Chapter Four

"He's coming around," nurse Acne observed, walking away.

Horace lifted his head, regretted the action, and lowered it again, closing his eyes. He was skeptical; it was a long shot; he'd never heard of anything like it; but in the absence of any other hard evidence, he had to attribute the searing pain in his pate to the miracle of his sudden calling, somehow. Everything has its price.

He was, it seemed, lying down. With tentative fingertips he explored the surface of his bed. It was hard and rough. He decided to experiment with the ocular thing again. If that went well, he reckoned, he would try something else. As an irregularly shaped glow slowly resolved itself, Horace recognized the sky, outlining two persons of unknown purpose.

"Wait," advised one.

"Don't move," counselled the other.

"Why?" asked Horace, "and why not?"

"Administration," chanted the first.

"Liability," hissed the second.

"Who are you people?"

"Oh! I'm sorry!" squeaked the first brightly. "I'm Susie, Possible Imminent Admissions Public Interface."

"And my name is Charles, Pre-Accounting Procedural Consultant."

Horace eyed first Susie, then Charles. "Who are you people?" he repeated.

"He looks bad," noticed Susie.

"He sounds bad," concurred Charles. "Where did Nurse Acne go?"

"She's getting PAPE," she answered. Charles nodded.

Horace was getting the pieces in his hands now, he felt. Things were easing on the mystery front. Something about a nurse seemed significant, considering the sensations in his skull. "Who is Pape?" he inquired.

Susie giggled at this question. Charles, more the professional, chortled.

"Wrong," he explained. "`What,' not `who.'"

Horace looked at Susie, hoping for a translation.

"P. A. P. E." she spelled. "Stands for `Pre-Admission Policy Examination'. It determines," she lapsed into her recitative monotone, "whether you will qualify for admission regardless of your moral, ethnic, religious, criminal, mental, or socio-economic backgrounds, as dictated by the the pertinent legislation (including but not limited to bureaucratic regulation) of this or any germane city, township, county, borough, shire, commonwealth, territorial possession, state, regional, federal or foreign government or governments or any combination thereof, and the currently enforced policy or policies of the Board of Governors of this hospital."

Hospital! The light had lit. "I'm at the hospital!" Horace exulted in the discovery. "Damn good thing, too. I've got a beaut of a headache."

Nurse Acne towered into view. "There we are!" she cooed, to relieve any doubt along those lines. "How is our head feeling?"

Horace momentarily became Siamese with Nurse Acne. It was not pleasant.

"We have to answer a few questions," she began, "just for the paperwork. Okie dokie?"

Horace stated his name.

Horace spelled his name.

Horace printed his name.

Horace signed his name.

He revealed his address. He told of his previous address. And of several addresses previous to the previous address.

His occupation became known. His (late) place of business. His former employer's name was not withheld, nor was the corresponding address. Nor telephone number.

Horace's other past employers marched into the picture. Their data were not sacred, and were duly divulged.

Horace shed light on his fiscal behavior. The bank on which his checks were drawn was exposed. His checking account number was painstakingly recorded. His loan officer became part of the tapestry. Credit cards drew careful scrutiny.

Horace signed his name again, to be checked against his previous signature.

"Very nice!" sang Nurse Acne. "That wasn't so really, really bad now, was it? No it wasn't! Mr. - uh, Horace, based on this preliminary information I think we can get up off the parking lot and proceed inside! Isn't that neat?"

"Parking lot!" yelled Horace, somewhat perturbed.

"Looks bad," Susie shook her head as she witnessed Horace's signatures by initial and walked away.

"Thank Yew!" chirped Nurse Acne.

"Sounds bad," frowned Charles, jotting his initial after Susie's.

"Thank Yew!" chirped Nurse Acne. "Now, Horace, shall we walk in, or shall we ride in a wheelchair? How is our head feeling?"

"Yes," answered Horace. "No. Bad." Somehow, he slowly gained his feet without moving his head, suffering only a minor amount of death. "Lead," he commanded weakly, "the way."

Sterile is generally applauded as the condition for hospitals to be. Odors not conducive to life abound there. Furniture, as a rigidly enforced rule, cannot encourage any degree of comfort. Sounds must be harsh, shrill, or preferably both. White, as a philosophy, has its own way. The lobby into which Horace was ushered screamed all these things through a bullhorn. He became aware of his finer sensibilities being not merely persecuted, but tortured with hot pokers.

