Читать книгу St Paul’s Labyrinth - Jeroen Windmeijer - Страница 9

Friday 20 March, 5:10pm

Anja Vermeulen’s shift was almost over, less than two hours to go. The kitchen staff were serving meals ahead of the start of visiting hours.

She set out the patients’ medication on her trolley. The general ward at Leiden University Medical Centre was known for being fairly quiet. Most of the patients were here to recover from minor surgeries like appendectomies, or to be helped with the transition back to their homes after a longer stay.

Ordinarily, nothing particularly interesting ever happened here. But today had been extraordinary. That afternoon, a young man had been brought in, a mysterious case. He had been discovered when a digger fell into a pit during excavation works in the town centre. The man, who was in his mid-twenties, was covered in blood. He’d been found lying in a cavity below the hole that had been dug for an underground waste container. Except for a loincloth, he had been completely naked. Nobody knew how he had ended up under the ground. Anja had heard the news about the accident on the local radio. It said that Mayor Freylink had been injured, but they hadn’t mentioned this nameless casualty.

After he was admitted to the hospital, unconscious but in a stable condition, the young man was washed from head to toe. Not a single wound was found on his body, and miraculously, none of his bones were broken. The blood that covered his body must have come from someone else. A sample had been collected and was being tested in the hope that it would reveal clues, a disease or some other condition. The police had said they would come the next day to take photographs of the young man and question him, if he had regained consciousness.

The anonymous patient was dressed in a clean hospital gown and taken to an empty room.

At about quarter past five, Anja looked in on ‘Anonymous’, as the name card next to his door said. She opened the door and saw that all was as it should be. The young man, well-built, clearly the sporty type, was breathing calmly. Everything appeared to be under control.

Clothes from the depot had been left on a chair, ready for him to wear when he was discharged from the hospital.

She stood next to his bed for a while, wondering what could have happened to him. As she turned to leave, she saw his eyelids flutter, a sign that he was regaining consciousness. She turned up the dimmed light on his bedside cabinet to make sure. Now the patient was clearly blinking his eyes. Instinctively, she blinked back.

When his eyes were completely open, he only stared at the ceiling at first, disoriented. Anja took hold of his hand. He slowly turned his head to look at her, furrowed his brow, and then closed his eyes again.

‘Can you hear me?’ she asked softly.

He nodded weakly.

‘Do you know where you are?’

He shook his head.

‘You’re in hospital. The LUMC. You were brought in this afternoon.’

He frowned again.

‘Do you know what happened?’

The young man pressed his lips together, as though he wanted to speak but was being silenced by something stronger than himself. He tried to lift his head.

‘Don’t worry,’ Anja said comfortingly. ‘Whatever happened to you, it’s over now. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you here.’

Her words were apparently what he needed to hear. The frown vanished from his forehead, his mouth relaxed and he let his head fall back onto the pillow.

‘I have to leave you for a few minutes, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I won’t be long.’

Anja hurried back to the ward reception desk to report the patient’s progress to the doctor on call. He put her mind at rest and said that he would look in on him later. Since there didn’t appear to be anything medically wrong with him, no immediate action was necessary.

She made a note in the records, along with a short summary of their conversation.

Just as she was about to go back to the young man’s room, the ward telephone rang. She answered it, but kept an eye on the corridor.

‘Hi, it’s Patrick.’

Anja and Patrick talked almost exclusively by phone, almost never in person. He worked in the hospital’s lab and often called to pass on test results.

‘Shouldn’t you be at home?’ she asked. ‘The lab’s closed, isn’t it?’

‘Normally I would be home by now, and we are actually closed for the day, but I’m calling about the man who came in this afternoon. You know, the one who was found after that accident with the mayor.’

‘Yes, he’s here. He woke up a few minutes ago, although he’s not said anything yet. I’ve just told the doctor.’

‘Good, listen … The bloodwork was scheduled for tomorrow but his case was so interesting that I went ahead and made a start already.’

‘Right. And?’

‘It’s not his blood,’ he said, sounding slightly hesitant.

‘No,’ Anja said, ‘but they were fairly sure of that already anyway, weren’t they? I mean, he didn’t have any wounds, right?’

‘No, he didn’t but …’

‘What’s wrong?’

Patrick fell silent.

‘What’s wrong?’ Anja repeated the question, with an increasing mix of worry and curiosity.

‘Listen, it’s—’

‘Hang on a second,’ Anja said.

She was sure she had just caught a glimpse of someone leaving the anonymous man’s room.

‘I think something’s not right here,’ she said to her colleague. ‘I’m just going to put the phone down for a second.’

‘But—’

Anja threw the receiver down on the desk and ran down the hall to Anonymous’ room. The light, downy hairs on both her arms stood on end, like marram grass on a bare dune. Before she even got into the room, she could see that the pile of clothes was gone from the chair.

The bed was empty.

Anja ran back to her desk to call security.

The phone’s receiver was still on the desk. When she picked it up, she heard her colleague’s voice again.

‘Oh, there you are. Listen—’

‘Sorry, I have to hang up. That man is gone.’

‘What? But … Wait, wait, this is important.’

Her finger hovered over the button to hang up, but Patrick spoke so urgently that she hesitated for a second.

‘You know I said the blood wasn’t his?’

‘Yes. So?’

‘It’s not human blood.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘It’s from an animal.’