“It’s very good with heart attacks,” Linda Beecham said, as if she knew what he was thinking. “Other than that, you could die here.”
“It’s not bad for delivering babies, either,” Clara said. “For God’s sake, Linda. You turn me into a tour guide. You’re so damned negative.”
“I’m not negative,” Linda said, but it was automatic.
They had been walking along the side of the building all the time they were talking. Now they turned a sharp corner and Gregor found himself looking at what had to be the front of the hospital. There were columns, the kind of columns that appeared at the front of stately brick houses meant to be Old, and Greek Revival, but the columns weren’t holding anything up but a little triangular facade. There was a curving drive, wider than the usual, that was meant to allow more than one car at a time to have access. There was a little offshoot of the drive marked emergency, with one ambulance parked in the three-space section right before the door.
“If you need serious medical attention, you go to Boston,” Linda Beecham said.
Then she strode past them and walked through the hospital’s plate glass front doors, a compact, solid little figure in sensible shoes and that ridiculous coat.
Gregor followed Clara and Bram because that was what gave him the most time to look around. The front foyer was clean enough. In fact, it was almost too clean. It was also very empty. The little gift stand was closed. The woman at the reception desk was reading a paperback romance novel with a picture of a boat on the cover.
Clara went up to the reception desk and cleared her throat. “Elyse? Linda came to get us at the ferry.”
Elyse put down her romance novel. She had to be well into her seventies. “Oh,” she said. “Miss Walsh. He’s up on the third floor. It’s awful, if you ask me. I mean, there isn’t anybody at all on the third floor. But Dr. Ingleford said the second floor had all those flu cases, and flu was catching. So there he is.”
“That’s fine,” Clara said. “He can’t be all alone, though, can he? There must be a nurse up there.”
Elyse considered this. “I think Sheri may be up there with him. One of the aides, at any rate. I don’t know if they mean to keep him or not, but if they do, they’re going to have to move him off that floor. It’s creepy up there. It’s too quiet.”
“Does he have a television?” Clara asked.
“He may have, but he can’t watch it, can he, when he’s not awake?” Elyse looked indignant. “But Dr. Ingleford said I wasn’t to say it was a coma, because it isn’t one. It’s just something in his system. It’s just hypnotol. Or something like that.”
Gregor had not been paying much attention to this particular exchange. He had been looking at the out-of-date magazines in the window of the gift shop, and at the way the chairs set out in a square in the waiting area looked as if nobody had ever sat in them. Now he looked up and gave Elyse his full attention. She was not playing around. If anything, she was working very hard to give Clara Walsh her full attention.
Clara looked mildly annoyed, and nothing else. Gregor came closer to the reception desk. “Just a minute,” he said. “Do you mind if I ask you something? Could you by any chance have gotten the name of that drug wrong?”
“Oh, honey,” Elyse said, “I get everything wrong. It’s a good thing I’m just the receptionist. It would be dangerous having me work in a hospital if I was doing anything else.”
“Would you know the name of the drug if you heard it again?”
“You could try me,” Elyse said. “I couldn’t promise you anything. I hate to be around sick people. Did I tell you that?
Doctors and hospitals. They do good work, but I hate to be around sick people.”
“How about Rohypnol?” Gregor asked. “Could it have been Rohypnol?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Clara said. “They wouldn’t have given him Rohypnol. Nobody would have given him Rohypnol.”
Elyse brightened. “That’s right. They didn’t. That’s what Dr. Ingleford said. They didn’t give him hypnohol, or whatever it was, they gave him some cereal, and the cereal made him pass out, and now it’s going to be hours before he’s up and around again. I remember because I thought it was so odd, that cereal could make you pass out. But there he is, you know, up there, and his hand is a mess. Isn’t it terrible what goes on these days? Here’s Jack that everybody’s known forever and somebody cuts up his hand. And he’s not awake, so nobody knows why.”