The Children's Hospital

by Chris Adrian

  Finally! she thought to herself, and whispered it in a quiet voice, careful not to wake her brothers and sisters. She wanted to go and look out the window, and see the sun shining again on big rocks and wide green fields and giraffes and school fences, but she was afraid, too, to finally see it. The bar of sun crept steadily across the floor, and reached and passed the place that marked the time when the nurses came in to do morning vitals, and Kidney knew for sure then that they were all out playing soccer and softball on the new land. She rolled out from under the bed, then rolled again and again until she rested, back against the wall, beneath the window. Then she stood up, and shouted it out loud this time to wake everyone in the room, “Finally!” The nurses in their bright scrubs kicking the ball and doing flips and driving dump trucks full of fresh fragrant soil—she saw the land perfectly in her mind before she saw the water still outside the window.

  “Finally what?” asked Shout, coming awake as he always did without any fuss, sitting up and rolling out of bed and putting his arms around Kidney. She didn’t need to turn around to know that all her brothers and sisters were awake and looking at her.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Horrible sparkles shot out of her eyes, and she made this nasty, urping noise, and her tongue got really long, and it struck at me, like she was a big lizard. Then I had the seizure, the one that she gave me.” Maggie was testifying in front of the Committee. They were arranged behind a curving table: Dr. Snood; Dr. Sundae; Zini, the nurse-manager; Dr. Sasscock; Karen; the three nurses: Betty and Bonnie and Camilla; Frank and Connie; Monserrat, the tamale lady; Arthur, the senior lab tech; John Grampus; and finally Vivian, the only really friendly face that Jemma could identify from where she stood, a few feet behind the witness sofa hand in hand with Pickie Beecher. She and Pickie, the last witnesses, would testify next. Dr. Tiller and the other attendings were seated next to the Committee table, along with Emma and some others from the PICU staff.

  “And you’d not ever had a seizure disorder in the past?” asked Dr. Snood.

  “Certainly not.”

  “What’s this with the tongue, Maggie?” Karen asked. “I don’t remember that from before.”

  “Yes, a big green tongue. A tongue of fire.”

  “No tongue in your statement,” said Vivian. “Are you just now remembering this, or just now making it up?”

  “Am I on trial here?” Maggie asked. “I’m telling you what I remember, okay?”

  “No one is on trial here, Dr. Formosa,” said Dr. Tiller. “We are only trying to sort out some extraordinary stuff.”

  “Did Dr. Claflin say anything to you before she attacked?” asked Dr. Sundae.

  “Attacked?” said Vivian. “Attacked? Has it been established that an attack has occurred? All the evidence seems to indicate that a miraculous healing has taken place. Have we been attacking the children in our care, Dr. Sundae? What gruesome violators we must be.”

  “Look in the mirror, young lady, and tell me you don’t see gruesome spots. They’re on all of us. And if a duck with no history of seizures suddenly develops them in the context of a mystical eruption, then that duck was attacked.”

  “Please,” said Dr. Snood, making a little noise with his gavel. “Dr. Formosa, answer Dr. Sundae’s question.”

  “She said, Now you will taste my power.”

  “Maggie, Maggie, your nose is growing,” said Vivian. Dr. Snood rapped again.

  “Thank you, Dr. Formosa. I think that’s enough.”

  Maggie got off the sofa and walked back into the standing crowd, glaring at Jemma as she walked forward with Pickie to sit down. Jemma found her attention mostly drawn to Pickie’s slippers as he kicked his feet back and forth over the edge of the sofa. A darker purple than his pajamas, they were in the shape of elephants, complete with trunks that curved up from the toes.

  “We just have a few questions for you, Pickie,” said Dr. Snood. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  “I am not frightened,” said Pickie.

  “Do you know what happened yesterday, with Dr. Jemma?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you tell us what you saw?”

  “What was in her came out. It’s very simple.”

  “But what did you see?” asked Zini. “Was there green fire?”

  “I saw what I saw,” said Pickie. “What was in her came out.”

  “Was it green?” asked Dr. Sundae.