The unrelenting aridity of the pile was only rendered more stark by its contrast with Horace's fellow Possible Imminent Admissions. They were not sterile. The aromas of life, of plentiful, thriving, seething life, were exuded with abandon. These people were Sick, and if they weren't, they wanted to be. Communication, and all seemed communicable, consisted of a sort of code of guttural grunting, coughing, retching, wheezing, sneezing, drooling, and moaning. Rude noises were also heard.

"Please, Horace," said Nurse Acne, dividing the remains of two leprous slabs. "Sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

"Criminal optimism," mused Horace.

He turned to the object on his right and smiled he hoped not too reluctantly. "Hello," Horace said right out of the blue. In reply, a sound not quite like the echo of a steam whistle emanated from a region Horace would not previously have guessed to harbor the organs of speech.

"Sorry to hear it," Horace empathized, truthfully.

He dismally surveyed the dismal scene. The evolution of misery was being enacted in real time before his eyes. The artful architecture of the abattoir as a virgin was everywhere on display. The cacophony of noisome exhalations and unwanted secretions heedlessly trampled his sense of survival. He waited for an unknown signal, and his head hurt. But some element, some I-don't-know-what, he felt, was missing.

A large bunny-slippered lump of decay, stuccoed with hair and rags, oozed up to a television set and, incredibly, turned it on.

"Ah! that's it!" thought Horace as his personal Hades became whole. "Perfect! A soap opera."

A mere two hours and one packet of smelling salts later Horace was delivered. A large person was squinting through her hornrims at a piece of paper, then peering with equal concentration at Horace's face.

"Mr. uh, um, er, eh," she pumped, drawing no water. "I mean, Mr. eh, uh, er."

"Close," said Horace. "Not bad, actually. Quite good, really." He had become accustomed to the banter of the lobby. "What, though, if you don't mind my asking, are you about?"

"Are you," Mrs. Plodgett asked, "Mr. Horace Ah, eh, wuh, er, um?"

"Sticky one," Horace conceded. "What does he look like?"

"I mean, is this your name, sir?" Mrs. Plodgett showed Horace the paper, and pointed at the offending appellation.

"Ay-away," demonstrated Horace, nodding confirmation.

"Sailor?" asked Mrs. Plodgett, impressed by the seemingly nautical flavor of his reply.

"Frisbee," said Horace of the only craft he had any experience in sailing.

"Where?" queried Mrs. Plodgett, whose geography of exotic locales was limited.

"Clothes!" replied Horace, indicating what he generally wore.

"Close?" muddled Mrs. Plodgett.

"Open," Horace returned immediately. "I like word association tests. How am I doing?"

"Let's just start over," begged Mrs. Plodgett.

"That bad, eh?"

"What is your name?"

"Eh?" Horace groped to associate and failed, but then divined her intent. "Oh! You want to know what my name is. My moniker, it appears, is your goal. Nothing to it. That's it, there," he put his finger on her paper, "on your form."

"So far, so good," sighed the patient Plodgett. "Now, please, how might this name be pronounced?"

"It might be pronounced `Jones'," said Horace, "or even, in an attack of whimsy, `Smith'. Chances are, though, that I would fail to respond to either; although I am mysteriously attracted by whimsy at odd times when I am not repelled by it. On the average, though, to answer your intended question, I pronounce it `Ay-away'."

"Aeiouaey," mouthed Mrs. Plodgett. "That's a very unusual name."

"Not," explained Horace, "in Jakarta."

"How interesting!" she exclaimed. "Is that where you're from?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Why do I - it's just that you said there were a lot of Aeiouaeys in Jakarta and I assumed - "

"I said no such thing! In fact, `Aeiouaey' isn't even a name in Jakarta," Horace huffed, as if he expected her to be familiar with the Indonesian phone book.

"If you're not from Jakarta," Mrs. Plodgett huffed back, ruffled, "then, where?"

"My dear lady, time does not permit!" Horace begged off. "As it happens, there are a great many places I am not from."

"But where do you hail from?"

"The curb, of course! Where do you hail from?"

"Nebraska, but - "

“How interesting!" Horace mimicked. "Are there cabs in Nebraska?"

"What are you talking about? I just wanted to know about your roots, that's all." Slightly miffed, and the remainder tiffed, she led Horace to a desk. Horace checked his dental work, and practised his osmosis and capillarity on the way, until the communication gap finally sparked.

"Oh! sorry. Your question was ethnically oriented, wasn't it?"

"Ah! You are Chinese, then!" she bubbled with the excitement of discovery.

"Not then, and not now," Horace refuted. "Icelandic. Can we move this along now? My head hurts.

