“I already did! They’ve taken him to the hospital. But there was no space for me in the ambulance. And now because of the snow, every taxi in town is occupied and the buses are getting bogged down everywhere!”

Scattered streams of blood are running down one of her cheeks. Ove clamps his jaws so hard that he starts gnashing his teeth.

“You can’t trust bloody buses. The drivers are always drunks,” he says quietly, his chin at an angle that might make someone believe he was trying to hide his words on the inside of his shirt collar.

Maybe she notices the way his mood shifts as soon as she mentions the word “bus.” Maybe not. Anyway, she nods, as if this in some way clinches it.

“Right, then. So you have to drive us.”

Ove makes a courageous attempt to point threateningly at her. But to his own dismay he feels it’s not as convincing as he might have hoped.

“There are no have-tos around here. I’m not some bloody mobility service!” he manages to say at last.

But she just squeezes her index finger and thumb even harder around the bridge of her nose. And nods, as if she has not in any way listened to what he just said. She waves, with irritation, towards the garage and the plastic tube on the floor spewing out exhaust fumes thicker and thicker against the ceiling.

“I don’t have time to fuss about this anymore. Get things ready so we can leave. I’ll go and get the children.”

“The CHILDREN???” Ove shouts after her, without getting any kind of answer.

She’s already swanned off on those tiny feet that look wholly undersized for that large pregnant bump, disappearing around the corner of the bicycle shed and down towards the houses.

Ove stays where he is, as if waiting for someone to catch up with her and tell her that actually Ove had not finished talking. But no one does. He tucks his fists into his belt and throws a glance at the tube on the floor. It’s actually not his responsibility if people can’t manage to stay on the ladders they borrow from him—that’s his own view.

But of course he can’t avoid thinking about what his wife would have told him to do under the circumstances, if she’d been here. And of course it’s not so difficult to work it out, Ove realizes. Sadly enough.

At long last he walks up to the car and pokes off the tube from the exhaust pipe with his shoe. Gets into the Saab. Checks his mirrors. Puts it into first and pulls out into the parking area. Not that he cares particularly about how the Pregnant Foreign Woman gets to the hospital. But Ove knows very well that there’ll be no end of nagging from his wife if the last thing Ove does in this life is to give a pregnant woman a nosebleed and then abandon her to take the bus.