Veronika Decides to Die (On the Seventh Day 2)

She had put off making that remark as long as possible, because it meant admitting that there was something wrong, but she could not hold out any longer.

"Let's go outside," he said.

When he took his wife's hand to help her to her feet, he noticed it was ice cold.

"I don't think I can get that far. Please tell me what's happening to me."

Her husband felt afraid too. Sweat was pouring down Mari's face, and there was a strange light in her eyes.

"Keep calm. I'll go out and call a doctor."

She was gripped by despair. What he said made absolute sense, but everything--the theater, the semidarkness, the people sitting side by side staring up at the brilliant screen--all of it seemed so threatening. She was certain she was alive, she could even touch the life around her as if it were something solid. And that had never happened to her before.

"On no account leave me here alone. I'll get up and go out with you, but take it slowly."

They both made their apologies to the people in the same row and began walking to the exit at the back of the cinema. Mari's heart was now beating furiously, and she was certain, absolutely certain, that she would never get out of that place. Everything she did, every gesture she made--placing one foot in front of the other, saying "Excuse me," holding on to her husband's arm, breathing in and out--seemed terrifyingly conscious and deliberate.

She had never felt so frightened in her life. "I'm going to die right here in this movie theater."

And she was convinced that she knew what was happening because, many years before, a friend of hers had died in a movie theater of a cerebral aneurism.

Cerebral aneurisms are like time bombs. They are tiny varicose veins that form along the arteries--like the ballooning you get on worn tires--and they can remain there undetected during a whole lifetime. No one knows they've got an aneurism, unless it's discovered accidentally--for example, after a brain scan carried out for other reasons--or at the moment when it actually ruptures, flooding everything with blood, leaving the person in an immediate state of coma, usually followed by death.

While she was walking down the aisle of the dark theater, Mari remembered the friend she had lost. The strangest thing, though, was the effect this ruptured aneurism was having on her perception. She seemed to have been transported to a different planet, seeing each familiar thing as if for the first time.

And then there was the terrifying, inexplicable fear, the sheer panic of being alone on that other planet: Death.

I must stop thinking. I'll pretend that everything's all right and then everything will be.

She tried to act naturally, and for a few seconds the sense of oddness diminished. The two minutes that elapsed between first feeling the palpitations and reaching the exit with her husband were the most terrifying two minutes of her life.

When they reached the brightly lighted foyer, everything seemed to start up again. The colors were so garish, the noises from the street seemed to rush in on her from all sides, and everything seemed utterly unreal. She started to notice certain details for the first time; for example, the clarity of vision that covers only the small area on which we fix our gaze, while the rest remains completely unfocused.

There was more. She knew that everything she could see around her was just a scene created by electrical impulses inside her brain, using light impulses that passed through a gelatinous organ called the eye.

No, she must stop thinking. That's how she could be brought to sanity.

By then her fear of an aneurism had passed; she had managed to get out of the theater and was still alive. The friend who had died, on the other hand, never even had time to leave her seat.

"I'll call an ambulance," said her husband, when he saw his wife's ashen face and bloodless lips.

"Call a taxi," she said, hearing the sounds leaving her mouth, conscious of the vibration of each vocal cord.

Going to a hospital would mean accepting that she really was seriously ill, and Mari was determined to do her utmost to restore everything to normality.

They left the foyer, and the icy cold air seemed to have a positive effect; Mari recovered some control over herself, although the inexplicable feelings of panic and terror persisted. While her husband was desperately trying to find a taxi, which were scarce at that time of day, she sat down on the curb and tried not to look at her surroundings: the children playing, the buses passing, the music coming from a nearby street fair--all seemed absolutely surreal, frightening, alien.

Finally a taxi appeared.

"To the hospital," said her husband, helping his wife in.

"Please, let's just go home," she said. She didn't want to be in any more strange places; she was desperately in need of familiar, ordinary things that might diminish the fear she was feeling.

While the taxi was driving them home, her heart rate gradually slowed, and her temperature began to return to normal.

"I'm beginning to feel better," she said to her husband. "It must have been something I ate."

When they reached their house, the world again seemed exactly as it had been since her childhood. When she saw her husband go over to the phone, she asked him what he was doing.