Strangers: A Novel(47)

He doesn’t disagree, but he doesn’t say anything to reaffirm it either. My attention goes back to his arm; the bleeding has slowed now, but not stopped.

I gesture hesitantly toward the kitchen roll, then walk past Erik, out into the hall and up the stairs. My legs are shaking so hard that I can barely manage the steps.

In the bathroom, the first thing I see is the boiler, the cover of which hasn’t been replaced yet. Yes, so I guess that was me too. It must have been, if there was any logic at all behind the past few days.

If he hadn’t turned around, then—

Then I would be sitting over his dead body right now, covered in even more blood, the knife sticky in my hand. Without the slightest idea how it came to that.

The image squeezes the air from my lungs. I squat down on the floor until the black spots in front of my eyes gradually clear.

Close. So close.

With clammy fingers, I get the first-aid kit from the cupboard, find the disinfectant spray and sterile swabs. I bring everything downstairs.

Erik is now sitting on one of the barstools. He’s taken his shirt off and is pressing it against his arm. His face is pale. I place the first-aid kit down on the bar and move to tend to the wound, but he shakes his head. “Don’t even think of touching me.”

“But you can’t do it by yourself—”

“Yes I can.” He jerks his chin, silently telling me to back away, then begins to clean the wound.

A deep, gaping cut; blood is still seeping out of it. It needs stitches.

Struggling a little, Erik puts a dressing over the wound and tries to wrap an elastic bandage around it, but it’s practically impossible with only one hand.

“Let me help you. Please.”

He doesn’t answer; instead he intensifies his efforts.

As I step closer to him and take the roll of bandage from his hand, he finally relents. He holds the dressing as I secure it.

“Please let me drive you to the hospital.”

He laughs. “Not a chance.”

“But you have to get stitches.”

Erik moves his hand over the bandage, checking it. For now, it’s holding. “Yes, I know. But the last thing I’m going to do is get in a car that you’re driving.”

He glances over at the torn, blood-soaked shirt on the floor. “I’ll change clothes, and then I’ll go. Alone.”

When he stands up, he teeters a little, but then regains his balance.

I step into his path. “Let me come with you.”

“No.”

“In the passenger seat. Please. I can’t let you drive like this.” I’m fully aware of how ironic my concern must seem in light of the situation. But I want to do something; I’d undo everything that happened if I could, but as that’s not possible then I at least want to … be of help.

“I’m going by myself. I don’t want to have you next to me and constantly be afraid that you’ll grab the steering well and drive us into a wall. Or pull another knife out of your sleeve. Or off yourself in front of my eyes, jump out of the car while we’re doing a hundred or something like that.” He looks at me. “It’s over, Joanna. I hope you get help, for your own sake. But there’s no way I can be with someone who I can’t turn my back on without having to worry they might stab me.”

He slowly makes his way over to the stairs. “I’ll come by in the morning and pick up my things. The little that’s left of them, anyway.”

I follow him, and try to take his hand, but he pulls it away. “I mean it,” he says sharply. “Don’t touch me. Stay away.”

And so I let him go. I retreat back into the far corner of the hall, wondering why this good-bye feels so painful. No chance of an answer, though. And I should probably hand the task of figuring out the inner workings of my mind over to the experts as soon as possible.

Five minutes later, Erik comes back downstairs. The new shirt he’s put on is already beginning to turn red above the stab wound.

I say nothing else.

He says nothing else.

He leaves the house without turning around even once.





22

I sit down carefully in the car. Waves of white-hot pain are surging through my entire upper body from the wound on my arm.

What’s just as painful, perhaps even more, is the bitter disappointment, the crushing realization that Joanna’s lost her mind once and for all. That she’s beyond recovery. And that there’s nothing she, or I, can do.

She wanted to kill me.

The mixture of physical and mental agony is starting to dull my senses. I blink several times, shake my head, and wrench my eyes open. Don’t faint, not now. No, I can’t let myself escape into that merciful darkness right now. I have to go get the wound treated.

I start the car and take a final look over at the front door. It’s closed. Who knows what Joanna’s doing in there right now. Maybe she’s attempting to take her own life again for a change. Insanely enough, when that thought crosses my mind I feel the urge to get out of the car and check, but soon shake my head in disbelief. I can’t really be that stupid, can I?

The house seems like it’s swaying as I reverse the car down the driveway. This surreal kind of image is something I usually only see in bad dreams. But this isn’t a dream. There’s no hellish pain in dreams.