Mrs. Plodgett keyed in.

Horace reconfirmed his name, signing same.

His birthdate soon leaked out.

Along with the omnipotent Social Security Number.

Insurance policies Horace had known were dissected and refiled, cross-referenced by byte and instantly verified in about an hour and a half. The textual misspellings that Horace could not explain were filed under `L'.

Horace vehemently denied having been patient in that hospital.

He was thoughtfully provided with forms releasing the hospital, its doctors, nurses, interns, assistants, volunteers, clerical and service staffs, the families of the above, and, as far as Horace could determine, every soul worldwide throughout eternity, from any and every type of liability, conceivable or otherwise, arising from any high crimes or misdemeanors, incompetency, plots or accidents attempted or performed, acts of God or nature, acts profane or unnatural, and/or every other possible result of luck or art practiced within the confines of the hospital or anywhere within a five light-year radius.

"Seems only reasonable," thought Horace, signing off.

He declined, against Mrs. Plodgett's recommendations, the use of a television, asking if he could be provided with a similarly sized boulder instead, which he was, inexplicably, denied.

At long last Mrs. Plodgett straightened up and blew the curls of smoke off her fingertips. "Well," she sighed, "you're all done here. Now you go on to Post-Admissions Assignment."

"Do they have doctors there?" asked Horace, adding, "my head hurts."

"Now, don't you pay any attention to your head," she clucked. "First things first. Do you know where to go?"

"I've been told, and I thought I was there."

"Well, you're not."

"I know. That's why I'm here."

"What?"

"Never mind. Where should I go from here?"

"OK," she drew a deep breath and stood, pointing. "Do you see those double doors there? OK. You go through those, follow the corridor around to the right, then back to the left. OK. Then a green line on the floor will direct you to another lobby, which has seven hallways going out of it and four coming in. Take the third out hallway from the left of the second restroom from the right. OK? A semi-continuous magenta stripe on the ceiling will direct you to the elevators if you remember to turn to the left about two hundred feet before it changes color. Take the third elevator from the far end up to floor 7.3F, wait twenty seconds or so, and come down to floor 4.1 Able Baker. OK now. Walking backwards, retrace your steps exactly on that floor to a point directly above us here. There you'll find the Information Desk, and someone there will direct you to Post-Admissions Assignment. Perfectly clear?"

Horace fumbled for his gun, which he must have left in his other trousers. "Have you a map I can use?" he asked, in lieu of murder.

"Oh my goodness, no!" Mrs. Plodgett was horrified at the thought. "Security won't allow it. In fact, for security reasons, no single person knows the entire complex. That's why we send all our admissions to Information for directions."

"Ah!" ah'd Horace. "The architect was married! That explains it. Absent a map, then, can a guide be had? Or, more to the point, followed? I anticipate requiring occasional reminders to stay my course."

Mrs. Plodgett brightened immediately in a dull sort of way. "Yes, of course! Just request a volunteer at the Information Desk." She sat down, obviously having fulfilled her obligation toward the patient's treatment. Glancing up again after a moment of fiddling with some paper, she seemed surprised to find Horace still seated before her. "Have a nice day!" she demanded without warning.

"Why hadn't I thought of that?" Horace smiled sweetly, surreptitiously unplugging her monitor and bending a couple of pins. "Thank yew!" He stood, turned, and made his way through the double doors. There, directly before him on the wall, loomed a chartreuse sign, unapologetically belching the legend `Post-Admissions Assignment'. Horace shrugged, sighed, signed, and sat.

In a fleeting hour and a half he was coaxed to the window.

"Mr. Ah, uh, oo, ee," the clerk sang out. "Mr. Ah, eh, ee, ow?"

"Aeiouaey," corrected Aeiouaey.

"Wow," the clerk noted for no apparent reason. "That's a different name, isn't it?"

"Actually, no," said Horace, "it's the same name. I've had it all my life."

"It sounds hard to pronounce correctly."

"It's incredibly, even stupefyingly easy to pronounce correctly," Horace returned, "but, it takes years of practice to hear it right."

"What?"

"See what I mean? It's the same with many other Tibetan names."

"Oh. Are you Tibetan?"

"No. I never gamble," Horace explained. "Can I see a doctor now? My head hurts."

The clerk just stared for a while, then remembered himself. "Right. Look, they are waiting for you upstairs."

"I'm not there."

"You're supposed to be - " he leafed through his schedules - "at the Information Desk."

"I skipped that part," Horace boasted. "They're just going to send me here, so I took a short cut."