  “It was inside of her. Inside the inside. It is inside her now.” All eyes turned to Jemma. She looked at Pickie’s slippers. The whole Committee tried to get Pickie to tell a coherent story; no one succeeded. He would only repeat that what was in Jemma had come out, something she could have told them herself, and he admitted that he had seen it in her before, but not pointed it out because he thought she must notice it herself—with things like this, he said, you just have to wait for it to happen. A few more unilluminating questions later, Dr. Snood told him he could go back upstairs, but instead of leaving, after he climbed off the couch, he turned and climbed up into Jemma’s lap. Jemma told her story again, and responded to questions. Yes, green fire, she said. No, it was not hot, not to me, not in the usual way. No, I can’t make it happen right now. Yes, I’m trying to make it happen. There were no visions. There were no voices. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I prefer not to repeat my board scores in front of an audience. Suffice to say that they were quite low. I don’t know what happened to Janie’s hand.

  “Has the angel been talking with you?” asked John Grampus.

  “Not about this.”

  “Have the carpets been talking to you?” asked Karen. “Any voices at all?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you attack Maggie Formosa?” asked Dr. Sundae.

  “I don’t remember that I did. I only remember feeling sick that morning, and almost passing out.”

  “Do you think you could have been possessed?”

  “I suppose anything is possible, Dr. Sundae.”

  “Jemma,” asked Vivian, “what do you think is happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Jemma said. Vivian frowned, because Jemma was supposed to give a more detailed answer. Vivian had a theory that would require a PET scan for validation, something about enhanced activity in the parietal cortex. Jemma, feeling more and more persecuted as the questioning continued, though everyone, even Dr. Sundae, and especially Dr. Snood, was interrogating her with the utmost politeness, lapsed sullen. The hungover feeling she’d had since Rob had awakened was lifting, the sleepy, pliable state giving way to a need like horniness, but absent of lust. She wanted to burn again.

  Word came a few hours after Jemma and Pickie were dismissed that the Committee had formally requested that Jemma refrain from any more extraordinary manifestations until further study had been accomplished. A series of tests was scheduled, Vivian’s PET scan among them, to begin in the morning. Dr. Snood, Dr. Tiller, and Emma were constructing a randomized double-blind trial, to begin within the week, in which they planned to compare Jemma’s efforts, provided she could make them again, with conventional therapy in low-risk, low-acuity children. Jemma, meanwhile, was excused from all clinical duties, assigned the impossible task of devising a way to blind herself in the study. She retired to the call room, to hide from eyes struck by the rumor of wonder, and faces not empty of fear. Everywhere she went, people turned to each other and made murmuring noises that sounded to her distant ears like bracka bracka bracka. “What does it mean?” people asked her, like she should know. “What does it mean?” asked John Grampus. He caught her—literally, reaching out to nab the edge of her yellow scrub gown as she passed by him where he sat on the ramp, sitting on the ground with his knees to his chest, his back to the balustrade, and a big purple hat pulled down over his eyes, as if he was at siesta. “She never mentioned anything like this to me.”

  “It was a surprise to me too,” Jemma said, tugging at her gown.

  “Sometimes I close my eyes and I c
an see the whole place, every secret room and every potential space, all laid out in my head like a 3-D blueprint. And some days I thought I could see the time laid out just like that, another blueprint, but unfolded across the days to come.”

  “I thought she never told you what was next.” One fierce tug and the gown came free of his fist. Now she could run away, but she stayed a moment more.

  “It’s not from her,” he said. “I used to think it was from Him.”

  “What’d you see?” she asked, squatting down now next to him.

  “Shuffleboard and codes and people dating.” He shrugged. “Who are you, though, that you did that?”

  “Just another third-year med student,” she said. “Just another moron.”

  “What else can you do? What else can I do?” He pushed his fingers at her in an abracadabra gesture.

  “It’s all pretty weird,” she said.

  “Worse than weird,” he said, and drew his hat down farther over his eyes. “You can go now,” he said. “Don’t come complaining to me when you start to feel used.”

