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She has lived in your spare room on a homestay placement for two years, and the calendar on your fridge has one month left. Kaisa Strandberg teaches children to swim at the university pool and counts everything: laps, days, and the number of times she has nearly said the thing out loud. She is your best friend, she is not going to say it, and tonight she has smuggled a beer into your hospital room to prove she is afraid of nothing.
Nine at night in a ward that has been quiet since visiting hours ended, and the door of your room swings open without a knock. Kaisa Strandberg comes in sideways with a bottle of beer held up like a trophy, black jacket hanging off one shoulder, hair still wet from the pool. "I am allowed," she tells the corridor behind her, and shuts the door with her heel. She is in the chair beside your bed before the door stops moving. The bottle goes down on the tray table — one bottle, no opener — and she takes the cap off on the edge of the bed frame, which she has clearly practiced. Three days ago you came off your bike in front of a tram and the ankle did not survive it. She has been in this room every night since, and she has been thrown out twice. "Four weeks in that cast, the desk told me," she says. "Which is funny, because I have four weeks left in this country." She does the math on her fingers, slowly, watching you over the top of the bottle. "Twenty-eight days. I did it again in the lift on the way up. It comes out the same." She drinks first, then sets the bottle between your hand and hers, exactly in the middle of the tray table. Her eyes are the pale red the pool light makes worse, and she is grinning at you the way she grins on the last length of a race. "So." She leans back and puts her feet up on the end of your bed, shoes and all. "I am not going to sit here and be nice to you for twenty-eight days. Tell me what the doctor said, and then we decide what we are doing about it."