Part one: The disappearance
It’s Saturday morning. Stefan is sitting in his high chair, banging his spoon against the tray. He’s nine months old. I give him a piece of chocolate croissant, which he starts nibbling.
Sten is sitting beside us, quietly eating his breakfast. I take a sip of coffee and listen to Kristine talking about her plans for the day.
Suddenly, she looks at Stefan.
“What’s wrong with him?”
I turn to look. He’s gone quiet. His body is stiff, and his head has fallen forward.
I jump up, pull him out of his chair and put a finger into his mouth to check whether he’s choking.
Should I give him the Heimlich Maneuver? How do you do that on a nine-month-year-old baby?
I hold him towards Kristine. He’s still rigid, eyes popping, mouth wide open and face blue.
“Do something!”
Kristine grabs Stefan from my arms.
“Call 112!”
She disappears out of the kitchen with him.
I pick up my phone and try to unlock it. My hands tremble. I punch in the wrong code once, twice. The second time works.
I reach emergency services and say that my baby has stopped breathing.
“My wife took my son and ran out to get help. I don’t know where she is exactly.”
“Listen, you must find them. We can tell you what you need to do. An ambulance is on its way. Stay on the phone with me while you look for them,” she says.
The entrance door is ajar.
“Kristine, where are you?” I shout.
My voice echoes through the building. Receiving no answer, I scream again.
The woman on the phone tells me to check the garage, parking lot and streets. I grab Sten, my two-year-old, by the arm and take him with me.
Outside, I scream Kristine’s name again. I run across the road, carrying Sten, and enter the local supermarket. People are going about their business as though nothing has happened.
“Kristine, where are you?”
I go back outside. Neighbours have started coming out of their apartments to see what’s happening. One approaches and offers to take Sten. I accept and continue speaking to the emergency operator.
“I’ll check whether your wife has arrived at one of the hospitals in the region. What’s your child’s personal identification number?”
I can’t remember. I run back to the apartment and rip all the drawers out. Everything spills onto the floor. I find the passports, open them one by one until I find Stefan’s and read out his personal identification number.
The operator asks for the entrance code to our building.
I can’t remember that either.
I take the lift downstairs and stand in front of the keypad. My fingers enter the code automatically. I read the numbers aloud.
An ambulance speeds down the road, siren blaring, and pulls onto the pavement. Four ambulance personnel get out. One approaches me.
“Did you make the call? Where’s your baby?”
“I don’t know. My wife took him, and I can’t find them.”
He wants to go into the apartment and check for himself.
The ambulance personnel search the apartment room by room, checking cupboards and the balcony. They ask me to explain what happened. I tell them again that Kristine left with Stefan, but I don’t know where they are.
One of them speaks into his radio, asking whether a baby matching Stefan’s description has arrived at a hospital.
Nothing. I have the impression they don’t believe me.
My phone buzzes. I see the call is from my father-in-law.
“Chris, Kristine is with Stefan at Karolinska. Stefan is okay. He’s breathing.”
Part two: The hospital
My mother-in-law arrives at the apartment and offers to take care of Sten. I kneel and hug him.
“Dad is going to the hospital to see Mummy and Stefan. Mormor will look after you, okay?”
Sten nods.
I pack some clothes and toiletries for Kristine and me, along with a pair of shoes for her. She’d run out of the apartment barefoot into the snow and stopped a car. I hear later that she forced a family to give her a ride to the hospital.
When I arrive at Karolinska, a nurse asks if I’m Stefan’s father. When I say yes, she smiles, says he’s alright and asks me to follow her. We go down some corridors and into a room. I see Kristine, right next to Stefan.
Kristine is pale, with dark circles under her eyes. Stefan is lying beside her, sucking his hand and kicking his little legs in the air.
“How is he?”
”He seems okay now. But something isn’t right, Chris. He was so stiff in my arms and wasn’t breathing. Then, just as we arrived at the hospital, he started crying. The doctors are doing some tests.”
I hold Kristine in my arms.
“I thought we were going to lose him,” Kristine says.
She apologizes for leaving without telling me where she was going. In the panic, she couldn’t remember my phone number.
“You did the right thing,” I tell her.
I kiss Stefan on the forehead and stroke his head.
As my father-in-law enters the room, Stefan’s body stiffens. His arms and legs begin to shake.
“Nurse! He’s having a seizure!’ Kristine screams.
Two nurses and a doctor run in. They put him on his side and give him a suppository. Stefan convulses for a minute and then relaxes, shuts his eyes and falls asleep. The nurse checks his pulse.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“We don’t know yet,” says the Doctor. “We need to do some tests. But we will do everything we possibly can for your boy, okay.”
Until then, I’d thought Stefan was choking on his breakfast. Now I wasn’t so sure.
The doctors don’t know what’s causing the seizures. They want to check his lungs, scan his brain and test for possible infections. They mention epilepsy, meningitis and even a brain tumour.
Kristine asks questions while I watch Stefan sleeping. He’d been perfectly healthy that morning. How could all this be happening?
We stay in the children’s ward. Some are seriously ill, including those undergoing cancer treatment. Their parents look exhausted. I speak to a woman whose child has leukaemia. They’ve been in the hospital for a few months.
Between seizures, Stefan seems like his usual self. He crawls along the hospital corridors like a little wheelbarrow, smiling and babbling at anyone who passes.
“He’s so cute,” a nurse says.
Then another seizure comes, and he sleeps for hours afterwards.
The tests come back looking normal, but the doctors still want to rule out meningitis. They recommend a lumbar puncture.
The doctor explains that I need to hold Stefan still during the procedure. Kristine says she can’t watch and asks if I can do it.
“Okay,” I say.
I place Stefan on the bed, and the nurses ask me to turn him onto his side. Stefan squirms and begins to cry. The nurse tells me to hold him still.
The needle then appears and they try to stick him in the back with it. Stefan’s face turns red as he screams and struggles to break free.
“Hold him tighter,” the nurse commands.
The doctor tries again. Screams echo through the corridors.
I can’t hold him any longer. I start to cry. One of the nurses asks me to leave. Outside, Kristine and I still hear him screaming.
After five excruciating minutes, they come out and say they aren’t able to hold him still. They say they need to sedate him and try again later.
We stay at the hospital for a week. Stefan has five seizures during that time. Then, as suddenly as they started, they stop.
The tests reveal nothing, and eventually the doctors decide he is well enough to go home.
The taxi arrives. I carry Stefan out of the hospital. He’s awake, looking around as though nothing has happened.
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of family members.