Suggested in the Stars

Apparently, almost no one here at the hospital likes me. Until I met Inga, I’d never realized that. I’m an honest, sunny sort of person, so if people have a bad impression of me, it must be because some outside force assigned me the role of villain before I even got here. By “outside” I mean beyond the scope of my awareness. This is a serious problem. I’m like a beloved actor playing the role of a cold, vicious murderer—he has to stay in character: he can’t simply grin at the audience in the middle of the play and say, “This isn’t the real me, you know.” Or perhaps not a play, but a movie. An actor can go to his dressing room after a play, where he’ll take his makeup off, and then, back to his normal self, his fans will crowd around with bouquets. But with a movie, no one can see his off-screen self. Nothing’s more miserable than being trapped inside someone else’s movie.

If Inga hadn’t edged her way into my life, I wouldn’t be worrying about such trivial things. Her words pound my heart, making me want to open the door, only I can’t because someone has stolen the knob. Some may call this situation love. But this love story, too, is a scene in a scenario I’m not allowed to see.

You can tell there’s a solid body under Inga’s white uniform. Her features are striking, her physique far superior to that of the other nurses. Women with feeble bones appear servile, and I don’t like that. But Inga is so sturdy, so well put together that she probably wouldn’t even notice if her ribs were tickled with flattery, or if jealousy pushed her from behind. The mere sight of her takes my breath away. Speechless one day, yet feeling I’d suffocate if I didn’t say something, anything, I whispered, “That woman has hips like a cabinet,” to a colleague standing next to me. I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way—not at all. Thinking up unusual metaphors seems to release me from my pain. Perhaps I should have been a poet, but my grades at school were much too good, so before I knew it, I was a doctor.

“A cabinet?” my colleague protested, wrinkling up his nose. “That’s a bit much, no? She’s not thin, but she’s still firm, and hasn’t lost her curves. She certainly isn’t square, like a piece of furniture.”

His repartee disgusted me. If he hadn’t been drinking her in all along, how could he have retaliated so perfectly, on the spur of the moment?

One day, a vase fell and smashed on the floor the moment Inga came into the examining room. Upon coolly replaying the incident in my mind, I realized that the breaking of the vase had nothing to do with her entrance—I’d bumped into the side table.

“Steady there, NORDLI,” I said, to hide how flustered I was. I’ve long had a habit of talking to Ikea furniture. I feel especially affectionate toward the entire NORDLI series, from cabinets to beds.

Inga immediately corrected me.

“That’s a LINDVED.”

Never had I been so surprised. The delicate, three-legged table before me was undoubtedly a LINDVED. Ikea products are manufactured in my homeland, and I had never misnamed a single one. The devil must have made me slip up that way. Being corrected by a foreigner made it all the more unbearable.

“Speaking of furniture,” Inga said, still smiling, “I heard that you once said I had hips like a cabinet. Did you mean a MALM, or a HEMNES?” I certainly wasn’t expecting that.

I was desperate to make a clever comeback, but couldn’t think of one. Perhaps this is what losing the power of speech is like.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” Inga said, not the least bit flustered. “All my furniture was passed down from my grandparents, so I’ve never had to buy anything from Ikea.” She then turned her back on me and went out of the room. Her hips, gently swaying beneath her skirt, looked more like white peaches then like furniture.

*

I’ve been so distracted lately that I occasionally dig myself a hole and almost fall in. Once when an official on an inspection tour from the Ministry of Health was supposed to observe a liver operation, I mistakenly handed him the medical record of a heart patient with exactly the same name. It should be against the law for two different people to have identical names. Luckily Inga happened along to save the day.

“Since the liver operation was postponed,” she said, “we were planning to have you observe a heart operation on the patient whose record you have now, but then it’s suddenly been decided that the liver operation should proceed as planned. Please follow me.” She then briskly led the confused official away. That’s how a clever woman rescued a man on the brink of tumbling down the success stairway. The way she came to my aid despite that cabinet remark suggests that she’s fond of me, but after that, she didn’t smile at me once when I crossed her path in the corridors. Even when I greeted her, she ignored me. Doctors and nurses should be on equal footing—I understand that, and I believe in workplace freedom, but this degree of rudeness I would normally find intolerable. Not that I’d give the offending party a tongue-lashing—just some sarcastic remark, dripping with poison. With Inga, however, I had to bow my head and suffer in silence.

If my life is actually a scenario, penned by someone else, and I am merely playing the role that person wrote for me, then the conclusion of this love affair with Inga is already decided, and there’s no use worrying about it. I’ll just have to let it follow its course. As I walk through the hospital corridors, the image of a lonely-looking back in a white coat comes to mind. That back is my own. A camera is filming me from behind.

