The Hostile Hospital Read online

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

  "That makes it much easier," Klaus said. "Now, let's move around the letters in Violet's name and see if we can spell out 'Albert E. Deviloeia.'"

  Working carefully to avoid breaking them, Klaus began to move the noodles he and Sunny had taken out of the soup, and soon learned that 'Albert E. Deviloeia' and "Violet Baudelaire" were not quite anagrams. They were close, but they did not have the exact same letters in their names.

  "Albert E. Deviloeia must be an actual sick person," Klaus said in disappointment. "Let's try to spell out 'Ada O. Übervillet.'"

  Once again, the supply closet was filled with the sound of shifting noodles, a faint and damp sound that made the children think of something slimy emerging from a swamp. It was, however, a far nicer sound than the one that interrupted their anagram decoding.

  "Attention! Attention!" Mattathias's voice sounded particularly snide as it called for attention from the square speaker over the Baudelaires' heads. "The Surgical Ward will now be closed for the cranioectomy. Only Dr. Flacutono and his associates will be allowed into the ward until the patient is dead--I mean, until the operation is over. That is all."

  "Velocity!" Sunny shrieked.

  "I know we have to hurry!" Klaus cried. "I'm moving these noodles as quickly as I can! Ada O. Übervillet isn't right, either!" He turned to the list of patients again to see who was next, and accidentally hit a noodle with his elbow, knocking it to the floor with a moist splat. Sunny picked it up for him, but the fall had split it into two pieces. Instead of an O, the Baudelaires now had a pair of parentheses.

  "That's O.K.," Klaus said hurriedly. "The next name on the list is Ed Valiantbrue, which doesn't have an O in it anyway."

  "O!" Sunny shrieked.

  "O!" Klaus agreed.

  "O!" Sunny insisted.

  "Oh!" Klaus cried. "I see what you mean! If it doesn't have an O in it, it can't be an anagram of Violet Baudelaire. That only leaves one name on the list: Laura V. Bleediotie. That must be the one we're looking for."

  "Check!" Sunny said, and held her breath as Klaus moved the noodles around. In a few seconds, the name of the eldest Baudelaire sister had been transformed into Laura V. Bleediotie, except for the O, which Sunny still held in pieces in her tiny fist, and the last E, which was still a piece of carrot.

  "It's her, all right," Klaus said, with a grin of triumph. "We've found Violet."

  "Asklu," Sunny said, which meant "We never would have found her if you hadn't figured out that Olaf was using anagrams."

  "It was really the Quagmire triplets who figured it out," Klaus said, holding up the notebook page, "and it was you who opened the cans of soup, which made it much easier. But before we congratulate ourselves, let's rescue our sister." Klaus took a look at the list of patients. "We'll find 'Laura V. Bleediotie' in Room 922 of the Surgical Ward."

  "Gwito," Sunny pointed out, which meant "But Mattathias closed the Surgical Ward."

  "Then we'll have to open it," Klaus said grimly, and took a good look around the supply closet. "Let's put on those white medical coats," he said. "Maybe if we look like doctors, we can get into the ward. We can use these surgical masks in the pocket to hide our faces--just like Olaf's associate did at the lumbermill."

  "Quagmire," Sunny said doubtfully, which meant "When the Quagmires used disguises, they didn't fool Olaf."

  "But when Olaf used disguises," Klaus said, "he fooled everyone."

  "Us," Sunny said.

  "Except us," Klaus agreed, "but we don't have to fool ourselves."

  "True," Sunny said, and reached for two white coats. Because most doctors are adults, the white coats were far too big for the children, who were reminded of the enormous pinstripe suits Esmé Squalor had purchased for them when she had been their guardian. Klaus helped Sunny roll up the sleeves of her coat, and Sunny helped Klaus tie his mask around his face, and in a few moments the children were finished putting on their disguises.

