'Wake up, Jerry. We have to get help.'
The door opened. The light was turned on. Three Greek cops and the proprietor were watching from the doorway. The cops pointed to the boys and said something in excited Greek. They backed out of the room stuffing handkerchiefs in front of their faces. Leaving once cop at the door, they called an ambulance.
Audrey vaguely remembered being lifted onto a stretcher by masked figures. As he was carried down the stairs, he saw words in front of his eyes: a lattice of black words on white paper shifting and rotating. He could make out the first sentence:
'The name is Clem Snide. I am a private asshole.'
The nurse stood by his bed with a thermometer. She put it in his mouth and left the room. She came back with a breakfast tray. She drew out the thermometer and looked at it. 'Well, almost down to normal now.'
Audrey sat up in bed, drank the orange juice greedily, ate a boiled egg and a piece of toast and was drinking his coffee when Doctor Dimitri came in. The face looked familiar and seemed to stir and concentrate the vague shapes of the dream. Of course, Audrey thought. I've been delirious and he was the doctor.
'Well, I see you're a lot better. You should be out of here in a few days now.'
'How long have I been here?'
'Ten days. You've been very sick.'
'What was it?'
'Don't know exactly ... a virus ... new ones keep turning up. We thought at first it was scarlet fever but when there was no reaction to antibiotics, we shifted to purely symptomatic treatment. I don't mind telling you it was a close thing ... temperatures up to a hundred and six ... your two friends are here ... exactly the same syndrome.'
'And I've been delirious all this time?'
'Completely. Do you remember any of it?'
'Last thing I remember is being carried out of the hostel.'
'The remarkable thing is that you, Jerry, and John all seemed to be in the same delirium. I've made a few notes....' He flipped open a small loose-leaf notebook. 'Does this mean anything to you? Tamaghis ... Ba'dan ... Yass-Waddah ... Waghdas ... Naufana ... or Ghadis?'
'No.'
'Cities of the Red Night?'
Audrey glimpsed a red sky and mud walls .... 'Just a flash.'
'And now, there is the matter of my fee.'
'My father will pay you.'
'He has already agreed to do so but he has refused to pay the hospital costs—pleading his income tax. This is awkward. However, if you will sign an agreement to pay ... your father suggests that you apply to the American Embassy for repatriation....'
*
The boys are at the reception desk of the hospital, signing papers. Doctor Dimitri stands there in a dark suit.
Audrey looks around: something very strange about this hospital ... for one thing, no one seems to be wearing white uniforms. Perhaps, he thinks egocentrically, they are all waiting for us to go home so they can leave—but then another shift would be coming on. In fact, he decides, this doesn't look like a hospital at all ... more like the American Embassy.
A cab pulls up under
