The Hostile Hospital

Sunny entered the finished half of Heimlich Hospital, their feet moving less and less emphatically and their hearts beating faster and faster, they heard something that soothed their savage breasts:

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

There, coming around the corner, were the Volunteers Fighting Disease, walking down the hall singing their cheerful song and carrying enormous bunches of heart-shaped balloons. Klaus and Sunny looked at one another, and ran to catch up with the group. What better place to hide than among people who believed that no news was good news, and so didn't read the newspaper?

'We visit people who are sick, And try to make them smile, Even if their noses bleed, Or if they cough up bile.'

To the children's relief, the volunteers paid no attention as Klaus and Sunny infiltrated the group, a phrase which here means 'sneaked into the middle of a singing crowd.' An especially cheerful singer seemed to be the only one who noticed, and she immediately handed a balloon to each newcomer. Klaus and Sunny held the balloons in front of their faces, so that anybody passing by would see two volunteers with shiny, helium-filled hearts, instead of two accused criminals hiding in V.F.D.

'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,