  "Let's go," Klaus said, and put his hand on the door of the supply closet. But he did not open it. Instead he turned back to his sister, and the two Baudelaires looked at each other. Even though the siblings were wearing white coats, and had surgical masks on their faces, they did not look like doctors. They looked like two children in white coats with surgical masks on their faces. Their disguises looked spurious--a word which here means "nothing at all like a real doctor"--and yet they were no more spurious than the disguises that Olaf had been using since his first attempt to steal the Baudelaire fortune. Klaus and Sunny looked at one another and hoped that Olaf's methods would work for them, and help them steal their sister, and without another word, they opened the door and stepped out of the supply closet.

  "Douth?" Sunny asked, which meant "But how are we going to find the Surgical Ward, when the maps of this hospital are so confusing?"

  "We'll have to find someone who is going there," Klaus said. "Look for somebody who looks like they're on their way to the Surgical Ward."

  "Silata," Sunny said. She meant something along the lines of "But there are so many people here," and she was right. Although the Volunteers Fighting Disease were nowhere to be seen, the hallways of Heimlich Hospital were full of people. A hospital needs many different people and many different types of equipment in order to work properly, and as Klaus and Sunny tried to find the Surgical Ward they saw all sorts of hospital employees and devices hurrying through the halls. There were physicians carrying stethoscopes, hurrying to listen to people's heartbeats, and there were obstetricians carrying babies, hurrying to deliver people's children. There were radiologists carrying X-ray machines, hurrying to view people's insides, and there were optic surgeons carrying laser-driven technology hurrying to get inside people's views. There were nurses carrying hypodermic needles, hurrying to give people shots, and there were administrators carrying clipboards, hurrying to catch up on important paperwork. But no matter where the Baudelaires looked, they couldn't see anyone who seemed to be hurrying to the Surgical Ward.

  "I don't see any surgeons," Klaus said in desperation.

  "Peipix," Sunny said, which meant "Me neither."

  "Out of my way, everybody!" demanded a voice at the end of the hallway. "I'm a surgical assistant, carrying equipment for Dr. Flacutono!"

  The other employees of the hospital stopped and cleared the way for the person who had spoken, a tall person dressed in a white lab coat and a surgical mask who was coming down the hallway in odd, tottering steps.

  "I've got to get to the Surgical Ward right away!" the person called, walking past the Baudelaires without even glancing at them. But Klaus and Sunny glanced at this person. They saw, beneath the bottom hem of the white coat, the pair of shoes with stiletto heels that this person was wearing, and they saw the handbag in the shape of an eye that the person was holding in one hand. The children saw the black veil of the person's hat, which was hanging in front of the surgical mask, and they saw blotches of lipstick, which had soaked through from the person's lips and were staining the bottom of the mask.

  The person, of course, was pretending to be a surgical assistant, and she was carrying something that was pretending to be a piece of surgical equipment, but the children did not need more than a glance to see through both of these spurious disguises. As they watched the person tottering down the hallway, the two Baudelaires knew at once that she was really Esmé Squalor, the villainous girlfriend of Count Olaf. And as they looked at the thing she was carrying, glinting in the light of the hospital hallway, the two Baudelaires knew that it was nothing more than a large rusty knife, with a long row of jagged teeth, just perfect for a cranioectomy.

  Chapter Ten

  At this point in the dreadful story I am writing, I must interrupt for a moment and describe something that happened to a good friend of mine named Mr. Sirin. Mr. Sirin was a lepidopteri
st, a word which usually means "a person who studies butterflies."

