The Children's Hospital

by Chris Adrian

  “She fed them some of Karen’s blood and they died,” Rob said. “But not before they made multinucleated giant cells. I think we should put the ganciclovir back on everybody.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jemma said. Rob jumped up, either ignoring or not noticing Jemma’s bored tone, and ran off down the hall toward the fellows’ call room, recently re-converted from a finger-painting studio. She wasn’t actually bored, though she affected a distinct air of aloofness from the medical proceedings in the PICU: they were doing their thing, she was doing hers, and she was not about to go back to being a kick-me-in-the-ass scut monkey after having wished away all the diseases of the old world. She still hoped that it would just be a matter of time, a matter of understanding, a matter of imagining a cure in the right context, before this one would fall to her.

  She got up and made her usual tour, walking up and down the hall outside the bays that held each victim. She stood a while in front of each one, waving at the nurse behind the doors—Janie in a puffy suit—squinting with her natural eyes to see the patient, their images refracted by the glass doors and plastic isolation tent, while examining them simultaneously in her mind. The weeks passed and she felt more powerful in her gift—she didn’t have to touch a person to know how fast their heart was beating, or how well they were oxygenating their blood, or if they were hungry. It was in her more every day—some nights she felt so nervous and overstuffed with it that she would go up to the roof to hurl green fire at the sky—and yet she could still do nothing for the victims of the botch except scan them and describe their bodily deprivations. The boy, in the middle bay in the victims’ row, slept as soundly as ever, in perfect health as far as she could tell with either her natural or supernatural senses, while Wanda Sullivan, Aloysius Pan, Cotton Chun, Thelma, Karen, and Dolores lay before her in various stages of living decay, and she could not even restore the luster to Karen’s hair, let alone heal any of them.

  She put her head against the glass of the middle bay, where the boy was, and closed her eyes, aware of the brief attention paid to her by his nurse, who turned to look at her just for a moment before going back to her task of adding up his output of pee for the morning. The nurses were used to Jemma’s loitering, and seemed not to mind it very much, though she hadn’t proved herself very useful. She almost tried again, bringing her hands up and pressing her palms flat against the glass, but instead of letting the fire seep through the glass and ride on currents of air into the rooms, reaching a hundred thin fingers under the plastic and over the bed to strike their ailing flesh, she just stood their watching them and listening to them, not sure, when they started talking to each other, if she was imagining it or making it happen.

  Are we going to die? Thelma asked.

  Of course, Dolores said.

  I knew we were in trouble, Wanda Sullivan said, when I smelled Sylvester’s poop. It was the worst ever, worse than any of the CF poops. It was pretty floaty, too. It floated right out of the toilet and hung in the air, and I saw how there was a ridge on it like a mouth that opened and said, Wanda, thou art stricken with the botch.

  Don’t be fucking stupid, said Karen.

  You weren’t there. You didn’t see how black the mouth was inside, like it went on and on forever, that blackness, even though it was rather a small poop, comparatively.

  There are probably worse ways to die, said Cotton Chun. I’m glad I didn’t drown.

  Maybe we still will, said Aloysius.

  Shut the fuck up, said Cotton. I’m so sick of you, man. I’ve been sick of you since the day after I met you.

  What did I ever do to you?

  Cotton, everybody would say, what was wrong with you yesterday? I saw you in the hall and you looked like your dog just died. Are you okay? I was okay, motherfucker. I was always okay, and I always had to explain that it was you they saw, and that we weren’t related, or the same person on a good day or bad day, and that I didn’t have a fucking clue why you never smiled. What’s your problem, anyway? Would it ever have killed you to have smiled once or twice, or to have been nice to someone, just one single time?

  I’m almost happy now.

  I mean, someone asks you for an echo and you act like they want you to gouge out your eyeballs.

  I can almost see it. Can you all see it?

  The land? Thelma said. The new world?

  That’s not for us, Aloysius said. There’s another place, a place not here. It is removed from suffering, though there is no happiness there.

  What part of shut the fuck up do you not understand? asked Cotton.

  There’s nothing out there, Dolores said. Not even a nothing.

  I think I see it! Thelma said.

  I see it too! Wanda said. Oh, I hope Sylvester comes soon. Is that selfish of me?

  Completely, Cotton said.

  All you see is what you want to see, Dolores said. I have learned to want nothing anymore, and expect nothing, and so I see the truth.

  Spoken like a true surgical intern, said Cotton.

  Maybe I don’t see it, Thelma admitted. But I wish I did.

  Just waiting for it is its own sort of pleasure, said Aloysius.

  I see her, though, Thelma said. Looking at us.

  Staring like a freak, Karen said.

  This isn’t the zoo! Cotton shouted.

  Or the television, said Dolores. Stop gloating.

  I’m not, Jemma said.

  Gloating over how useless you are, Karen said. I’m the most useless girl in the world. No one is more useless than me.

  Are you getting ready to not save us again? asked Wanda.

  I could tell the first day I met her, Karen said. Useless. She had that look about her, and the big U on her forehead.

  I told Sylvester it was too good to be true. Some days I could still smell it in him, but I never said. I should have told him, Everything will be the same again. Don’t get used to this.

