PART 2

PART 2

Thank God she spent the morning charging her mobile at work and that it was almost at 100% when they arrived at South General Hospital,

Iris thinks as they sit in the emergency waiting room. She would never have managed to keep Sigrid in such a good mood for this long otherwise.

Her arm has already been examined by a young and very stressed doctor. He is wearing a mask. Sigrid’s questioning look prompted an explanation, but the doctor said no more.

Suspected fracture of the elbow joint was the diagnosis, and currently she is waiting for a transfer up to X-ray. If the doctor is right, she shouldn’t need an operation and they can go home with just a cast.

“Mummy,” Sigrid says and turns towards her. “Mummy, why is everyone so sick?”

The telephone isn’t just for entertainment purposes, but also to keep her from asking questions about what is going on around them. It’s not working too well. Sigrid is getting too old for such tactics and often sees things more clearly than Iris herself.

“We’re at the hospital. This is where people come when they’re sick. It can get quite crowded sometimes.” Sigrid stares into space for a while.

Everything’s fine, this is normal, Iris wants to say. The hospital is always this crowded. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to lie to her child, it doesn’t feel right.

The fact is, she’s never seen the emergency department like this. Well, apart from on television perhaps, in one of the more heart-wrenching episodes of

ER.

But today isn’t about open wounds, agonising screams and broken body parts. Just a lot of very sick-looking people who want everyone to know about it. Sighs, moans, coughs, wheezes and snot everywhere in an unusually vocal form.

And no one called in comes back looking happier, no light skips towards the exit and the adjoining pharmacy, a fresh prescription awaiting them in the computer. Hollow-eyed, sweaty and frustrated, they lumber past.

“Does your arm hurt, mummy?”

Iris nods. “Yes, a lot. I hope we can go and get that X-ray soon.”

“Will you get a cast? ”

She nods again. “I think so. You have to cast a broken bone, so that it will heal correctly and the bones grow back together in the right place.”

Sigrid looks thoughtfully at her mother’s arm resting in the temporary sling the doctor gave her.

Then she looks back down at the mobile, before passing it towards Iris’ good hand. “Can you try daddy again?”

Iris tries to smile naturally. “He’ll ring us when he has the time. I left him a message telling him that we’re here.”

And sent four text messages. And phoned three times when Sigrid wasn’t watching.

“Why isn’t he answering?”

“He’s probably forgotten his phone at home and gone out. Sometimes he works in cafés, I’m sure that’s what he’s doing now.”

“But…”

Sigrid trails off. Iris thinks she should say something, encourage her daughter to express the fear she knows is gnawing at her. But she’s too tired. They have been here for three hours, it’s nearly five p.m. and she feels like her insides are being chewed to bits by the worry.

She was soaked through with sweat when she finally reached the nursery. The hill up to Söder’s highest point by Sofia Church was all she needed in her state. A teenaged boy who had stopped to rubberneck, helped her tie a simple sling using her cardigan but it did little to ease the pain which cut like knives with every step as the bones rubbed against each other. But she didn’t scream, swear or curse her bad luck; it didn’t feel appropriate given the situation. It only took a few seconds for the paramedics to turn their backs on the driver in the small car and go to the van. He was dead, she understood and she didn’t doubt their judgement. It had been horrible to watch, how they ignored the mangled wreckage of his car and brusquely went to attend to the next.

And as no one was interested in her any longer, she left.

“Iris?” A male nurse looks half-heartedly around the crowded waiting room. Iris lifts her other arm carefully and smiles, but the man makes no attempt to return the friendly gesture, at least not that she can see behind his mask.

She takes Sigrid by the hand. “Come, we’re going for an X-ray.”

They walk along endless corridors. She can see now that the waiting room had housed only a fraction of the coughing, sniffing patients that now fill the corridors. Beside the elevators an older man appears to be having difficulty breathing. He also has a fever. A woman sits beside him; she is struggling like him minus the rasping throat sounds, and she looks helplessly around. When she spots the nurse leading Iris and Sigrid towards them, the colour returns to her cheeks.

“Hey! You! He needs help! We’ve been waiting for two hours and his breathing is getting worse. A doctor was supposed to come, but there’s been no one. What are you guys doing?”

He tries to calm her, but she is too upset to hear what he’s saying. “Why isn’t anyone helping us? He’s burning up and his chest is getting worse by the minute. I’m starting to get really scared. Someone has to get him checked!”

“I…” he starts but stops himself and looks around for someone to help. “I don’t know, I work in X-ray,” he finishes and presses the button to call the lift.

“Then take him upstairs and X-ray his lungs! You must be able to hear how bad they are.”

“It… doesn’t work like that,” the nurse replies.

Sweat is pouring down the woman’s forehead. She is gathering energy for another outburst when she catches sight of Iris and stops.

