That day, you didn’t go up. You stood a while outside number 11, staring up at the building. Your finger hovered at one of the buzzers, then you changed your mind and rushed away, passing just meters from where I stood on the other side of the road, partially hidden by a white van. Tears were streaming down your face, and when you’d crossed Bogstadveien, you headed down a less-crowded side street and broke into a run, your hair flowing behind you on the soft breeze like contrails from a jet.

That evening, I began to understand that something had shifted in me. Something big. I could barely follow the conversation with my girlfriend at dinner; I had the sensation of sitting there trapped in my body, but my mind was far away. It was with you. All I wanted was to see you and talk to you and talk about you – it was as though anything other than you had just faded into uninteresting shades of gray. I was so worried about you and what I’d observed that afternoon. I was also feeling the first stirrings of anger, though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. It was like a dull ache in my stomach, that feeling you get when you’ve eaten something you know disagrees with you and you have no choice but to wait and see what happens. I was angry that you were more than what you showed to me, that you had a life outside of the therapy room, that you were affected by the highs and lows of life, like everybody else. It made me feel so anxious that someone who emanated such calm, such gentle compassion, was actually as intensely vulnerable as me. I’m over it now and that anger grew into an even deeper love, and a fierce need to protect you, and ultimately, to set you free.

33

Kristina

I want to howl and throw the laptop across the room. My face is wet with tears. I feel tired to the bone and highly agitated; it’s as though an electric feeling of nervous energy rushes through me. I remember that day she’s referring to. Elisabeth had taken another overdose and had just been released from hospital to another bleak women’s shelter, and I was desperately trying to get in contact with the director at Villa Vinternatt, an old colleague of mine from when I did my psychology doctorate residency at a private hospital specializing in treating addicts like Elisabeth. He’d gone on to found Villa Vinternatt, and I believed its progressive arts program could be exactly the kind of thing that could bring lasting change to Elisabeth’s life, so I tried to convince him to take her on the program. Instead, it led to her death.