  In this case, however, the word "lepidopterist" means "a man who was being pursued by angry government officials," and on the night I am telling you about they were right on his heels. Mr. Sirin looked back to see how close they were--four officers in their bright-pink uniforms, with small flashlights in their left hands and large nets in their right--and realized that in a moment they would catch up, and arrest him and his six favorite butterflies, which were frantically flapping alongside him. Mr. Sirin did not care much if he was captured--he had been in prison four and a half times over the course of his long and complicated life--but he cared very much about the butterflies. He realized that these six delicate insects would undoubtedly perish in bug prison, where poisonous spiders, stinging bees, and other criminals would rip them to shreds. So, as the secret police closed in, Mr. Sirin opened his mouth as wide as he could and swallowed all six butterflies whole, quickly placing them in the dark but safe confines of his empty stomach. It was not a pleasant feeling to have these six insects living inside him, but Mr. Sirin kept them there for three years, eating only the lightest foods served in prison so as not to crush the insects with a clump of broccoli or a baked potato. When his prison sentence was over, Mr. Sirin burped up the grateful butterflies and resumed his lepidoptery work in a community that was much more friendly to scientists and their specimens. I am telling you this story not just to reveal the courage and imagination of one of my dearest friends, but to help you imagine how Klaus and Sunny felt as they watched Esmé Squalor, disguised as an associate of Dr. Flacutono, walk down the hallway of Heimlich Hospital carrying the long, rusty knife disguised as a surgical tool to be used on Violet. The two youngsters realized that their only chance of finding the Surgical Ward and rescuing their sister was to try and fool this greedy and stiletto-heeled villain, but as they approached her, like Mr. Sirin during his fifth and final prison sentence, the two Baudelaires felt the unpleasant fluttering of butterflies in their stomachs.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," Klaus said, trying to sound less like a thirteen-year-old boy and more like someone who had graduated from medical school. "Did you say you were an associate of Dr. Flacutono?"

  "If you're someone with a hearing problem," Esmé said rudely, "don't bother me. Go to the Ear Ward."

  "I'm not someone with a hearing problem," Klaus said. "This woman and I are associates of Dr. Flacutono."

  Esmé stopped in the middle of stabbing the floor, and stared down at the two siblings. Klaus and Sunny could see her eyes shining behind the veil of her fashionable hat as she regarded the children before replying.

  "I was just wondering where you were," she said. "Come along with me, and I'll take you to the patient."

  "Patsy," Sunny said.

  "What she is saying," Klaus said quickly, "is that we're very concerned about Laura V. Bleediotie."

  "Well, you won't be concerned for long," Esmé replied, leading the children around a corner to another hallway. "Here, you carry the knife."

  The evil girlfriend handed Klaus the rusty blade, and leaned in closely to talk with him. "I'm glad you two are here," she whispered. "The brat's little brother and sister haven't been captured yet, and we still don't have the file on the Snicket fires. The authorities removed it for their investigation. The boss says we might have to torch the place."

  "Torch?" Sunny asked.

  "Mattathias will take care of that part," Esmé said, looking around the hallway to make sure no one could hear them. "All you have to do is assist with the surgery. Let's hurry up."

  Esmé walked up a stairway as fast as her shoes could carry her, and the children followed nervously behind her, Klaus holding the rusty, jagged knife. With every door they opened, every hallway they walked down, and every staircase they ascended, the youngsters were afraid that at any moment Esmé would see through their disguises and realize who they were. But the greedy woman was too busy pausing to yank the blades of the stiletto heels out of the floor to notice that the two additional associates of Dr. Flacutono bore a very strong resemblance to the children she was trying to capture. Finally, Esmé led the Baudelaires to a door marked "Surgical Ward," which was being guarded by someone the children recognized at once. The guard was wearing a coat which read "Heimlich Hospital" and a cap that had the word "GUARD" printed on it in big black print, but Klaus and Sunny could see that this was another spurious disguise. The siblings had seen this person at Damocles Dock, when poor Aunt Josephine had been their guardian, and they'd had to cook for this person when they'd been living with Count Olaf. The spurious guard was an enormous person who looked like neither a man nor a woman, and who had been assisting Count Olaf with his nefarious schemes for as long as the Baudelaires had been escaping from them. The person looked at the children, and the children look back at him or her, certain that they would be recognized. But Olaf's assistant merely nodded and opened the door.

  "They've already anesthetized the bratty orphan," Esmé said, "so you ladies merely need to go to her room and bring her to the operating theater. I'm going to try to find that sniveling bookworm and that stupid baby with the oversized teeth. Mattathias says I get to choose which one to keep alive in order to force Mr. Poe to give us the fortune, and which one I get to rip to shreds."