  Of course it could have stood for ugly, too.

  I’m sick of you, too, said Cotton. Though I’m still more sick of him.

  “I’m down here,” said another voice. Jemma opened her eyes and looked down. Sylvester Sullivan was standing at her hip, holding a bunch of daisies and a bottle of baby oil. “Can I go in yet?” he asked her. “I need to rub her feet.”

  “Welcome,” said Helena Dufresne. “Where are your bags?”

  “I’m just visiting,” Jemma said.

  “That’s what everyone says, at first. I said it, too. We’ll just check it out, I said, because I felt a stirring, during the speech. I’m not used to that. Speeches and sermons and commercials and romance movies—they usually don’t touch me the least bit. But what she said—it was all squirmy in me, and I kept thinking about how people used to put gerbils up their bottoms, because I felt a squirminess that I was sure must be just like that, and I wondered, did people ever really do that, and I wondered, was that the reason, was that the last thing he noticed before he said, That’s it? Can you imagine the poor gerbil? I had a dream about it, of course. I was the gerbil, and I had to get out. I scrabbled with my little claws—everything was dark and warm and smelly and I couldn’t breathe. When I woke up I realized what it all meant. I had to get out of the world, I had to get closer than we were. I made up my mind. I told Tir, We’re going for a tour on the ninth floor. We’re just going to look. But I packed us a bag, just in case.”

  “I’m really just visiting,” Jemma said. She put a hand on her belly. “It’s time for my checkup.”

  “If you say so. Come on with me, I’ll take you to her.” She rose from behind the desk that Thelma had never given up until the botch took her to the PICU. The months had changed the lady: she was a little thinner, and didn’t huff and puff when she walked, and smiled all the time instead of scowling, and cursed more pleasantly if not less frequently, and had adopted a glamorous, sequin-based wardrobe, though today she was wearing the same plain linen dress that all the women on the ninth floor were wearing. “Walk this way!” she said, an
d Jemma considered imitating her bouncy gait. “Tir’s in class with the other kids,” she added, “or I’d take you to say hello. Maybe after your visit?”

  “Okay,” Jemma said. They passed down the pastel halls of the old psych ward, each room was filled with adults sitting quietly on the bare floors, staring up at the ceiling or out the windows; they all seemed to be waiting patiently for something to happen. “What are they doing?” Jemma asked.

  “Listening,” Helena said. “Trying to figure it out. I have a hard time being so calm about it. I sit there and think, Speak! Speak to me! Because it’s like a race, to listen hard enough to know what the worst thing was, and be sorry enough for it, and know what to do next, and save ourselves and everybody, before it’s too late. And it’s almost too late, now. “

  “Heard anything yet?” Jemma asked.

  “I’ll let her tell you.” They circled down the hall into the rehab ward. Jemma peeked in the window to the gym as they walked by and saw a room full of children who looked to be doing a very slow, swaying dance. Helena stopped outside the entry to the old gym. “We’ve got room in our bed,” she said, and winked in a way that struck Jemma as very innocent and strange, then bounced off down the hall.

  Vivian was inside, sitting under the model sun on a little platform that hadn’t been there last time Jemma had visited up here. She was wearing a handsome linen pantsuit, her legs drawn up against her chest, and seemed to be staring at her feet. “I’ve never seen you wear a pantsuit before,” Jemma said.

  “Graduation,” Vivian said. “And med-school interviews.”

  “You said you weren’t going to wear pants at graduation.”

  “I chickened out.”

  “I didn’t,” Jemma said, recalling the curious feeling of the cheap rayon gown against her bare bottom.

  “Sorry,” Vivian said.

  “Well,” Jemma said, “what other lies did you tell me?”

  “Nothing that ever mattered,” Vivian said sadly. “None of them were the worst thing.”

  “I’m here for my checkup,” Jemma said, deliberately not asking what the worst thing was. Vivian lifted her face and gave Jemma a sad, sweeping look.

  “You’re fine,” she said, then lowered her head again.

  “Well, I don’t feel fine,” Jemma said. “My back hurts and my belly hurts.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “Well what about my clumsiness and my numb fingers and my nap attacks?”

  “Normal, too.”

  “The baby is rolling around all the time. I think it’s trying to get out already.”

  “You’re fine.”

  “Don’t you want to check a urine? Don’t you want to take my blood pressure? What if the lie is all weird? What if it’s breech?”

  “It’s fine. You’re fine. Don’t you get it?” She looked up again, and seemed more familiar now—angry Vivian instead of sad, pensive Vivian. “Do you really think something bad could possibly happen to your baby?”

  “Of course something bad could happen. What, you think I’m being a freak because I’m worried? Have you noticed the mystery disease that’s killing everybody?”

  “Not the kids,” Vivian said. “They’ll be fine.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “It sort of… came to me.” She looked down at her feet again and sighed. “You can’t sit here all fucking day and not figure something out. Are you here to move in with us? It’s going pretty well, you know. We could make it, maybe. Just maybe. If you helped it might all go quicker.”