Something worries me, casting a shadow in my heart that I can’t shake off. I have a nagging sense that I might be only a minor character in this movie. Perhaps the protagonist is someone else, who required hospitalization and needed a doctor. As movie heroes are always trying to win the viewers’ sympathy by having automobile accidents or contracting fatal diseases, a doctor often appears. But he’s rarely the center of attention. Who’s the protagonist of this movie? I’ll have to find him and give him a piece of my mind.

*

There’s a room in the hospital with a coffee machine where doctors and nurses can take a break. Finding such a facility beneath me, I secretly call it “Filter Coffee,” and had hardly ever entered it until one day I happened to see Inga in the corridor and followed her, straight into that room. It would have seemed odd if I hadn’t bought anything, so I went over for a look at the machine, but couldn’t figure out how it worked. When I pushed the button for café au lait, nothing happened. It then occurred to me that money was supposed to go in first, so I hurriedly took out my wallet, but couldn’t find a slot for a coin. Instead, there was a slit, perhaps to insert a credit card. Taking my hospital vending card from my wallet, I slid it in and pushed the button: this time, coffee came pouring out but there was no cup to catch it. Then I remembered. This environmentally friendly vending machine requires users to bring their own cups. I once overheard someone talking about it. I sensed Inga coming toward me, but not having the courage to look up at her, I let my eyes wander through the room until I saw a quart of milk, placed squarely on the table next to the vending machine like a savior. I looked up to see Inga’s face, just where I’d expected it to be, and now that I had that milk carton to talk about, I managed to stay calm and collected.

“The first Tetra Pak cartons were tetrahedrons. Do you know why?”

Once I’d asked the question, I realized that I myself didn’t know. Was that shape more convenient for transporting the cartons, or less? I tried to think but my brain wasn’t functioning. Although I was sure I knew all the details concerning every company that originated in my homeland, I had had so few chances to discuss them here that this information was slipping away fast. Inga, who fortunately didn’t seem the least bit interested in Tetra Pak, placed a plain, white china cup under the spout and pushed the button once again. Though she hadn’t inserted her card, coffee came pouring out. It was like magic. When the cup was full to the brim, she picked it up with a perfectly steady hand and, as if to say, “Here’s your coffee,” thrust it under my nose.

“How, when you didn’t put your card in?”

I shouldn’t have asked.

With a teasing look, she replied, “Everyone’s allowed one mistake—it’s programmed that way.”

That’s impossible. Inga is a magician. I dutifully took a sip, and discovered that it tasted as good as the brew that comes out of the espresso machine I have at home, for which I’d paid ten thousand kronors. The steam wafting from it had a fine aroma, and the taste was rich, with no undue bitterness. I drank it leaning against the wall, all the while telling myself to calm down. She was looking over at me, waiting for me to speak, so I had to say something.

“Why do you think Strindberg’s marriage failed?”

The topic of Tetra Pak having fizzled and died, I tried Strindberg. To keep the advantage, a man must stay in his own territory and attack from an unexpected direction. Yet even faced with my country’s greatest psychological mountain, Inga was not the least bit shaken.

“Probably because he wandered too far into the world of his own plays,” she answered quietly. She may have a point. Life for a woman married to a writer who has strayed into his own world must be exceedingly difficult. Yet surely being lost in a literary world of one’s own creation is better than being trapped in someone else’s movie. Inga then closed her eyes for approximately two seconds. The silver powder of her eye shadow sparkled on the waves of tiny wrinkles on her eyelids. As if drawn in her direction I approached her and placed my hands on both her arms. When she opened her eyes she didn’t seem at all surprised, but looked straight at me, her eyes filled with curiosity, her lips gently parted.

*

Whether I throw her a curveball or a slider, she always catches it and tosses it back. Her lips have curves as well, which seemed at first to tease me, but as time passed, grew more tempting than playful.

“Are you going home? Let me take you in my car.”

“No thanks. The driver will worry if he doesn’t see me on the bus.”

“Buses have plenty of space, but intimacy requires something a bit more cramped, don’t you think? Of course, cramped isn’t the right word. As you know, the inside of a Volvo is quite roomy. And very safe.”

“Sorry, safety is Volvo’s main selling point, I know, but I prefer a little adventure.”

“Then you simply must let me give you a ride. I’ll take you to a forest where moose will come to batter us from all sides. Quite an adventure, don’t you think?”

I finally persuaded her, and gave her a ride home.