The Hospital chapel matters less as a described building than as a place Emma cannot confidently distinguish from the distortions of her own perception. As she tries to understand what happened there, the chapel becomes a test of reality and, through Michiel’s later confirmation that he was present, a fragile opening toward trust and shared experience.

A Place in the Uncertain Landscape

The chapel enters Emma’s account amid a wider collapse of confidence in what she sees and remembers. In the hospital corridor, she tries to dismiss the hospital shop and the chapel as meaningless, attributing her distress to medication side effects. She hurries back toward the PAAZ, trying to walk normally and remain unnoticed. The chapel is thus named alongside another hospital location, but neither offers her a secure explanation for what has happened.

Later, Emma paces in the garden, touching the wall and counting steps as she tries to decide whether her perceptions can be trusted. She recalls a walk with Karel, wonders whether there were wolves in the chapel and snakes on the path, and asks herself what was real and what she may have invented. The scene gives no settled account of what she saw inside the chapel. Its importance lies in that unresolved uncertainty: Emma is no longer sure that her memory can separate an external event from a hallucination.

The Question of Who Was There

While Michiel is leaving the garden with a bicycle, Emma calls out to him and asks whether he was in the chapel with her a few days earlier. His first response does not confirm or deny it; instead, he asks what answer she wants. The question exposes the stakes for Emma. She wants to know not only whether the episode was real, but whether she was alone and whether someone had noticed and tried to help.

Michiel eventually confirms that he was nearby. He says Emma was acting strangely and had not even seen him. His account does not explain what she experienced in the chapel, but it establishes that another person was present during at least part of the episode. The distinction matters to Emma: she recognizes this as the first time someone noticed what was happening, rather than merely being nearby when her mind seemed to change the rules.

Witness, Reality, and Connection

The confirmation leaves Emma with a narrow, painful form of reassurance. She suspects that Michiel was real amid the fragments of delusion, and thanks him for being there. His matter-of-fact response—that he was simply nearby—does not erase her uncertainty or shame. It does, however, provide a witness outside her own memory, allowing the chapel episode to be held as something that happened between people rather than as an experience she must interpret alone.

The chapel therefore functions as a boundary between private perception and shared reality. The book does not resolve every question about what Emma saw there; instead, it makes the act of asking and the answer she receives consequential. Michiel’s presence gives her a small opening in the confusion, without turning that opening into certainty about the whole experience.