  “I’m here for a checkup. What happened to the days when I used to have to beat you with a stick to keep you from doing Leopolds on me?”

  “You’re fine,” she said again. She made a blessing motion toward Jemma, without looking at her. “All is well.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jemma said, stomping up and sitting down. “How would you like it if I transferred my care to Dr. Killer?”

  “She’ll be dead weeks before you have that baby,” Vivian said simply. “Aloysius would probably be better. At least he can work the sono.”

  “He’s in the PICU.”

  “Well, maybe not him, then. You don’t need anybody, anyway. Do the sono yourself, if you’re that curious to see how totally normal and fine your baby is. Or I could do it, I guess, though it’s totally not necessary, if I could leave here. But I can’t, so you’d have to stay.”

  “No thanks,” Jemma said. “I’ve got other obligations.”

  “Nothing important, though. You’ll see.”

  “I’ll just go do it myself,” Jemma said. “I’ll do it all wrong. I’ll get ultrasound poisoning. I’ll make the baby deaf. What do you care?” Vivian didn’t reply. Jemma sat down. “How are things up here?” she asked, after another few minutes of silence.

  “Well enough. Nobody up here is sick yet. We haven’t got an answer, but we’re listening. I’m listening.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Not much. A little whisper, now and then. You shouldn’t have… why did you… how could you… what were you thinking when you… But I never hear the good part. I have my suspicions, though. You know how you can tell what a street sign says, even if you can’t read the letters in the name? Just from the shape and the context of the letters? It’s like that. I see the shape of it and I almost know what the word is, what the thing is, and then I’ll know.”

  “Then what? What happens after you know, or think you know?”

  “Then we fix it. Then we swear it off. All together—heave! I don’t know. Somehow that doesn’t seem like the hard part, maybe just because it’s not the part that’s right now. It will point to what’s next.”

  “Rob is getting depressed. He used to love the PICU and now it just makes him sad.”

  “I think I should be able to see it pointing, already. I mean it’s already pointing. I should be able to see it.”

  “Snood’s a Friend. Not my friend, mind you. He never shuts up.”

  “Why can’t I see it? It’s so stupid, to know what’s wrong but not know how to describe it, and to know we have to do something but not know what. Every time somebody dies it’s going to be my fault.”

  “It’s going to be my fault,” Jemma said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Well it sure isn’t yours.”

  “Except it is,” Vivian said.

  “You’re crazy,” Jemma said, and then a moment later added, “I miss you.” Vivian took her hand but didn’t look at her.

  “I know,” she said.

  It was the last show, and had the feeling of being a last show even before everybody knew that’s what it was. It was grander and fancier and stupider than anything they’d put on before (the stage they made for the talent show never went more than a few days without hosting a play or a dance recital or reading of deadly boring poetry) and the only show produced with the full energies of the Council, which seemed by this production to come into its own as a mature political entity, or prove anyway that it could be swift and efficient in organizing its populace in an appointed tasks. As swiftly as other governments had tried and executed dissidents, and as efficiently as others had invaded a neighbor, and as gorgeously as others had built monuments to death or war or courage, the Council whipped up a Broadway-caliber production of Hello, Dolly.

  Dr. Sashay took the starring role, surprising everyone when she turned up for auditions and brought Frank, the director, to tears with her rendition of “Don’t Let the Parade Pass Me By.” Maybe it was just that Frank, like everybody else, was rather depressed anyway, and might have been brought to tears by a troupe of dancing poodles—but nobody who heard her voice ringing through the auditorium could deny that she was loud, or emotive, or that she could carry a tune. The other roles filled so quickly and easily that Frank suspected the hand of God was working to round up his cast. “It’s like you were born to play this role,” he said to Anika, and to Dr. Sasscock, and to Dr. Pudding, and each of them confid
ed in the hastily written and printed notes to the show that they had indeed felt their hearts respond to the Council’s call for auditions, and had felt a vocation for their parts when they watched one of the film versions (either the original Streisand or one of the over two-dozen pornographic variations), a correspondence and a rightness, as Dr. Sashay put it, that she hadn’t felt since she first heard the word neuroblastoma, or saw the quivering, firm white mass of the tumor in gross section. Suddenly, she wrote in the program, I knew what I had to do.

  It wasn’t a holiday—the situation on board the hospital was too worrisome to proclaim one—but everybody there was familiar with the concept of respite care, and the Council had learned from the grueling exhaustion of their first few months at sea that caregivers have their needs, too, and that to ignore them was to invite early and perhaps avoidable burnout. So they billed it as a night of hope and respectful celebration of how far they had made it, and how much they appreciated that they could dance and sing and lift their hearts even in the middle of this new ocean, and even with the shadow of death falling over their toes, if not their hearts (Dr. Snood’s words). It was exactly the sort of thing Vivian now abhorred, and she and the ninth-floor squatters were the only people, besides the PICU staff watching over the six victims of the botch, who were not in attendance, either in the square field of chairs in the lobby, or in the risers and chairs set up all along the ramp. Way up on the ninth floor a tiny face appeared at the balcony ledge, now and then, during the show, but never for more than a few minutes.