Who: Caroline West and Sara Johnson/Natalie West What: Reuniting after forever. Kinda sorta. Where: Saint Göran's Hospital, Stockholm When: Wednesday afternoonish, September 8 Warnings: Lisbeth Salander = automatic R. >_>
After Natalie West stopped talking to her, the mystery patient known only as Anna Larsson did two things: she lit a cigarette, and she googled Caroline West. What she found didn't impress or comfort her. That girl in the picture from a ten-year-old newspaper looked like her, sure, but there was no rush of recognition, no instantaneous connection that made her start thinking of herself as Caroline. That girl wasn't her. Caroline looked happy. Caroline was charitable and moderately successful, at least up until four years ago. Caroline had a family – a broken one, judging from from the twenty-year-old obituary, but a family nonetheless. Anna saw the names and felt nothing. Lisbeth only felt suspicion. She didn't trust this Natalie. All that she'd told Anna the day before was easy enough to find on the internet – there was even photo of Caroline in her alma mater's newspaper where her tattoo was clearly visible. All it took was a little digging. Not exactly rocket science.
She slept like a baby that night, and when she woke up the next day, she came to three conclusions:
1) "Natalie" knew Caroline, or at least recognized her. Whether or not she really was her sister was irrelevant. 2) Only one person on earth knew why Caroline was here, and that was the person who shot her. If that person found out she was still alive, he or she would undoubtedly try to finish the job. 3) This hospital was driving her crazy.
What had to happen next was very clear in her mind. Anna spent the rest of the day waiting, chain-smoking purely because she wasn't allowed to. By mid-afternoon, the nurses had given up trying to stop her and closed her door to keep the smoke from affecting the other patients. It was late afternoon when there was finally a knock. One of the nurses peeked her head inside, frowned at the countless cigarette butts littering the floor around Anna's bed, and said in Swedish, "You have a visitor, Miss Larsson." She opened the door and ushered the woman inside. Anna glanced at her emotionlessly, then lit another cigarette. She didn't even cough when she inhaled this time. Clearly Caroline hadn't been a smoker.