The Hostile Hospital Read online

  "Tra la la, Fiddle dee dee, Hope you get well soon. Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon."

  As the volunteers reached the chorus of the song, they marched into a hospital room in order to start giving a cheerful attitude to the patients. Inside the room, each lying uncomfortably in a metal bed, were a man with both legs in casts and a woman with both arms in bandages. Still singing, a man from V.F.D. handed one balloon to the man and tied another to the woman's cast, because she could not hold it with her broken arms.

  "Excuse me," said the man hoarsely, "could you please call a nurse for me? I was supposed to take some painkillers this morning, but nobody has come to give them to me."

  "And I'd like a glass of water," the woman said in a weak voice, "if it's not too much trouble."

  "Sorry," the bearded man replied, pausing for a moment to tune his guitar. "We don't have time to do things like that. We have to visit each and every room of the hospital, so we need to move quickly."

  "Besides," another volunteer said, giving the two patients a huge grin, "a cheerful attitude is a more effective way of fighting illness than painkillers, or a glass of water. So cheer up, and enjoy your balloon." The volunteer consulted a list he was holding. "Next on the patient list is a man named Bernard Rieux, in room 105 of the Plague Ward. Come on, brothers and sisters."

  The members of V.F.D. cheered, and continued the song as they left the room. Klaus and Sunny peered around the balloons they were holding and looked at one another in hope.

  "If we visit each and every room in the hospital," Klaus whispered to his sister, "we're sure to find Violet."

  "Mushulm," Sunny said, which meant "I agree, although it won't be pleasant to see all these sick people."

  "We visit people who are ill, And try to make them laugh, Even when the doctor says He must saw them in half."

  Bernard Rieux turned out to be a man with a nasty, hacking cough that shook his body so much he could scarcely hold his balloon, and it seemed to the two Baudelaire children that a good humidifier would have been a more effective way to fight this disease than a cheerful attitude. As the members of V.F.D. drowned out his cough with another verse of the song, Klaus and Sunny were tempted to run and find a humidifier and bring it back to Bernard Rieux's room, but they knew that Violet was in much more danger than someone with a cough, so they stayed hidden in the group.

  "We sing and sing all night and day, And then we sing some more. We sing to boys with broken bones And girls whose throats are sore."

  The next patient on the list was Cynthia Vane, a young woman with a terrible toothache who probably would have preferred something cold and easy to eat, instead of a heart-shaped balloon, but as sore as her mouth looked, the children dared not run and find her applesauce or an ice-cream snack. They knew she might have read The Daily Punctilio, in order to pass the hours in the hospital room, and might recognize them if they showed their faces.

  "Tra la la, Fiddle dee dee, Hope you get well soon. Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon."

  On and on the volunteers marched, and Klaus and Sunny marched with them, but with every ho ho ho and hee hee hee their hearts sank lower and lower. The two Baudelaires followed the members of V.F.D. up and down the staircases of the hospital, and although they saw a great number of confusing maps, intercom speakers, and sick people, they did not catch a glimpse of their sister. They visited Room 201 and sang to Jonah Mapple, who was suffering from seasickness, and they gave a heart-shaped balloon to Charley Anderson in Room 714, who had injured himself in an accident, and they visited Clarissa Dalloway, who did not seem to have anything wrong with her but was staring sadly out the window of Room 1308, but nowhere, in any of the rooms that the volunteers marched into, was Violet Baudelaire, who, Klaus and Sunny feared, was suffering more than any of the other patients.

  "Ceyune," Sunny said, as the volunteers walked up yet another staircase. She meant something along the lines of "We've been wandering around the hospital all morning, and we're no closer to rescuing our sister," and Klaus nodded grimly in agreement.

  "I know," Klaus said, "but the members of V.F.D. are going to visit every single person in Heimlich Hospital. We're sure to find Violet eventually."

  "Attention! Attention!" a voice announced, and the volunteers stopped singing and gathered around the nearest intercom speaker to hear what Mattathias had to say. "Attention!" Mattathias said. "Today is a very important day in the history of the hospital. In precisely one hour, a doctor here will perform the world's first cranioectomy on a fourteen-year-old girl. We all hope that this very dangerous operation is a complete success. That is all."

