The room was a white, rectangular box of pure function. Everything in it was designed to suppress, to neutralize. The harsh, blue-white light from the fixture in the ceiling killed all shadows and revealed everything mercilessly. The air was thick with the sharp, clean smell of antiseptic, a scent that seemed to sterilize even thoughts, leaving nothing but disease and injury.
The silence was total, broken only by the low, even hum of the ventilation system and the dry, crinkling sound of the paper on the examination bench beneath me with every slight movement.
I sat on the edge of the bench, feeling a hot, creeping sense of humiliation. My feet didn't reach the gray linoleum floor, and I dangled them like a child. But I didn't feel like a child. I felt like an idiot. A full-grown art school student who had somehow managed to acquire the most clichéd and embarrassing injury imaginable. If this were a painting, it would be titled something ironic — "Study of a Woman Who Should Have Known Better." Acrylic on desperation.
Two hours ago, I had stood in a gallery in Grünerløkka with a wine glass in hand, pretending to look at art. An opening. The graduating exhibition of the class ahead of me. I had gone to support a friend, but the real reason, the one I wouldn't admit to myself, was that I knew Martin would be there. My own face in the mirror that evening: mascara, the red dress, the small hope I thought I had hidden well enough. And then — his hand on the back of someone else's neck. A blonde girl with a broad smile and a soft, easy laugh that carried through the entire space. Three weeks. It had been three weeks since he said he needed time.
I drank the wine too quickly. Set the glass down. Walked out into the November night without saying goodbye to anyone. And then, because I was who I was — impulsive, angry, slightly drunk, and too proud to take the long way around the construction site at Tøyen — I climbed over a barbed wire fence. The last thing I remember before the pain was the absurd thought: this is exactly the kind of action Martin always said would get me into trouble.
