Falling

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  “I have an appointment with Doctor Sørensen,” he said with a wide smile and handed his ID card to the receptionist.

  She blushed, entered him into the system, and said, “Thanks. Please have a seat.”

  Alexander was too restless to sit, so he remained standing until Isobel appeared in the waiting lounge.

  “Hello, doctor,” he said.

  She eyed him suspiciously. There was no trace of the laughing, dancing woman of the weekend. She looked stern. “What are you doing here?”

  “Why don’t you have a white coat? I like women in uniform. I have an appointment,” he added.

  Isobel cast a questioning glance toward the receptionist, who confirmed what he claimed with a nod.

  “Come on, then,” she said.

  Alexander sat down in the visitor’s chair as Isobel took a seat at her desk, placed a hand on the surface, and gazed calmly at him.

  “I need medical attention,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. Thanks for the other night, by the way.”

  “Yes, thank you. What can I help you with?”

  He wondered what Isobel had done over the weekend. Did this beautiful, serious doctor have a boyfriend? For some reason, he had assumed she was married to the job, but assumptions were one thing—knowing was something entirely different. Maybe she had a whole host of lovers?

  “I’m waiting,” she reminded him.

  “I bought a flat on Strandvägen yesterday,” he said.

  “And you’re telling me this why?”

  “I’m making conversation. Did you know that it isn’t actually Africa that needs the Western world’s help, but the other way around? We need Africa and its natural resources. By exploiting them for ourselves, we condemn African countries to poverty.”

  “Yes.”

  “But did you know that you can get malaria only at night?”

  “Since it’s my job to know that, yes, I did. People usually get bitten at night or in the evening. Why do you know that?”

  “I read a fascinating book over the weekend. A few, actually.”

  “About Africa?”

  “Yes. And humanitarian aid, and Doctors Without Borders. Among others. It ended up being a good number of books. And articles online. And podcasts.” He rested a foot on his knee. He had looked her up, found a CV. Impressive was an understatement. Specialist here, Harvard education in catastrophe medicine there. And she was still only thirty. Would be turning thirty-one in November. Granddaughter of Karin Jansson Pelletier, the painter and sculptor. “When you asked me what I did in New York, I lied a little.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “Really? You’re even smarter than you look. Anyway, when I’m not partying, I’m studying. Psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology. Pretty much anything that ends with an -ology, actually.”

  She blinked. “Why?” she eventually asked, as though she had been trying to solve a complex chemical equation but failed.

  “I can’t say—you’ll just think even less of me.”

  “I could argue that wouldn’t be possible,” she said drily.

  “Nothing is impossible.” He gave her an accusing look. “And I thought my stock had gone up.”

  “From a purely theoretical viewpoint, plenty of things are impossible. And as far as your stock is concerned, it’s still pretty unstable. Why only things ending in -ology?”

  “I study the subjects my father looks down on. His sons should read economics or law. So I do everything else.”

  “Sounds childish,” she said.

  Alexander stretched his legs out in front of him and gave her an amused look. Did Isobel really think he was so easily provoked? He had been called much, much worse things than childish over the years. And he hadn’t just read a load of books and articles over the weekend. He had also watched old TV clips. Among other things, he’d found an interview with Blanche Sørensen, Isobel’s beautiful ice-queen mother. Again and again, he had seen the way Blanche pursed her lips every time MSF was mentioned. Cowboys, hippies, and irresponsible were words that recurred whenever Blanche spoke about the organization her daughter had chosen to work for.

  “So you’ve never done anything just to defy your mother, to rebel? Why did you choose to work for MSF again?”

  “Touché,” she said with a smile.

  He laughed and thought that what he wanted right now was to get up, pull her from her chair, and give her a kiss. Instead, he peered around her examining room. She had the obligatory posters of muscles and organs in cross-section on the walls, and a whiteboard. On a bookshelf, a plastic skull sat next to various medical reference books. A stethoscope and blood pressure meter rested on her desk. His eyes fell on a small photo, pinned to the whiteboard with a magnet advertising stomach ulcer medicine.

  “Is that from Chad?” he asked as he took a closer look. Isobel was surrounded by laughing children, the stereotype of the white, colonial doctor among dark-skinned kids.

  But her laugh was genuine, and the photographer had captured a vulnerability in her face. He wondered who had taken the photo.

  Her eyes lingered on it.

  “I’m going back there soon.”

  “Soon? I thought you just came home.”

  “We’re working out the details, but it’ll be before summer.”

  Hmm. Suddenly, he had a deadline to work against. It shouldn’t be a problem. A wave of excitement rushed through him. He loved this, the chase; it was the best part. And she had just inadvertently raised the stakes. Isobel was without a doubt one of the most attractive women he had ever chased. Yup, this spring had every chance of being really entertaining. And if he was honest, he had liked all the reading over the weekend, making his brain work. The fact that he enjoyed studying was probably one of his best-kept secrets.

  “So, Alexander De la Grip, age twenty-nine, here during emergency hours,” Isobel read aloud from her computer screen. She gave him a skeptical look. “There doesn’t seem to be anything urgently wrong with you.”