  "Violet," Sunny murmured to her brother.

  "I think so, too," Klaus said. "And I don't like the sound of that operation. 'Cranio' means 'head,' and 'ectomy' is a medical term for removing something."

  "Decap?" Sunny asked in a horrified whisper. She meant something like "Do you think they're going to cut off Violet's head?"

  "I don't know," Klaus said with a shudder, "but we can't wander around with these singing volunteers any longer. We've got to find her right away."

  "O.K.," a volunteer called, consulting the list. "The next patient is Emma Bovary in Room 2611. She has food poisoning, so she needs a particularly cheerful attitude."

  "Excuse me, brother," Klaus said to the volunteer, reluctantly using the term "brother" instead of "person I hardly know." "I was wondering if I could borrow your copy of the patient list."

  "Of course," the volunteer replied. "I don't like to read all these names of sick people, anyway. It's too depressing. I'd rather hold balloons." With a cheerful smile, the volunteer handed Klaus the long list of patients, and took the heart-shaped balloon out of his hands as the bearded man began the next verse of the song.

  "We sing to men with measles, And to women with the flu, And if you breathe in deadly germs, We'll probably sing to you."

  With his face exposed, Klaus had to duck down behind Sunny's balloon to look at the list of the hospital's patients. "There are hundreds of people on this list," he said to his sister, "and it's organized by ward, not by name. We can't read it all here in the hallway, particularly when we both have to hide behind one balloon."

  "Damajat," Sunny said, pointing down the hall. By "Damajat," she meant something along the lines of "Let's hide in that supply closet over there," and sure enough, there was a door marked "Supply Closet" at the end of the hallway, past two doctors who had paused to chat beside one of the confusing maps. While the members of V.F.D. started in on the chorus of their song as they walked toward Emma Bovary's room, Klaus and Sunny separated themselves from the volunteers and walked carefully toward the closet, holding the balloon in front of both their faces as best they could. Luckily, the two doctors were too busy talking about a sporting event they had watched on television to notice two accused murderers sneaking down the hallway of their hospital, and by the time the volunteers were singing "Tra la la, Fiddle dee dee, Hope you get well soon. Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon." Klaus and Sunny were inside the closet.

  Like a church bell, a coffin, and a vat of melted chocolate, a supply closet is rarely a comfortable place to hide, and this supply closet was no exception. When they shut the door of the closet behind them, the two younger Baudelaires found themselves in a small, cramped room lit only by one flickering lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. On one wall was a row of white medical coats hanging from hooks, and on the opposite wall was a rusty sink where one could wash one's hands before examining a patient. The rest of the closet was full of huge cans of alphabet soup for patients' lunches, and small boxes of rubber bands, which the children could not imagine came in very handy in a hospital.

  "Well," Klaus said, "it's not comfortable, but at least nobody will find us in here."

  "Pesh," Sunny said, which meant something like "At least, until somebody needs rubber bands, alphabet soup, white medical coats, or clean hands."

  "Well, let's keep one eye o
n the door, to see if anyone comes in," Klaus said, "but let's keep the other eye on this list. It's very long, but now that we have a few moments to look it over, we should be able to spot Violet's name."

  "Right," Sunny said. Klaus placed the list on top of a can of soup, and hurriedly began to flip through its pages. As he had noticed, the list of patients was not organized alphabetically, but by ward, a word which here means "particular section of the hospital," so the two children had to look through every single page, hoping to spot the name Violet Baudelaire among the typed names of sick people. But as they glanced at the list under the heading "Sore Throat Ward," perused the names on the "Broken Neck Ward" page, and combed through the names of all the people who were staying in the Ward for People with Nasty Rashes, Klaus and Sunny felt as if they were in a Ward for People with Sinking Stomachs, because Violet's name was nowhere to be found. As the lightbulb flickered above them, the two Baudelaires looked frantically at page after page of the list, but they found nothing that would help them locate their sister.