Once the doors have closed, Iris can stop herself no longer, even if she knows the answer will scare Sigrid.

“What’s happening?”

The nurse doesn’t want to reply at first and instead keeps his eyes fixed on the numbers slowly changing in the panel above the buttons.

“I don’t know much more than you,” he says eventually. “It started getting serious around eleven this morning, here and in the clinics. First it was just in the centre of town. A wave of people came in with flu-like symptoms, high fever and a persistent cough, that sort of thing. It goes straight for the lungs. Most people seem to have severe stomach ache too.”

There is a ping and the elevator stops.

He hurries out and points to the right. “We’re going in here.”

A woman is waiting in the bare X-ray room. She coughs behind her mask and Iris feels Sigrid’s grip tighten. The man disappears quickly into a neighbouring room having clearly kept the furthest possible distance from the coughing woman, who in turn is looking with tired eyes at Iris. Then she catches sight of Sigrid and tries to perk herself up.

“Your daughter must wait outside when we take the X-ray. Do you want to be in the corridor, or in that room?” she asks with just as bright a voice as she can muster, but her tone is forced and it only makes Sigrid more suspicious.

“Wait in the corridor. I’m sure the door can be kept ajar, that way you can see me the whole time,” Iris says, careful not to phrase it as a question in case the nurse objects.

Reluctantly, Sigrid goes out, stands by the door and places her foot in the opening when it looks as if it might swing shut. Iris spots a little yellow shoe and the tip of a nose in the gap. Love and fear jab in her chest.

The nurse places her in the correct position, lifts Iris’ arm to the desired height and tells her to keep still. A searing pain shoots through her and for a moment she thinks about punching the nurse in the jaw, but then she remembers the little nose in the doorway and clenches her teeth instead.

Three pictures later they return downstairs, this time without an escort.

“A doctor will collect you down there!” the male nurse calls from inside the control room. Once back in the waiting room, Iris begins to doubt the doctor will ever come.

The number of people in the waiting room has doubled in the twenty minutes they were away. They find a little spot on the floor beside a wall. Sigrid has to sit in Iris’s lap. The noise is deafening, people coughing, sniffing, panting and whimpering, and somehow it reminds Iris of that hidden camera footage from poultry battery farms. Every now and again someone breaks through the din and screams something about why isn’t anything happening, what the hell is going on and that this constant defunding of the Swedish healthcare system is a fucking disgrace.

Sigrid stiffens with every outburst. “Mummy, I want to go home,” she says several times. “Can’t we go and see if daddy is back?”

“He’ll be there when we get home, I promise,” Iris wants to say. In fact, she’s beginning to think it’s true, but it’s not a thought that eases her mind. The opposite in fact.

“Soon,” she says instead and gives her daughter a tired smile. “We’ll be called soon.”

A man in his fifties stands up and starts rooting around in his pocket. He takes a step forward, so as not to lose his balance. A younger man sees this as an invitation to take his seat.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The younger man looks up with a fevered grimace. “What’s your problem, you got up?” he snaps and turns away.

The older man’s punch is surprisingly well-placed and forceful, given his condition. It lands with a crack on the young man’s nose and blood starts streaming down his face.

“What the fuck?!” he manages to howl before launching himself at the older man.

The sudden movement only makes the blood spurt more and it splatters over Iris’ jeans, paints a red stippled pattern on Sigrid’s shoes and showers the girl next to them in the face.

The girl’s reaction is instant, she is on her feet and directing the force of her rage at the young man’s groin with her knee. “Ooof!” he cries, grabs his crotch and bends over double.

“Mummy,” Sigrid whimpers, “Mummy, what…” She falters as the girl kicks the young man again, this time in the head.

“You idiot!” she screams, “you fucking idiot!” Another kick, now at his face. He is on the floor, trying to shield himself from the attack.

The older man looks surprised at this violent chain reaction, thinks about stopping the woman from kicking a third time, then is suddenly swept up by her fury.

“You little shit!” he screams. “It’s idiots like you that are destroying this country!” and aims a foot at the young man’s crotch.

“Stop, what are you…” Iris starts, but stops herself when she realises no one else is about to intervene. There are over fifty people in the waiting room, and most of them have their eyes fixed firmly on the fracas, but no one is reacting.

In fact, Iris thinks she can see anger start to ignite in several more feverish and sweaty faces, not because they are concerned by the injustice of it all, but rather because they “WANT IN...”

Iris pulls herself slowly to her feet, takes two steps forward and cries, “Stop it! Can’t you see what you’re doing?” The woman turns to her, her eyes burning with contempt. Her top is soaked through with sweat.

“Shall I kill you too?” she asks casually, as if asking the time. “Because I will, if you come any closer.”

Stunned, Iris stares back at her.

