The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell Page B

but otherwise they were on their own. It used to be worse, thought Ylva Brink as she sat down on the sofa with her coffee. A few years ago she had been the only midwife on duty all night long, and sometimes this had resulted in difficulties. They had finally managed to talk some sense into the hospital administration and push through their demand to have at least two midwives on every night.
    Her office was in the middle of a large ward. The glass walls allowed her to see what was going on outside. In the daytime there was constant activity, but at night, everything was different. She liked working nights. A lot of her colleagues preferred other shifts. They had families, and they couldn’t get enough sleep during the day. But Ylva Brink’s children were grown up, and her husband was chief engineer on an oil tanker that sailed between ports in the Middle East and Asia. For her it was peaceful to work while everyone else was asleep.
    She drank her coffee with pleasure and took a piece of sugar cake from a tray on her desk. One of the nurses came in and sat down, and then the other one joined them. A radio was playing softly in the corner. They talked about autumn and the persistent rain. One of the nurses had heard from her mother, who could predict the weather, that it was going to be a long, cold winter.
    Ylva Brink thought back on the times when Skåne had been snowed in. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was terrible for women who were in labour but couldn’t get to the hospital. She remembered sitting freezing in a tractor as it crept along through the blizzard and snowdrifts to an isolated farm north of town. The woman was haemorrhaging. It was the only time in her years as a midwife that she had been seriously afraid of losing a patient. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Women simply did not die giving birth in Sweden.
    But still, it was autumn now. Ylva came from the far north of Sweden, and sometimes missed the melancholy Norrland forests. She had never got used to the open landscape of Skåne where the wind reigned supreme. But her husband had been born in Trelleborg and couldn’t imagine living anywhere but in Skåne. When he had time at home, that is.
    Her musings were interrupted when Lena Söderström came into the room. She was about 30. She could be my daughter, Ylva thought. I’m twice her age.
    “She probably won’t deliver before early morning,” Lena said. “We’ll get to go home.”
    “It’ll be quiet tonight,” said Ylva. “Take a nap if you’re tired.”
    A nurse hurried by in the hall. Lena Söderström was drinking her tea. The other two nurses sat bent over a crossword puzzle.
    Already October, Ylva thought. The middle of autumn already. Soon winter will be here. In December Harry has a holiday, a month off, and we’ll remodel the kitchen. Not because it needs it, but so he can have something to do. Harry’s not wild about holidays. He gets restless.
    Someone had pressed a call button. A nurse got up and left. A few minutes later she came back.
    “Maria in Room 3 has a headache,” she said, sitting back down to her crossword puzzle. Ylva sipped her coffee. Suddenly she realised that she was sitting wondering about something, without knowing exactly what it was. Then it came to her. The nurse who had walked past in the hall. Hadn’t all the women working in the ward been here in the office? And no call bells had rung from intensive care. She must have been imagining things.
    But at the same time she knew she hadn’t been.
    “Who just walked by?” she asked softly.
    The two nurses gave her curious looks.
    “What’s that?” Lena Söderström asked.
    “A nurse walked down the hall a few minutes ago. While we were sitting here.”
    They still couldn’t understand what she was talking about. She didn’t understand it herself. Another bell rang. Ylva quickly set down her cup.
    “I’ll get it.”
    The woman in Room 2 was feeling bad. She was about to have her