The Children's Hospital

by Chris Adrian

  “Nothing,” Jemma said. “I think I wanted to be surprised.”

  “Fuck that,” Vivian said. “DR surprises are bad news. Will you open your eyes or do I have to pry open your lids?” Jemma looked, just one eye at first, but wept from both of them as soon as she saw the image. It was just a mess of static, and yet it managed to contain in it, ghosts among the snow, the faces of everyone she ever loved.

  I see him, too. Oh yes, hello little thing. It wasn’t really so long ago when there seemed to me no greater disaster than a baby in the womb, a seed of corruption and an innocent who would be abused even by the very air of his first breath. Go back! Undivide, and involute, and shrink back to safety. How I puzzled over the means of it. Now I am proud, and wish I had an ear to put on Jemma’s belly, because that is what you are supposed to do, immortal ears of the spirit seeming invasive to me now. Still, I listen, and speak. Hello, little one. Let me be the one to tell you it is finally good news again, to be born.

  You stir, and turn your face to me, though your eyes are too young to open. Go away, you say. Leave me alone. I know it isn’t time yet to wake up.

  Jemma was sure that anybody would have been better at this than she was. Ishmael would have brought a sense of friendly anonymous majesty to the job. Dr. Snood, for all his prim snide fussbudgetry, would have been their best approximation of a statesman. Dr. Sundae was grim and wrathful and dull, but Jemma had no doubt she would have proved an expert wielder of authority—without any office at all she still inserted herself into Council meetings and ordered people around, and was lobbying hard for the position of chief magistrate. Vivian would have had the whole place performing complex musical numbers, or water ballet. It was easy to imagine her lifted on a ninety-foot-high plume of water while below her shirtless constituents sang her name and formulated rhyming theses of causation, regret, and redemption. Even Monserrat, a tamale in one hand and a hammer in the other, would have led them all, somehow.

  But me, Jemma thought, I just sit here. That was what she was doing at the moment, just sitting there at the head of a Council meeting. They were in the same room as always, but they had brought in a new set of tables after the election, a small one with room for four where Jemma sat with Ishmael, Monserrat, and Vivian, and a large C-shaped one, where across from them Dr. Tiller, the Secretary, and the other eleven members of the Council sat. Jemma tried not to stare out the huge windows. There was a school of flying fish that seemed to be trying to attract her attention.

  They were talking about how to use the ER space. The discussion was heated, but Jemma had found that their discussions were always heated. These were the sort of people that could argue passionately about the contents of the salad bar.

  “I think it would make things feel more normal,” Monserrat was saying, “if people could go to the market again. Imagine it: waking up on a Saturday to go buy fresh carrots and parsley and rutabagas for your family.”

  “It could be a new social center,” Dr. Snood said. “Someplace for people just to run into one another, and discuss things. A place for serendipitous conversations—great things can come of those.”

  “I understand the virtues of raw vegetables,” Dr. Tiller said. “But it seems to me that it would all just be for show. People will return to their rooms with bags of groceries and then toss them out the window. Who’s cooking here? Who has money to pay for these things? Will we print our own money with which to buy our unnecessary staples?”

  “We should think twice,” said Dr. Sundae, from the audience, “before filthifying ourselves with lucre.”

  “The vegetables will be for free,” Monserrat said. “It will be like a paradise. You come up to my carrot cart, you ask, you receive.”

  “Does anyone else see a big wedge of classroom space filling up with cabbages?” Vivian asked.

  “Or a bar,” said Ishmael. Drs. Sundae and Tiller hissed at him. “A coffee bar,” he said.

  “Nothing wrong with a real bar,” said Frank, and Connie seconded her husband vigorously.

  “Why not make it what it already is,” said Karen. “A place where people can come to meet, and kiss, if they want. But not in secret, or not necessarily in secret.”

  “A sex club?” Vivian asked.

  “Nothing so crude,” Karen said. “A kissing marketplace. Just a place to go kiss. A kissy place.”

