‘I suspect it was a subcapsular hematoma.’
‘You didn’t take his low blood pressure into account,’ he said sharply. ‘The consequence of you going it alone, against my express advice to operate on the boy. And lo and behold, the result.’ He said this with such gloating triumph that Danielle felt sick to her stomach.
‘What I wouldn’t do to change this,’ she heard herself say.
Her words popped out so spontaneously that her sudden shift in attitude had an immediate effect. Radder looked up at her and she saw the coldness ebb from his eyes for a moment. It was only a fraction of a second, but she was certain of it.
He felt the spleen from all sides. ‘Maybe we can salvage a piece of it.’
She wanted to jump for joy. He evidently felt his authority was no longer being questioned, which confirmed his apparent feeling of superiority.
‘Bernson,’ he said, motioning for her to take a closer look. ‘We’re going to have to remove this piece.’ He pointed at the most damaged part of the spleen. ‘This middle tear is beyond repair. But we might be able to save these bits left and right.’
Danielle was silent and nodded obediently. She knew it was important for her to play the role of dutiful student. In the interest of the boy, she had to give the master the floor.
‘If they’re both viable, then we can push the pieces together, surround them with a net. What do we think, Bernson?’
‘Perfect solution.’
‘My feeling exactly. And let’s just hope the bits grow back together,’ Radder said in the arrogant tone he seemed to have a patent on. He immediately began to cut away the damaged part of the spleen.
Within half an hour, the two remaining halves of the spleen were joined using a bio-absorbable net.
‘Since you’re here anyway, Bernson, why don’t you close him up?’ Radder grumbled.
A while later, as she escorted the bed with the boy in it through the almost deserted hospital corridors back to the Intensive Care Unit, Danielle felt like she was floating. She helped Mariska reconnect him to all the ICU machines.
‘There’s someone in the waiting room for him,’ Mariska said. ‘The same woman who was here yesterday morning.’
Danielle immediately felt herself tense up. The way Farah had made it clear to her this evening that she needn’t count on her if she went public with the boy’s story was bewildering. Farah was involved, she definitely wanted to help the boy, yet at the same time refused to use her resources to reveal the abuses suffered by a victim of child trafficking.
‘You have to take a step back, Danielle,’ Mariska said. ‘Don’t let it become an obsession. It’s not good for you, not for him either.’
She gazed down at the boy and realized Mariska was right. Because of the immense obligation she felt, she hadn’t managed a proper diagnosis during the first operation. A less emotionally involved doctor wouldn’t have made such an error.
Perhaps taking the boy under her wing was a big mistake. Less than six months ago she’d deserted panicked children in their beds to save her own skin. Was she just using him now to prove she wasn’t a coward? As a way to clear her conscience?
‘Did you contact her?’ Danielle asked Mariska.
‘Who?’
‘That journalist.’
‘Is she a journalist?’
‘Yes, she writes for the AND.’
‘No, why would I call the newspaper?’
‘Then how does she know what’s going on?’
‘No idea. Why don’t you ask her?’
Danielle left the room. She massaged her throbbing temples with her fingers. When she saw Farah Hafez’s silhouette in the waiting room, she couldn’t help but shiver.
31
For the second time in barely twenty-four hours, Farah found herself looking out over nocturnal Amsterdam from the fifth floor of the WMC. She thought of the boy as if he were her own child. A child she hadn’t asked for, but who’d entered her world so forcefully that now she couldn’t possibly abandon him.
She also thought of Danielle and her urge to go public with the story. Danielle was a doctor, she’d sworn an oath, but now she wanted to go beyond that oath. She was keen to show that it wasn’t about saving his life, but about preventing it from being necessary in the first place. The cause needed tackling, so no more children would be left for dead, anywhere in the world.
As far as the boy was concerned, Farah suspected that her own objectives didn’t differ all that much from Danielle’s. However, their ways of realizing those objectives were miles apart. Given her strong emotional involvement, Danielle opted for the quickest route. But haste makes waste, as they say, and that could well be true in this case. You never know what forces are unleashed by courting publicity without due preparation. But Farah had no say over Danielle’s life or, for that matter, her choices.
She heard muffled footsteps behind her back. Reflected in the window, she saw a woman dressed in scrubs. Farah turned around.
‘Hello, Danielle. What’s happened to him?’
‘His spleen ruptured, so we had to remove part of it. He’s stable. For now.’
Farah detected a note of detachment in her voice and saw Danielle scrutinizing her.
‘How did you know what was happening?’
‘I didn’t. I phoned because …’ Farah hesitated and then decided not to tell her about the carousel. Since their previous encounter, the distance between her and Danielle had grown too big for the complex truth.
‘Did one of the nurses phone you?’ Danielle inquired, suspiciously.
‘No.’
‘Then who did?’
‘I phoned off my own bat. I just told you.’
‘Why?’
‘Is this a cross-examination?’
‘I want to know why you phoned, that’s all.’
‘I wanted to know how he was doing.’
‘After midnight?’ As Danielle pursed her lips, her eyes narrowed and her voice shot up. ‘So just as he’s taking a turn for the worse, you think to yourself, hey, let’s give them a call.’