  "She's not here," Klaus said, putting down the last page of "Pneumonia Ward." "Violet's name is nowhere on the list. How are we going to find her in this huge hospital, if we can't figure out what ward she's in?"

  "Alias," Sunny said, which meant "Maybe she's listed under a different name."

  "That's true," Klaus said, looking at the list again. "After all, Mattathias's real name is Count Olaf. Maybe he made up a new name for Violet, so we couldn't rescue her. But which person is really Violet? She could be anyone from Mikhail Bulgakov to Haruki Murakami. What are we going to do? Somewhere in this hospital, they're getting ready to perform a completely unnecessary operation on our sister, and we--"

  Klaus was interrupted by the sound of crackly laughter, coming from over the Baudelaires' heads. The two children looked up and saw that a square intercom speaker had been installed on the ceiling. "Attention!" said Mattathias, when he was done laughing. "Dr. Flacutono, please report to the Surgical Ward. Dr. Flacutono, please report to the Surgical Ward to prepare for the cranioectomy."

  "Flacutono!" Sunny repeated.

  "I recognize that name, too," Klaus said. "That's the false name used by Count Olaf's associate when we lived in Paltryville."

  "Tiofreck!" Sunny said frantically. She meant "Violet's in grave danger--we have to find her immediately," but Klaus did not answer. Behind his glasses, his eyes were half closed, as they often were when he was trying to remember something he had read.

  "Flacutono," he muttered quietly. "Flac-u-to-no." Then he reached into his pocket, where he was keeping all the important papers the Baudelaires had gathered. "Al Funcoot," he said, and took out one of the pages of the Quagmire notebooks. It was the page that had written on it the words "Ana Gram"--a phrase that had not made any sense to the Baudelaires when they had looked at the pages together. Klaus looked at the Quagmire page, and then at the list of patients, and then at the page again. Then he looked at Sunny, and she could see his eyes grow wide behind his glasses, the way they always did when he had read something very difficult, and understood it at last.

  "I think I know how to find Violet," Klaus said slowly, "but we'll need your teeth, Sunny."

  "Ready," Sunny said, opening her mouth.

  Klaus smiled, and pointed to the stack of cans in the supply closet. "Open one of those cans of alphabet soup," he said, "and hurry."

  Chapter Nine

  "Recazier?" Sunny asked dumbfoundedly. The word "dumbfoundedly" here means "wondering why in the world Klaus wanted to eat alphabet soup at a time like this," and "Recazier?" here means "Klaus, why in the world do you want to eat alphabet soup at a time like this?"

  "We're not going to eat it," Klaus said, handing Sunny one of the cans. "We're going to pour just about all of it down the sink."

  "Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity," Sunny said, which you will probably recall means something along the lines of "I must admit I don't have the faintest idea of what is going on." Sunny had now said this particular thing three times over the course of her life, and she was beginning to wonder if this was something she was only going to say more and more as she grew older.

  "The last time you said that," Klaus said with a smile, "the three of us were trying to figure out the pages the Quagmires left behind." He held out a page for Sunny to see, and then pointed to the words "Ana Gram." "We thought this was someone's name," Klaus said, "but it's really a kind of code. An anagram is when you move the letters around in one or more words to make another word or words."

  "Still pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity," Sunny said with a sigh.

  "I'll give you an example," Klaus said. "It's the example the Quagmires found. Look, on the same page they wrote 'Al Funcoot.' That's the name of the man who wrote The Marvelous Marriage, that dreadful play Count Olaf forced us to participate in."

  "Yuck," Sunny said, which meant "Don't remind me."

  "But look," Klaus said. "'Al Funcoot' has all the same letters as 'Count Olaf.' Olaf just rearranged the letters in his name to hide the fact that he really wrote the play himself. You see?"

  "Phromein," Sunny said, which meant something like "I think I understand, but it's difficult for someone as young as myself."

  "It's difficult for me, too," Klaus said. "That's why the alphabet soup will come in handy. Count Olaf uses anagrams when he wants to hide something, and right now he's hiding our sister. I bet she's somewhere on this list, but her name's been scrambled up. The soup is going to help unscramble her."

  "But how?" Sunny asked.