  "Good," Klaus said, trying to sound fierce and villainous. "I'm so tired of chasing those kids around."

  "Me, too," Esmé said, and the enormous assistant nodded in agreement. "But I'm sure this will be the last time. Once we've destroyed the file, nobody can accuse us of any crimes, and once we murder the orphans, the fortune will be ours."

  The villainous woman paused and looked around her to make sure no one was listening, and then, satisfied that no one could hear her, she laughed wildly in triumph. The enormous assistant laughed, too, an odd laugh that sounded like a squeal and a howl at the same time, and the two Baudelaire youngsters tilted back their masked faces and made noises as if they were laughing, too, although their laughter was as spurious as their disguises. Klaus and Sunny felt more like being sick than laughing as they pretended to be as greedy and evil as Count Olaf and his troupe. It had never occurred to the children how these terrible people acted when they didn't have to pretend to be nice, and the two siblings were horrified to hear all the bloodthirsty things Esmé had said. Watching Esmé and the enormous assistant laugh together made the butterflies in the Baudelaire stomachs flutter all the more, and the youngsters were relieved when Esmé finally stopped laughing, and ushered the children into the Surgical Ward.

  "I'll leave you ladies in the hands of our associates," she said, and the Baudelaires immediately saw with horror what she meant. Esmé shut the door behind them, and the children found themselves facing two more of Count Olaf's wicked associates.

  "Well, hello there," the first one said in a sinister voice, pointing at the two children with an odd-looking hand. One of the fingers was curved at an odd angle while the others hung limp, like socks hung out to dry, and Klaus and Sunny could see at once that this was the associate of Olaf who had hooks instead of hands, wearing rubber gloves to hide his unusual and dangerous appendages. Behind him was a man whose hands were not as familiar, but Klaus and Sunny recognized him just as easily, due to the hideous wig he was wearing on his head. The wig was so limp, white, and curly that it looked like a heap of dead worms, which is not the sort of wig one forgets. The children had certainly not forgotten it from when they had been living in Paltryville, and realized at once that this person was the bald man with the long nose who had been assisting Count Olaf since the Baudelaires' troubles began. The hook-handed man and the bald man with the long nose were among the nastiest members of Olaf's troupe, but unlike the majority of nasty people of this earth, they were also quite clever, and the two young siblings felt the butterfly feeling in their stomachs increase exponentially--a phrase which here means "get much, much worse"--as they waited to see if these two associates were clever enough to see through the children's
disguises.

  "I can see through your disguise," the hook-handed man continued, and placed one of his spurious hands on Klaus's shoulder.

  "Me, too," the bald man said, "but I don't think anyone else will. I don't know how you ladies managed to do it, but you look much shorter in those white coats."

  "And your faces don't look as pale in those surgical masks," the hook-handed man agreed. "These are the best disguises Olaf--I mean Mattathias--has ever cooked up."

  "We don't have time for all this talking," Klaus said, hoping that the associates wouldn't recognize his voice, either. "We've got to get to Room 922 right away."

  "You're right, of course," the hook-handed man said. "Follow us."

  The two associates began walking down the hallway of the Surgical Ward as Klaus and Sunny looked at one another in relief.

  "Gwit," Sunny murmured, which meant "They didn't recognize us either."

  "I know," Klaus replied in a whisper. "They think we're the two powder-faced women, disguised as associates of Dr. Flacutono, instead of two children disguised as the two powder-faced women disguised as associates of Dr. Flacutono."

  "Stop all that whispering about disguises," the bald man said. "If anyone hears you, it'll be the end of us."

  "Instead of the end of Laura V. Bleediotie," the hook-handed man said with a sneer. "I've been waiting to get hooks on her since she escaped from marrying Mattathias."

  "Trapped," Sunny said, sneering as best she could.

  "Trapped is right," the bald man said. "I already gave her the anesthetic, so she's unconscious. All we have to do is lead her to the operating theater, and you can saw her head off."

  "I still don't understand why we have to murder her in front of all those doctors," the hook-handed man said.

  "So it can look like an accident, you idiot," the bald man snarled in reply.