  “Just call it a sex club,” said Vivian.

  I should veto something, Jemma thought to herself, but the discussion had not degraded or escalated sufficiently to really require her intervention. Not much did require her intervention, and she had not forced any ideas of her own through their pseudo-legislative process since their very first session, when she had struck a blow against the surgeons which, while she didn’t regret it, did not make her as proud or happy as it had. She watched the fish for a few moments. On that day the hospital had rotated so the Council room was in the stern. The fish were playing in the wake, and seemed to be competing in a contest to jump the whole wide thing. She laughed when two of them, jumping from opposite sides, knocked into each other. Then she noticed it was quiet, and that everyone was looking at her.

  “Let’s leave the sex club in some undiscovered basement,” she said. “You all seem to be asking the same thing, though. Do we have enough space for people to hang out and feel normal in? Maybe the answer is that we can’t ever have enough space like that.” She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “I’m a fake,” she’d told Rob, and “This was an accident,” and “I wasn’t actually elected,” and “What were they thinking?”

  “Socializing is fine,” said Jordan Sasscock, “but don’t we want something fun? What about a playground? What about rides? I bet we could build them.”

  “We can build anything we want,” said Dr. Snood.

  “Will we really turn this hospital into a theme park?” asked Dr. Tiller, shaking her head.

  “Is it enough space for a bowling alley?” asked Dr. Sasscock. I should have just said no, Jemma thought. “Can’t I just say no?” she had asked, at first, of everybody. “If you want to be a fool,” Vivian said. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said John Grampus. “It could probably be arranged,” said Dr. Snood. “If you want to hurt the whole world’s feelings,” Rob said.

  “But I don’t know where we’re going,” she’d said to Rob. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.” He only shrugged at her, and smiled. No one knew where they were going; that wasn’t exactly what she’d meant. She did not know where she would take them, or could take them. It would have been better for them to get Vivian, or Dr. Snood, or her brother. She watched the fish at play and tried again to envision a future for them all. She could see herself making a speech, not a very exciting one, and getting shot, or watching Ethel Puffer’s puppet show from a deluxe box, and getting shot, or just walking along and minding her own business, and getting shot. She tried harder, but it was not a task amenable to effort. “Madame Friend?” said Dr. Snood. “What say you?” They were soliciting her opinion on the final resolution, but she hadn’t heard a thing they’d said for the past few minutes.

  So let it be written, she wanted to say. So let it be done. But instead she said, “All right, yes,” trying to sound committed to their decision, and hoping they hadn’t decided on the sex club.

  * * *

  Even though she was the leader of the whole world, Jemma still had to teach her class. But in the past weeks she’d come to define the word “teach” with increasing elasticity. At first she decided it was okay if they didn’t actually learn how to fix people, as long as they kept trying. And then she decided it was okay as long as they were learning something, and so they clogged and crafted and wrote poems, though they complained that they were already writing poems, the younger children in a class devoted strictly to writing, the older ones in a rather free-wheeling expressivity seminar taught by Father Jane. And then she decided they just really needed to all be together during time assigned to her class, because who knew wh
en they might have a breakthrough—one child might suddenly seize, the next seize in sympathy, and a third erupt in green fire and repair them both. So they rode poles down the ramp all in a line, or chased after the fish at the windows, or filled baskets in the cafeteria and brought them to the roof for a picnic.

  They had one after the Council meeting was done. Jemma plucked leaping fruit from out of the salad-bar fog while the kids filled their own baskets. The menu was never planned; individuals grabbed what was interesting to them and presented it to the group. She led them in single file up the stairs—she insisted on taking the stairs, though she always ended up carrying Kidney, and Josh Swift always ended up carrying Valium. They all liked to throw open the door from the dim, cool stairwell out to the bright warm roof, and pass through, though there was something to be said, too, for taking the elevator, and seeing it open onto a vista of green grass and blue sea.

