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

inspections. We have found what we were looking for." There was a pause as Mattathias moved away from the microphone, and as Klaus and Sunny listened very hard, they could hear the faint, faint noise of triumphant, high-pitched laughter coming from the Head of Human Resources. "Excuse me," he continued, when his giggling fit was over. "To continue, please be aware that two of the three Baudelaire murderers-- Klaus and Sun--I mean, Klyde and Susie Baudelaire--have been spotted in the hospital. If you see any children whom you recognize from The Daily Punctilio, please capture them and notify the police." Mattathias stopped talking and began to giggle again, until the children heard the voice of Esme Squalor whispering, "Darling, you forgot to turn off the intercom." Then there was a click, and everything was silent. "They caught her," Klaus said. Now that the sun had risen, it wasn't very cold in the half-finished section of the hospital, but the middle Baudelaire shivered nonetheless. "That's what Mattathias meant when he said that they had found what they were looking for." "Danger," Sunny said grimly. "She certainly is," Klaus said. "We have to rescue Violet before it's too late." "Virm," Sunny said, which meant "But we don't know where she is." "She must be somewhere in the hospital," Klaus said, "otherwise Mattathias wouldn't still be here. He and Esme are probably hoping to capture us, too." "Ranee," Sunny said. "And the file," Klaus agreed, taking page thirteen out of his pocket, where he had been storing it for safekeeping along with the scraps of the Quagmire notebooks. "Come on, Sunny. We've got to find our sister and get her out of there." "Lindersto," Sunny said. She meant "That'll be tough. We'll have to wander around the hospital looking for her, while other people will be wandering around the hospital, looking for us." "I know," Klaus said glumly. "If anyone recognizes us from The Daily Punctilio, we'll be in jail before we can help Violet." "Disguise?" Sunny said. "I don't know how," Klaus said, looking around the half-finished room. "All we have here is some flashlights and a few dropcloths. I suppose if we wrapped the dropcloths around us and put the flashlights on top of our heads, we could try to disguise ourselves as piles of construction materials." "Gidoost," Sunny said, which meant "But piles of construction materials don't wander around hospitals." "Then we'll have to walk into the hospital without disguises," Klaus said. "We'll just have to be extra careful." Sunny nodded emphatically, a word which here means "as if she thought being extra careful was a very good plan," and Klaus nodded emphatically back. But as they left the half-finished wing of the hospital, the two children felt less and less emphatic about what they were doing. Ever since that terrible day at the beach when Mr. Poe brought them news of the fire, all three Baudelaires had been extra careful all of the time. They had been extra careful when they lived with Count Olaf, and Sunny had still ended up dangling from a cage outside Olaf's tower room. They had been extra careful when they'd worked at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, and Klaus had still ended up hypnotized by Dr. Orwell. And now the Baudelaires had been as careful as they could possibly be, but the hospital had turned out to be as hostile an environment as anywhere the three children had ever lived. But just as Klaus and Sunny entered the finished half of Heimlich Hospital, their feet moving less and less emphatically and their hearts beating faster and faster, they heard something that soothed their savage breasts: "We are Volunteers Fighting Disease, And we're cheerful all day long. If someone said that we were sad, That person would be wrong. " There, coming around the corner, were the Volunteers Fighting Disease, walking down the hall singing their cheerful song and carrying enormous bunches of heart-shaped balloons. Klaus and Sunny looked at one another, and ran to catch up