The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,21

was not going to wake up a vegetable. He wrote down her wake-up time as 9.06 p.m., about sixteen hours after he had finished the operation. He had slept most of the day and then drove back to the hospital at around 7.00 in the evening. He was actually off that day, but he had some paperwork to catch up on.

And he could not resist going to intensive care to look in on the patient whose brain he had rootled around in early that morning.

"Let her sleep a while, but check her E.E.G. regularly. I'm worried there might be swelling or bleeding in the brain. She seemed to have sharp pain in her left shoulder when she tried to move her arm. If she wakes up again you can give her two mg. of morphine per hour."

He felt oddly exhilarated as he left by the main entrance of Sahlgrenska.

Anita Kaspersson, a dental nurse who lived in Alingsås, was shaking all over as she stumbled through the woods. She had severe hypothermia. She wore only a pair of wet trousers and a thin sweater. Her bare feet were bleeding. She had managed to free herself from the barn where the man had tied her up, but she could not untie the rope that bound her hands behind her back. Her fingers had no feeling in them at all.

She felt as if she were the last person on earth, abandoned by everyone.

She had no idea where she was. It was dark and she had no sense of how long she had been aimlessly walking. She was amazed to be still alive.

And then she saw a light through the trees and stopped.

For several minutes she did not dare to approach the light. She pushed through some bushes and stood in the yard of a one-storey house of grey brick. She looked about her in astonishment.

She staggered to the door and turned to kick it with her heel.

Salander opened her eyes and saw a light in the ceiling. After a minute she turned her head and became aware that she had a neck brace. She had a heavy, dull headache and acute pain in her left shoulder. She closed her eyes.

Hospital, she thought. What am I doing here?

She felt exhausted, could hardly get her thoughts in order. Then the memories came rushing back to her. For several seconds she was seized by panic as the fragmented images of how she had dug herself out of a trench came flooding over her. Then she clenched her teeth and concentrated on breathing.

She was alive, but she was not sure whether that was a good thing or bad.

She could not piece together all that had happened, but she summoned up a foggy mosaic of images from the woodshed and how she had swung an axe in fury and struck her father in the face. Zalachenko. Was he alive or dead?

She could not clearly remember what had happened with Niedermann. She had a memory of being surprised that he had run away and she did not know why.

Suddenly she remembered having seen Kalle Bastard Blomkvist. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing, but she remembered a kitchen - it must have been the kitchen in the Gosseberga farmhouse - and she thought she remembered seeing him coming towards her. I must have been hallucinating.

The events in Gosseberga seemed already like the distant past, or possibly a ridiculous dream. She concentrated on the present and opened her eyes again.

She was in a bad way. She did not need anyone to tell her that. She raised her right hand and felt her head. There were bandages. She had a brace on her neck. Then she remembered it all. Niedermann. Zalachenko. The old bastard had a pistol too. A.22 calibre Browning. Which, compared to all other handguns, had to be considered a toy. That was why she was still alive.

I was shot in the head. I could stick my finger in the entry wound and touch my brain.

She was surprised to be alive. Yet she felt indifferent. If death was the black emptiness from which she had just woken up, then death was nothing to worry about. She would hardly notice the difference. With which esoteric thought she closed her eyes and fell asleep again.

She had been dozing only a few minutes when she was aware of movement and opened her eyelids to a narrow slit. She saw a nurse in a white uniform bending over her.