TE22 Potpourri

You’re Not Dying

Kathrin Schmidt

* * * She’s freezing when she wakes up. Absolutely freezing. It’s cold here – so the blonde really did take her cover away. Now she’s making her report to another woman who’s also in a blue coat. They’re both standing a little way from her bed. ‘Frau Kiering, Yvonne,’ says the blonde. ‘Punctured lung after a road accident.’ Herewe go again. They’re still mixing her upwith other people. The blonde says Yvonne Kiering has slept peacefully through the night. They never once look at her while spreading such lies about, of course. Or are they perhaps not talking about her at all? She tries, slowly, to follow their gaze, arriving at another bed, with another woman in it. She seems to be unconscious. She’s got tubes in her mouth and nose, in her arm and in her groin. Where did she come from, all of a sudden? Could it be she’s not the only one to have survived the night? * * * Questions upon questions. There’s a rattling in her head when she’s awake. She seems to be awake for longer now. Which 55 Questions upon questions.

scratch it. Does her right hand want to scratch it too? No, it doesn’t. It lies on the bedcover as if strapped down. So she has to trywithher left. Sheyanks it upagainst all possible resistance and can actually touch her hair. But where it itches, she doesn’t have any hair. What’s happened to her hair? That’s why they’ve pinched the picture of her! Ha, she’ll win it back, and that’s a promise. With all her strength she starts to run her fingers over her scalp. They don’t get far. There are little metal anti- tank obstacles stuck in her skull and she tries to prise out two or three. Suddenly she feels fluid on her fingers. She tastes it. It’s blood! Where did they get the right to ram these anti-tank obstacles into her skull? She starts to shout and throw herself around in the bed – and it’s definitely a bed she’s in. Someone is coming. The blonde woman? Yes, as it happens. She looks down at her moodily. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, really? I’ll have to wash and change you again now. I’mgoing to strap you down and take your cover away, to teach you a lesson. Who knows what you’ll get up to otherwise!’ The woman keeps grumbling as she cleans up around her, putting back the anti-tank obstacles and cleaning the blood from under her fingernails. When she’s finished, she binds her left arm and left leg firmly to the edge of the bed with a piece of white material. The bed seems round to her.

There, she’s hanging yet another bag on the hook! 54