Helsinki Blood

28

We go to a pharmacy, Yliopiston Apteekki, to get Kate’s prescription filled. It’s downtown in a large shopping district, a mall across from it. The main train station is on the other side of the street. Kate and I go there by taxi. It’s packed. Kate and I don’t speak. She takes a number to get in line and we browse in different aisles so she can avoid looking at me.

My cell phone rings. A nurse from the hospital tells me Mirjami is awake and would like to see me. I say I’ll be there as soon as I can. We go home. Milo is sitting on the couch with my laptop, jotting notes, going through the vast amount of information accrued from the numerous communications devices I confiscated. Jenna and Sweetness are sitting at the dining room table, dressed in raggedy house clothes and sipping their early-afternoon beers. The swelling in his nose has gone down, but the bruises around his eyes have deepened, and the spectrum of their colors is a rainbow of light blue to near black.

I ask Kate, “Does their drinking bother you?”

“I don’t care what any of you do. I just want to sleep.”

I ask her to please wait, ask Jenna to help me, and make up the bed with fresh linens. I don’t want her to sleep in a bed that smells like Mirjami. I’ve always found changing the blanket covers-which are like very wide and long pillowcases-near impossible to do by myself and wonder at how women are able to reach inside the little armholes in the corners of the covers, reach through the bottom, grasp the blanket and shake the cover in a whipping motion so that the blanket doesn’t hang out the end.

Kate tells me that Americans seldom use blanket covers and sleep under bare blankets. It seems a dirty habit and vile to me. During the short time I spent in the States, there were no blanket covers, but I thought it was because I lived in student housing and people made do with whatever was at hand. And when I watch foreign television or movies and people hang around on the bed with their shoes on, it makes me cringe.

Kate waits with impatience in the kitchen. I give her a dose of Valdoxan, and take my own array of painkillers, tranquilizers and muscle relaxants. The tranquilizers seem useless to me, as I have no problems with nervousness, but the neurologists tell me the relaxing effects will help my injured muscles from tightening. My knee hurts like mortal hell at the moment. I’ll eat whatever to make it stop. Kate asks for Anu and I put my girls in bed together.

“Mirjami is awake and wants to see me,” I say to Milo. “Could you drive me to the hospital?”

“Sure.” He shuts down my computer. “Let’s go.”

• • •

WE DRIVE to Meilahti Hospital, a huge facility surrounded by a warren of smaller buildings. We get directions to the burn ward from the front desk. We know we’re on the right track because patients in later stages of recovery wander the halls, going to the canteen, outside to smoke. Some miss eyes, ears, noses, fingers. In comparison, Mirjami got off easy, but these people could be her, and it makes me furious.

I ask Milo to wait in the hall. He’s her cousin and her friend. I promise to ask her to talk to him. A nurse escorts me in.

There’s not much to see of Mirjami. Burns of various degrees of severity cover almost sixty percent of her body. She’s wrapped in gauze and some kind of plastic wrap that I suppose keep the ointments on her from rubbing off. I don’t know, maybe it also reduces the risk of infection. I pull up a chair next to her bed and she offers me a gauze-covered hand. I take it gently.

“Is it hard to talk?” I ask.

“Not if I don’t open my mouth too wide.”

“It’s a stupid question, but how are you?”

“Do you want the gory details?”

“Yes.”

“I’m burned to a crisp from the midsection down. I’ll need several surgeries, skin grafts, I can’t remember what all they said, but it’s bad, and it will be a couple years until it’s over.”

The only thing I can think of to say is I’m sorry, but those are paltry and tepid words, inadequate to her suffering, so I say nothing.

She can’t smile because of the burns, gauze and plastic, but she tries. “You should have made love to me when you had the chance. Those parts won’t be in working order again for a long time.”

I lie. “Yes, I should have. I wish I had.” I change the subject. “Where are your parents?”

“They flew in from Rovaniemi and have been here most of the time. I told them to go to a hotel and get some sleep.”

“If they need anything, have them call me.”

“Do you know anything about my condition?” she asks.

“The doctor told me what he could after he finished with you in the ER.”

She has a self-administered morphine pump. She doses herself. “I’m afraid they lie to me, to keep my spirits up. Please tell me what happened to my face. Tell me the truth.”

“Your face was farthest from the fire and so the least damage was done to it. You suffered third-degree burns to much of your lower body. From your lower torso and upward, you suffered first- and second-degree burns. If you looked at yourself in a mirror now, it would startle and frighten you, but it will pass, and most of those more minor burns will heal to a great degree within a few weeks. Your hair burned off. But hair grows.”

She sniffles, tries to keep from breaking down, keeps trying to smile. “I was beautiful just a couple days ago. This seems impossible.”

Her eyes are uncovered. She closes them and I kiss her on their lids. “You’re still beautiful, inside and out. It’s hard, but try to be patient. When they unwrap it and you see your face, you’ll realize that for yourself.”

She tries to squeeze my hand. It makes her wince. “Kari, I love you. Whatever and whoever else you have in your life, I want you to know that.”

I take a moment, try to decide what to say to make her feel the best. “And I want you to know this. If circumstances allowed it, I would have returned all the love you’ve shown me. I would have been proud for you to be my life partner. I would have been proud if you were the mother of my children. Since you walked into my life, I’ve thought of you as a godsend, and I love you, too.” There is a modicum of truth in most of this, but the last is a blatant lie. I just don’t love her.

She weeps quietly, and we share a few moments of silence.

“What will happen to me?” she asks. “I won’t be able to walk for a long time. Who knows when I’ll be able to work. I don’t want to live in this hospital for months.”

“You’ll stay with us. I’ll get you in-home care.”

Mirjami gives herself another jolt of morphine. “I don’t think your wife will appreciate that.”

No, she won’t. “You two were becoming friends. You took care of her and Anu when they needed it. You took care of me when I needed it. I can’t imagine her objecting to us taking care of you.”

Yes, I can. I picture strenuous objections. But that will be a few weeks away. I’ll deal with it then. It’s the right thing to do.

I wait for Mirjami to speak, but she’s passed out. The combination of morphine, burn trauma and exertion from talking put her lights out. Before I leave, I inform her doctor that I’m treating the fire that put her here as a criminal investigation, and ask him to call me immediately if there are any changes in her condition.