt the tears run down his cheeks.
He couldn’t bear the silence, so he started talking to her. Italian, because it came most easily to him. He talked about his childhood and youth in a small town near Milan, about his parents, about how they had lost their lives in a car accident and he hadn’t been able to say goodbye to them, even though there was still so much to say, so much to resolve. About the women he had known, and about his German girlfriend with the French name, Claire – Claire from Osnabrück, with whom he had long been out of touch. He assured Edda that her children and grandchildren wanted to be with her right now, but circumstances made it impossible for them, that he would tell them how she had passed gently and peacefully into the next world. He talked and talked, as if his life depended on it. He must have sat there a long time, longer than the five minutes the doctor had mentioned, until he could feel that there was no more life in the hand that he held. Gently he laid it back on the sheet, brought her other hand to rest on top of it. Edda’s expression hadn’t changed in all this time. He didn’t know if she had heard a single word he had said, if she sensed that she wasn’t alone in her last moments. In the darkness he saw only the cavity of her mouth and the shadows into which her eyelids had sunk.
His skin tightened where the tears on his face had dried. He rose, took up his crutches and left the room.
Across the hall the nurse was getting to his feet. It occurred to Manzano that neither he nor the doctor had introduced themselves. Maybe it was better if they stayed nameless.
In the next half-hour Manzano held the hands of three more people: the thirty-three-year-old victim of a car accident, a seventy-seven-year-old multiple heart attack patient and a forty-five-year-old who after a thirty-year career as a drug addict had shot up for the last time.
None of them showed any awareness of Manzano, or the medical staff. Only the addict let out something like a sigh before she fell silent. After Manzano had let go of her hand, he felt an emptiness inside himself.
Only slowly did his reason for being here work its way back into Manzano’s consciousness. His leg hurt, but instead of wishing the pain away he was almost glad that he still felt something. That he was alive. He stood up, held himself upright without crutches.
The doctor held her hand out to him. ‘Thank you.’
The nurse held out his hand too. In tacit agreement they preserved their mutual anonymity.
‘You’ll need this,’ said the doctor, and handed him her torch. Manzano thanked her and hobbled down the hallway towards the stairwell.
He had no idea what to do, where to go. If Hartlandt hadn’t come for him by now, he wouldn’t be coming at all. Maybe he should stay here overnight. Next to the lifts he found a directory that told him which departments he would find on which floor. After making his way through the list, there was only one option he would consider. He made his way to the third floor, to the maternity ward.
The hotel lobby had been repurposed by people desperate for shelter. There was hardly enough room for a baby to squeeze in, let alone a full-grown woman. But as Shannon had discovered over the past few hours, every other hotel had closed its doors. Shannon turned away, wondering where to go next. All she wanted was a bed for the night. The Porsche wasn’t an option; the seats were not designed for sleep, and in any case the thermometer was showing two degrees above freezing.
As she slipped into the driver’s seat, Shannon had an idea. She headed back to the hospital where she had last seen Manzano and drove into the underground car park – the gates had probably been open for days. It was pitch black inside the hospital. She dug out a mini torch from the car’s tool kit, shouldered her rucksack and went upstairs to the reception area. The hospital’s halls were deserted, there were sheets everywhere, rags, medical supplies. The smell was repulsive. The circle of light from her torch hovered over the plan beside the lifts.
Third floor, maternity ward. The only beds in which she would feel at ease. She took the stairs.
‘Quietly,’ said Hartlandt. ‘So he isn’t warned, if he’s still here.’ Eight policemen and four dogs followed him into the hospital. As they moved through the deserted corridors and rooms, they pointed their torches into every possible hiding place.
Hartlandt led the way into the room where Manzano had been operated on. He rummaged around in the overflowing waste bin, fished out the scrap of Manzano’s jeans that the doctor had cut away, and passed it to the dog handler
. The dogs sniffed nervously at the rag. One of them headed for the door. The others followed, straining on their leashes.
Lying under four blankets, Manzano gazed through the window into the darkness. He could only dream of sleep. The events on the sixth floor had shaken him too deeply. What was more, the smell of faeces, decay and death that pervaded the other floors was now seeping into the maternity ward as well.