Just then, the older man starts coughing violently, interrupting the barrage of kicks he has been aiming at the man who is protesting feebly on the ground. The coughs are coming from deep inside his belly. He reaches for the wall to steady himself, expels coughs like machine gun fire until suddenly, he stops. He stands still for a couple of seconds, then sways over his victim. He opens his mouth and out cascades a fountain of blood. Some meets the wall, but most pours down his chin and chest directly onto the face of the young man on the floor, who in his state of shock, doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening. With one long drawn-out moan, the older man collapses on top of him, across his chest, and doesn’t move again. The young man makes a few futile attempts to get free, but he looks more like a fish on land making its last, gasping stand before it’s all over. Everyone is quiet for a few seconds.

Then the waiting room erupts in panic.

Dano is sitting on a bench in a small commuter station. His little brother Bilal is sitting in his lap and crying uncontrollably, screaming incomprehensibly. His only coping mechanism against the pain in his stomach, like most eight-month old babies, is to screech out his pain, spray it in a mixture of tears, saliva and mucus.

He doesn’t actually know if Bilal has stomach ache but that’s his guess as his brother keeps striking his little arms in spasms against his lower abdomen, as if trying to hit away the pain, hold it at bay with the only meagre means he has at his disposal. Dano watches his brother’s frenetic, cramp-like movements and tries to fix them with his eyes, as if he could make them false by seeing them clearly, halt the blurry little fingers tapping tapping tapping against his tense stomach…

No. He can’t. Dano wants to let go, let Bilal fall to the concrete beneath and throw his arms around himself instead, screw up his eyes and press his hands against his ears so that he can shut out everything that is happening around him. Instead, he does the opposite. Pulls Bilal tight to his chest, tries to share the pain.

Their mother is lying on the ground beside them. Her breathing is raspy and the colour has drained from her face. Her head is resting on the little rucksack Dano’s father usually carries on his stomach. He placed it there before taking Line in his arms and going to look for help, for someone who could do what the people on the other end of the emergency number couldn’t. They rang 112 from their mobile but no one answered, no voice came to say “Hello?” not in Swedish, English or Arabic.

“Stay here,” his father said. “Stay here and look after your mother and little brother. We’ll be back soon with help.”

Dano has no idea how much time has passed since. However long it is, it’s been too long.

“Mama?” he asks. “Mama , can you hear me?”

She doesn’t answer at first, but he sees that she heard him, her face twitches and she turns slowly, arduously towards him, tries to open her eyes, but after a few failed attempts, gives up.

“Da… Da…” she says with a quiet voice. At least that’s what Dano thinks she is saying, Bilal’s screaming is drowning out most other sounds. He slides down off the bench, his wailing brother still pressed tight against him, and kneels beside his mother. His tears fall on her cheeks, but she doesn’t notice; she is much too disorientated.

Just as he is about to free one hand and stroke it across her cheek, she jerks and throws herself violently to one side. She vomits, yet again, all over the platform, mostly foul-smelling yellow bile, but Dano thinks he sees streaks of blood this time and panic rises in him.

“Mama,” he wails, “Mama, stop, please!”

A man in his twenties is lying on a park bench a few metres away. He’s wearing black jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. Dano thinks he looks German, at least he saw lots of guys like him in Germany with hair so white that it looked bleached. He was screaming earlier, at Dano, howled and swore in a language that didn’t sound like normal German. Is that how Swedish sounds? He lunged, but stopped short. The sweat had formed beads on his forehead and ran down his face as he grabbed his stomach, just like Dano’s mother did just now. Dano could see how the hatred shone in his eyes but he was too weak, and he returned, doubled over, to his bench where he crumpled into a foetal position on the wooden slats. He hadn’t moved since, except to vomit.

That feels like hours ago, Dano thinks.

Bilal is still screaming in his arms, still drumming his stomach, determined to make the pain in there go away.

“Please, stop now Bilal,” Dano pleads quietly into Bilal’s ear between clenched teeth. He tries to shush him by pulling him closer. “Please, it doesn’t help. Leave your tummy alone. Stop, stop, stop.” But the little boy doesn’t stop, his little arms are shaking from the exhaustion, but still he keeps banging.

A train is standing on the tracks in front of them. A blue train with far fewer doors than the silver one that brought them here. The seats look different and Dano guesses this must be one of those commuter trains the man across the aisle told him about. The doors are open and it looks abandoned, but Dano can hear sounds coming from inside: complaints, that much he is sure. There must be people lying in there.

The man with the yellow vest opened the doors to their train eventually. Then he sat down beside the train and as they passed Dano saw him crumpled with one hand on his chest, the other clutching a strange-shaped key. His breathing had the same shallow gasping quality as his mother’s had now.

