The Mystery of Raspberry Hill by Eva Frantz

Author:Eva Frantz [Frantz, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

The East Wing

The days were melting together more and more at Raspberry Hill. They were all the same. I woke up, ate, rested, got examined, ate, rested, got washed, ate, slept. Sometimes I was allowed to go outside for a bit, sometimes Dr Hagman or Dr Funck decided that I was too poorly and had to stay indoors.

I wasn’t getting any better either, quite the opposite. I was coughing even more than before and felt tired most of the time. But I didn’t say that in the next letter I wrote home to Sjömansgatan a few days later. Instead I wrote about the lift and the rich ladies lying on the porch taking the air even though they weren’t sick.

In any case, I had grown a little braver. I plucked up the courage to walk around the sanatorium during the day, especially when I was allowed to go outside. Really, one of the nurses should have been escorting me down the stairs, but they were lazy and figured I could find my own way. Which I could by now. But I chose to take my time getting there.

I would walk through corridor after corridor, finding secret staircases, taking closer looks at the lift in daylight, and gradually I came to know Raspberry Hill Sanatorium rather well.

I figured out that most of the nurses lived in the West Wing on the floor above the kitchen and washroom. My heart almost stopped one day as I was sneaking through the corridor outside the washroom and suddenly heard a deafening roar. I thought the whole sanatorium was collapsing, but it turned out it was just some of the nurses working a huge mechanical mangle. No wonder the sheets in the sanatorium were pressed so flat. The mangle was the size of a motor car and sounded like a thunderstorm.

If I came across a nurse or patient on my walks around the sanatorium, I just nodded and said hello. No one ever asked me what I was doing or where I was going. Of course, the worst thing would be if I bumped into Sister Emerentia, but luckily I never had.

One day I came down from the first floor via a staircase I hadn’t used before and thought I was lost. But then I realized where I was. Outside Dr Hagman’s office. Mrs Hagman wasn’t sitting at her desk outside the office, but there was someone else sitting on a bench in the corridor. A child, like me.

No, sadly it wasn’t Ruben. It was the rich girl I’d seen get out of the car a few days earlier.

She was so beautiful. She wore a white lace dress with pink bows, and a hat with small flowers on the brim. She noticed me. I should have just got out of there sharpish, but I couldn’t resist going over to talk to her. It had been so long since I’d spoken to a girl my own age.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” mumbled the girl.

Her voice was just as frail and stiff as the rest of her.

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