  She spread out their big blanket on a corner of the field and settled them down. “What have we got?” she asked, when they were all seated in a circle, each with a basket in their lap. She started, putting out the fruit, apples and pears and pomegranates and peaches and kiwis and starfruit and one coconut, which she rolled to Pickie Beecher. He had brought cookies, not red raw meat like the last time, which he brought not to eat himself, but for others to consume while he watched. No one would do it, though Jarvis sniffed at a piece, and Kidney touched her tongue to another. Kidney and her brothers all brought cookies, too. Cindy Flemm had an assortment of puddings. Ethel brought out a cake puzzle—it came apart into fourteen jigsaw shapes. Jarvis had soda in wax bottles: you could tear of the tops with your teeth, and chew the bottle as an after-dinner distraction. Juan Fraggle had candy vegetables, not just corn but squash and broccoli and eggplant and peppers. Magnolia brought crème brûlée: she had thirteen palm-sized dishes in front of her in the grass and was patiently scorching them with a little propane torch while the others put out their food. Marcus Guzman brought jelly beans. Josh Swift lifted a glistening pork loin out of his basket and set it down in the grass.

  “Real pork or candy pork?” Jemma asked.

  “What does it look like?”

  “I can’t eat that,” Pickie said.

  “Me neither,” said Ethel. “I think it just moved.”

  “I thought we all agreed to bring real food this time,” Jemma said.

  “Look! It twitched!”

  “That’s ’cause it likes you,” Valium said.

  “It smells like feet,” said Kidney.

  “Is it done?” asked Magnolia. “Do you want me to cook it some more?” She waved her torch at him.

  “I can smell the blood,” Pickie said sadly.

  “Why’s everyone making fun of me?” Josh asked. “I did what we were supposed to. I did the homework, damn it. I’m the only one who brought something real.”

  “It’s fine,” Jemma said. They all continued to make fun of the meat, but it proved to be the most popular item. At the end of the picnic, Josh was the only one with nothing left, though Jemma had none of the pork, and Pickie only touched a piece of candy corn against it, and savored that. “Whose turn is it?” Jemma asked, after everyone had heaped their plates. She had discovered the lame trick of obliging her students to make presentations. It was a good way to pass the time, and provided many opportunities for her to nod at them. They were supposed to research a disease of the old world. They rarely picked the entities that had afflicted them, but sought out illnesses with more gruesome manifestations.

  “Pickie,” said Ethel.

  “I spoke yesterday,” he said.

  “Liar,” said Jarvis. “You were supposed to go yesterday.”

  “Every week seems the same to me. Every picnic and every sunny day. They happen over and over. Sometimes I speak and sometimes I don’t. How am I supposed to remember?”

  “Just do your job, little dude,” said Josh.

  “It is your turn,” Jemma said. “It wasn’t because I didn’t know that I was asking.”

  Pickie sighed. “Very well. You have probably all heard about Dreadful Hoof Dismay.”

  “It’s supposed to be a real disease, Pickie,” Jemma said. Pickie just stared at her. “One that people get. That sounds like a veterinary condition.”

  “Yes, veterinarians are particularly vulnerable. But they don’t get it from the animals.”

  “People don’t have hoofs,” said States’-Rights.

  “Not until. First you get the hooves, then you get the dismay. You are compelled to pull out all of your own hair, and then you lose all your friends. Then your own poop begins to follow you around, and to call you the most terrible names. Then you get very, very lonely. Then comes the rash.”

  “The worst part, huh?” asked Cindy Flemm.

  “Oh no. That would be the dismay.”

  “Is it fatal?” asked Juan Fraggle.

  “Of course. Though digging out the eyeballs with a spoon was considered palliative treatment.”

  “A real disease, Pickie,” Jemma said. “Come on. Start over.”

  “Every disease is equally real and unreal, now,” he said. He filled his mouth with candy corn, and would not talk anymore, but Ethel raised her hand and offered to speak on an illness she had been researching.

