The Night Manager

It was the middle of the night. I was standing outside in the street down in the harbour quarter and the blood was flowing fresh from the cut in my skull. The cut was about 5 inches long and razor sharp. I thought it was a bit strange that there was so much blood in the space between the skin and the skull. But there was clearly an inexhaustible source of blood up there. Nothing I had done to stop the bleeding seemed to help. I clutched the towel to my head, but it was so saturated with blood that clutching it seemed counterproductive.

It may be coming to an end now. I actually thought it was. It may seem dramatic, but for me it was also kind of comforting. Something to hold on to. It’s never too late to give up, and that day might be today. Everyone knows that the last day is coming, but I may have thought about it more than most people do. It could have something to do with experience as well. It gave me peace to be able to acknowledge that if it ended now in a foreign city, it would be a good ending. I had seen what there was to see, heard what was worth hearing, met those who were important in my life and regretted nothing. If it ended now, my life would still be complete.

I heard the taxi coming and turned away a little so he wouldn’t drive away if he saw all the blood. I pressed the once white towel against my head in a constant attempt to overcome the flow of blood, but to no avail.

The taxi driver had no intention of driving away. He babbled on that we had to go to the emergency room and that he had always dreamed of being an ambulance driver. He had taken the test, but failed some physical, or was it something technical. Maybe he said something about drugs too. I wasn’t fully concentrating on his story as we ran red lights with our hazard lights on through a sleepy town in the middle of the night. Some dreams were fulfilled this night, but they obviously weren’t mine. It´s nice to be able to assist others in achieving their dreams…

– Knock on the white door! 

I looked out the backseat window and saw a completely ordinary white door in lacquered aluminium placed in a red brick wall. I opened the back door and used it as a support to avoid falling to the ground. There was blood on the seat and on the window of the taxi but the driver didn’t seem to care. – Good luck, I heard him say as I staggered over to the white door in the wall.

There was only one other person inside the emergency room. A slightly hunched guy. He looked up, and for a moment he perked up a little more, pointed at me and said in a rusty voice that I had to go in before him and that I had to sit down. I replied that I would just as well stand in the corner here by the door so as not to bleed down the sofas in the waiting room. Now he really perked up and knocked on the door to the reception desk despite the fact that no one was there. He rang and knocked until a somewhat tired receptionist finally arrived. My new friend pointed at me and shouted – HIM! THERE! There was a small pool of blood on the floor now. The receptionist woke up, picked up the phone and seconds later I was on a bed racing down the corridors. All I saw were the lights on the ceiling passing by. The blood loss was so great now that I felt the numbness had started. There was nothing I regretted or missed. It was a good feeling to just lie on the stretcher and feel such peace while more and more blood left me. I was in someone else’s hands now. They had taken over the responsibility.

They connected machines and equipment. My blood pressure was low. It got a bit hectic with several nurses drying blood, a doctor sewing and other nurses with needles and injections, but as they got more fluid into my veins, I slowly felt my body coming back.

When I returned to my hotel room after a couple of days, all the blood was gone, and there was a stepladder in the room. The room smelled both washed and freshly painted. All traces of what happened here two nights ago were gone now. I put the “please do not disturb” sign on my door, took a shower and collected my belongings. Someone had already tried to start packing them, without stepping over a line about what was proper and what was private.

I left the scene of the crime, and despite the pain in my head, felt relief that when things eventually do come to an end, I have lived my life without regrets.