The man infected her, Dano thinks. He infected her and he infected Bilal. Maybe Baba is also sick. Wasn’t he also coughing in that terrible way when he left with Line to look for help?

Dano had been standing closest to him, so he too should be lying on the concrete vomiting. But Dano doesn’t feel sick.

Only tired, emptied of all energy, life drained from him.

His mother started complaining about the heat not long after they left the train. The cough started in earnest soon after that, then the sweats, cramps and shivers. By the time they reached the station, Dano had long been responsible for Bilal, and Baba had to help Mama up onto the platform as she couldn’t manage to heave herself up on her own. Lots of other people seemed to be sick, people stopped to rest by the side of the tracks, held their foreheads, shuffled to the side and leant against the fence to be sick again and again. Then they started collapsing, those with energy searched for shade, hoping that someone might come to help. Others fell on the tracks, beside and even on top of each other, as if the dirt, dust and bodies of strangers no longer mattered.

A road bridge crosses the tracks close to where they’re sitting. Traffic has been heavy from what he can see and hear. Cars have been honking their horns in a way he didn’t think was normal here. An ambulance with sirens and blue lights blaring passed, as did two police cars, maybe more that he didn’t notice.

Something warm and sticky runs over his hands, and when he looks down he realises Bilal too has started vomiting. A warm, yellowy-white goo, breast milk mixed with something thicker and slimier, oozes over his arms as he clutches his little brother. Dano wants to scream, howl out his pain, but instead he tips Bilal forwards so that he won’t choke. The contents of Bilal’s stomach flows slower compared to the violent vomiting of his mother, as if his little body has already been emptied of all strength.

“Dano…” he hears his mother’s weak voice say, “Dano, are you…”

“I’m fine Mama,” he replies quickly, so that she won’t have to waste energy talking. “I don’t feel sick.”

“Bilal…”

“He’s well,” Dano says without thinking. “He’s fine, he’s only crying because he’s scared,” he continues and turns away from his mother. Her eyes are closed, but he doesn’t want to take any chances.

He doesn’t know where he’s getting the strength to lie from, all he knows is he has to protect her from the feeling of powerlessness that comes from watching your baby die and not even being able to hold him or comfort him in your arms.

Bilal is sick again, and this time there is blood in his vomit. Dano doesn’t want to see it, would rather cast his little brother away – hurl him – as far as he can. He wants to wake from this nightmare. Instead, he presses his cheek to his brother’s, (he’s burning hot) shushes and stands up, paces, rocks his brother back and forth, tries to do exactly what his mother usually does to get him to sleep.

People are spread out everywhere along the platform. A woman in office wear was leaning against a column, but has fallen forwards. Dead probably, her glassy eyes are fixed on the train as if accusing it of not having taken her home. Something sticky and yellowy-white has trickled down her chin and collected in a pool at the corner of her half-open mouth.

An older woman has collapsed over her suitcase a few metres further away. Dano can’t see her face, but she doesn’t appear to be breathing. The angry man with the bleached hair has also stopped moving.

Everyone’s dying. Dano doesn’t understand it, but the passengers from the train are dropping like flies around him.

Bilal spasms and vomits for a third time, every muscle in his tiny body stiffens in one last attempt to rid his body of the pain. Practically the only thing that comes up is pink phlegm with streaks of fresh red blood. Dano presses his little brother’s clenched fists to his chest, feels that they want to keep hitting, but also notices their strength fading.

“I’m sorry Bilal,” he whispers. “I love you. Never believe otherwise.”

He manages to free an arm without dropping his brother and places his hand over Bilal’s face, pinches his nose with his thumb and forefinger and presses his palm gently but firmly over the little baby’s mouth.

Nothing happens at first, his little brother’s movements continue as before, but after five or six seconds his head begins to jolt, as if such resistance might be enough to free him. Dano sobs, the tears roll down his face and land in Bilal’s sweat-soaked, messy hair. He walks further from his mother to make sure she doesn’t realise what’s happening. He sinks down behind a pillar, bawls, shushes, cries, sings into a little ear. Refuses to yield to the love in his chest that wants him to let go.

It didn’t take long. The little body didn’t have the strength to hold on. Soon, his brother is lying still in his arms.

Dano stays sitting by the pillar for a while. Now that Bilal is no longer screaming, the silence in the station is unbearable. Sometimes he thinks he hears the sound of a motor, but the traffic appears to have thinned and he can’t hear any more sirens.

He wipes the vomit from his brother’s face, cleans him as best he can, first with his hand – wipes the blood and vomit on the pillar and the ground. Then he uses his T-shirt.

He stands on shaky legs and walks over to his mother, who from a distance appears lifeless.

“Mama?”

At first she shows no sign of having heard him. Maybe she too is dead, he thinks, but then he sees a faint twitch of a smile on her face. “My dearest Da…” she whispers.