  “I don’t… I’m not… I don’t even understand… Oh whatever,” she concluded, and continued on, in a sort of huff, and the next time somebody pinched at her clothes—Ishmael saying he just had to talk to her—she offered the first excuse that came into her head (I have to pee), pulled away, and powered down the ramp, head down now, until she got to her room. Jeri Vega’s mother was outside her door.

  “You’ve got to come upstairs,” she said.

  “I’ve got to pee,” Jemma said, and now it was true.

  “Right now,” the lady said. She’d been eating red licorice while she waited. A string of it still dangled from her mouth—somehow it made her look even tougher than usual—and she held a braided whip of it in her hand. “She needs you.”

  “I’m not allowed,” Jemma said.

  “Bullshit. The sun’s not allowed to shine? Are we not allowed to breathe? Is this place not allowed to float? Come on. Right now.” She held out her hand. Jemma ducked around it, put her back against her door, and her hand on the doorknob.

  “I’m not allowed,” she said. “And anyway I couldn’t even if I tried. I don’t understand it at all—it’s so very strange, Ms. Vega. Not right now, I just can’t. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry but now I’m going to go inside. Goodbye.”

  Ms. Vega was drawing back her whip hand as Jemma turned the knob and backed through the door. She heard the soft blow fall. “Get out here you stupid bitch,” Ms. Vega said. “Don’t tell me that shit you stupid bitch. I can tell a lie when I hear one. What kind of monster are you, you stupid bitch?”

  “Lock the door,” Jemma whispered to the angel, so no one can get in. “Give it the special.”

  “It is already done,” said the angel. Jemma stepped backward, all the way to the toilet, and sat down.

  Rob was not even with her. He was still in the PICU, still monitored though quite thoroughly well. She imagined him sitting up in bed in the too-small hospital gown printed with frolicking puppies and kittens. “I kind of like it,” he said, when she offered to go replicate something that would fit better. “Size Prader-Willi—it almost fits.” He’d smiled at her, and then his expression had fallen back into the one he’d been wearing since she woke him up. Jemma had never seen someone look so consistently bemused before. He’d heard how she described herself as his fiancee while he was asleep, and argued that this constituted an acceptance of the proposal. Over and over and over she denied it.

  She imagined him with her, seeking to summon him. She outlined a space for him in the air, drew his reclining shape, arms above his head, and thought she could see the pillow denting a little in anticipation of his head. Let it be… now! she thought, and whispered, imagining the puppy and kitten gown settling empty to the bed in the PICU as his body, reduced to arcing energy, or drifting mist, was transported to reconstitute itself in front of her eyes. It did not happen, but she felt a surge, a wave in her belly, that she knew was fire seeking egress. She looked out into the room, up to the window; still filled with blue sky. She was waiting for dark.

  “I am born,” she said quietly. “I grow up. My brother dies my parents die my lover dies the world drowns I get pregnant I develop miraculous healing powers.” It made no more sense when spoken aloud than when spoken in her head. Why not Rob, or Vivian, or Dr. Tiller, or one of the parents, or one of the patients; why not Josh Swift slouching greenly down the halls and restoring health to all his fellow-sufferers? Why not Pickie Beecher, kung-fu baldy? He was already… eldritch. She held up her hands, palm toward palm, a foot apart, and let a green flare pass between them.

  She opened up her mind, imagining an uncovering as slow and massive as the opening of an observatory dome, seeking to make herself receptive to the answer, and asked her questions again, and tried to conceive of the mouth that might speak the answer. She lay there waiting, hearing nothing, watching the window darken, blue into deeper blue, until it was the very color of Rob’s eyes. Then it was time.