For a moment he thought he heard footsteps, saw a beam of light. No, he couldn’t get paranoid now!
He turned on to his other side, restless. For the second time he thought he heard something, thought he saw a weak glow moving around in the hallway outside, but it vanished immediately. He got out of bed and limped to the door. This time he heard footsteps quite clearly. And hushed voices. And another sound that he couldn’t place. As if someone was tapping on a stone floor with plastic spoons.
Then a whimper. Dogs! And a hissed command. He felt himself break out in a sweat. Hastily he limped back to his bed and reached for the crutches. Then he went outside the ward and listened.
The sounds were coming from the stairwell. Manzano looked around, frantic. Was it Hartlandt after all, prowling after him?
Manzano stood by the lifts, listening to the approaching footsteps. It was too late to flee into the stairwell now. And he didn’t know where the hallway ended. Fair chance it was a dead end. In his fear, he could think of only one escape route. His eyes turned to the window.
Then, from the hallway, he heard barking.
‘Police! Who’s there? Come on out!’
Shocked and blinded by the sudden light, Shannon put her hands in front of her eyes.
‘I’m a journalist!’ she cried, in English. ‘I’m a journalist!’
‘What’s she saying?’
‘Hands up, get out of the bed!’
‘I’m a journalist! I’m a journalist!’
‘Out, let’s go!’
Dogs barking.
Shannon couldn’t see a thing. She kept shouting as she tried to free her legs from the tangled blankets.
‘It’s a woman!’
‘What’s she saying?’
‘She says she’s a journalist.’
Finally, Shannon’s feet came free and she swung them over the side of the bed. She stood up, one hand shielding her eyes, the other held up as if in greeting. From somewhere behind the torches she could hear dogs growling.
‘Who are you?’ asked a tall, muscular man with short hair. He spoke English with only a hint of a German accent. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I couldn’t find a hotel to stay the night,’ said Shannon, truthfully.
The man shone his torch on her, examining her from head to toe. Now she recognized him. He had led Manzano away, chased him and taken him to the hospital.
‘Have you seen anyone else around?’
‘No.’
The men searched the other beds. When they had finished, their leader told her, ‘You should find yourself a better place to stay.’
Shannon stood by the bed while the men stormed into the next ward. She could feel herself shivering, but didn’t know if it was on account of the shock or the cold. She crawled back under her blankets and listened to the policemen in pursuit. Their voices and footsteps faded, then returned, marched straight past her room and died away.
On the fifth floor, Hartlandt and his people searched with as little result as on the fourth. It was long past midnight. Both men and dogs were dead tired after the previous day’s duties. The dark building, with its forsaken, deserted wards, was even more depressing than a hospital under normal circumstances. With eyelids drooping, they worked their way down the hallway of the sixth floor. Then the dogs started to whimper louder and louder.
‘Could that be him?’ Hartlandt asked one of the dog handlers.
‘Maybe. Although this whimpering usually signals something else …’
The animals were pulling eagerly now. The men let themselves be led until they came to one of the last wards. The beams of their torches wandered over the outlines of beds, eight in total, packed in tightly. Sheets covered the patients from head to toe.
Hartlandt stepped up to the first bed, threw the sheet back and looked into the pale, emaciated face of an old woman. He had seen enough dead people over the course of his career to recognize one when it was lying in front of him. He hurried to the next bed. Awaiting him was the corpse of a gaunt woman – a junkie, thought Hartlandt, judging by the bad skin and rotten teeth.
By then two of his colleagues had checked the beds on the other side.
‘It looks like they stowed the dead patients in here,’ one of them surmised.
The dogs waited in the doorway, whimpering, tails tucked between their legs.
‘With no lifts working, the staff probably couldn’t manage to get them down to the morgue,’ said another.
Hartlandt swept his torch beam over the remaining beds. Two of the corpses appeared to have been truly obese. ‘Nobody could carry these two down the stairs.’ He turned away. ‘And what would be the point? The morgue’s freezers aren’t working.’
He gave the men a signal and they left the room.
‘Let’s keep going.’
As the footsteps died away, the corpse began to weigh even more heavily on Manzano. The dead man’s head lay next to his, the torso covering his own. Manzano hardly dared to breathe. Weight, fear, pure horror robbed him of breath.