‘I’m not going there,’ Farah said calmly.
‘I just want to know who told you what was happening.’
‘Okay. But then I’d like to ask you something first. And I’d like you to give me an honest answer. Did anything go wrong the first time you operated on him?’
Danielle blanched.
‘How would you know?’
‘I have this strong suspicion and I’d like to know if it’s true.’
Again, an ashen veil spread across Danielle’s face.
‘You can’t fool me. You’ve spoken to someone. Why are you being so secretive about it?’
The woman now standing before her didn’t look anything like the calm, self-assured doctor who’d saved the boy’s life. This woman was seething with suspicion.
‘It’s simple. I saw him. It happened twice. The first time was last night, after I’d driven to the woods to take a look at the spot where he was hit. About thirty minutes after you wheeled him into the operating theatre, he suddenly appeared before me. In his dancing clothes. Wearing all of his jewellery. Incredibly lifelike.’
The disbelief on Danielle’s face was all too apparent. Against Farah’s better judgement, she decided to tell her the rest.
‘The same thing happened earlier tonight. But it was even more realistic this time. It felt as though I’d hit him myself.’
The disbelief in Danielle’s eyes made way for fear.
‘It sounds stupid, but I think the boy is trying to communicate with me,’ Farah said falteringly. ‘I don’t know what it is and I can’t explain it either. It must sound rather strange coming from a journalist’s mouth.’
She felt she’d laid herself bare and could only hope that Danielle was prepared to take her seriously. Being more candid than this wasn’t possible.
‘Strange is not the right word,’ Danielle said, her voice trembling. ‘It’s downright bizarre. You know what I don’t
get? You’re not a relative, yet you keep showing up here. You’re a journalist, but you don’t want to write about him. What are you doing here? Why the interest?’
‘The first time was a coincidence. But now I think he may be trying to tell me something. Tell us something. Maybe we ought to think less about ourselves and more about him. I don’t know.’
Danielle stared at her. ‘I don’t get you. Why are you bothering me with this nonsense?’
‘I was hoping …’ But Farah didn’t get the chance to finish.
‘Spare me the rest of your new-age claptrap. Go home. There’s nothing you can do for him. In fact I don’t even want you to do anything for him. Is that clear?’
Farah realized that there was no point arguing.
‘Whatever your thoughts are on this, I hope he’ll be all right,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve done amazing things for him. You saved his life. But what you have in mind is dangerous, Danielle. It could turn against you.’
As she walked down the corridor she felt the blonde doctor’s eyes burning into her back.
32
In the car park Danielle waved her ignition key in every direction, but didn’t hear the clicking of her car door locks anywhere. She’d spent another hour in the ICU with Farah’s warning echoing through her head the entire time. Publicizing the boy’s story might be dangerous. It could very well turn against her.
It gradually dawned on her that it wasn’t so much a warning, as it was an indirect threat. She now distrusted Farah to the bone. In retrospect, it couldn’t have been a coincidence that Farah showed up at the Emergency Department at exactly the same moment the boy was brought in. Danielle needed to share her suspicions with the detectives working on the case.
She anxiously walked up and down the rows of cars in the garage when behind her she suddenly heard door locks open. She was startled, just like she was startled by every random noise these days – a door slamming, a ringing telephone, the click of door locks opening. Her door locks.
Before getting into the car, she instinctively looked around. Since returning from Africa, this had also become part of her routine. A nervous obsession that told her to scan her surroundings before going inside anywhere, whether it was a lift, a pub or a car. She didn’t see anyone in the car park. Yet, she had the distinct feeling someone was there. This was fuelled by a fear nestled deep inside her. A fear that festered like a virus.
On the ring road heading towards Amsterdam-Noord she stared straight ahead and began to recite her daily mantra. A pep-talk meant to keep her from panicking.
‘I’m a doctor. People need me. I’m not spineless!’
Just a few months ago she’d run for her life, through knee-high grass. But she was still fleeing, constantly short of breath, always looking over her shoulder as if death was hot on her heels. The children she’d left behind in the camp kept shouting her name, and not only in her dreams. She heard their cries even when she was awake.
She constantly had to convince herself.
‘I’m here. I’m safe. I’m brave.’
In the airplane returning to the Netherlands, she’d suddenly remembered a poem about a gardener. While weeding early one morning, he sees Death taking a stroll and in a panic flees to another city, believing he can outwit the Grim Reaper. But Death, surprised, just wonders what the man is doing in the garden early that morning when he has to pick him up somewhere entirely different that same evening.
During that night flight Danielle wondered if the same might happen to her. She’d escaped Death, but perhaps it was just patiently waiting for her thousands of kilometres away in the arrivals hall at Schiphol Airport.
That thought had triggered all the obsessive-compulsive neuroses that would plague her. It was also the first time in her life that she really felt frightened. And for months now that fear reared its ugly head at the most unexpected moments.
