Free The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg

copper dome, green with verdigris, and its great gate guarded by four angels with raised, golden wings. Anna remembers the hospital site as always thronged with people of all ages. Some of the strolling groups would include a patient in his pyjama-style daywear but there would also be people dressed for a picnic, or entire families, the boys in knee-length shorts and the little girls with bows like small propellers in their hair. The trams taking you away from Steinhof would always be crowded. It felt as if the whole city had enacted a communal pilgrimage and happily went home in unison. A few years later, Anna’s granddad was moved to the Ybbs hospital and no more visits were made, at least not by her. The family would sum up what happened as: the old man was lucky to die in good time. What that was supposed to mean, no one cared to explain.
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    Has Sister Anna Worked with Idiots Before?    When she starts work, she discovers that Steinhof has changed and no longer has anything but the walls and the façade ornamentation in common with the hospital site she once visited with her father. It is January 1941. The day is overcast and still. Near the imperial clock by the main entrance, the Nazi flag droops, as if glued to the flagpole. Set among the bare trees in the park, the pavilions look like bunkers with their high, solid walls and window grilles. Anna Katschenka presents herself to the administrative office in pavilion 1 and is given instructions about where to go next, but she is soon met by the matron, Klara Bertha, who comes walking briskly down the wide drive. Bertha is a strongly built, middle-aged woman with, in some people’s eyes,striking good looks. Arguably she would have been respected, whatever profession she had taken up. In conversation (with patients or colleagues) she comes across as slightly reserved, someone waiting patiently if a little irritably for what the others have to say before finally delivering her response, distinctly and explicitly. On the way towards their pavilion, she points and describes with pedagogic clarity which of the pavilions still belong to the ‘old’ Steinhof establishment and which to the new institution for children and adolescents. She explains that the odd numbers, as in 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13, are ‘theirs’. We have tried to avoid mixing former inmates with, for instance, the children from Lustkandlgasse who have been placed in pavilions 3, 5 and 9, and those from Juchgasse in number 7. Pavilions 15 and 17 hold only psychopaths of both sexes and also younger children who are very ill or malformed, which means that they don’t just need specialised care but also constant supervision. And that is where Sister Anna will be nursing. Anna Katschenka points out her previous experience of dealing with severely ill children and takes the opportunity to mention her many years in Professor Knöpfelmacher’s unit. Matron smiles patiently, almost sadly, as she waits for Sister Katschenka to finish and then says: I’m afraid that there’s very little hope for these young lives. By then, they have reached the right place and the door is opened by a young nurse who introduces herself as Nurse Hedwig. Behind her, several other members of staff emerge from doors along a narrow corridor. Bertha introduces some of them by name and qualifications: Emilie Kragulj, Hildegard Mayer and Cläre Kleinschmittger. Kragulj and Mayer had worked before as psychiatric nurses at Steinhof but had been seconded to the children’s wards and had to relearn on the job. Same difference, Mayer says. Her tongue is as quick as her body is heavy. Nurse Kleinschmittger, Bertha continues, is the charge nurse for one of the wards for very young children. There are threetypes of patient in pavilion 15: infants, children aged less than three, and slightly older children, up to the age of six or seven. We employ tutors who are meant to instruct the third age group but, regrettably, most of the children lack the