The stench was unbearable. The sheets beneath the dead man had been covered in dried blood and faeces – but Manzano had discovered this only when he was already lying halfway under him. More than once Manzano had been forced to stifle his retching as he felt his clothes grow damp from liquids secreted by the corpse. Still he waited until the silence had gone undisturbed for several minutes before throwing the limp limbs aside and swinging his own stiff limbs off the bed. As he bent to retrieve his crutches from under the bed, he stumbled forward until he fell against the wall, his gaze focusing in horror on the shadowy shapes on the beds around him. His breathing was shallow, tears ran down his cheeks. At some point he took a couple more steps towards the door.
He listened again, for a long time. The hallway was totally silent. He opened the door a crack. Nothing. Then he felt his way down the corridor in pitch darkness. The doctor and the nurse were gone; presumably they’d left before Hartlandt and the dogs had shown up. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably. His trousers were wet from his hiding place and smelled of something truly repellent. He pulled them off. Now he was in his boxers. If only he could have a shower – a long, hot one, with plenty of lather.
A small eternity later he had cautiously made his way down to the third floor, having seen no sign whatsoever of the men with the dogs. He made his way back to the ward, to the bed he had left a few hours earlier. He crawled under his four blankets, his entire body trembling. He did not expect to sleep a wink for the rest of the night.
Day 7 – Friday
The Hague, Netherlands
‘I think I have a fever,’ groaned Marie, standing in the doorway with shoulders slumped, arms hugging her torso. Despite the cold in the house, a thin sheen of sweat covered her pallid face. Her eyes were red. ‘I can’t make it to the food line today.’
Bollard put a hand on her forehead, his mind elsewhere, thinking about the calls he needed to make as soon as he got to the office. ‘You should go back to bed,’ he told her. ‘Do we have any flu medicine?’
‘Yes. I’ll take some. You need to go – if you don’t get there early, there’ll be nothing left.’
‘Go where?’ he said, confused.
Bollard chained the bicycle to a signpost. He wouldn’t get any further on it. Hundreds of people were packed into the small square. He could make out a number of horse-drawn carts, surrounded by sturdy young men armed with clubs and pitchforks. From a distance came the low rumble of a lorry as it slowly drew closer. There was a ripple of movement through the crowd. From a street on the opposite side of the squ
are a weak beam of light filtered through. It grew brighter, then the lorry pushed its way into the sea of people. Immediately some of the waiting crowd began to climb up on the running boards and bumpers. Bollard pushed into the middle of the square. He wasn’t the only one. Soon he was completely boxed in by people. There was cursing and shouting. This is what it must feel like to be caught in a riptide that you can’t swim against, he thought. He tried to hold his ground but he was pushed off to the side instead of towards the delivery lorry. People were hanging off it like bees on a hive.
The rations lorry came to a halt in the middle of the square, and for the next minute, it sat there. Then the crew finally managed to open the doors that the crowds had been blocking. It took them a few more minutes, escorted by two police officers, to make it to the back of the lorry. They opened two big swinging doors and climbed on to the bumper. Either side of them, police officers used their batons to keep the crowd at bay.
Bollard saw two small children bobbing above the crowd, hoisted on their parents’ shoulders to signal that here was a family in need of provision. Behind him, the first scuffles broke out.
Stoically the men handed out packages to anyone who managed to get to the edge of the loading deck. Inside the lorry, identical bundles were stacked right up to the ceiling. Bollard was too far away to stand a chance of claiming a food parcel.
In the tangled mass of people, fighting broke out in earnest now. Some took advantage of the situation and forced their way past the brawlers. Bollard, at a loss, wondered how Marie had managed to come home with food the day before. The policemen defending the cargo were losing their battle to maintain order. Beating off the crowd with batons was having no effect; for every rioter that fell, another would take his place. Then one of the policemen pulled out his service weapon and fired a shot into the air.
For an instant the crowd froze. The drivers seized the opportunity to slam the doors. After pressing one last package into each policeman’s arms, they jumped down from the lorry. The policemen then escorted them, guns drawn, as they shoved their way back to the cab and climbed inside.