Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [90]
And yet it was her life that was going to be turned inside out. She would be forced to explain herself and to beg for forgiveness because she had defended herself.
She just wanted to be left in peace. And when it came down to it, she was the one who would have to live with herself. She did not expect anyone to be her friend. Annika Bloody Giannini was most likely on her side, but it was the professional friendship of a professional person who was her lawyer. Kalle Bastard Blomkvist was out there somewhere – Giannini was for some reason reluctant to talk about her brother, and Salander never asked. She did not expect that he would be quite so interested now that the Svensson murder was solved and he had got his story.
She wondered what Armansky thought of her after all that had happened.
She wondered how Holger Palmgren viewed the situation.
According to Giannini, both of them had said they would be in her corner, but that was words. They could not do anything to solve her private problems.
She wondered what Miriam Wu felt about her.
She wondered what she thought of herself, come to that, and came to the realization that most of all she felt indifference towards her entire life.
She was interrupted when the Securitas guard put the key in the door to let in Dr Jonasson.
“Good evening, Fröken Salander. And how are you feeling today?”
“O.K.,” she said.
He checked her chart and saw that she was free of her fever. She had got used to his visits, which came a couple of times a week. Of all the people who touched her and poked at her, he was the only one in whom she felt a measure of trust. She never felt that he was giving her strange looks. He visited her room, chatted a while, and examined her to check on her progress. He did not ask any questions about Niedermann or Zalachenko, or whether she was off her rocker or why the police kept her locked up. He seemed to be interested only in how her muscles were working, how the healing in her brain was progressing, and how she felt in general.
Besides, he had – literally – rootled around in her brain. Someone who rummaged around in your brain had to be treated with respect. To her surprise she found the visits of Dr Jonasson pleasant, despite the fact that he poked at her and fussed over her fever chart.
“Do you mind if I check?”
He made his usual examination, looking at her pupils, listening to her breathing, taking her pulse, her blood pressure, and checking how she swallowed.
“How am I doing?”
“You’re on the road to recovery. But you have to work harder on the exercises. And you’re picking at the scab on your head. You need to stop that.” He paused. “May I ask a personal question?”
She looked at him. He waited until she nodded.
“That dragon tattoo … Why did you get it?”
“You didn’t see it before?”
He smiled all of a sudden.
“I mean I’ve glanced at it, but when you were uncovered I was pretty busy stopping the bleeding and extracting bullets and so on.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Out of curiosity, nothing more.”
Salander thought for a while. Then she looked at him.
“I got it for reasons that I don’t want to discuss.”
“Forget I asked.”
“Do you want to see it?”
He looked surprised. “Sure. Why not?”
She turned her back and pulled the hospital gown off her shoulder. She sat so that the light from the window fell on her back. He looked at her dragon. It was beautiful and well done, a work of art.
After a while she turned her head.
“Satisfied?”
“It’s beautiful. But it must have hurt like hell.”
“Yes,” she said. “It hurt.”
*
Jonasson left Salander’s room somewhat confused. He was satisfied with the progress of her physical rehabilitation. But he could not work out this strange girl. He did not need a master’s degree in psychology to know that she was not doing very well emotionally.