Butterfly on the Storm

  Using gently rotating movements, she massaged wild rose scrub on her face, rinsed it off and then carefully daubed the honey-yogurt mixture on her cheeks, chin and forehead. She’d once seen her mother do this and even now, many years later, she still tried to perform this modest ritual twice a week, in tribute to her. Lying in the bath with her tea, she leafed through Vogue while the plaintive chords of Shankar’s sitar drifted through the apartment.

  After about fifteen minutes, she wiped off the mask with a flannel, showered, dried herself and rubbed body lotion into her skin. She put on a cardinal-red lace bra with matching knickers and appraised herself in the mirror. Thinking of her surprise appearance at Hotel De l’Europe later, she pulled a long-sleeved black lace top out of her wardrobe and a red pencil skirt reaching to just above the knee. She’d team it with gossamer-thin black tights and black stiletto heels with pointy toes. Her long black hair would look great in a messy bun.

  As she lay the complete outfit on the bed, the music and laughter from outside, on Nieuwmarkt, slowly filtered through. She could hear, smell and taste the excitement of the summer festival and suddenly realized that after everything she’d been through she really didn’t relish spending the evening being an exotic accessory and squeezing money from the pockets of potential investors. She left a message on David’s voicemail to say that she wasn’t coming and ten minutes later she joined the crowd at the summer festival.

  The many music stages produced a loud and irresistible mix of salsa, jazz and schmaltzy Dutch songs. There was also a small faux-vintage ‘culinary Ferris wheel’ with old-fashioned red leather bucket seats, which rotated so slowly you could easily finish your paella in a single revolution.

  Enjoying the lively atmosphere, she came to a halt in front of the ‘Swing’, a mid-twentieth century carousel ride with wooden seats. The Swing was an annual feature. In the three years she’d lived on this square, she’d been on a couple of rides every day of this August week. Soon, in about half an hour or so when she was feeling a bit better, she’d nestle on one of the wooden seats again and briefly float away from all the negativity.

  She entered an old-fashioned Spiegeltent with brightly coloured stained glass windows.

  The heat inside was the kind more commonly associated with tropical rainforests. Exhilarated locals and baffled foreigners were packed in tight, listening to two brassy blondes dressed in sixties skirt suits performing hilarious renditions of old, sentimental Dutch ballads. Tragic songs about girls of ill repute, of poverty-stricken origins or a combination of the two, who met with tragic and premature ends.

  Farah barely knew the lyrics, but after her third beer she was quite happily hollering along when she spotted Joshua Calvino in the spirited crowd.

  She elbowed her way through the sweaty mass until she was standing right in front of him and with a great deal of feigned surprise tried to make herself heard about the noise.

  ‘You HERE?’

  ‘I live NEARBY.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘YEAH! Where do you live?’

  She steered him out of the Spiegeltent and pointed to the flat above Café Del Mondo.

  ‘You win,’ Joshua said with a grin. ‘Fancy another drink?’

  They ordered bottles of Mexican beer and Spanish tapas from a large Mercedes-Benz truck with ‘Cantina’ written across it in red letters.

  ‘You have no idea what you turned down this afternoon, Mr Detective,’ she said half-jokingly after they’d found a seat.

  ‘I think I do.’ He squeezed half a lemon into his beer glass. ‘It’s not every day you meet someone who finds lost earrings for you.’

  ‘I reckon your esteemed colleague has a lot to answer for,’ she said between sips. ‘You know what he reminds me of?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The “Fat Man”.’

  The “Fat Man”?’

  ‘The atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki.’

  Joshua shook his head, but smiled.

  ‘He’s my partner,’ he said simply.

  ‘Your partner,’ she said cheekily while chomping on a stuffed olive. ‘Is he now? You mean you’re taken. What a shame.’

  The look he gave her now was the same as when he helped her up in the woods. Remembering his firm hand, she could feel her heart racing.