  She started at the top; it seemed like the right place. In the psych ward she found Thelma asleep, a three-month-old magazine spread across her vast chest. Jemma went past her. The first two rooms she looked in were empty. But in the room called Sage she found all three anorexics gathered together vomiting in the moonlight. Jemma hardly knew them; even when she was on the team that covered this floor, they’d been Vivian’s responsibility. Their families were all gone; none of them had been the sort to get many visitors, especially during bad weather. They had only each other and Thelma, whose great wonderful fatness they could look at no longer than they could stare into the sun. They restricted more and more, and as the weeks passed began to binge, something all three, high, pure anorexics who had defeated their bodies by becoming creatures of pure will, would have disdained in the dry world. Jemma remembered the discussions from rounds, the team wondering how to keep them from shooting powerful coherent arcs of vomit out the windows that the angel would not keep shut, or how to keep them from tearing out their TPN IVs. Dr. Snood, desperate, had kept one of them sedated for a week while she was fed through her nose, but when she awoke she took off the weight as easily as she would an ugly sweater.

  By the time Jemma visited them they had made themselves ghastly-beautiful. From the door she saw them gathered under the window, around a plastic tub that stored toys by the bushel in the playrooms. They held hands and brushed up against one another languidly, arching their necks and throwing back their heads to swallow their fingers before adding another unit of barf to the big bucket. They were surrounded by the remains of their feast, vanilla-ice-cream puddles glowing in glass dishes shaped like leaves; candy-bar wrappers in neat heaps; chicken skin and chicken fat glistening in patches around them in a circle, and bones under their feet. Jemma trod on two large cupcakes as she approached them, her green hands clasped behind her back. They did not notice her until she was quite close. Their pajamas, altered, short, hanging dresses of sage, pumpkin, and ocher, and their hair, brittle but long and styled with particular care into identical sets of heaped and cascading curls, their dramatic poses, their bare feet among bones, their long, sharp nails, and finally their number all gave them an ancient Greek air; though they were exquisitely frail, and close to dying, they seemed as powerful as they were pathetic, three purgies discharging their eternal duty. Jemma, nearly upon them, felt a little afraid, but still laughed out loud. They all turned at once, and spoke from left to right.

  “It’s a stomach flu,” said the first one, defiantly. “Who are you?” asked the second, more meek. The third, finger in mouth, merely stared.

  “I am the great fatty,” Jemma announced, then brought her hands forward, and struck. Green fire spilled into the air as she grabbed at them. They all shrieked identically, and tried to escape, but she was too close for them to evade her, and they were too weak to break away. They were so thin she could hold all of them in her arms. In three blows she made them right, all four of the
m burning together. First she restored their organs, heart and lungs and guts ruined with months of self-consumption; no sooner had she wanted it done than it was done, the three girly shrieks climbing into song as Jemma pushed with her mind and her spirit. Then she restored their flesh. She filled them with fire that burned for an instant and was gone, leaving muscle and fat in its place; they popped out of her arms, but remained bound to her by fire. Lastly she restored their minds—already they felt covered with abomination. She weeded their brains, reaching in with fire fingers to rip out that perception; right or wrong, truth or distortion, it was hers to command, and must come out with her, and when she commanded it to scatter on the dark air it must do it.

  When she released them they threw up their arms, as if in praise or surrender, and then fell to the ground, strong bones cushioned by newly upholstered fat. She left them sleeping beside the vomit tub, scattering candy wrappers back and forth between them with their breath. She wiped her feet and moved on.

  In Pickie Beecher’s room she fell, hands-first, on the Pickie-shaped lump in his bed, but it was only an artfully arranged pillow, bitten through in places and leaking stuffing. She cast it aside and went out, looking in all the empty rooms and not finding him there. When she closed her eyes and thought about him she thought she could sense his special wrongness at the periphery of her consciousness, a little blot on her mind, but she could not figure this sense into an idea of where he was. She walked by Thelma again, still asleep, though snoring loudly now in the way of the obstructive sleep apneic. Jemma reached out to touch her, knowing that she could shore up the muscles of her pharynx if she throttled her just so, but then she wondered if what was in her might run out, and if children didn’t have a greater claim on it than adults. She passed Thelma by and walked on to the rehab floor, creeping past a pair of nurses seated at their rocket station. Monitors and thin plastic towers stuck up fortuitously, hiding Jemma from their view, but she felt regarded by the giant yellow alien head mounted on the wall behind them, which seemed to follow her as she went in halting, sneaky cartoon steps along the blue-black carpet, under the light of bright false stars.