  “Atrocious Pancreas Oh!” she said. “In 1679 there was an epidemic that wiped out a third of the population of Cairo.” Jemma sighed and lay down in the grass while the kids talked of Crispy Lung Surprise and Chronic Kidney Doom. When she turned on her side and rested her head on her outstretched arm she saw that while she had been eating Rob had assembled his junior tumbling class behind her for practice on the grass. They had improved considerably over the weeks. They cartwheeled up and down the field, every toe nicely pointed, and did round-off drills in perfect formation. Half of them could do back handsprings, and three or four were doing back-flips. Rob walked among them, shouting or running after the ones who approached the edge of the roof, demonstrating form for them, and grabbing at the flying legs of an airborne pupil, to push them and help them rotate faster, and make the flip. Her own class got pulled into the fun, one by one they got sucked away from the circle, starting with Pickie, who abandoned the game he had started to somersault, slow and intrepid toward Rob—it took him forever to strike, but Rob never saw him coming. When Jarvis heard them all laughing he rose and traveled by back handspring to the other side of the field. Soon it was just Ethel and Kidney, trading descriptions of imaginary illnesses over Jemma’s prone body and eating pomegranate seeds.

  “Class dismissed,” Jemma said belatedly, when they finally grew quiet, but they only lay down next to her, Kidney curling at her feet and Ethel laying her bald, black head on Jemma’s leg.

  “Nap time,” said Ethel. She didn’t close her eyes, though. She watched the tumbling children, calling out every once in a while to no one in particular, “Don’t break your neck!” Jemma stretched her arm out farther, and stretched her whole body, then shifted her head so her cheek lay against the grass. She closed her eyes.

  There was a hospital floating in her mind as surely as there was one floating out in the world. The hospital in her head was shaped the same as the one in the world, and inhabited by the same people, and sometimes they happened to float almost in the same place, so her image of the hospital was superimposed upon its subject. Then she thought she knew everything that was happening inside, what everyone was doing, even how everyone was feeling. She could hear the humming and clicking of the great toy in the lobby, and the unexhausted wonder of a child standing here or there around it, trying to comprehend how all its gears and spokes and pistons fit together, and which part was the prime mover that drove all the others. She sensed or imagined a pair of lovers in the emergency room, and suddenly a half-dozen bright spots of hanky-panky flashed among the other floors. Someone was contentedly polishing the new wooden floors in the old surgery suites, putting the finishing touches on the conversion she’d ordered. A math decathlon was finishing in
the playroom—old accomplished geeks cheering on fresh incipient geeks from wooden bleachers constructed just for the event. A floor above, in the old NICU, it was naptime, and the crèche mothers were circulating among their sleeping charges, a few of them still considering how strange it was not to have suctioned a single baby all day, or all week, or all month.

  Upstairs in the old PICU, all the sick rooms had become classrooms. A half-dozen kids sat in each one, together with one or two teachers—Jemma didn’t care to know what they were talking about. It looked a little boring, judging from how many children were staring out the window at the rippling wake of the hospital. A daydreaming child was accosted by a teacher—he asked what she was looking at out there that was so interesting. The child said she was keeping watch for land. Up another floor, in the old medical ward, it was toddler teatime at the nurses’ station. On the seventh floor the long halls were occupied by a pinewood derby track—Vivian had successfully argued against the continuation of old-world organizations like the Boy Scouts, but some of their institutions and traditions could not be squelched: hats and badges and uniforms were forbidden, but the pinewood racers must roll, and though Vivian herself burned a few of the little brown fascist jumpers, a secret cookie society proliferated. In the old heme-onc ward three of the negative pressure rooms had been consolidated into a dancing salon. They were large rooms to begin with—three of them together made a huge space. Five girls and two boys stretched at the bar, rehearsing already for a show their teachers had composed and choreographed for them. They moved with a practiced harmony that was made more striking and lovely by the sparkling light thrown up on them from the water—everybody’s students were doing better than Jemma’s.