  ‘Now I know what you think of my colleague,’ he said, grinning broadly, ‘but not what you think when you picture me.’

  ‘There’s no need to picture you, since you’re sitting right in front of me.’

  ‘Okay,’ Joshua said. ‘That gives us two options. Either I’m out of here like a shot and you picture me and tell me about it later, or I stay right here and you tell me now.’

  On the other side of the square someone started ringing an ear-splitting bell. ‘The Swing!’ Farah exclaimed delightedly. She grabbed hold of his hand. ‘Let’s go!’

  She pulled him along and together they zigzagged through the crowd to join the long queue which had formed in front of the carousel. Joshua laughed as he let himself be led by her. Farah called out to the man who’d rung the bell. He gestured for her to walk around the back, where he pushed a fence aside so they could slip unseen on to the platform and take the last available seats.

  They sat with their backs touching, which felt like a reverse embrace. He rested his head on her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear. ‘I have a confession to make. I can’t stand going backwards.’

  They burst out laughing.

  The steel cables produced a squeaking noise as the carousel slowly chugged into motion. People on the ground waved at them as though they were embarking on a long journey. With each rotation they went a bit faster. Farah could tell by the way the people and the lights on the square started blurring; she could tell by her hair, which was blowing about wildly; she could tell by the tears in her eyes and her difficulty breathing as the wind took her breath away. She could tell by the sounds which were breaking up into snippets, the cheering of the spectators which tightened into high-pitched squeals and cut ever sharper through the spinning sky.

  And then the lights on the ride were dimmed. Farah allowed herself to drift away into the hazy eye of a hurricane made of fragmented light and sound. Then came the smoke. Billowing like an ancient genie out of a magic bottle, the artificial mist spread among the whizzing seats. It felt as if they were flying through fluffy clouds. Given the speed they were going at, all the seats were now listing so badly that the square, the people on it and the buildings around it appeared to have been tilted out of true.

  Amorphous, forbidding shadows came crawling out of the dark recesses of the sky, hitting Farah in the face like cold gusts of wind. She felt the fear penetrating her body and her eyes dilating. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  She saw someone free himself from the crowd on the square and float towards the Swing as if there were no such thing as gravity. It was the boy in his beautiful robe. After each rotation he was a little closer. Farah gestured to him wildly, trying to tell him to stay where he was so he wouldn’t be crushed by the fast spinning carousel, but still he came closer and closer.

  She began screaming at the top of her lungs, but the boy took no notice of her.

  As she charged at him at full speed, he raised his right arm and brought the little bells back to life by stamping his right foot. She uttered a cry of great anguish the moment she hit the boy head-on.

  29

  Farah had no idea how she’d escaped her spinning hell. All she knew was that she was standing on the square again, closely entwined with Joshua. She could feel his hands going up and down her back. She was trembling and crying like a child who’d just been jolted awake by a nightmare. And yet she knew that what she’d just experienced had really happened.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she heard Joshua say. ‘It’s over.’ He tenderly took her head in his hands and forced her to look him in the eye.

  She knew there were a couple of things she had to do to calm down. The first was to
accept that Joshua kept hold of her as they left the square and crossed the street. The second was to let him escort her up the steep wooden staircase. The third was to allow everything he proceeded to do next.

  She let herself be laid down gently on the bed. She heard the shower running. Then he pulled off her boots and whispered to her, ‘Trust me.’

  She allowed him to take off her trousers and help her sit up. He lifted her arms, so he could pull off her long-sleeved top. Then he carried her to the bathroom and placed her under the hot water jet in her underwear, holding on to her all the while. Without a word, she let it all happen. She just kept breathing.

  In and out. In and out.

  While in the shower, unable to fight the flood of tears, she began crying again. It made her angry. She grabbed hold of Joshua and her open mouth slid across his face and found his mouth. Sweet excitement replaced bitter sadness.