“I got him to sleep,” Dano says, trying hard to keep his voice calm, to not fall apart. “I rocked him, like you usually do.”

Her breathing is even shallower, he thinks. And she seems to have vomited again. Dark blood, Dano sees.

“You have to keep going,” she whispers to him. “You have… the address, right? And the number?”

He nods. “Yes,” he says. “But Mama…”

“Maybe… your father’s brother… maybe he’s…” She coughs and makes a face. “Just try.”

He is quiet. Tries to gather his thoughts. “I promise.”

“Place Bilal on my chest,” she says. “I want… I want him with me.”

“But Mama, he’s sleeping...”

She raises one arm, only a few centimetres, but it’s enough to make him understand and stop talking. “I know he’s dead,” she says.

In that moment, Dano’s world collapses in its entirety. The tears explode from deep inside and he cries like he has never cried before. He places his brother’s lifeless body on her chest, lifts her arm and helps her hold her dead child.

“Will you stay with me?” she asks. “Will you sit with me until…” but before she can finish Dano has rested his head beside his brother’s, safe in his mother’s arms one last time.

Iris and Sigrid run across the ring road. Iris has a tight grip on Sigrid with her good hand and is forcing her onwards faster than she can really manage. They have to get home. Now.

Everywhere vehicles are honking, people are driving too fast, too aggressively. Two cars have crashed into each other. Two dented grills and two women arguing over whose fault it is. The first punch lands just as Iris and Sigrid pass on the pavement.

“Mummy, why are they hitting each other? It’s bad to h…” Sigrid starts, but Iris yanks her forward. Sigrid whimpers and Iris instantly feels guilty. Iris bites her lip. They must get away, they must get home. They’re taking too long. A woman with a broken arm and a little child, it doesn’t feel safe outdoors anymore.

Everywhere the same shiny faces and strained expressions. Tops wet with sweat and vomit, people screaming at each other, sitting on the ground whimpering, burning, collapsing on the pavement, shrieking at everyone close and no one in particular.

They rush on, hurry, run away from everyone, away, away, away. Iris wants to get home and hide Sigrid in a wardrobe with a plate of sandwiches, a glass of chocolate milk and an iPad with a fully charged battery. She wants her away, until everything is back to normal.

“Mummy, is your arm better?” Sigrid asks, and Iris attempts a sprightly smile. “Not entirely, but a little bit. We’ll have to see what the X-ray says when they’re ready. Come on,” she says and presses on faster, urging her daughter forwards, homewards. They turn right onto the cycle lane towards Rosenlunds Park. It should be quieter in

Skånegläntan; people don’t hit each other in playgrounds.

They rush into the park and pass the large climbing frame. It’s strange to see it empty, admittedly the number of children playing on it falls dramatically around five when it’s time for dinner and the start of the bedtime routines, but it’s rarely empty and the older children and teenagers have usually arrived by six to turn the asphalt into basketball courts. But not tonight.

She notices the wistful look in Sigrid’s eyes as she gazes over at the slide and then expectantly up at her. She turns her focus quickly back ahead without saying anything, as if her six years of experience tell her that this isn’t the time or place to pester.

Sigrid releases Iris’ hand. “Look, not everyone’s gone home.”

Iris’s gaze follows her daughter’s pointing finger. A child is sitting on the edge of the sandpit in one corner of the park. The swings and slide for younger children are surrounded by a fence. She can see the back of a brown T-shirt and a mass of curly shoulder-length hair. They approach the fence. The child hears and turns. A little boy of around two, Iris guesses. Snot is running into his mouth in thick strings and his eyes are red.

“Hi,” says Sigrid. “What are you doing?”

The boy looks at Sigrid, then Iris, and turns back. “Daddy,” he says.

“Where’s your daddy?” Iris asks.

The boy points down to his side with his spade, “There,” he says.

Iris lets go of Sigrid’s hand and takes hold of the fence, which barely reaches her waist, steadies herself and climbs over. No, she thinks. No, no, no.

But her fears are realised. There, in the sunken sandpit, lies a man on his stomach, his face turned towards the boy.

Iris’ first thought is to try to help him, turn him the right way and check his breathing, but then she sees that the boy has shoveled sand on him, a game she has played with Sigrid many times. A game that should have been cute. Except that the boy has dumped sand on the man’s face and in his open and impassive eyes.

“Daddy…” the boy says again.

“Your… your daddy is…” Iris says and reaches clumsily to stop the boy who has filled his spade with yet more sand and is preparing to deposit it once again over his father.

“No…” she says. “He might… we… we can put the sand here instead.” She steers the boy’s shaking hand to a bucket beside him and together they pour the sand into it.

“Mummy?” Sigrid asks. “What’s wrong with his daddy?”