  He held up a hand. “I’ve got a box-moving injury.”

  She squinted without leaning forward. “A what?”

  “Can’t you see it? A cut.”

  “You got an appointment for that scratch? With me?”

  “I can be very convincing.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can. But a nurse could put a Band-Aid on that. From what I can see, the receptionist could probably do it.”

  “I’m a little disappointed, I have to say. I was imagining how you would tend to my wound, show me some care and sympathy. Aren’t you going to put your hand on my forehead at the very least? Are you sure you’re a real doctor?”

  Isobel smiled. She slowly moved her fingers together until they formed an airy triangle, and her eyes glittered. “I can cut something open if you like. Or sew something up—I’m no surgeon, but I’m very good with a scalpel and a suture needle. Or maybe you want an exam involving rubber gloves and an index finger?”

  He stifled a laugh as she looked meaningfully at a paper box of single-use gloves.

  “As erotic as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”

  She laughed. When she crossed her legs, he couldn’t help but follow the movement with his eyes. The dancing on Friday had been so hot. Isobel in that red dress plastered to her curves, her hips rocking. The thought alone turned him on. She had on something like a shirt today, and looked cool and professional. The woman really was a study in opposites. Her hair was gathered at the nape of her neck, but loose strands gently framed her face.

  “Plus, I don’t want to take up vital doctor’s time,” he continued. He had persuaded the receptionist to give him an appointment, but he suddenly realized that he might have taken it from someone with a genuine emergency. It had been an impulse to call the doctor’s office, a joke, but now he wondered whether it was really all that funny.

  “My patients here are rarely in great need,” she said.

  Of course. It was one of the country’s few truly expensive private cl
inics. What did it do to a person, to be thrown between the richest and the most vulnerable? Between Westerners who could get the best care in the world and children who died of simple infections? Why had he never thought about the injustice of his ability to buy Isobel’s time when people literally died because they couldn’t see a doctor? He shook off those thoughts. This was what happened when you got too involved. Things got complicated.

  “I should probably go before I agree to something painful.”

  “Afraid of pain?”

  “Very. It’s only normal.”

  Isobel flashed him a quick smile. Something elusive and private flickered across her face and disappeared before Alexander had time to interpret it. It was as though she had thought of a joke she didn’t care to share with him.

  “But while I’m here, stealing crucial time from your dying patients, I wondered whether you would go to a concert with me on Friday?” He said it breezily but realized he was holding his breath as he waited for an answer.

  She placed a hand on the table and gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Alexander, I can’t.”

  Can’t or won’t?

  “What about Saturday, then? Opera? Ballet? The Bolshoi Ballet is giving a guest performance.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be away, in Skåne. A weekend event. Leila and I are chasing financiers. I promised to go.”

  The woman really didn’t do much other than work.

  “That’s okay.” And it really was; he had put the pieces together in less than two seconds. “Some other time then,” he said noncommittally. He had the great joy of seeing a flicker of disappointment in her big, gray eyes. So, she wasn’t quite as cool as she made out.

  But Isobel said nothing, she simply got to her feet and he did the same. She smiled, not her cool doctor’s smile but a real, warm smile, and she held out a hand to him. Alexander studied it for a moment. He sighed. The eternal hand shaking she insisted on. He laid a hand on her upper arm, saw her eyes widen, dipped his head, felt his cheek brush against loose strands of red hair, and gave her a kiss. Only another peck on the cheek, but lower down this time, close to the edge of her mouth. He allowed his lips to linger. She was completely still, as though he had surprised her, and his lips brushed her skin, cool and soft and velvet smooth, her scent fresh and with just a touch of disinfectant.

  Isobel breathed in and placed a hand on his chest. Reluctantly, he let her pull away, and found himself lost in her beautiful, intelligent eyes; they looked as though they wanted to ask a thousand questions.

  “See you later, Isobel,” he said quietly.

  She blinked slowly.

  And that was how he left her, wondering and a little dazed. He wasn’t the least bit confused. Fate had clearly decided to be on his side, and now it was game on.

  Chapter 11

  As Gina made her rounds of the office in the financial building, she listened to a lecture through her headphones. It was what she normally did, record important lectures so she could listen to them whenever she had the opportunity. Some of them she had heard so many times that she knew them by heart. Cleaning flats and offices was a good job from that point of view. She was left to her own devices. The lecture she was listening to right now was one of her all-time favorites: Doctor Isobel Sørensen talking about catastrophe medicine at Karolinska Institutet last fall. Isobel Sørensen. Wow. If she had one wish, it was to be as cool as that woman one day.

  Gina had been completely starstruck when she saw Dr. Sørensen at La Habana. And she was not easily impressed. As she scrubbed at a particularly stubborn coffee ring, Gina wondered what a woman like Isobel was doing with a man like Alexander. But then again she had never understood why women chose certain men. She herself had never felt more than mild affection for a man. But maybe that was just how things were when you’d lived in fear of being married off until you were eleven, and then had been constantly terrified of being raped by one of the men who helped you flee through Africa and Europe to Sweden. And life in the dangerous accommodations provided to asylum seekers hadn’t exactly increased her confidence in the nature of men either.

