The Divorce by Moa Herngren

Author:Moa Herngren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Manilla Press
Published: 2024-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

ÖSTERMALM, STOCKHOLM

November 2015

IT FEELS A LITTLE odd to meet away from the hospital, without their white coats and their daily rounds to fall back on. Niklas hasn’t seen Per Alvén since June, when the team on the paediatric ward saw him off with cake and a bottle of Glenfiddich, but, as he enters the restaurant today, his former colleague looks the same as ever. The same boyish gaze and teasing smile, forever young in an ageing body.

Niklas gets up. After a brief deliberation over how to greet each other, Per holds out a hand and gives him a gentle thump on the shoulder; they’re more colleagues than friends, after all.

‘I see you’ve jumped on the trend,’ Per says with a nod to Niklas’s head. ‘Erika from X-ray has started dying hers grey, too.’

‘Get yourself a new job, a couple of teenage daughters and a kitchen renovation project, and you can skip going to the hairdresser, too. Bea calls me the Silver Fox.’

‘If you grow it a bit longer, you could start calling yourself Gandalf the Grey.’

Per laughs at his terrible joke, and Niklas can’t help but join in. He has missed his colleague’s childish sense of humour.

A few other diners – men in suits – turn in their direction, and Niklas has a sudden fond memory of the staff cafeteria at Sollentuna Hospital, where he and Per used to eat every day. It was like a noisy school dining hall, full of white coats, clicking wooden clogs and watery stew, yet he also remembers it being a much more pleasant place to be than the restaurant where they are currently sitting.

Once they have ordered their sushi, they go over everything that has happened since the last time they spoke. Other than Erika from X-ray having changed her hair colour, Bibbi has baked her way through autumn with such enthusiasm that the entire department has piled on the pounds. Tove and Lena have started exercising at lunch, jogging around Edsviken and doing strength training in the outdoor gym. Per has held off on joining them for as long as he can, he says, but Niklas still feels a rush of envy. Joar is due to go on paternity leave in the new year, and Niklas’s replacement has finally arrived: a talented young doctor everyone seems to like. Life there has continued more or less like usual.

‘Though we miss you, obviously.’

Niklas nods. The feeling is mutual. He steels himself and asks his question.

‘Per, what would you say about working with me again? In town.’

The plan was to be a little more strategic, to start by telling his former colleague all about the new maternity ward at Sophiahemmet and the paediatric clinic they have planned. About the investment, the benefits. Brand new equipment, all cutting-edge; a light, bright environment. No 1970s corridors or shabby examination rooms. But Niklas feels like a dishonest vacuum cleaner salesman, because although it is true that the new department is great, it is also far from complete. They blew the budget months ago, and they are incredibly understaffed.

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