Tobias walks back in with Julia close behind.

I keep my arms on the armrests, exactly like they were before, the blanket covering my sliced-through duct tape.

My jaw is wedged open with the plastic mouth retractor. Tobias’s one eye approaches and looms over me again. He moves his mouth mask into place. It sucks in and blows out with each of his breaths.

‘Let me know if you can feel this.’

He pokes my gum with a sharp metal instrument.

I can’t feel it.

‘Ouch,’ I say.

He looks into my eye and says, ‘More anaesthetic, please, nurse.’

She leaves and my head clears.

He turns to change the music on his phone. From something Russian to German opera. Mahler, I think.

I lower my right hand from the blanket and pivot my elbow.

The tray is right there.

I pick up the scalpel as quietly as I can. My head is still clamped in place, my jaw is stretched wide open, my ankles are bound. He turns toward me and I stab the scalpel up and round into the underside of his neck. Plunging it in as deep as I can. He doesn’t scream, he whimpers. He goes down, his hand clamped around his neck. Blood gushes out from the wound. The green tarp turns glossy. I pull the retractor out from my mouth and place it on my chest and then I slice at my head-tapes with the scalpel and pull out clumps of my own hair, along with tape. I kneel up. There’s a groan, but it’s not Tobias. It’s Emil. He’s waking up. I sit and slash at my ankle tapes.

I’m free from the lounger.

The music plays on. Oboes and violins. Trombones. Kettle drums.

Emil’s eyes are wide open. Looking around. His jaw retracted. Panic. Blood in his moustache whiskers.

I put my fingers to my lips. ‘Shhh.’

He looks as terrified as I feel.

I search the room for some kind of weapon – a bat or an iron rod – but there’s nothing. I only have the scalpel. It’s pathetically small.

I try to peer around the edge of the shower curtain into reception. My heart’s beating and my jaw is numb. I could bite off my tongue and swallow it without even knowing.

Emil groans again.

My heart feels like it’s beating at twice its normal speed.

I can’t even look at Tobias.

Julia’s at her desk, sucking up anaesthetic from a vial into a syringe with a fat needle. The fish float dead in the fishtank. The magazines are stacked into three neat piles. Some on fishing. Some crossword puzzles. Some on the Swedish royal family.

I look down and the green-tarp floor is covered in blood now. A river of it.

I have to focus.

Julia isn’t looking this way. She’s still concentrating on the syringe.

The door’s right there.