She had to circle her neighbourhood three times before she found a parking spot. As she got out, she looked around again. She forced herself not to race to her house. Despite her pounding heart, she tried to walk to her front door as calmly as possible. As she rummaged in her bag for her keys, she heard a car slowly approaching in her dead-still neighbourhood. Trembling, she dashed into her house and bolted the door behind her.
In the hallway she braced herself against the wall for a few minutes so she could catch her breath. She had to do something. No mantra was a match for this. She had to take control – overcome her anxiety attacks. She walked up the stairs to her living room, turned on all the lights and poured herself a whisky. She decided she would go for a run the next morning. She’d even done this while she was in Africa. She was athletic and running always made her feel better. She was pleased with this decision. At least it was a start.
After three gulps of whisky she was trembling less. She collapsed on the leather sofa and zapped past inane TV stations until she saw Cathy Marant, in a low-cut shiny blouse, sitting behind a desk hosting The Headlines Show. She understood that it was a repeat broadcast from earlier that evening. With the on-air presence of a hyena, Cathy Marant talked about an incident during a martial arts gala in Carré, where according to several sources someone had been seriously injured.
To Danielle’s amazement, she was watching the same woman who’d just tried to convince her that she’d had paranormal contact with the badly injured boy mercilessly slamming a defenceless woman against the mat. In the meantime, Cathy Marant looked directly at the camera and, piling on the pathos, stated that Farah Hafez’s victim was doing well under the circumstances, but that a journalist, especially one who thought that all illegal immigrants living in the Netherlands should receive a general pardon, needed to be punished for violently battering others in public, and behaving rudely, for that matter.
‘There can be no question of a pardon here,’ Marant argued. ‘Also not a general pardon, Ms Hafez! What will become of our democracy if we allow such things to happen?’
Danielle discovered one amazing thing after another, because in the following item she saw the same detective who’d sternly spoken to her in the hospital the other morning arresting Dennis Faber in the middle of his live TV show and hauling him away like a common criminal. The reason for his arrest, Marant reported, was that the police initially suspected Faber and his wife of being guilty – directly or indirectly – of a hit-and-run involving an underage boy in the Amsterdamse Bos.
Marant denounced the heavy-handed ineptitude of the police. What made it even worse, the detective who’d swooped in appeared to be drunk. Witnesses declared that they smelled something suspicious. Luckily the police quickly realized the magnitude of the mistake they’d made and immediately released the popular presenter and his wife, after it came to light that Mrs Faber had only seen the boy lying on the road and had called emergency services without delay.
Danielle watched Dennis Faber and his wife coming down the police station steps. Cleared of any alleged involvement. Beleaguered, traumatized celebs who must be buckling under the weight of all this bad publicity.
At that moment, a light went on in Danielle’s head. She gathered her thoughts and her plan began to take shape. The Faber couple would be the key to getting the boy’s story out into the world. With a starring role for Cathy Marant as well.
She felt the fighting spirit that she thought she’d lost after returning from Africa. This plan would finally allow her to shake off all her obsessive thoughts.
‘I’m here. I’m safe. I’m brave.’
33
David was a man who thought about the future, who was forward-looking and had faith in promises. Farah would love to be like that too, but to her promises were like soap bubbles that could burst at any moment. Lies and death were a constant threat.
She was approaching the exit that would take her to David’s house. He’d left a message saying that he’d be waiting for her at home. ‘However late it gets, darling,’ he’d said, before adding something about ‘an unexpected breakthrough’ he
wanted to celebrate with her. When she passed the exit she told herself that at that moment in time she had no control whatsoever over her destiny in life.
The former ship’s cabin exuded a warm, inviting glow. Via a wooden gangway she reached the deck of the steel barge where she heard the muffled tones of a jazz combo and, after she’d rapped on the door, the sound of feet on the steps. Joshua Calvino appeared in the doorway without an inkling of surprise.
‘I’m sorry,’ Farah said, ‘for turning up here unannounced.’ She knew she was talking to herself more than anyone. ‘You know, I’m not normally …’
‘I don’t believe in normal,’ he cut her short and led her down the steps to the living quarters below decks. The floor was polished wood and paintings of clouds dotted the boat’s walls. ‘I love clouds,’ Joshua said as he handed her a glass of red wine, ‘but I’d rather not have my head in them. Cheers.’
They clinked glasses. She took a sip, put her own glass down, took his out of his hands, pulled him close and began to kiss him long and hard. Although she felt like ripping the clothes from his body, she refrained and carefully unbuttoned his shirt first and then his trousers. She continued to do everything extremely slowly to curb her own excitement. She was the one taking the initiative and she wanted to be as careful and meticulous about that initiative as possible.
She pulled off her top in one fluid movement and unhooked her bra, and in the narrow space between their bodies his hands groped her breasts and massaged her nipples. When she pushed him down, he first slid his tongue across her breasts before moving further down her belly until his head was between her legs and she felt his tongue entering her.
With John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme playing on vinyl in the background, Joshua was on his knees, as though worshipping a half-naked statue of the Madonna. Farah let herself be worshipped. She felt he was liberating her from the nightmarish twilight that had enveloped her and, feeling light-headed, she grabbed his hair with both hands when he made her come with his tongue.
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