The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest Book Review

The Daughter Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
By Stieg Larsson
Hardcover, 576 pages
Knopf
List price: $27.95

Linguistic communication Advisory: This excerpt contains language that some readers may find offensive.

Chapter i
Fri, April viii

Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. Information technology was merely before i:30 in the morning.

"What?" he said, confused.

"Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Ii patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The adult female has a gunshot wound."

"All right," Jonasson said wearily.

Although he had slept for only one-half an hour, he felt groggy. He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska infirmary in Goteborg. It had been a strenuous evening.

Past 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients and and then gone back to the staff sleeping accommodation to attempt to rest for a while. He was on duty until half-dozen:00, and seldom got the take a chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. But this time he had fallen asleep most equally soon as he turned out the light.

Jonasson saw lightning out over the bounding main. He knew that the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. Suddenly a heavy downpour lashed at the window. The storm had moved in over Goteborg.

He heard the sound of the chopper and watched every bit it banked through the storm squalls down towards the helipad. For a second he held his jiff when the pilot seemed to accept difficulty controlling the aircraft. Then information technology vanished from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to land. He took a jerky swallow of his tea and fix down the cup.

Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area. The other physician on duty took on the first patient who was wheeled in-an elderly human with his caput bandaged, apparently with a serious wound to the face. Jonasson was left with the second patient, the woman who had been shot. He did a quick visual examination: it looked like she was a teenager, very dirty and bloody, and severely wounded. He lifted the coating that the Rescue Service had wrapped around her body and saw that the wounds to her hip and shoulder were bandaged with duct tape, which he considered a pretty clever thought. The tape kept leaner out and blood in. One bullet had entered her hip and gone straight through the muscle tissue. He gently raised her shoulder and located the entry wound in her back. In that location was no go out wound: the circular was still within her shoulder. He hoped it had not penetrated her lung, and since he did not see any claret in the woman'southward oral cavity he concluded that probably information technology had not.

"Radiology," he told the nurse in attendance. That was all he needed to say.

Then he cutting abroad the bandage that the emergency team had wrapped around her skull. He froze when he saw another entry wound. The woman had been shot in the head, and there was no exit wound there either.

Jonasson paused for a 2nd, looking downwardly at the girl. He felt dejected. He often described his job as being like that of a goalkeeper. Every day people came to his identify of work in varying weather condition just with one objective: to become aid.

Jonasson was the goalkeeper who stood between the patient and Fonus Funeral Service. His job was to determine what to do. If he made the wrong decision, the patient might die or mayhap wake upwards disabled for life. Nigh often he made the right decision, because the vast bulk of injured people had an obvious and specific trouble. A stab wound to the lung or a crushing injury after a motorcar crash were both particular and recognizable problems that could be dealt with. The survival of the patient depended on the extent of the harm and on Jonasson'due south skill.

In that location were 2 kinds of injury that he hated. One was a serious burn case, considering no affair what measures he took the burns would virtually inevitably issue in a lifetime of suffering. The second was an injury to the brain.

The girl on the gurney could live with a slice of lead in her hip and a piece of lead in her shoulder. Just a piece of lead inside her brain was a trauma of a wholly dissimilar magnitude. He was suddenly aware of the nurse saying something.

"Lamentable. I wasn't listening."

"Information technology'due south her."

"What exercise you mean?"

"It's Lisbeth Salander. The girl they've been hunting for the past few weeks, for the triple murder in Stockholm."

Jonasson looked again at the unconscious patient'southward face. He realized at once that the nurse was correct. He and the whole of Sweden had seen Salander'due south passport photograph on billboards outside every newspaper kiosk for weeks. And at present the murderer herself had been shot, which was surely poetic justice of a sort.

Only that was not his business. His chore was to salve his patient'south life, irrespective of whether she was a triple murderer or a Nobel Prize winner. Or both.

Then the efficient chaos, the same in every ER the world over, erupted. The staff on Jonasson'due south shift set near their appointed tasks. Salander's apparel were cut away. A nurse reported on her blood pressure level -- 100/70 -- while the md put his stethoscope to her chest and listened to her heartbeat. It was surprisingly regular, simply her breathing was not quite normal.