  She moved on to the next desk, gave it a quick rub with a damp cloth, saw the pale children and blond wife framed in gold. She studied the photo thoughtfully. They all had photos just like this on their desks. Wives in pastel-colored cardigans, two or three well-groomed children. Some idyllic landscape in the background. The few women who worked in the office had a man in a suit and nearly identical children in their frames. If she was honest, Gina didn’t understand these men at all. The white upper class. The lottery winners. They were completely fascinating—it was as though they knew nothing about life. At best, they were just unconcerned playboys like Alexander. At worst, racist pigs who tried to steer her into a quiet room for a bit of a grope the moment they got the chance.

  And then there were men like Peter De la Grip.

  Gina glanced to the doorway; she could see Peter at his desk. He had his own corner office, and he was always the last to leave. In a way, she’d long seen Peter as the stereotype for all men in his position. Superior and condescending, unaware of how others in society lived. But then, last year, he had started to change. She cleaned for other families, and she knew what had happened that extraordinary day last summer. People gossiped, and she was used to vanishing into the background. So she knew that he had snapped at the board meeting. That he suddenly had turned against his own family, and that his parents since then refused to have anything to do with him. And that his pale, horrid wife had left him in a fury. It was pretty much all people had talked about for weeks. He seemed to be disappearing into himself. Bad spirits, the women in her village would have said. They were a superstitious lot, and she shuddered when she thought about them and their barbaric customs. By now Gina had studied medicine long enough to know that Peter was probably depressed. Like she cared. Yes, he had lost a lot of things: his wife, his job, his precious castle. But he was still rich. Had everything he needed. To her, he was just weird, with his mumbling and his awkward manner. Irritating. She emptied a trash can and switched to another lecture on her headphones. When she glanced back at Peter’s office, he was still there. Soon, his would be the only one left to clean.

  She ran the vacuum over the floor. Emptied another trash can. She had counted them once. One hundred thirty-two. Plus the five big bags in the kitchen.

  “Gina?”

  She was so startled, she jumped. She pulled out one of her earbuds and stared, questioningly, at Peter.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Peter fell silent. Cleared his throat. “I spilled water on my desk. I just need to get a cloth. I didn’t want to scare you,” he repeated.

  “I can mop it up,” she offered, reluctantly.

  “No, no, I’ll get a cloth.”

  She watched him disappear into the kitchen.

  She pushed the earbud back into place. But now she couldn’t concentrate on the lecture. Did someone like Peter think he was better than other people? Just because he’d inherited a load of money? And if he did, why did it provoke her so much? All she had to do was ignore him. They’d often had discussions like this at home, she and her father. He thought it was caused by her feelings of inferiority. Gina hated that argument. She wasn’t inferior to anyone. Her Swedish was perfect. Though they’d only arrived in Sweden when she was eleven, she spoke without mistakes, just like her little brother. No, better—she spoke well and sounded educated. They were in agreement on that, she and her father. They knew that the demands placed on them were much higher than on any native Swede, and they had both studied nonstop once they got their residence permit.

  Her father had taken a course in Swedish for immigrants, and coped well in the society that had opened its arms, if not its heart, to them. And that was why she had chosen to study medicine. Doctors were respected. She would be something, someone, and she would do it herself, without being dependent on anyone else.

  Gina knew all too well that life w
as deeply unjust. The idea that life rewarded hard work was crap. She had never seen anyone work as hard as the women in Somalia, and they were hardly rewarded with riches and power. Life was a lottery, and her little family had been lucky, despite everything. Not lucky lucky, the way the De la Grip family was, but much luckier than many of her compatriots. Their father had fled with them, away from oppression and threats, and they had made it here. That meant the three of them belonged to the luckier ones. She would never waste the chance she’d been given. All you had, in the end, all you had, was your courage and your integrity.

  She looked over at Peter’s door again. He had already dried the desk and was sitting with his head bowed. She had always been invisible in his world. A silent servant. Peter looked up and their eyes met briefly before he quickly started to leaf through some papers on his desk.

  His office was the last one she needed to clean, so she headed over.

  “Come in,” he said.

  She cleaned the room quickly and efficiently, and left as soon as she could.

  Once she was finally done for the evening, she rinsed the cloths, changed the bag in the vacuum, and placed the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. It was seven when she changed her shoes and picked up her jacket and purse from her locker. She would rush home—two subway trains and a bus, but with luck she should be home before eight. If Dad had had a good day, he would have made food. If he’d been in a lot of pain or slept badly, she would have to cook for the three of them before she got down to her studies.

  The very last thing she did was wash her hands. Just as she had tied the belt on her jacket and was ready to leave, Peter appeared. Damn it, she had been planning to sneak out without talking to him. He reached the door at the same time she did. He had a briefcase in one hand and a thin jacket over his other arm. He quickly moved the briefcase to the jacket hand, opened the heavy plexiglass door, and held it open for her. They took the elevator in silence. She hurried out through the door before he had time to open it too.

  Just as they were about to head in different directions, he said, “Bye, Gina. Thanks for today.” He disappeared around the corner.