The Forest
The man sitting in front of me had rough hands that revealed a life of labor. Not in an office but a real one. His facial skin had deep furrows more than wrinkles, and were I smaller, I could have wandered in them like the valleys of Sarek. But it wasn't for my sake he was here, but his wife's. The man was a strong man, often getting up early in the morning to fetch the newspaper. He brewed coffee for them both and ate a crispbread sandwich with butter and cheese. Always the same breakfast. Even though he had been retired for many years, the routine remained the same. While his wife washed up after breakfast, he took a walk in the forest they owned. It had been in the family for generations, and he wasn't going to be the one to let it go. Their children might not be so interested yet, but they would probably learn with time. The land and the farm were as natural as the changes of the seasons. Snow fell over frozen stumps, icicles melted from the eaves of the house, followed by wood anemones behind the slope. Summer came, and the swallows flew like German cars on the autobahn into the barn. Then came the darkness of autumn and the moose hunt. But not this time. Something was different, and his wife noticed.
He woke up earlier than ever, already in the hour of the wolf. Slowly he paced back and forth in the hallway. It seemed like he was searching for a solution to a problem he didn't know what it was. Occasionally she heard a sigh and then a creaking of the boards.
"How are you?" she asked.
"It's nothing. If it weren't for my troubled stomach, I would work as usual. Something isn't right. But it will be sorted out."
And so it went on. His wife worried but didn't want to disturb. He belonged to a different time when men didn't talk about more than the practical. She would try to get him to see the doctor in due time.
Autumn turns to winter
The weeks passed, and so did the months, and now it was December. She could see he had lost weight. The crispbread sandwich was all he could manage, and he had stopped his morning walk in the forest after breakfast. At her urging, he had made an appointment at the health center. "Say you're not sleeping at night and that you're not eating properly," she had told him before he drove off. What he ended up talking about was his stomach. He had lost weight and was sure there was something wrong. He knew his Vilhelm Moberg and told about Hans in Lenhovda who had a worm in his stomach. No matter how much he ate, he didn't gain weight.
"It feels like the worm is in my intestines, eating what should be for me. When I try to sleep, I feel it moving inside me and giving me no peace. And what if it eats too much? Can it burst? What happens to me then? Does it lie there and rot and take me with it? An old man with rotting intestines."
What he didn't tell the doctor was that he had a solution. He had slaughtered many animals as a hunter and knew how to do it. The worm in his intestines had to go, and the easiest way would be to cut it out. Pull it out like when the prey hangs upside down in the slaughterhouse. He already had the knife; he just had to wait for the right moment. But now that he was at the health center, maybe he could get a different solution. The one he had thought of himself was still there.
The long wait
The doctor at the health center was used to taking care of the whole person. Everything from check-ups on babies, ears on colicky babies, and allergies in teenagers. But the patients he encountered the most were still the elderly. Hearts that faltered, sleep that didn't come, or memories that had seen better days. However, someone looking as dejected as the man in front of him was not common. He asked a question - How are you? - and it took almost a minute before the answer came. There wasn't a hint of movement in the face. The doctor smiled but got no smile back. The only thing he understood was that the elderly man had stomach problems that he for some reason believed were due to a worm. The shirt in the checkered flannel looked unwashed, and he caught a whiff of old sweat. After the visit, he wrote in the journal.
"Hence, a 75-year-old man with little previous contact with this clinic. Fundamentally hypertension and asthmatic bronchitis, but now seeks treatment for stomach troubles. Appears psychosomatic, almost psychotic. Clearly depressed, psychomotorically inhibited, and cannot be diverted. In need of urgent follow-up within specialist psychiatry, and the undersigned ensures that the patient is transported by taxi and provided with a referral to the psychiatric emergency department."