Free Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

girl who was just admitted.’
    ‘To be honest, I didn’t look in on her. I was checking the drip in Room 3 . It was running out, so I changed the bag.’
    ‘No problem.’ Svava stood up. ‘I guess I’d better check on her.’ She placed her glasses on her forehead in case she needed them; they didn’t make that much difference, but they were better than nothing. She smiled at the temp; it actually didn’t matter whether she’d checked on the patient, as Svava liked to keep an eye on the new patients and try to learn a bit about them. Often you could detect when a patient was about to go downhill, through signs you wouldn’t necessarily notice unless you knew them. Only by learning what was normal for a patient could you identify abnormalities.
    She walked from the staffroom down the corridor to Room 7 . Her route took her past several rooms, and from each open door she could hear slow breathing and the electronic beeps of monitors and other equipment. Everything seemed normal, or as normal as could be expected, and as she approached Room 7 she heard nothing to make her quicken her pace. Assuming the girl was asleep, she tiptoed into the spartan white room, almost empty apart from the huge bed. No attempt had been made to disguise the hospital bed as something more homely; the chrome frame was clearly visible.
    Svava had never given it much thought until this young woman was admitted, since there seemed little point. Most patients weren’t in the department for long, and their illnesses ended with them either going home or being carried out in a coffin, which would at least be spruced up with a satin lining. It was a different matter for this girl, who was a young woman really. She had spent many years of her short life in hospital beds, and would be in one until it ended. She was completely paralysed, which confined her to the bed for the larger part of each day. The only change came when she was moved – with great effort – into a specially modified wheelchair and allowed to go out for a breath of fresh air with an orderly. This was not a service provided by the hospital; she was seriously ill and it was not considered safe to move her. Svava wished the room could be made more comfortable somehow, but she thought any attempt to do so would be like hanging Christmas lights on a shotgun. The girl wouldn’t be in the room for long no matter what, so it was futile to make any kind of effort doing it up; Svava’s role, like the others’ in the department, was to nurse and heal, not to play interior designer.
    As Svava entered the room she noticed something odd. The sterile smell that generally overwhelmed everything was contaminated with what smelt like body odour. She went to the girl’s bedside and saw that her forehead was damp. Grabbing a flannel from the bedside table, she wiped off the girl’s brow before laying her hand across it to check whether she might have a temperature. This didn’t seem to be the case; the girl was rather cold to the touch, if anything. Still, there was something wrong, because the girl’s eyes were wide open and moving back and forth as if she were having some kind of attack. Maybe she was suffering from cramps, though of course her body lay motionless, as her muscles were no longer under her brain’s control. Her EKG showed a rapid pulse, far
too
rapid, although her systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings appeared normal. If the girl was simply feeling off colour she might be a bit panicky. Svava had plenty of experience in dealing with the physically disabled, but it was rare to see someone this seriously affected, who was unable to express herself except with her eyes.
    ‘Did you have a bad dream?’ Svava leaned closer to the girl’s face and followed her eyes closely. She thought she’d been told that the girl would blink once for yes and twice for no but had never tested this out, so it could very well be the other way around; Svava couldn’t remember. The