  Suddenly she saw herself, as though she’d left her body and was now watching it from a distance. Standing there, half-naked, passionately kissing this detective who was pressed up against her in the shower. The thought of David carrying her into the bedroom last night instantly returned her to her body. She abruptly freed herself from the clinch.

  ‘Sorry. This isn’t … what I want. I’m fine now.’

  He looked as though she’d slapped him in the face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she didn’t doubt him. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me too,’ she replied. ‘You’d better go now, Joshua.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Go, Joshua. I mean it.’

  Farah couldn’t help but smile at the formal way in which he tiptoed backwards out of the bathroom, as if he’d just had an audience with the queen.

  ‘Joshua?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I’m going, all right.’

  She stood there, in her soaking wet lace underwear, until she heard the door of her apartment slam shut. Only then did she move again. She wrapped a large bath towel around her, retrieved her mobile and keyed in the hospital’s number. While waiting for someone to answer, she walked across to the open window. The smells of stale beer and grilled meat wafted in on a slight breeze.

  As soon as she saw Joshua look up at her from the square, she stepped back from the window. She was in the middle of the room when she was put through to the ICU and was told what she’d feared all along after her panic attack.

  30

  Danielle groped around for her mobile phone after a ringtone of chirping birds disturbed her dream. She was fleeing in the darkness through knee-high grass, as the sound of exploding grenades drowned out the screams of the children she’d left behind.

  When, in her drowsiness, she finally located her phone under the pile of clothes lying beside her, it felt as if a whole flock of birds flying in every direction in a blind panic had splatted against the freshly-painted walls of her spacious rented house in Amsterdam-Noord.

  She muttered a hoarse ‘Hello?’ and heard the agitated voice of Mariska, the ICU head nurse whom she’d asked to call her immediately if any problems arose.

  ‘The boy’s blood pressure dropped suddenly.’

  Danielle responded instinctively. ‘Give him saline!’ She sat up and turned on the bedside light.

  ‘It’s already been done.’

  ‘How does the blood gas read now?’

  ‘Listen, Danielle. I shouldn’t even be calling you.’

  ‘Take him for a CT scan!’ Danielle shouted as she grabbed her jeans.

  ‘This is out of your hands. The trauma surgeon’s in charge now. You know that?!’

  ‘I’m on my way!’

  Mariska was of course right. According to hospital protocol Danielle had nothing more to say, but she’d promised herself that she’d be there for the boy whenever necessary. As she stumbled down the stairs, all kinds of possibilities of what might be wrong with him rushed through her head. What had she overlooked that she shouldn’t have? Within a few minutes she was speeding along the ring road at 150 kilometres an hour headed for the WMC.

  At this hour of the night the road was practically deserted. A few kilometres further she heard the birds in her handbag go again. She swerved to the right, pulled on to the hard shoulder and slammed on her brakes. She left the engine running and rummaged in her bag on the passenger’s seat looking for her phone. When she finally found it, she was too late picking up.

  From the distance came the menacing honking of a lorry that had also swerved right. Hadn’t she turned on her hazard lights? Damn, she had no time for this. She quickly hit ‘missed calls’ on her phone, while pressing down on the gas, and raced off before the truck overtook her.

  She steered with her right hand and held the phone to her ear with the left. She was transferred to Mariska, who told her that the surgeon on-call had immediately sent the boy for a CT scan because he suspected his spleen was ruptured.

  Danielle cursed aloud in exasperation. She’d missed something: the damage to the spleen was worse than she’d thought, but had only come to light once his blood pressure improved over the course of the day. As soon as it returned to normal, the spleen ruptured.

  ‘Who’s the surgeon on-call?’ she asked.

  ‘Radder,’ Mariska said.

  Tears of frustration welled up in Danielle’s eyes. Of all people, Radder. Radder was a butcher. He’d make a fifteen-centimetre incision left under the rib cage and remove the whole spleen. Her body was overwhelmed with despair.