“Hold on,” Iris says, half turning so that she can see Sigrid as well as the boy. “We have to… he…”

She stops. This isn’t happening, she thinks, as her pulse thunders in her ears. This can’t happen. Fathers don’t die in sandpits, leaving young children alone with no one to care for them. There are people cycling past them on the bicycle lane so this can’t be happening, not here. It doesn’t work like this.

“We have to… he has to…” She can’t get her brain to function. What should she do? She can’t just take a child from a playground. But she can’t leave him here either… Can she…?

“Is he dead?” Sigrid asks, her voice cracking. “Is his daddy dead?”

Iris looks at her pale face. Sigrid is clutching the flaky paint of the fence. Iris wants to say something calming, make a joke or at least say something to smooth it all over, but the only thing she can think about is that the fence Sigrid is clinging to will never be painted again. She is certain. This is the beginning of the end.

“Come on,” she says to the boy. “Can you stand up?”

He does as he is told and Iris carefully brushes the sand from his trousers. “I’m going to lift you up now, OK?” she says, and places her right arm under the boy’s bottom, presses him against her and hoists him into her arms. Without her other arm to steady her she almost falls, but she finds her balance and stands up.

“Can you look after him for a second?” she says to Sigrid as she places him on the other side of the fence. “I have to check something.”

She goes back to the sandpit and crouches down beside the man. His face is covered in stubble, he is sunburned and looks a few years over thirty. A trickle of blood has run from his mouth. Maybe the child was trying to cover it up, make it go away, by pouring sand over his face.

She feels in his pockets, it makes her nauseous just to touch him, but luck is on her side. She can feel something hard in his back pocket and after a bit of fumbling pulls out an iPhone. She presses the home button. It’s locked, but she can see that he has several missed calls and two text messages from someone called Magda. She can’t see what they say, but she swipes the name on one of the missed calls, takes a deep breath and closes her eyes as the ringing blares in her ear. Sigrid is trying, without success, to get the boy to tell her his name.

“Hello?!” the voice is breathless, strained. “Why didn’t you answer? How’s Lukas? Have you… it’s awful here. There’s an ambulance at one of the neighbours’ houses and… where are you?”

Iris sighs. “Hello,” she starts. “My name is Iris and I’m with your… I’m with Lukas, your son. We are at the sandpit in Skånegläntan.”

She can hear the surprise, and the fear, as Magda draws breath. “Is he OK? Where’s Niklas?”

“He…” Iris looks at Sigrid. She is silent, watching her mother, and Iris can see that she is processing every word, trying to understand what it means for her. My big, lovely baby, she thinks, you will never forget this day.

“He’s sick,” she manages. “He can’t talk right now. Can you get here right away? I have to get my daughter home and… well, you seem to have noticed what’s going on.”

“I’m coming, don’t go anywhere! I’m just… I’m coming!” The woman hangs up.

Iris goes to the children and crouches down beside them. Sigrid is stiff, her whole body is saying that she wants to go home but she is keeping the words to herself. Iris wants nothing more than to keep going, to take her child home and discover that the gnawing fear that has been with her all day has been misplaced. But she can’t.

“Your name is Lukas, isn’t it?” she asks the boy. He nods vaguely and points again at the sandpit. “My daddy,” he says again.

Iris nods. “Yes, your daddy is over there. And your mummy is coming soon. I just spoke to her on the phone.”

The boy smiles, but then turns away, shy from all the attention.

“Do you have brothers or sisters?” Iris asks. “A big sister maybe? A younger brother?”

The boy nods.

“ I want mummy…”

“I know,” says Iris. “Really soon.”

Sounds of the city echo around them, cars honking, a siren somewhere – no,

two

sirens. Everything feels so desolate, so far away, somewhere, where…?

“LUKAS!” The voice is coming from near the climbing frame. Iris looks over, sees a woman on a bicycle approaching fast. “LUKAS!”

She stands up. The boy looks at Iris with concern, then at Sigrid. He doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on, but then he spots the woman heading straight for them.

“Mummy!” he cries. “Mummy!”

Magda brakes and stops in front of them, throws her bicycle to the side and arrives panting. Her cheeks are red and splashed with tears. She grasps the boy and pulls him into her arms, lifts him and then looks at Iris.

“What have you… Where’s… Where’s Niklas?”

Iris looks over at the sandpit where the bucket and spade are still perched on the edge. She watches Magda’s eyes settle, uncomprehending at first. Then she recognises them.

“He’s over there,” Iris says quietly. “In the sandpit.”

With Lukas pressed hard against her, the woman takes a few steps, but stops at the fence. Her breathing is shallow, she inhales her mucus loudly, coughs a couple of times, then hesitates.

“Thank you,” she says. “It was nice of you to call…” She breaks off into yet more coughing.

