Seb

Seb is Lonneke’s husband and Bor’s father, introduced in the PAAZ ward lounge during a visit to bring the baby to his mother. His brief encounter with Emma turns an ordinary act of caregiving into a revealing account of how Lonneke’s illness affected their household—and how her admission, though painful, brought relief as well as separation.

Identity and Introduction

Seb enters while Emma is alone in the lounge. Short and broad, wearing worn overalls, he carries Bor on one arm and a diaper bag on the other. He has expected the room to be empty because he thought the patients were in therapy, and pauses when he realizes someone is there. After introducing himself, he asks Emma’s permission to change Bor at the other end of the table. The scene places him at once in two roles: a visitor negotiating the ward’s shared space and a father managing the immediate practical needs of a baby.

Seb handles the diaper change and packs the supplies away with practiced ease. When Emma asks whether it is difficult to do everything alone, he shrugs and explains that Bor is their first child, so he has no earlier experience to compare with. His answer does not deny the strain; it locates it within a new routine he has had to learn while Lonneke is away.

Lonneke’s Illness and Admission

Seb describes Lonneke as having been home for only two weeks after giving birth before her admission. During the day, she was frightened and saw things. At night, she would sit upright in bed every few hours, screaming that the house was on fire and that Bor had to be rescued. Seb is unsure whether these episodes were dreams or hallucinations, but their effect on the family is concrete: even when he knew there was no fire, he felt compelled to get up and check, in case Lonneke had heard or smelled something real.

The repeated alarms exhausted him. He says he felt relieved when Lonneke was admitted, and describes the situation as having reached the point where either she or he would have needed institutional care if it had continued another day. His halting apology for referring to the PAAZ as an institution underscores his awareness that he is speaking in front of someone receiving care there. The admission is therefore both a response to Lonneke’s distress and a reprieve from a household crisis that was wearing down her husband too.

Caregiving and Work

While Lonneke remains hospitalized, Seb works half-days in construction. This arrangement lets him bring Bor to the PAAZ in the morning and collect him in the afternoon. At night he sets an alarm a few times to prepare a bottle. He contrasts that interrupted sleep with waking as many as ten times a night during Lonneke’s episodes, when he felt he had to check whether the house was burning. His comparison gives the practical burden a measure: caring for an infant alone is difficult, but, in his account, it is more manageable than the nightly cycle of fear and checking.

As Seb finishes, Bor begins to coo. Seb smiles, straightens the baby’s blanket, and prepares to ask the nurses whether the psychiatrist knows when Lonneke might return home. His attention moves between the child in the buggy and the uncertainty of her discharge, keeping the family’s separation present even in a small, everyday gesture.

Narrative Role

The encounter briefly shifts the focus from Emma’s own crisis to the lives connected to the ward. Seb does not offer a clinical explanation of Lonneke’s experiences; he describes what he witnessed and how he responded, distinguishing what he knew—that there was no fire—from what he could not safely dismiss. His account makes psychiatric hospitalization legible as a change in family life, not just a treatment decision.

For Emma, the meeting carries a painful aftereffect. She smiles as Seb and Bor leave, then looks back at the keyboard and feels the weight of what her own illness may be doing to Sergei and her family. Seb’s presence does not resolve that fear, but it makes visible the simultaneous truths that a patient may need care and that the people around her can be frightened and depleted too.