Chapter 27
I close the cabin door behind me.
After lunch, I asked Katarina to tell someone for me that I wasn’t feeling well, that my cramps had gotten worse and that I needed to go lie down. Katarina assured me she’d take care of it, and so I slunk away.
The room is still in disarray from last night, the clothes pulled out from the suitcase in piles on the floor.
I tore the place apart looking for the missing phone, hoping, in vain, that I might find it somewhere, that I had just misplaced it, only to be left with the sinking realization that it was gone.
I sit down on the bed and pull my recorder out of my pocket. It has run out of battery, and I curse softly to myself, pull the charger out of my bag and go to plug it in next to the bathroom mirror, in the socket meant for a hair dryer.
I stare at myself in the mirror.
The hollows under my eyes look more pronounced, my lips void of color. My hair is lying flat against my skull. I look like the ghost of the person who left my shitty little secondhand rental a few days ago.
And yet, as I look at the shadow staring back at me, she smiles.
I didn’t catch it the first time the good doctor did it, with Leyla. I was stuck in the moment, much too focused on what was happening in the room. But with Pernilla, it struck me.
“You told me you used to lie awake at night.”
Pernilla never said that in group therapy. Just like Leyla never told us the name of her ex-girlfriend, Alexia.
They both shared that in their individual therapy. And Martina told the rest of us. She shared those buried, hidden intimacies with us like it was nothing, in order to break Leyla and Pernilla. In order to bend them to her will.
This goes against at least two different privacy laws. Secrets shared in therapy count as medical information. And I’ve got Martina doing it on tape.
I won’t be able to use it directly, won’t be able to quote it in the article, for fear of violating Leyla’s and Pernilla’s privacy all over again.
But it’s proof. It’s real, tangible proof.
I can already feel the text beginning to unspool in my mind, paragraphs drafting themselves, weaving the web that will eventually ensnare both Martina and Himlafall and put an end to all of this.
You’ve seen the ads for the Himlafall Clinic.
Smiling influencers with perfect skin telling you how the Hastings Method changed their life.
Maybe it appeared on your phone screen late at night, in between swiping endlessly on the apps and staring at the TV; or maybe a friend sent it to you, joking that you should both go, take charge of your love lives once and for all.
You probably never did end up going for that stay at the Himlafall Clinic.
The vast majority of the population would never be able to afford it.
Maybe you felt jealous of the women who could, the ones who secured their spot and set off on a weeklong journey to psychological health and future romantic bliss, a dream come true.
But for the women who actually checked in at the Himlafall Clinic, that dream would turn out to be a nightmare.
In the mirror, I see my own smile begin to fade.
I can still see their faces. Leyla, dull and listless; Clara, crying quietly, like a broken child; Pernilla, with decades and decades of desiccated rage painted on her face and neck in violent red splotches.
I wasn’t supposed to care about them. The other patients. They were supposed to be sources, nothing more, the subjects of interviews and the anonymized stories that would make my case for the article.
My dad always told me not to get close to anyone while on a story.
“You have to think of them as characters, princess, not people. The moment they become people, you lose objectivity.”
But how can I think of them as anything but people, now that I’m one of them? Until the end of the week, we are stuck in this twisted fun house together. And none of this is theoretical to them.
I wish I could tell them. I wish I could trust them.
But all I can do is hope that this works out. That whatever evidence I got today, and whatever evidence I might find tonight, is going to be enough.
I push my hair back from my face, and I reach for the recorder. Turning it on, I peer down at the tiny little screen and use my thumb to switch it over to the file with the voice notes.
I bring it to my mouth, and I start talking.
“This is my third day at Himlafall,” I say.
“Things have gotten worse. Last night, I saw someone watching me through the window, and after trying to find who the culprit was, they chased me down. When I came back, my phone had gone missing. I can only conclude that someone here doesn’t want me to be in contact with the outside world. ”
I stop, trying to gather my thoughts.
“I went through the second group therapy session this morning,” I continue. “And it…”
I don’t know how to express what happened in that room. The sheer overwhelming pressure in it. The feeling that we were seconds away from disaster. Like microscopic fractures spreading through glass, invisible to the naked eye.
“It looks like the doctor is … breaking the other patients,” I try.
“Breaking them down on purpose. Finding their pressure points and then digging in, until they are pliable, and desperate, and willing to give up their autonomy. Today, she broke medical privacy twice, revealing the personal information of two of the patients and revealing their sensitive information to the group as a whole. I can’t be sure what the end goal is. But—”
There is a knock on the door.
I drop the recorder, the clattering of it hitting the floor making me jump. I hold my breath, hoping I imagined it.
“Isobel?” A muffled voice through the wood. “Are you in there?”