  "It's difficult to figure out anagrams if you can't move the letters around," Klaus said. "Normally, alphabet blocks or lettered tiles would be perfect, but alphabet noodles will do in a pinch. Now, hurry and open a can of soup." Sunny grinned, showing all of her sharp sharp teeth, and then swung her head down onto the can of soup, remembering the day she had learned to open cans all by herself. It was not that long ago, although it felt like it was in the very distant past, because it was before the Baudelaire mansion burned down, when the entire family was happy and together. It was the Baudelaires' mother's birthday, and she was sleeping late while everyone baked a cake for her. Violet was beating the eggs, butter, and sugar with a mixing device she had invented herself. Klaus was sifting the flour with the cinnamon, pausing every few minutes to wipe his glasses. And the Baudelaires' father was making his famous cream-cheese frosting, which would be spread thickly on top of the cake. All was going well until the electric can opener broke, and Violet didn't have the proper tools to fix it. The Baudelaires' father desperately needed to open a can of condensed milk to make his frosting, and for a moment it looked like the cake was going to be ruined. But Sunny--who had been playing quietly on the floor this whole time-- said her first word, "Bite," and bit down on the can, poking four small holes so the sweet, thick milk could pour out. The Baudelaires laughed and applauded, and the children's mother came downstairs, and from then on they used Sunny whenever they needed to open a can of anything, except for beets. Now, as the youngest Baudelaire bit along the edge of the can of alphabet soup, she wondered if one of her parents had really survived the fire, and if she dared get her hopes up just because of one sentence on page thirteen of the Snicket file. Sunny wondered if the Baudelaire family would ever be together again, laughing and clapping and working together to make something sweet and delicious.

  "All done," Sunny said finally.

  "Good work, Sunny," Klaus said. "Now, let's try to find alphabet noodles that spell Violet's name."

  "V?" Sunny asked.

  "That's right," Klaus said. "V-I-O-L-E-T-B-A-U-D-E-L-A-I-R-E."

  The two younger Baudelaires reached into the can of soup and sorted through the diced carrots, chopped celery, blanched potatoes, roasted peppers, and steamed peas, which were all in a rich and creamy broth made from a secret blend of herbs and spices, to find the noodles they needed. The soup was cold from sitting in the closet for months and months, and occasionally they would find the right l
etter only to have it fall into pieces, or slip from their clammy fingers back into the can, but before too long they had found a V, an I, an O, an L, an E, a T, a B, an A, a U, a D, another E, another L, another A, another I, an R, and a bit of carrot they decided to use when a third E was not to be found.

  "Now," Klaus said, after they laid all of the noodles on top of another can so they could move them around. "Let's take another look at the list of patients. Mattathias announced that the operation would take place in the Surgical Ward, so let's look in that section of the list, and try to see if any names look like good bets."

  Sunny poured the rest of soup into the sink and nodded in agreement, and Klaus hurriedly found the Surgical Ward section of the list and read the names of the patients:

  LISA N. LOOTNDAY ALBERT E. DEVILOEIA LINDA RHALDEEN ADA O. ÜBERVILLET ED VALIANTBRUE LAURA V. BLEEDIOTIE MONTY KENSICLE NED H. RIRGER ERIQ BLUTHETTS RUTH DËRCROUMP AL BRISNOW CARRIE E. ABELABUDITE

  "Goodness!" Klaus said. "Every single patient on the list has a name that looks like an anagram. How in the world can we sort through all these names before it's too late?"

  "V!" Sunny said.

  "You're right," Klaus said. "Any name that doesn't have a V in it can't be an anagram of 'Violet Baudelaire.' We could cross those off the list--if we had a pen, that is."

  Sunny reached thoughtfully into one of the white medical coats, wondering what doctors might keep in their pockets. She found a surgical mask, which is perfect for covering one's face, and a pair of rubber gloves, that are perfect for protecting one's hands, and at the very bottom of the pocket she found a ballpoint pen, which is perfect for crossing out names which aren't the anagrams you're looking for. With a grin, Sunny handed the pen to Klaus, who quickly crossed out the names without Vs. Now the list looked like this: