The Boy in the Suitcase Read Online Free PDF Page A

not here, Mrs. Ramoškienė. He is probably with your mother, or with some other relative. Or a neighbor. He is perfectly fine, I tell you. Now will you please lie down and stop screaming so. There are other patients here, some of them seriously ill, and you really mustn’t disturb them like this.”
    The nurse helped her back into the bed. At first she felt simple relief. Mikas was all right! But then she understood that something wasn’t quite right, after all. Sigita tried to see the woman’s face more clearly. There was something there, in the tone of her voice, in the set of her jaw, that was not compassion, but its opposite. Contempt.
    She knows, thought Sigita in confusion. She knows what I did. But how? How could some unfamiliar nurse in a random ward in Vilnius know so much about her? It was so many years ago, after all.
    “I have to go home,” she said thickly, through the nausea. Mikas couldn’t be with her mother, of course. Possibly with Mrs. Mažekienė next door, but she was getting on now and could become peevish and abrupt if the babysitting went on too long. “Mikas needs me.”
    The other nurse gave her a look from across the neighboring bed, smoothing the pillowcase with sharp, precise movements.
    “You might have thought of that before,” she said.
    “Before … before what?” stammered Sigita. Was the accident her fault?
    “Before you tried to drink your brains out. Since you ask.”
    Drink?
    “But I don’t drink,” said Sigita. “Or … hardly ever.”
    “Oh, really. I suppose it was just a mistake, then, that we sent you to have your stomach pumped? Your blood-alcohol level was two point eight.”
    “But I … I really don’t.”
    That couldn’t be right. Couldn’t be her .
    “Rest a little,” said the first nurse, pulling the blanket across her legs. “Perhaps you will be discharged later, when the doctor comes by again.”
    “What’s wrong with me? What happened?”
    “I believe you fell down some stairs. Concussion and a fracture of your lower left arm. And you were lucky it wasn’t worse!”
    Some stairs? She remembered nothing like that. Nothing since the coffee and the playground and Mikas in the sandbox with his truck.

G ETTING AWAY FROM the center was actually a relief, thought Nina, as she drove up the ramp to Magasin’s parking garage and eased her small Fiat into the none-too-generous space between a concrete pillar and somebody’s wide-arsed Mercedes. Sometimes she got so sick and tired of feeling powerless. What kind of country was this, when young girls like Natasha were compelled to sell themselves to men like the Bastard for the sake of a resident’s permit?
    She took the elevator to the top floor of the building. As soon as she stepped out of the narrow steel box, the odor of food overwhelmed her—roasted pork, hot grease from the deep-fryer, and the pervasive aroma of coffee. She scanned the cafeteria and finally caught sight of Karin’s blond head. She was seated at a table by the window, in a sleeveless white dress that struck Nina as an off-duty version of her nurse’s uniform. Instead of one of the chic little handbags she normally sported, one hand rested possessively on the black briefcase on the chair next to her, while the other nervously rotated her coffee cup, back and forth, back and forth.
    “Hi,” said Nina. “What is it, then?”
    Karin looked up. Her eyes were bright and tense with an emotion Nina couldn’t quite identify.
    “You have to fetch something for me,” she said, slapping a small round plastic circle onto the table. A token with a number on it, Nina observed, like the ones used for public lockers.
    Nina was starting to feel annoyed.
    “Don’t be so damned cryptic. What exactly is it I’m supposed to fetch?”
    Karin hesitated.
    “A suitcase,” she finally said. “From a locker at the Central Station. Don’t open it until you are out of the place. Don’t let anyone see you when you do open it. And