“Should we maybe… Are you OK?” Iris asks.

“It’s OK. Thank you,” she says, but Iris can’t help noticing the sweat running down her fevered cheeks. Her harried gaze flickering between the body, the back the only part visible, and Iris.

“But…”

“I said thanks, OK?!”

She places her son on the ground, lifts her bike and then places Lukas into the seat on the back. She coughs again, harder this time, clears her throat and dries her eyes, then looks at Iris and Sigrid with an expression Iris can’t interpret. Then she leaves.

“Byeee!” they hear Lukas call as they disappear past the climbing frame.

“What about his daddy?” asks Sigrid.

Iris seeks out her daughter’s hand, takes hold of it and squeezes tight. “We can’t do anything for him.” She takes a deep breath and forces herself to look away when she sees how close Sigrid is to crying. “Come on, let’s go home now.”

They reach the end of the park and it’s as if the world comes back, the number of people on the streets increases, cyclists are weaving in and out of cars and pedestrians and no one is looking where they are going. People are sweating, threatening each other with their fists, wishing death and damnation upon their fellow travellers. Iris drags Sigrid over the road, no teaching her to look left and right first, just straight out into the traffic. They zig-zag between three cyclists and two cars all coming from different directions. She needs to get away from here, to erase the boy’s last look at them as his mother cycled away. The dull ache in her arm suddenly explodes as she yanks Sigrid onto the pavement on the other side of the road. One second later and she would have been mowed down by a Lycra clad cyclist, panic in his eyes. Iris is too exhausted to shout at him and instead pulls her daughter onwards.

Onwards. Homewards.

The traffic is at a standstill everywhere on their route home.

A cacophony of sound is echoing off the buildings – horns, shrieking, sobbing and the slamming of car doors as people abandon their vehicles in the street. She sees fury in their eyes, fear and desperation – and everywhere that same sweat pouring down cheeks and being wiped from shiny foreheads. She hears the coughing and spontaneous outbursts of tears that seem to floor people as the realisation hits. As they understand what is going on. Iris is fighting to hold back tears of her own. She doesn’t want to break down here, not in front of Sigrid

.

A young man comes rushing out of the Skrapan plaza, a Macbook still in its box under each arm. A guard comes running after him, but stops before the young man has even made it halfway across the street. The guard looks along the cycle lane, bends over double, cough, cough, coughs, then sits down. Within seconds, a man with a child seat on the back of his bike drives straight into him, slamming the handlebars into his head. The guard screams, falls, but coughs again, while the man on the bike smashes into the ground a few metres on, spilling out over the bicycle lane. And there he remains.

“He wasn’t wearing a helmet mummy,” Sigrid says matter-of-factly as a pool of blood collects around his head. Iris turns towards her, wants to say something, but sees a break in the bicycle traffic and drags Sigrid across to the other side instead. She bites her lip to ignore the pain that accompanies such a drastic movement, but she’s in the middle of the road. They weave through the standing cars. Just then, a man winds down his window to get some fresh air and instead starts choking on his own blood and vomit. Iris tries to get Sigrid to look the other way.

Enough, thinks Iris. Enough of the sickness, the death, the accidents, crushed metal, mangled bones, broken hearts.

“Come on, let’s run all the way home,” she says as they reach the pavement on the other side of the road.

Within minutes of Dano placing his head against his mother’s chest, she is dead. He hears her last, raspy gasp of breath through her top, as if she wants to leave with her lungs full of oxygen. She holds it, lets the oxygen linger. Every muscle in her body tightens and she stays like that for a few, tremulous seconds. Then her body sinks back and is still forever. Dano is alone.

He stays lying there, clutching his dead mother and brother, trying to take it all in. He wants to remember this moment forever, just as he wishes more than anything he has ever hoped for in his twelve short years of life that it could be undone.

At last, he sits up and looks around. No one nearby, no life anywhere. The only thing he can hear is a car driving across the bridge above. He is uncomprehending and numb. What’s going on?

Further along the platform is a glazed waiting area. He drags his mother and brother as gently as he possibly can over the concrete, opens the swing door with his back and pulls them inside. It’s greenhouse-hot and their bodies will begin to decompose and smell faster in here, but at least they’ll be protected from birds and other animals. He goes back to their bags and takes the biggest blanket from his father’s rucksack. Then he covers their bodies, carefully tucking the edges in under his mother.

He feels powerless, he wants to do more – bury them, sing for their souls, grieve for them. He sits by their side for a few minutes, hums the song they sang at the funerals of his two cousins just before they left in January. He doesn’t remember the words, but it probably doesn’t matter.

He walks back to the bags, removes all their packing and divides the contents into two equal piles, including the small amount of food they have left. He then repacks it all into two bags. He stands one of the bags down and takes the other into the waiting room, placing it beside his mother and Bilal. Then he takes a piece of paper from the notebook his father keeps in the small rucksack and writes a note for him, using the pen in the front pocket.