"It doesn't work that way," said the clerk. "All your paperwork was sent to Information. You have to stay with your charts."

"But my headache is here. Why didn't they just give me the charts to deliver, myself? We could have avoided this problem."

"Are you kidding? Let a patient see his own history? Do you have any idea what that could do?" the clerk palpitated.

"Forgive me, what could I have been thinking?" Horace said. "Why don't you call up and have them brought down?"

"What do you mean?"

"Call up and have them brought down."

"You mean call the Information Desk?"

"Precisely."

"On the telephone?"

"Probably more effective than whistling."

"I don't know if I can do that."

"Of course you know you can do that. Not only that, but you can do that," Horace encouraged him. He was obviously in great need of encouragement. Either that, or he was in great need of being riddled with bullets. Horace thought wistfully of his other trousers.

The beads of persp. bulged on his brow. "Rma!" he turned in panic to an aide in the little room through the window. "Rma, can I phone the Information Desk from here?"

Rma, and the two other ladies in the room, suddenly fell silent and stared at the clerk in shock. "Where did you get an idea like that?" Rma finally whispered. The clerk pointed behind his hand through the window at Horace. Rma chuckled in relief. "Let him try it!" she sneered. The clerk put a phone on the counter in front of Horace, and turned his back, snickering.

In thirty seconds Horace returned the phone.

"Give up so soon?" the clerk laughed. Rma and the aide winked at each other.

"Not at all," Horace replied coolly. "They'll bring my charts right down."

"Impossible!" Rma exploded, rising from her chair and striding to the counter. "You couldn't have transferred a call to the Information Desk that fast and not been put on hold! That's against hospital policy!"

Horace attempted to explain. "Not knowing the extension, I got an outside line and dialed the hospital Communications Center, telling them my disherwasher was sudsing over and could they please get my wife in the fourth floor break room so she could tell me what to do? Of course this emergency couldn't be put on hold. Once connected to the break room, I asked for someone from the Information Desk, told her I was calling from Post-Admissions Assignment, which I am, and said we had just discovered Horace Aeiouaey's insurance had lapsed. I expect my poisonous papers to be here presently."

"Impossible!" Rma asserted again, although with a slight quaver of uncertainty in her voice. "It takes at least an hour, and usually three, to - "

Thud!

A lithe figure on roller skates slapped an impressive-looking pile on the counter beside Horace's elbow and disappeared swooshing around a corner without slowing down. "Ah!" ah'd Horace. "It would appear that my charts and myself are become as one."

The aides swooned. The clerk and Rma emulated poorly executed statuary, until Rma recalled herself and slapped Horace's hand away from the suddenly materialized material. "You can't see that!" she hissed.

"Indeed?" chirped Horace. "Then what is this that I am seeing?"

But Rma chose to ignore him, and after scrutinizing the offending manuscript for some time, whispered rather conspiratorially in the clerk's ear. "Please, allow me, your Tibetan majesty," choked out the clerk, "to show you to your room."

Horace followed him down a hallway, through a door, and into total snowblindness. He naturally assumed his injury to be the cause of it. "That's the last," vowed Horace to himself, "idea I ever get!"

"Wait here," predicted the clerk, closing the white door behind him as he left, leaving not a trace of its outline discernible.

Horace blinked, experimentally. Yes, he noted with no small degree of relief, it did get dark momentarily. He had no object on which to fix his gaze, until the back of his hand was discovered. More relief.

The purity of this room was diabolical. No detail, no hinge, plug, knob, or caster was unbleached. The result was a horizonless expanse of colorless claustrophobia. He felt weightless, until space sickness manifested itself by reanimating his breakfast, which then mercifully defined the previously unfocusable floor. Thus reassured, Horace waited.

The preferred definitions of the word "patient" have long been bittersweet fodder for contemplation by the victims of both. As Horace sat in this amorphous cell, doting on his mortality, time slithered on. Birds chirped, traffic blared, lovers lowed, choirs barked. Bureaucracy, though, a realm exempt from reality, harked not this living symphony. Time must be naught but its slave in its crusade for a higher Policy. If, in order to advance the common good, the common were trampled, well, such was progress. If, to achieve the ultimate goal in health, which is, that every organism survives long enough to become terminally ill; or that every body technically outlives its life to an obscene and/or excruciating end; sufferers withstood short shrift, long hours, low wages, high duns, and, oh yes, chronic pain, who could complain? What is mere physical insufficiency in the face of mandated potential Good? It's almost enough to make one wish one's tears of pain were instead tears of penitence for the insufferable selfishness exhibited in the voicing of one's complaints. The pounding in one's head must be transformed into the pounding on the door of opportunity leading to the promised land of Universal Care. "Hello!" the ultimate practitioner will warmly greet the patient patient. "Hello, and welcome to ease! Hello, and welcome to comfort, and wealth! Hello," the practitioner continues, "and welcome to caring, even to Love! Hello, and - "

"Hello!"