Jonasson did not hesitate to classify Salander's status as critical. The wounds in her shoulder and hip could look until later, with a compress on each, or even with the duct record that some inspired soul had applied. What mattered was her head. Jonasson ordered tomography with the new and improved CT scanner that the hospital had lately acquired.

Jonasson had a view of medicine that was at times unorthodox. He idea doctors frequently drew conclusions that they could not substantiate. This meant that they gave up far too easily; alternatively, they spent too much time at the astute stage trying to work out exactly what was wrong with the patient so as to decide on the right handling. This was right procedure, of course. The problem was that the patient was in danger of dying while the physician was still doing his thinking.

Just Jonasson had never before had a patient with a bullet in her skull. Most likely he would need a brain surgeon. He had all the theoretical noesis required to make an incursion into the brain, but he did non by any ways consider himself a brain surgeon. He felt inadequate, but all of a sudden he realized that he might exist luckier than he deserved. Before he scrubbed upwards and put on his operating apparel he sent for the nurse.

"There's an American professor from Boston working at the Karolinska infirmary in Stockholm. He happens to be in Goteborg tonight, staying at the Radisson on Avenyn. He just gave a lecture on brain research. He'due south a good friend of mine. Could you get the number?"

While Jonasson was still waiting for the 10-rays, the nurse came back with the number of the Radisson. Jonasson picked upwardly the phone. The night porter at the Radisson was very reluctant to wake a guest at that time of night and Jonasson had to come with a few selection phrases well-nigh the critical nature of the situation before his call was put through.

"Good morning, Frank," Jonasson said when the phone call was finally answered. "It'south Anders. Exercise y'all feel like coming over to Sahlgrenska to help out in a brain op?"

"Are you lot bullshitting me?" Dr. Frank Ellis had lived in Sweden for many years and was fluent in Swedish -- albeit with an American accent -- but when Jonasson spoke to him in Swedish, Ellis always replied in his mother natural language.

"The patient is in her mid-twenties. Entry wound, no leave."

"And she'due south live?"

"Weak but regular pulse, less regular breathing, blood pressure one hundred over seventy. She also has a bullet wound in her shoulder and another in her hip. Only I know how to handle those two."

"Sounds promising," Ellis said.

"Promising?"

"If somebody has a bullet in their head and they're nonetheless live, that points to hopeful."

"I empathise ... Frank, can you help me out?"

"I spent the evening in the company of good friends, Anders. I got to bed at 1:00 and no doubt I have an impressive claret alcohol content."

"I'll make the decisions and exercise the surgery. Only I need somebody to tell me if I'thou doing anything stupid. Even a falling-down boozer Professor Ellis is several classes better than I could always exist when it comes to assessing encephalon impairment."

"OK, I'll come. Simply you're going to owe me 1."

"I'll have a taxi waiting outside past the time you get downwards to the anteroom. The driver volition know where to drop you, and a nurse will exist there to meet yous and get you scrubbed in."

"I had a patient a number of years ago, in Boston-I wrote virtually the example in the New England Journal of Medicine. It was a girl the aforementioned age as your patient here. She was walking to the university when someone shot her with a crossbow. The arrow entered at the exterior edge of her left eyebrow and went straight through her head, exiting from nearly the middle of the back of her neck."

"And she survived?"

"She looked similar nothing on earth when she came in. We cut off the arrow shaft and put her head in a CT scanner. The arrow went straight through her encephalon. By all known reckoning she should take been dead, or at least suffered such massive trauma that she would have been in a blackout."

"And what was her condition?"

"She was conscious the whole time. Not merely that; she was terribly frightened, of course, just she was completely rational. Her only problem was that she had an pointer through her skull."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I got the forceps and pulled out the arrow and bandaged the wounds. More or less."

"And she lived to tell the tale?"

"Apparently her condition was disquisitional, but the fact is we could take sent her abode the aforementioned 24-hour interval. I've seldom had a healthier patient."

Jonasson wondered whether Ellis was pulling his leg.

