The Hostile Hospital (A Series of Unfortunate Events 8)

"I hope we won't be giving shots," Klaus said. "Needles make me a bit nervous."

"Of course we won't be giving shots," the bearded man said. "We only do cheerful things. Mostly we wander the halls singing to sick people, and giving them heart-shaped balloons, like the song says."

"But how does that fight disease?" Violet said.

"Because getting a cheerful balloon helps people picture getting better, and if you picture something, it makes it so," the bearded man explained. "After all, a cheerful attitude is the most effective tool against sickness."

"I thought antibiotics were," Klaus said.

"Echinacea!" Sunny said. She meant "Or well-tested herbal remedies," but the bearded man had stopped paying attention to the children and was looking out the window.

"We've arrived, volunteers!" he called out. "We're at Heimlich Hospital!" He turned to the Baudelaires and pointed out at the horizon. "Isn't it a beautiful building?"

The children looked out the windows of the van and found that they could only half agree with the bearded man, for the simple reason that Heimlich Hospital was only half a building, or at best two-thirds. The left side of the hospital was a shiny white structure, with a row of tall pillars and small carved portraits of famous doctors over each window. In front of the building was a neatly mowed lawn, with occasional patches of brightly colored wildflowers. But the right side of the hospital was scarcely a structure at all, let alone a beautiful one. There were a few boards nailed together into rectangles, and a few planks nailed down for floors, but there were no walls or windows, so it looked like a drawing of a hospital rather than a hospital itself. There was no sign of any pillars and not even one carved doctor portrait on this half-finished side, just a few sheets of plastic fluttering in the wind, and instead of a lawn there was just an empty field of dirt. It was as if the architect in charge of constructing the building had decided halfway through that he'd rather go on a picnic, and had never returned. The driver parked the van underneath a sign that was half finished, too: the word "Heimlich" was in fancy gold letters on a clean white square of wood, but the word "Hospital" was scrawled in ballpoint pen on a piece of cardboard ripped from an old box.

"I'm sure they'll finish it someday," the bearded man continued. "But in the meantime, we can picture the other half, and picturing something makes it so. Now, let's picture ourselves getting out of the van."

The three Baudelaires did not have to picture it, but they followed the bearded man and the rest of the volunteers out of the van and onto the lawn in front of the prettier half of the hospital. The members of V.F.D. were stretching their arms and legs after the long drive, and helping the bearded man remove a big bunch of heart-shaped balloons from the back of the van, but the children merely stood around anxiously and tried to figure out what to do next.

"Where should we go?" Violet asked. "If we walk around the hallways of the hospital singing to people, someone will recognize us."

"That's true," Klaus said. "The doctors, nurses, administrators, and patients can't all believe that no news is good news. I'm sure some of them have read this morning's Daily Punctilio."

"Aronec," Sunny said, which meant "And we're not getting any closer to learning anything about V.F.D., or Jacques Snicket."

"That's true," Violet agreed. "Maybe we need to find a Library of Records, like the bearded man said."

"But where can we find one?" Klaus asked. "We're in the middle of nowhere."

"No walk!" Sunny said. "I don't want to start all that walking again either," Violet said, "but I don't see what else we can do."

"O.K., volunteers!" the bearded man said. He took his guitar out of the van and began playing some cheerful and familiar chords. "Everyone take a heart-shaped balloon and start singing!

"We are Volunteers Fighting Disease, And we 're cheerful all day long, If someone said that we were sad, That person would be--"

"Attention!" interrupted a voice that seemed to come from the sky. The voice was female but very scratchy and faint, as if the voice were that of a woman talking with a piece of aluminum foil over her mouth. "Your attention please!"

"Shh, everybody!" the bearded man said, stopping the song. "That's Babs, the Head of Human Resources at the hospital. She must have an important announcement."

"Attention!" the voice said. "This is Babs Head of Human Resources. I have an important announcement."

"Where is she?" Klaus asked him, worried that she might recognize the three accused murderers hiding in V.F.D.

"In the hospital someplace," the bearded man replied. "She prefers communicating over the intercom."

The word "intercom" here refers to someone talking into a microphone someplace and having their voice come out of speakers someplace else, and sure enough the children noticed a small row of square speakers placed on the finished half of the building, just above the doctor portraits. "Attention!" the voice said again, and it became even scratchier and fainter, as if the woman with the piece of aluminum foil over her mouth had fallen into a swimming pool filled with fizzy soda. This is not a pleasant way to hear someone talk, and yet as soon as Babs made her announcement, the savage breasts of the Baudelaire orphans were instantly soothed, as if the scratchy and faint voice were a calming piece of music. But the Baudelaires did not feel better because of the way Babs's voice sounded. The announcement soothed the children's savage breasts because of what it said.

"I need three members of the Volunteers Fighting Disease who are willing to be given a new assignment," said the voice. "Those three volunteers should report immediately to my office, which is the seventeenth door on the left as you enter the finished half of the building. Instead of walking around the hallways of the hospital singing to people, these three volunteers will be working in the Library of Records here at Heimlich Hospital."

Chapter Four

Whether you have been sent to see the principal of your school for throwing wet paper towels at the ceiling to see if they stick, or taken to the dentist to plead with him to hollow out one of your teeth so you can smuggle a single page of your latest book past the guards at the airport, it is never a pleasant feeling to stand outside the door of an office, and as the Baudelaire orphans stood at the door reading "Office of the Head of Human Resources" they were reminded of all the unpleasant offices they had recently visited On their very first day at Prufrock Preparatory School, before they had even met Isadora and Duncan Quagmire, the Baudelaires had visited the office of Vice Principal Nero and learned about all of the academy's strict and unfair rules. When they worked at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, the siblings had been summoned to the office of the owner, who made clear just how dreadful their situation really was. And, of course, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny had been many, many times to Mr. Poe's office at the bank, where he coughed and talked on the phone and made decisions about the Baudelaires' future that had not proved to be good ones. But even if the children had not had all these unfortunate experiences in offices, it was perfectly understandable that the Baudelaire children had to stand for a few moments in front of the seventeenth door on the left, and gather their courage to knock.

"I'm not sure we should take this risk," Violet said. "If Babs has read this morning's edition of The Daily Punctilio, she'll recognize us soon as we walk through the door. We might well be knocking on the door of our jail cell."

"But the Library of Records might be our only hope," Klaus said. "We need to find out who Jacques Snicket really was--where he worked, and how he knew us. If we get some evidence, we can convince people that Count Olaf is still alive and that we're not murderers."

"Curoy," Sunny added, which meant "Besides, the Quagmire triplets are far, far away, and we have only a few pages of their notebooks. We need to find the real meaning of V.F.D."

"Sunny's right," Klaus said. "In the Library of Records, we might even solve the mystery of that underground passageway that led from Jerome and Esmé Squalor's apartment to the ashy remains of the Baudelaire mansion."

"Afficu," Sunny said. She meant something like "And the only way we'll get into the Library of Records is if we talk to Babs, so it's a risk we have to take."

"All right," Violet said, looking down at her sister and smiling. "You've convinced me. But if Babs begins looking at us suspiciously, we'll leave, agreed?"

"Agreed," Klaus said.

"Yep," Sunny said, and knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" Babs's voice called out.

"It's three members of Volunteers Fighting Disease," Violet replied. "We're here to volunteer at the Library of Records."