The Hostile Hospital

Chapter Three

We are Volunteers Fighting Disease, And we're cheerful all day long. If someone said that we were sad, That person would be wrong. We visit people who are sick, And try to make them smile, Even if their noses bleed, Or if they cough up bile. Tra la la, Fiddle dee dee, Hope you get well soon. Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon. We visit people who are ill, And try to make them laugh, Even when the doctor says He must saw them in half. 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. Tra la la, Fiddle dee dee, Hope you get well soon. Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon. 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. Tra la la, Fiddle dee dee, Hope you get well soon. Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, Have a heart-shaped balloon.

An associate of mine named William Congreve once wrote a very sad play that begins with the line "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast," a sentence which here means that if you are nervous or upset, you might listen to some music to calm you down or cheer you up. For instance, as I crouch here behind the altar of the Cathedral of the Alleged Virgin, a friend of mine is playing a sonata on the pipe organ, to calm me down and so the sounds of my typewriter will not be heard by the worshipers sitting in the pews. The mournful melody of the sonata reminds me of a tune my father used to sing when he did the dishes, and as I listen to it I can temporarily forget six or seven of my troubles.

But the soothing effect of music on a savage breast obviously depends on what kind of music is being played, and I'm sorry to say that as the Baudelaire orphans listened to the song of V.F.D., they did not feel even one bit less nervous or upset. When Violet, Klaus, and Sunny first boarded the V.F.D. van, they were so worried about avoiding capture that they scarcely took a look around them until they were quite far away from the Last Chance General Store. But when the shopkeeper was merely a speck on the flat and empty landscape, the children turned their attention to their new hiding place. There were about twenty people in the van, and every single one of them was exceedingly cheerful. There were cheerful men, cheerful women, a handful of cheerful children, and a very cheerful driver who occasionally took his eyes off the road to grin cheerfully at all his passengers. When the Baudelaires took a long trip in an automobile, they liked to pass the time reading or looking at the scenery and thinking their own private thoughts, but as soon as the van pulled away from the general store, the bearded man began playing his guitar and led all of the Volunteers Fighting Disease in a cheerful song, and each "tra la la" only made the Baudelaires more anxious than before. When the volunteers began to sing the verse about people's noses bleeding, the siblings were sure someone would stop singing and say, "Wait a minute! These three children weren't on the van before! They don't belong here!" When the singers reached the verse about the doctor sawing someone in half, the children were certain someone would stop singing and say, "Wait a minute! Those three people don't know the lyrics to the song! They don't belong here!" And when the cheerful passengers sung the section of the song discussing deadly germs, the siblings were unequivocally positive that someone would stop singing and say, "Wait a minute! Those three children are the murderers described in The Daily Punctilio! They don't belong here!"

But the Volunteers Fighting Disease were too cheerful to wait a minute. They believed so strongly that no news is good news that none of them had even glanced at The Daily Punctilio. And they were too busy singing to notice that the Baudelaires didn't belong on the van.

"Boy, do I love that song!" the bearded man said, when the last chorus had ended. "I could sing it all the way to Heimlich Hospital. But I guess we'd better save our voices for the day's work. So why don't we settle down and have cheerful conversations until we arrive?"

"That sounds super-duper!" said one of the volunteers, and everyone nodded in agreement. The bearded man put away his guitar and sat down next to the Baudelaires.

"We'd better make up false names," Violet whispered to Klaus, "so no one will learn who we are."

"But The Daily Punctilio got our names wrong," Klaus whispered back, "so maybe we should use our real names."

"Well, let's get to know each other," the bearded man said cheerfully. "I like to get to know each and every one of our volunteers."

"Well, my name is Sally," Violet began, "and-"

"No, no," the bearded man said. "We don't use names in V.F.D. We just call everybody 'sister' and 'brother,' because we believe all people are sisters and brothers."

"I'm confused," Klaus said. "I always thought that brothers and sisters are people who share the same parents."

"Not always, brother," the bearded man said. "Sometimes brothers and sisters are just people who are united for a common cause."

"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 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."