Ove and the cat sit in silence in the Saab outside the hospital.
"Stop looking at me as if this is my fault," says Ove to the cat.
The cat looks back at him as if it isn't angry but disappointed.
It wasn't really the plan that he would be sitting outside this hospital again. He hates hospitals, after all, and now he's bloody been here three times in less than a week. It's not right and proper. But no other choice was available to him.
Because today went to pot from the very beginning.
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It started with Ove and the cat, during their daily inspection, when they discovered that the sign forbidding vehicular traffic within the residential area had been run over. This inspired such colorful profanities from Ove that the cat looked quite embarrassed. Ove marched off in fury and emerged moments later with his snow shovel. Then he stopped, looking towards Anita and
Rune's house, his jaws clamped so hard that they made a creaking sound.
The cat looked at him accusingly.
"It's not my fault the old sod went and got old," he said more firmly.
When the cat didn't seem to find this to be in any way an acceptable explanation, Ove pointed at it with the snow shovel.
"You think this is the first time I've had a run-in with the council? That decision about Rune, do you think they've actually come to a real conclusion about it? They NEVER will! It'll go to appeal and then they'll drag it out and put it through their shitty bureaucratic grind! You understand? You think it'll happen quickly, but it takes months! Years! You think I'm going to stick around here just because that old sod went all helpless?" The cat didn't answer.
"You don't understand! Understand?" Ove hissed and turned around. He felt the cat's eyes on his back as marched inside.
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That is not the reason why Ove and the cat are sitting in the Saab in the parking area outside the hospital. But it does have a fairly direct connection with Ove standing there shoveling snow when that journalist woman in her slightly too large green jacket turned up outside his house.
"Ove?" she asked behind him, as if she was concerned that he might have changed his identity since she last came here to disturb him.
Ove continued shoveling without in any way acknowledging her presence.
"I only want to ask you a few questions. . . ." she tried.
"Ask them somewhere else. I don't want them here," Ove answered, scattering snow about him in a way that made it difficult to tell whether he was shoveling or digging.
"But I only want t—" she said, but she was interrupted by Ove and the cat going into the house and slamming the door in her face.
Ove and the cat squatted in the hall and waited for her to leave. But she didn't leave. She started banging on the door and calling out: "But you're a hero!!!"
"She's absolutely psychotic, that woman," said Ove to the cat.
The cat didn't disagree.
When she carried on banging and shouting even louder, Ove didn't know what to do, so he threw the door open and put his finger over his mouth, hushing her, as if in the next moment he was going to point out that this was actually a library.