Horace jumped out of his skin and back into it again before he could flinch, and then he flinched.

"Hello - oh! Did I startle you?" a face, above and more or less between a pair of hands, floated into the room. Horace blinked.

"`Startle?' No. `Electrocute?' Yes. `Exorcise?' Yes. `Disembowel?' Yes. `Throw onto hot spikes and unzip to my navel by ripping out my tongue?' Yes. But `startle?'" Horace tried to regain his composure. "Don't people knock here? Who are you?"

"I did knock, but there was no answer. My name is Connie!! Your Post-Admission Assignment Medical Background Examination Technician! You must be Mr. Ah, ee, ih, oo, er."

"If I must, then I must," philosophized Horace.

"How is it pronounced? I'm sure I mangled it."

"No, you did just fine."

"Really? I would like to hear you pronounce it for me, though."

"All right. `It.' There."

"What?"

"No, `It'."

"That's how you pronounce your name?"

"Of course not! That's how I pronounce `it'. My name is pronounced Ay-away."

"Aeiouaey!" Connie exclaimed. "I haven't heard that name since I visited my cousins in Botswana."

"Must be in exile," commented Horace. "It's Tahitian in origin."

"`It' is, or `Aeiouaey' is?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Affirmative," Horace clarified. "Da. Oui."

"I hate head injuries!" Connie thought. "Mr. Aeiouaey, I need to fill in some gaps in our health history. May I ask you a few questions?"

"Of course," Horace replied. "Am I obligated to answer them?"

"Uh," the floating face flinched, "that's sort of the point in asking them. It will only take a second."

"Why don't we skip the seconds, too, and go straight to dessert, Alice?" Horace chuckled, then, noting her expression was betraying either confusion or Perfect Wisdom - he couldn't tell which, but knew it had to be painful for her - he waved his hand and said, "never mind. Do go on."

Connie's head turned, floated a few feet to her right, and smoothly settled a couple of feet lower. Her hands miraculously produced a sheaf of papers, which she set in order, and began to read aloud.

"Mr. Aeiouaey, have you or any member of your immediate family been diagnosed or treated for diabetes, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, angina, coronary thrombosis, atherosclerosis, hypertension, poliomyelitis, measles, smallpox, bubonic plague, malaria, chicken pox, influenza, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, nephritis, kidney failure, asthma, contact dermatitis, anemia, leukemia, hemophilia, vent gleet, varicose veins, phlebitis, spinal irregularities, chronic constipation, fractures, lung cancer, trichinosis, tuberculosis, emphysema, hemorrhoids, colon or rectal cancer, malnutrition, obesity, bulimia, ulcers, gallstones, inguinal hernia, hearing or equilibrium disorders, hepatitis, neurosis, psychosis, psychosomatic disease, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, brain tumors, meningitis, scars, burns, pregnancy, deviated septum, acne, psoriasis, laryngitis, upper respiratory infections, cholera, glaucoma, cataracts, detached retina, foot pain, bunions, ingrown toenails, tooth decay, periodontal disease, prostate dysfunction, malocclusion, carcinomas, sarcomas, benign tumors, cystitis, kidney stones, or yeast infections?

"Yes," answered Horace.

"What do you mean, `Yes'?" Connie was alarmed.

"Positive. Si. Uh-huh."

"Specifically, how so?" she demanded.

"I recall hearing stories," recalled Horace, "of my mother occasionally suffering from pregnancy. Unfortunately, I can't positively verify them."

“Mr. Aeiouaey, do you smoke?"

"Under STP, no."

"I mean tobacco."

"Poor Bacco," Horace commiserated. "Is he your husband?"

"What?"

"I don't smoke."

"Thank you!" Connie felt a breakthrough had been achieved. "Do you drink?"

"I find it cures thirst."

"Drink alcohol! Do you drink alcohol?"

"It works much faster that way."

"OK!" she inscribed a check mark on the sheet which raced all the way across the page. "That does it for the general overview! Now we proceed to the alphabetical itemization."

