Salander was aware of the smell of almonds and ethanol. It felt as if she had alcohol in her mouth and she tried to swallow, but her tongue felt numb and paralyzed. She tried to open her eyes, but she could not. In the distance she heard a voice that seemed to be talking to her, but she could not understand the words. Then she heard the voice quite clearly.
“I think she’s coming around.”
She felt someone touch her forehead and tried to brush away the intrusive hand. At the same moment she felt intense pain in her left shoulder. She forced herself to relax.
“Can you hear me, Lisbeth?”
Go away.
“Can you open your eyes?”
Who was this fucking idiot harping on at her?
Finally she did open her eyes. At first she just saw strange lights, until a figure appeared in the centre of her field of vision. She tried to focus her gaze, but the figure kept slipping away. She felt as if she had a stupendous hangover, and the bed seemed to keep tilting backwards.
“Pnkllrs,” she said.
“Say that again?”
“ ’diot,” she said.
“That sounds good. Can you open your eyes again?”
She opened her eyes to narrow slits. She saw the face of a complete stranger and memorized every detail. A blond man with intense blue eyes and a tilted, angular face about a foot from hers.
“Hello. My name is Anders Jonasson. I’m a doctor. You’re in a hospital. You were injured and you’re waking up after an operation. Can you tell me your name?”
“Pshalandr,” Salander said.
“Good. Would you do me a favour and count to 10?”
“One, two, four … no … three, four, five, six...”
Then she passed out.
Dr. Jonasson was pleased with the response he had gotten. She had said her name and started to count. That meant that she still had her cognitive abilities somewhat intact and was not going to end 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 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 rooted around in early that morning.
“Let her sleep a while, but check her EEG 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 milligrams of morphine per hour.”
He felt oddly exhilarated as he left by the main entrance of Sahlgrenska.
* * * *
Anita Kaspersson, a dental hygienist who lived in Alingsas, was shaking all over as she stumbled through the woods. She had severe hypothermia. She wore only a pair of wet pants 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 still be alive.
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 around her in astonishment.
