Hypnosis

Hypnosis is presented as an intervention whose effects escape the session and unsettle both Rose and Carl. Its consequences first appear in shaking, rocking, nightmares, and broken recollections; later, Rose’s sister reports that Rose injured herself and no longer recognized her own identity. The narrative does not establish an independent medical explanation, but it repeatedly links these crises to the hypnosis and makes that link central to the investigation’s human cost.

Immediate Aftereffects

The first warning comes through Assad’s report that Rose is not well enough to join the planned trip. After the hypnosis, she shook throughout the cab ride home and, once dropped off, sat rocking back and forth. Assad had tried to reach her again shortly before speaking with Carl, without success. Her absence is therefore not an ordinary change of plans: she has withdrawn from contact, and the episode has visibly affected her body and behavior.

Carl also questions the procedure’s effects. He says that he had nightmares and kept seeing things he had not thought about for years. Assad answers that the practitioner had told him the effects would pass, but reassurance does not settle Carl’s concern about Rose. Assad thinks a couple of days at home should help her recover; the later report of her condition makes that expectation painfully inadequate. At this point, the effects are still described as temporary, but neither person has a clear account of what the hypnosis has stirred up.

Carl’s Disordered Recollections

Carl’s own aftereffects intensify after he staggers to bed at four in the afternoon. When he wakes the next morning, still feeling dazed, he calls Assad to cancel their trip. Assad again treats the condition as a likely aftereffect and offers a comic comparison involving looking too deeply into a camel’s eyes. Carl thanks him, but the comparison cannot lift the haze he describes.

The more consequential symptom is the way memory displaces thought. When Carl tries to concentrate on the Alberte case, he instead sees Ronny’s brother racing along the dirt road to his parents’ farm. Trying to think about that episode brings back Hardy and Anker on their way into the shed on Amager, where their fates were sealed. His attempt to contemplate that fatal event then gives way to a rush of emotion and longing, with Vigga, Mona, Lisbeth, and Kristine appearing in his thoughts before Mona returns again. These recollections belong to different parts of his life, but arrive without the order or control he expects; even his efforts to direct his thinking fail. Hypnosis is thus associated not simply with unpleasant dreams but with an immediate disruption of concentration, memory, movement, and emotional composure.

Rose’s Identity Crisis and Injury

The later account of Rose comes from a worried caller who has arrived at her home and found her in the bedroom. Rose did not recognize her visitor. She repeatedly said she had done what she had to do and wanted out of it all. The report makes her condition more alarming than the earlier description of rocking and withdrawal: Rose had cut one of her wrists with a pair of scissors.

Rose also claimed that she was Vicky, the caller’s other sister. As the caller recounts it, Rose believed she had been hypnotized into thinking she was Rose, did not want to be Rose because she was a bad girl, and felt that the hypnosis had gone too deep. She further reported that the man who hypnotized her had said he could not help because she was already a full cup. These are Rose’s statements relayed by another person, not an independent account of what occurred during the session. Their importance lies in the crisis they disclose: Rose’s sense of who she is has become entangled with the hypnosis, and the caller finds her both injured and unable to recognize family.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

On hearing the report, Carl calls the situation awful and looks to Assad, who is shaking his head. Carl’s immediate disbelief registers the distance between the earlier expectation of a few days’ rest and the crisis now described. Rose is admitted to Nordvang Hospital; the caller warns that she should not be expected back soon, if she returns at all. The outcome is left uncertain rather than resolved as a temporary disturbance.

The two characters’ experiences give the hypnosis a widening reach. Carl is incapacitated enough to cancel travel and cannot keep present casework separate from memories of past losses and relationships. Rose, in the more serious reported episode, suffers self-injury, confusion about her identity, and hospitalization. The narrative carefully distinguishes what is observed from what is attributed: shaking and rocking are reported directly by Assad, while the claims about Vicky and the full cup come through Rose’s sister. Still, the sequence makes the promised transience of the effects increasingly doubtful. Hypnosis functions here as a plot hinge whose consequences are bodily and practical, while its workings and the prospect of recovery remain uncertain.