Connie leaped in with both white feet. Beginning with abdominal wounds, abortions, abrasions, accidents, achalasia, acid burns, acrophobia, and Adams-Stokes disease, continuing through to glycosuria (renal), goiters, gonorrhea, gooseflesh, gout, and granulocytic leukemia, on to schistosomiasis, schizophrenia, sciatica, and sclerosis, to a triumphant finale with white lung disease, whooping cough, withdrawal symptoms, and yellow fever, she was brilliant. She missed not a beat. Flushed with pride, she looked up at Horace.

"Did you mention `Colds'?" Horace was unsure. "I missed it, I believe. I get colds regularly."

"Colds? I, er, that is," stammered Connie, reading through the C's. "Colds are not on the list."

"Pity," said Horace, "They're really quite popular. Not to detract from your reading, however. I was enraptured. You painted a delectable cornucopia of suffering, disease, misery, and bodily mayhem. It's almost a shame to persevere in the face of such a wonderful bounty of pestilence. My throbbing head notwithstanding, it was worth every pang to drink in that three-quarter-hour's worth of such divine maledies. Hippocrates would surely thrill to hear so many discomforts identified. Well done, indeed!"

"Oooh!" Connie shivered in ecstasy, surfeit with praise.

"May I talk to a doctor now?"

"One," trilled Connie as she left the room, "is on the way!"

Twat! decided Horace.

A few short minutes later a lumpy form appeared, clipboard in hand. "Hi," he said, extending his free hand. "I'm Dr. Spracken. You're the man Ay-away, I understand. Fascinating name. Tahitian, isn't it? No, Tibetan - no, wait a minute - definitely Icelandic."

"Near misses all, Doctor," said Horace. "My ancestors evolved in the Peruvian Andes, actually. Wonderful story there, but I'm running a hair late for relief. Perhaps we could chat about this pressure pot capping my neck?"

"Classic lump," declared Dr. Spracken, examining Horace's pate. "How'd it happen?"

"I had an idea," Horace lamented. "Not something I'm good at, apparently."

"Says in your biography here you were trying to catch some construction worker's missile with your hair," said Dr. Spracken. "Just between us, Aeiouaey, you haven't got thick enough fur to pull off that kind of trick."

Ka-CHING!

Horace suddenly recollected details that had escaped him earlier. Yes! This made sense! Pain of this origin could be understood. It was, he realized with great satisfaction, not self-inflicted after all! After a further moment's reflection, one thing only remained mysterious.

"Doc," put Horace, "how could you have read all that deposition in a mere couple of minutes? I mean, it took a large semi-trained and intelligent staff hours to assemble it. It takes an hour to move it from one floor to the next."

"I scooped my poop from the accident report. The worker's foreman saw everything, I guess, fired the guy, and filed the report with the police to cover his own butt," the doctor explained. "I don't bother to look at that tripe they record here. What isn't unreliable testimony in the first place ends up misreported on the forms."

"So what about my head?" moaned Horace. "X-rays? EEG's? Scans?"

"Nah," scoffed Dr. Spracken, digging in his pocket. "Aspirin. Here, take these now, and more at home when necessary."

Horace looked at the two pills in his palm. "Shouldn't the nurse put these in a little paper cup, or something?" he puled.

"Look," said Dr. Spracken. "How long have you been here already to get two aspirin? Go home, get some rest. See you." He left.

Horace thought about calling the nurses, he thought about waiting for X-rays, he thought about waiting for blood counts, he thought about waiting for allergy tests, he thought about waiting for credit checks, he thought about waiting for dismissal proceedings, and he thought about Dr. Spracken's advice.

He swallowed the tablets, and decided to go home.

Horace's nerve-endings were assaulted as soon as he emerged from the sensory-depriving albino room. Flashing lights smote his retinas. Klaxons distorted his tympans. Hurtling bodies, as they collided with him, remorselessly demonstrated Newton's Laws of Motion. Hospital staff, brandishing all manner of morbific equipage, were bowling down upon him, nostrils flared to vacuum up the ether of death and mouths slavering at the prospect of attaining Godhead. Hidden loudspeakers shrilled, "Code Blue! Stat! Code Blue! Stat!"

"Attention, shoppers!" Horace deja vu'd.

An apologetic hurtler helped Horace to his feet after rather rudely experimenting with Newton's Second. Horace glanced back at the receding parade, checked for his wallet, and asked, "What's all that about?"

"Code Blue, Stat!" explained the intern.

To Horace's mind, this explanation left out a few details. “Pretend," he suggested, "I'm from Mars."