"On the other paw," Ellis went on, "I had a forty-two-yr-old patient in Stockholm some years ago who banged his head on a windowsill. He began to experience sick immediately and was taken by ambulance to the ER. When I got to him he was unconscious. He had a small-scale bump and a very slight bruise. But he never regained consciousness and died afterwards ix days in intensive care. To this day I have no idea why he died. In the autopsy report, we wrote brain haemorrhage resulting from an accident, merely not 1 of us was satisfied with that assessment. The bleeding was so minor, and located in an area that shouldn't accept affected annihilation else at all. And yet his liver, kidneys, center, and lungs close down one after the other. The older I get, the more I think it'due south like a game of roulette. I don't believe we'll e'er figure out precisely how the brain works." He tapped on the 10-ray with a pen. "What do you intend to exercise?"

"I was hoping you would tell me."

"Permit'due south hear your diagnosis."

"Well, beginning of all, information technology seems to be a small-calibre bullet. Information technology entered at the temple, so stopped virtually four centimetres into the encephalon. It'southward resting against the lateral ventricle. In that location's bleeding there."

"How volition you proceed?"

"To use your terminology, go some forceps and extract the bullet by the same route it went in."

"Excellent thought. I would use the thinnest forceps you have."

"It's that simple?"

"What else tin can we practise in this case? We could leave the bullet where it is, and she might live to exist a hundred, just it'southward also a risk. She might develop epilepsy, migraines, all sorts of complaints. And one affair you really don't want to do is drill into her skull and then operate a year from now when the wound itself has healed. The bullet is located abroad from the major blood vessels. And then I would recommend that you extract information technology, simply ... "

"But what?"

"The bullet doesn't worry me so much. She's survived this far and that's a good omen for her getting through having the bullet removed too. The real problem is here." He pointed at the X-ray. "Effectually the entry wound you have all sorts of bone fragments. I can see at least a dozen that are a couple of millimetres long. Some are embedded in the brain tissue. That's what could impale her if you're not conscientious."

"Isn't that part of the brain associated with numbers and mathematical capacity?" Jonasson said.

Ellis shrugged. "Mumbo jumbo. I have no idea what these particular grey cells are for. Y'all tin only do your best. You operate. I'll await over your shoulder."

Mikael Blomkvist looked up at the clock and saw that information technology was but afterwards iii:00 in the morning time. He was handcuffed and increasingly uncomfortable. He closed his eyes for a moment. He was expressionless tired but running on adrenaline. He opened them again and gave the policeman an angry glare. Inspector Thomas Paulsson had a shocked expression on his face. They were sitting at a kitchen tabular array in a white farmhouse called Gosseberga, somewhere about Nossebro. Blomkvist had heard of the place for the first fourth dimension less than twelve hours earlier.

At that place was no denying the disaster that had occurred.

"Imbecile," Blomkvist said.

"Now, you lot listen here -- "

"Imbecile," Blomkvist said once again. "I warned y'all he was dangerous, for Christ'due south sake. I told you that you lot would have to handle him like a live grenade. He'southward murdered at least three people with his bare hands and he's built like a tank. And y'all send a couple of hamlet policemen to arrest him every bit if he were some Saturday nighttime drunk."

Blomkvist shut his eyes again, wondering what else could go incorrect that nighttime.

He had establish Lisbeth Salander just subsequently midnight. She was very desperately wounded. He had sent for the police and the Rescue Service.

The but affair that had gone right was that he had persuaded them to send a helicopter to take the girl to Sahlgrenska hospital. He had given them a clear description of her injuries and the bullet wound in her head, and some bright spark at the Rescue Service got the message.

Withal, information technology had taken over half an hour for the Puma from the helicopter unit in Säve to arrive at the farmhouse. Blomkvist had gotten two cars out of the barn. He switched on their headlights to illuminate a landing area in the field in forepart of the firm.

The helicopter coiffure and two paramedics had proceeded in a routine and professional manner. One of the medics tended to Salander while the other took care of Alexander Zalachenko, known locally every bit Karl Axel Bodin. Zalachenko was Salander'due south father and her worst enemy. He had tried to kill her, just he had failed. Blomkvist had constitute him in the woodshed at the farm with a nasty-looking gash -- probably from an axe -- in his face and some shattering damage to 1 of his legs which Blomkvist did not bother to investigate.

From The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet'due south Nest past Stieg Larsson. Copyright 2010 by Stieg Larsson. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House Inc. All rights reserved.

martinwithris.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127033781

Share this post