Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital

“Would you like some tea?” Helena asked.

“I should keep looking,” Jemma said.

“Just stay a moment. It’s been a little while.”

“Maybe just a sip,” Jemma said, because Helena Dufresne was one of the few parents in the hospital not mistrustful of her.

“How are you?” she asked, when they’d sat down on a round bench under a window. “Are they still mistreating you down there?”

Jemma shrugged. “Worried,” she said.

“After you find your little friend you ought to come up and stay for a while, or for the duration. What’s down there for you except a bunch of fuckers who think you’re crazy? We can tell the difference up here — we’d treat you right, as long as you didn’t pull any shit, and mind you I don’t believe — none of us believe — half of what they say, the stories that go up and down and up again, out of the Council chamber and into the kitchen, into Tiller’s mouth and our of Snood’s ass. You may not be the Friend anymore but you were Her friend, and we have not forgotten that.”

“Thanks,” Jemma said, not sure what else to say.

“But how are you? You look about ready to pop.”

“The due date’s three weeks away. I guess it could come any day, though.”

“Who’s going to hold your hand? Who’s going to yell at the doctors to give you some space? Who’s going to put their shoe between your teeth, when the pains come?”

“Rob and I have a plan. Not too detailed — that’s bad luck.”

“Well, you just let me know. Just give a call, I’ll come advocating. Like, get the fuck away from her or I’ll smash your face! What’s in that needle, motherfucker! I haven’t forgotten the old days, you know. But why don’t you just stay here? We’ve got Dr. Sundae here now. Doesn’t she know how to bring out a baby?”

“She’s a pathologist. Ms. Fraggle — that’s Juan’s mom. She was a midwife in Bolivia, before. I’ve got her.”

“All the doctors are all the doctors now — you’re all the same. Don’t you get it? When are you going to come? We’re like our own little world up here. It’s not like other places.”

“I know,” Jemma said, though there were all sorts of little worlds scattered through this hospital — Vivian started a trend when she immigrated to the ninth floor. Every day they became a little more distinct, she thought, even as they died off. They sat for a while in silence, Helen smiling at her gently, Jemma trying not to notice the botch seeded in her liver — it was like trying not to notice spinach in the teeth or an open fly, and like ignoring a crying baby or a screaming amputee. Part of her wanted to douse the lady in flame again; part of her wanted to run away. She sat and finished her tea, a special blend that smelled like almonds but tasted like wet sticks. “Well,” she said, when she was done. “I had better keep looking.”

“I haven’t seen him,” said Monserrat. “But then, I have not been looking for him, and when he is there I try not to notice him, no matter how he makes himself obtrusive. He’s not usually a very helpful little boy. You ask him to get a sat or a temperature — both of these are well within his abilities, I know — and he draws you a picture of his brother, or brings you a steak and asks if he can watch you eat it. I’m sure he’s off playing some game.”

“I think something happened to him,” Jemma said. They were on the eighth floor, in Dr. Sashay’s old parlor, one of the few places in the hospital not entirely reconverted for clinical use. It had been the only dirty utility room in the hospital that had a window, small and oval, exactly like the one in Jemma’s room. The cabinets that used to hold hemoccult supplies and dirty potties had been replaced by display cases, full of curios: porcelain dolls and tribal fetishes — recreations from out of a larger collection Dr. Sashay had kept in her lost home. The big square toilet was a fountain now, the porcelain turned to dark stone, two jets of water rising up and down, taking turns being the taller of the pair. Monserrat had been using it as an office since she had delegated herself as an overseer to this floor, part of Dr. Snood’s initiative to make the Council into a more supportive entity for the hospital in crisis. Instead of just legislating from the fifth floor they would reach out to every ward, and be present there all day long. They wouldn’t have it on the ninth floor: Snood was so thoroughly ignored that he just left eventually, but everywhere else there was somebody acting like Monserrat, a liaison and a subtle overseer and a pal. The eighth floor was a place without any real oncologic issues anymore. They were given over to palliating the worst of the worst. People in whom the botch manifested as a particularly hideous affliction, for whom the experimental treatments would only be a torture, came there to experience the new morphine and super fentanyl and ultra-benzos.

“If I ever met a boy who could take care of himself,” Monserrat said, “it’s that one. I wouldn’t worry about him, if I were you. Isn’t there enough of other things, for worrying?”

“I try to just pick one thing and do a good job with it,” Jemma said, though in fact all her other worries had been subsumed by her concern over Pickie.

“That’s one way. I find I cannot do the ignoring. I have to worry about the depression of the nurses and who is getting sleepy now and whether Dr. Snood is being good to us. I know he is trying to be good but sometimes he gets like a proud little penguin and it makes me worry, and I ask myself, Is it time for the coup? I say it to him, Is it time for a coup, Mr. Napoleon? Is it time for me to take you down? I don’t think he believes that I could do it. I talk to Ishmael about it and he curses him but then he only has curses for anyone these days. He is always in a bad mood. It’s wrong, I think. A person should be sad and not angry, here. Sadness is the better thing.”

“He was afraid for a couple days before he disappeared, like he thought somebody was going to hurt him. He said the angel was out to get him, but he’s always been saying that, and the angel wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“She is a tricky lady. I have come to understand that. But she wouldn’t hurt us, oh no. Where would we be without her? All dead, of course. All floating dead, or all at the bottom of the sea. Maybe you should come with me, next time I ask Snood. So he can be reminded of how it comes and goes. How you can be king of the cats and then just another stray dog.”

“We try to stay out of each other’s way,” Jemma said.

“This I can handle,” Monserrat said, indicating the ward outside with her hands. “The low blood pressure and the high blood pressure and the pain — all the pain. I am not a doctor but it’s easy to say, You are doing this wrong, do something different. I don’t say it like that, of course. I say Listen, listen to the moaning. What does it say to you? And then I am there with my own answers when they don’t have answers of their own. Knowing what to do for these poor ones is fine, but knowing what to do for all the poor ones is not. I ask myself, Is there something else we could be doing for us all? Not like Vivian was asking. I mean something more practical but not even that is easy. And we ask ourselves in the Council meetings, Is there something else we could be doing? And I never have an answer and we never have an answer.”

“I’ve seen the broadcasts.”

“It was better when you were there. But those were better times, too. Maybe it wasn’t you that made for it to be good. Maybe it was just to be good, then, like now it is to be bad. What do you think, though? Is there something else we should be doing?”

“Looking for Pickie Beecher,” Jemma said, and stood up to go.