"Outstanding!" the intern's face brightened immediately. "But what for?"

"Pretend," said Horace, "that I don't know what `Code Blue, Stat!' means, and attempt to explain it to me."

The intern's face dimmed again. "Do you know what `Code Blue, Stat!' means, really?" he asked.

"No, I do not."

The intern's face glowed with new illumination. "Then," he beamed, "I don't have to pretend, do I? Now, if we can just get to the bottom of why you think you're from Mars, we'll be all set."

"I don't think I'm from Mars, I just wanted to know what's going on."

"Oh." The intern was crestfallen. Then, a fresh glimmer of hope sprang into his eyes. "Are you really from Mars, but your problem is that you think you're not from Mars?" he asked excitedly.

"I see that you are not one to be deceived by mere rational thought," Horace praised him, as a clamor again grew in the corridor. "You are the only one here to recognize me for what I truly am; an extraterrestrial amnesiac. Of course, I can't be sure, as I don't remember. So tell me: what is Code - "

He didn't get to finish his question. The commotion that had swept the hall before had now apparently reversed course and was bearing down on them again from the other direction. Lights blared, sirens flashed, and the intern's answer, and indeed the intern himself, became as jetsam on the tsunami rushing by. When Horace opened his eyes and looked up, a nurse was anxiously trying to raise him from the floor.

"Pwease get up," she begged. "You wanded on my foot."

"Excuse me!" he hastily apologized. "Can you tell me what is going on?"

"Code Bwue," she explained, adding, "Stat!"

"Pretend - " began Horace. "No. Forget that. Just tell me: what does `Code Blue, Stat!' mean to those enlightened lemmings?”

“Highest Pwiowity Emewgency. Secuwity Awewt. Wife and Death. Immediate Action. You know."

"I see. And the immediate action called for is to go rushing up and down the hall," mused Horace in admiration. "I would never have thought of that!"

"We awe wooking," she said with a hint of embarassment, "fow the wight woom. It's neaw hewe somewhewe." The rabble had made the loop and was coming about again.

“The white room!" shouted Horace. "It's right here! Here it is! This," he exclaimed triumphantly, as he opened the door to that recess, "is it!"

She immediately blew on her police whistle and waved to the mob, which blew into the room as one body, slamming the door in Horace's face. "Authorized personnel only!" intoned a guard who had suddenly sprung up before him, genie-like.

"What's happening in there?" Horace asked him.

"Outa thway!" he hawked through a bullhorn. "Lifen Deaf! Git!"

No arguing with that, Horace reasoned, and he decided to abandon his curiosity and move along. He had reached the end of the straightaway, and was about to head into the turn, when the chaotic contingent blasted out of the White Room again and noisily dispersed. Horace, as if by instinct, flattened himself against the wall as well as he could to avoid the onrush, but this time there was no need. He looked for a benign face amongst the glowering Code Blue Statters which he could accost with fresh inquiries but, finding none, he settled for the nurse whose foot he had tweaked when she had knocked him down.

"Smith, Security!" he rasped, flashing the palm of his hand in her face. "What is going on here?"

"Oh, no!" she shrieked hysterically. "I mean, hewwo! I didn't wecognize you in this bad wight! Sowwy about that." She went red, then white, then slowly back to normal, which was a sort of yellowish green.

"No need to report it, this time, young lady," Horace stated generously. "You are young, aren't you? Never mind. What's the meaning of this hobnobbing mob?"

"What?"

"Yes, `What'."

"What?"

"Exactly. As in, `Meaning of Mob, Hobnobbing'."

"What?"

"Allow me to rephrase." Horace felt an approaching understanding of the situation, not. "Why, ma'am, did gobs of, technically, humanity slurp so pointedly into that empty room? Many agitated bipeds hustled higglety-pigglety, pell-mell, and willy-nilly, to what end? Ireful idealogues wielding indescribable implements indulged in what mysterious immolations? In short: Que pasa?"

"Oh. Weww, I don't know what you mean by higgwety-piggwety, peww-meww, ow wiwwy-niwwy, but a Post-Admissions Assignee was wepowted missing fwom that woom. He appawentwy weft without pwopew pwoceedings; a vewy sewious cwime. I'm gwatified to see secuwity on the case so pwomptwy."

"Don't mention it," said Horace.

"Say!" she said excitedly, "maybe you saw him in the cowwidow!"

"Maybe you saw him in the corridor."

"I didn't," she said sadly. "Did you?"

"I think not," said Horace.

"He must have walked wight by you!"

