The Hostile Hospital

'Does that mean, brother,' Violet said, trying this new use of the word 'brother' and not liking it much, 'that you don't know the names of anyone in this van?'

'That's right, sister,' the bearded man said 'And so you've never known the name of anyone who's been a Volunteer Fighting Disease?' Klaus asked.

'Not a single one,' the bearded man said. 'Why do you ask?'

'There's a person we know,' Violet said carefully, 'who we think might have been in V.F.D. He had one eyebrow instead of two, and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle.'

The bearded man frowned. 'I don't know anyone of that description,' he said, 'and I've been with the Volunteers Fighting Disease since the organization first started.'

'Rats!' Sunny said.

'What my sister means,' Klaus said, 'is that we're disappointed. We were hoping to learn more about this person.'

'Are you sure he was in Volunteers Fighting Disease?' the bearded man asked.

'No,' Klaus admitted. 'We just know he worked in the volunteer something.'

'Well, there are lots of volunteer somethings,' the bearded man replied. 'What you kids need is some sort of Library of Records.'

'A Library of Records?' Violet said.

'A Library of Records is a place where official information is stored,' the bearded man said. 'In a Library of Records, you could find a list of every single volunteer organization in the world. Or you could look up this person and see if there's a file on him. Perhaps that would tell you where he worked.'

'Or how he knew our parents,' Klaus said, speaking out loud without thinking.

'Your parents?' the bearded man said, looking around the van. 'Are they here, too?'

The Baudelaires looked at one another, wishing that their parents were there on the van, even though it would be awkward to call their father 'brother' and their mother 'sister.' Sometimes it seemed to the children that it had been hundreds and hundreds of years since that terrible day at the beach when Mr. Poe brought them the dreadful news, but just as often it seemed as if it had been only minutes. Violet could picture her father, sitting next to her, perhaps pointing out something interesting he had seen through the window. Klaus could picture his mother, smiling and shaking her head in amusement at the ridiculous lyrics of the V.F.D. song. And Sunny could picture all five Baudelaires, together again, with nobody fleeing from the police, or accused of murder, or trying desperately to solve mysteries, or worst of all, gone forever in a terrible fire. But just because you can picture something does not make it so. The Baudelaire parents were not in the van, and the children looked at the bearded man and shook their heads sadly.

'My, you look glum,' the bearded man said. 'Well, don't worry. I'm sure wherever your parents are, they're having a good time, so let's not see any frowny faces. Being cheerful is the whole point of Volunteers Fighting Disease.'

'What exactly will we be doing at the hospital?' Violet asked, eager to change the subject.

'Just what V.F.D. says,' the bearded man replied. 'We're volunteers, and we'll be fighting diseases.'

'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