She picked up the second bag of peanuts and tore it open while tears ran down her cheeks. The salt of them mixed with that of the peanuts and their coarse salt ground itself into her chapped lips. It made her thirsty. She chewed another handful, almost biting her lower lip. And, as if she had found a kind of periodic ritual, she put down her glass of coke, bit another one of her nails until its bed started to bleed and took another handful of peanuts.
She rocked back and forth, rhythmically, almost autistic-like, while she watched TV. She probably didn’t even recognise what she was watching. She gulped down her third glass of coke and, again and again, half a handful of nuts found its way to her mouth with the aim of stopping that blankness inside. A third and a fourth bag of peanuts that evening added to four more glasses of coke and, I guess, that was the beginning of the end.
“Do you know what I like best about your reports, Edgar? They are so empathetic and detailed,” sneered Sarah. “How do you know that she was crying and that she had a mellow feeling in her stomach — not to mention her rocking back and forth? As far as we know, she came here as an emergency case and that she wasn’t really with us anymore. ”
Edgar took a deep breath in. “I was the one to tell her parents. Yes,” he added when Sarah’s face suddenly showed regret and compassion for what she’d just said. “I was the one who had the honour of telling her parents that she’d died.”
A pause increased the tension that was now omnipresent in the physician’s small office, which had no decorations on the walls and only one flickering fluorescent lamp on the ceiling. Sarah sat down and now paid full attention to Edgar.
“So they told you she was crying, right?”
“No.”
“Well. How would you know then?”
“Her lover finished her off that evening. I mean he finished their relationship.”
Apologising for not finding the right words, Edgar saw on Sarah’s face that she now began to grasp the whole tragedy of the girl’s death.
Silence.
“You know what is odd, Sarah?”
“What?”
“Her mother, in a way, wanted me to confirm that she’d died of a broken heart.”
“How did you react?”
“I just said it was not her heart that broke.”
“What did you do anyway, when she arrived in hospital?”
“Well, you know, the usual diagnostic screening. But then, her blood pressure sank so quickly, that we hardly had time to react.” Edgar stared at the wall, right through Sarah. “Later then, during the operation…”
“Yes?”
“That picture has burned itself into my mind.”
Sarah raised her head and listened.
“Mark just stood there. All in green. Normally, he listens to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s music during operations. Not so this time. And though most of his face was covered with that mask, I could see that his face was distorted with rage, and tears of anger filled his eyes. He had never seen anything like that and just shouted NOW LOOK AT THIS SHIT! while he grabbed a handful of soaked peanuts from her opened tummy and flung them to the floor.“
Edgar’s eyes also filled with tears now, which ran down his face and onto his lips. “That was what the girl must have tasted just before she died. How do you tell a mother that it was not her heart that broke but her stomach that burst because of coke-bloated peanuts?”
* * * DO NOT CLICK THIS! * * *