"I rather think not," said Horace.

"Twy!" she exhorted, looking through her file for a description of the fugitive. "Hewe it is! He is, um, about youw height, about, weww, youw weight, maybe, haiw wike youws, I guess, pwobabwy about youw age, too. Did you see him?"

"I rather think bloody not," said Horace. "And let me just say this: as a trained and certified hospital security staff member and a life-long prevaricator I take umbrage at the insinuation that I was derelict in my observational duties! Perhaps I do need to take your name!"

"Vewy weww." she said in resignation. "It's Wowita O'Woawke, Speciaw Adjutant Stat Team, Cwewicaw; spewwed capitow eww oh eww eye tee ay, capitow oh apostwophe capitow ow oh ay ow kay ee. Thewe now - what's wong?"

Horace's knees had buckled under the weight of Lolita's impediment, and he lay in a pile stuck in a continuous hoarse exhalation until his eyeballs bulged out further than even the veins in his neck, and the remainder of his body snapped into an impressively synchronized cramp. This, thought Horace, was cruelty personified. He hadn't laughed so hard since the conception of Bingo. As he struggled to unknot, Lolita O'Roarke cast a cold, cold eye on him.

"So, Mistew Smith, answew my question," she demanded. "Did you see the man I descwibed?"

"I rather bloody well know I didn't," Horace said when he found some air. "But I'll tell you what: I'll find him! I'll find that wascawwy wabbit if it's the wast thing I do! Heh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!" He turned and exited through the double doors, laughing.

Straws, while of relatively insignificant weight individually, are well known to become burdensome in large doses, and while Lolita, in categories aside from elocution, differed from a dromedary, she nevertheless posted a well-defined limit as per allowable male abuse, particularly in the sensitive area of speech. Years of being misunderstood, derided, and shunned had inured her to the usual rude badinage. Being snubbed she had learned to tolerate. Chuckles aside were insulting, but routine. But Mr. Smith had charged across the threshold with his snide mimicking. Action would be taken, and Lolita, through hard experience, knew what action, and how to take it.

"Mistew Smith!" she sputtered, barely controlling her indignation, "you awe swime! How dawe you widicuwe me?! It is not onwy extwemewy wude, but iwwegaw fwom a supewiow in a pwace of empwoyment! Mistew Smith, do you have a wawyer?"

"Not on me," Horace thought to himself as he walked into the lobby.

When he had previously left the foyer it had been merely an antiseptic humidor of Possible Imminent Admissions, leisurely stagnating. As he re-entered it now, however, the area was a veritable ant-colony of industry. From uniformed guards to the crew of News at Noon, Six, and Eleven the gamut of superfluous occupants was run. This beehive of random activity was beyond idle curiosity, he felt; such sublime chaos didn't deserve even an attempt at explanation. In one corner, a tense security force was being briefed, in another the television cameras whirred as they recorded the attempted interviews of the stale sausages watching themselves being interviewed on TV. People were hastily fastening large brightly-colored tags on their clothing while otherwise occupying themselves by tripping over a dizzying tangle of wires, hoses, and ammunition. The Niagra-magnitude din produced by unanimous conversation was punctuated by a blue strobe, which alternated with a buzz horn for no obvious reason. Horace felt a violent urge to be elsewhere and saw no reason not to gratify it, so he slowly made his way through the human and mechanical paraphernalia toward the door. When he got there, he found he could not open it.

"Caution!" the sign warned. "Ingress Only!"

How quaint, thought Horace. He considered asking someone where the Egress Only! door might be found, and was alarmed as the dragon phoenix specter of the trek to Information arose in his brain, when he noticed a figure motioning to him from outside. The man put his finger to his lips (as if any sound Horace was capable of emitting could hope to have been heard), and swiftly opened the door from the outside, beckoning Horace through.

"Thanks, said Horace, as the door clicked shut behind him with a gratifying finality. "I was beginning to think I was never going to get out of there."

"Not an idle fear, that," said his deliverer.

Horace had negotiated the roiling gauntlet of the lobby utterly unobserved, but as the door clicked shut his exit was detected. "That's the man!" shouted Mrs. Plodgett in a lather. "Aeiouaey! There he is! That's him!" Everyone in the lobby turned to look.

"Oh my God!" screamed Charles. "Oh my God! Oh my God - look who he's with! Oh my God save us all!"

All eyes swung to the window. All mouths dropped in astonishment. All brows glistened with sudden anxiety. All voices despairingly howled in perfect unison a single, terrible, demonic name.

"Spracken!"

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