Free A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket

breakfast of Baudelaire pancakes!" "Run!" Sunny cried, but her siblings needed no urging. The three children hurried down the rest of the C aisle, as the cabinets creaked and crashed all around them. "Where can we go?" Violet cried. "To the D aisle!" Klaus answered, but changed his mind as he saw another row of cabinets begin to topple. "No! The E aisle!" "B?" Violet asked, finding it difficult to hear over the sounds of the cabinets. "E!" Klaus cried. "E as in Exit!" The Baudelaires ran down E as in Exit, but when they reached the last cabinet, the row was becoming F as in Falling File Cabinets, G as in Go the Other Way! and H as in How in the World Are We Going to Escape? Before long, the children found themselves as far from the anteroom door as they possibly could be. As the cabinets crashed around them, and Esme cackled wildly and stabbed the floor in pursuit, the three youngsters found themselves in the area of the Library of Records where information was deposited. As the room creaked and crashed around them, the siblings looked first at the basket of papers, then at the bowl of paper clips, then the mouth of the chute, and finally at one another. "Violet," Klaus said hesitantly, "do you think you can invent something out of paper clips and a basket that could help us get out of here?" "I don't have to," Violet said. "That chute will serve as an exit." "But you won't fit in there," Klaus said. "I'm not even sure I will." "You're never going to get out of this room alive, you imbeciles!" Esme cried, using a horrible word in her horrible voice. "We'll have to try," Violet said. "Sunny, go first." "Prapil," Sunny said doubtfully, but she went first, crawling easily into the chute and staring out through the darkness at her siblings. "Now you, Klaus," Violet said, and Klaus, removing his glasses so they wouldn't break, followed his sister. It was a tight fit, and it took some manuevering, but eventually the middle Baudelaire worked his way through the mouth of the chute. "This won't work," Klaus said to Violet, peering around him. "It'll be tough to crawl up through the chute, the way it's slanted. Besides, there's no way you'll fit." "Then I'll find another way," Violet said. Her voice was calm, but Klaus and Sunny could see, through the hole in the wall, that her eyes were wide with fear. "That's out of the question," Klaus said. "We'll climb back out, and the three of us will escape together." "We can't risk it," Violet said. "Esme won't catch all of us, not if we split up. You two take page thirteen and go up the chute, and I'll get out another way. We'll meet up in the unfinished wing." "No!" Sunny cried. "Sunny's right," Klaus said. "This is what happened with the Quagmires, remember? When we left them behind, they were snatched away." "The Quagmires are safe now," Violet reminded him. "Don't worry, I'll invent a solution." The eldest Baudelaire gave her siblings a small smile, and reached into her pocket so she could tie up her hair and put the levers and gears of her inventing mind into motion. But there was no ribbon in her pocket. As her trembling fingers explored her empty pocket, she remembered she had used her ribbon to fool Hal with a fake loop of keys. Violet felt a quiver in her stomach as she remembered, but she had no time to feel bad about the trick she had played. With sudden horror, she heard a creak right behind her, and she jumped out of the way just in time to avoid the crash. A file cabinet labeled "Linguistics to Lions" fell against the wall, blocking the mouth of the chute. "Violet!" Sunny cried. She and her brother tried to push the cabinet aside, but the strength of a thirteen-year-old boy and his baby sister were no match against a metal case holding files on everything from the history of language to a large carnivorous feline found in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of India. "I'm O.K.," Violet called back. "Not for long you're not!" Esme snarled, from a few aisles over. Klaus and Sunny sat in