  ‘Call me as soon as they know for sure it’s the spleen. Radder shouldn’t be doing a splenectomy. Under no circumstances!’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Mariska said, sounding less than convincing. Danielle knew that none of the nurses was prepared to confront Radder. But as long as she was still on her way and couldn’t actually speak to Radder in person, it was best to exert her influence on Mariska.

  ‘If it’s the spleen, then the boy needs to go to the angiography suite,’ she said forcefully. ‘He mustn’t be taken to the OT. We need to get an interventional radiologist in. The spleen needs a coil embolization, but it shouldn’t be removed!’

  ‘You know I don’t have a say here, and neither do you,’ Mariska said reproachfully. ‘Radder’s in charge.’

  Danielle knew Mariska was right. She was out on a limb.

  ‘Put me through to the OT.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Mariska. She sounded relieved.

  Meanwhile Danielle had driven two exits too far without having noticed. Her temples throbbed and she was drenched with sweat. She’d just rolled down the window a crack when she heard the voice of Gaby, the OT assistant who’d helped her during the boy’s operation.

  ‘Gaby, it’s Danielle. Was an emergency operation called in?’

  ‘Correct, a ruptured spleen.’

  ‘It’s the boy!’ Danielle exclaimed. ‘The child we performed surgery on last night. Radder will no doubt go for a splenectomy. But I want the interventional radiologist consulted first.’

  ‘I’ll let Dr Radder know that you called with this request.’

  ‘Explicit request!’ Danielle corrected her.

  ‘But unfortunately there isn’t much more I can do right now.’

  ‘I understand. Please ask him to call me back immediately? I’m on my way.’

  It seemed like her whole body had gone numb. Although she was clutching the steering wheel, she couldn’t feel her hands. She had no idea how hard she was pushing down on the accelerator, it could just as well have been a pillow. Even the wind on her face at 150 kilometres felt like a faint caress.

  The outline of the WMC appeared in the distance. She was pulled back and forth between feeling invincible and being afraid. Without reducing her speed she exited the ring road and drove through two intersections with a blinking yellow traffic light. It was increasingly clear to her that Radder wasn’t going to call her back. He would rely on his own inimitable style of butchery, blind to alternatives and deaf
to better advice.

  When she sped into the parking garage, she was too agitated to find her pass quickly enough to open the gate. She shouted her name into the intercom and indicated she was there for an emergency. She then hurried to the service lift in the main lobby. Moments later, in the dressing room, she threw on OT scrubs and clogs and grabbed a cap and a mask on her way into the operation.

  ‘Anyone we know?’ Radder said without even looking up as she raced into the OT.

  Danielle caught the helpless gaze of Gaby, who was standing beside him.

  ‘Please not a splenectomy,’ Danielle said desperately. ‘If you do that, the risk of pneumonia or an infection is too great. His body can’t withstand a second operation in just two days! And if he makes it, he’ll be susceptible to infections for the rest of his life. You could try using a coil.’

  ‘Seems to be all the rage these days,’ Radder coldly replied. ‘I’m dealing with spleen tissue here that’s significantly torn apart. Stitching it up is almost impossible.’

  ‘Almost,’ Danielle interjected. ‘At least consider the other options!’

  ‘No time!’ Radder snapped. ‘I have to keep this patient from bleeding to death. Sorry, Bernson.’

  It sounded like he was enjoying himself. The dictatorial smugness in his voice when he asked for the scalpel, which Gaby placed in his open hand, was intolerable for Danielle. She wanted to cry, but restrained himself.

  She went and stood on the other side of the table directly across from him and did her best to exude calm.

  ‘You know as well as I do that the risks of living without a spleen still aren’t clear. And this child has a whole life ahead of him.’

  ‘Not if I don’t do something soon,’ Radder replied impatiently.

  Danielle could only look on helplessly as Radder made the incision and exposed the ruptured spleen. Gaby suctioned the blood while Radder examined the damage.

  ‘In itself a disappointing turn of events that the rupture was only discovered after the fact.’ Radder sounded like a judge sending her down for life.