He’ll wait for his father and Line here, until darkness falls. If they don’t come before then, he will fasten the note to the rucksack and leave it here.

He rereads the lines he has written. “I’m fine. I have gone towards the city, I’ll try to find Ahmed. Please come find me. Dano.”

Then his tears start falling again.

Iris grips her daughter’s hand so hard as they sprint along that she fears she might have bruised her. But Iris can’t worry about that now, it could be much worse. The afternoon is giving way to evening and the city is collapsing around them. Iris’ only goal in life at this precise moment is to get her daughter to safety.

On Södermannagatan she saw a woman sprawled out beside Il Caffe. Sigrid didn’t seem to see her, she was watching a dog scuttle past, its lead hanging low, at least Iris hopes so because she’s pretty sure the woman was Stina, Sigrid’s nursery school teacher, the one who had had trouble standing upright due to the raging fever only a few hours ago when Iris, the last parent to arrive, finally appeared.

She isn’t completely sure. It could have been anyone, but didn’t she live nearby? Hadn’t Iris met her in this neighbourhood before? Iris should have stopped of course, what kind of person doesn’t stop to see if her daughter’s teacher is OK, but just like the man in the sandpit and the man in the car on Götagatan, this woman had vomited blood. An asymmetric pool had formed around her head and Iris understood instinctively that there was nothing to be done. Other than to hurry her daughter on.

“Stand here,” she says when they finally arrive at the door just by the 7-Eleven on Nytorget. With her good arm, she pulls Sigrid up the long staircase and presses her against the door before releasing her hand and typing in the code. The lock clicks and by putting her entire body weight behind her right shoulder, she pushes open the door. The pain explodes in her arm and she has to clench her teeth to stop herself screaming.

Once inside, Sigrid runs to the elevator and presses the button.

“No, we’re taking the stairs,” says Iris.

“But it’s coming, look,” says Sigrid and points upwards.

“Uh-huh, but we’re walking anyway.” Iris has no intention of getting stuck between floors in the rickety scissor-gate elevator that the estate agent described as “full of rustic charm”. Not today.

Sigrid looks uncomprehendingly at her as if she is preparing to protest, when she sees her mother’s serious expression and defiance turns to regret. She moves to the stairs and starts climbing with demonstratively heavy steps.

Iris tries to get a hold of her thoughts. Is he going to be there? Will he be OK? Alive…? No, she can’t let her mind travel towards that last option, not before she absolutely must. Maybe she should go in first, to check that all is as it should be, that he…

She stops. Coughing, from a flat a few floors up. The sound rolls like thunder down the walls of the stairwell. Sigrid has also stopped and is looking at her.

“Someone else is sick, mummy,” she says.

Iris nods and pushes her daughter on. Onwards. Homewards. Whatever awaits them inside, she’d rather be there than stay out here.

They hear the coughing again as they pass a door on the third floor. She should ring on the door, ask if they need help. She should, but she can’t. She doesn’t want to.

Instead, she continues on to their door and out of reflex attempts to swing her shoulder bag forward, the one she always carries, but it isn’t there.

“What’s the matter mummy?”

“Uh, it seems I forgot my bag at the hospital,” she says stiffly.

“Didn’t we bring Cartman?” Iris can hear the panic rise in her daughter.

In any other situation, Iris would have smiled at her daughter calling their keys “Cartman”. It’s not that she doesn’t know the word for keys, but as a two-year-old, Sigrid learned that the foam character that hangs from her mother’s keychain had a name and she came to associate him with the door being unlocked. So now all keys equal Cartman. Which has caused a certain amount of confusion among her teachers at nursery, as well as her grandmother.

“It appears not.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Say a prayer that daddy is home,” Iris replies.

“How do you say a…” Sigrid begins, but then stops as Iris presses the bell and the surly knell is audible through the door. After four or five seconds she releases the button and silence descends on the stairwell. They wait, saying nothing.

Come on come on come on, Iris thinks. Come on my lovely darling you.

But the mantra feels hopeless and the words ring false.

Iris pulls vainly at the handle even though she knows they never leave the door unlocked.

“Try ringing him again mummy,” Sigrid says after what feels like an eternity. “Ring his mobile.”

Iris takes her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. No notifications. 23% battery left. She taps in the pin, clicks on “Recents” and presses on the first number for the twelfth time that day. She doesn’t even bother to put the phone to her ear, just stares hopelessly at the screen. She doesn’t have the strength left. Shit.

“It’s ringing, mummy.”

“Yes, I know, I’m calling him now.”

“No, I don’t mean like that. It’s

ringing.

From inside the flat. Can’t you hear it?”