The Lord of Opium(25)

“I am called Waitress,” she responded.





11





FEEDING A PET WAITRESS




One good result of the battle was that Nurse Fiona returned to the hospital. Matt did accompany her, taking an inhaler along in case he suffered another asthma attack. He saw at once why Fiona hated the place. The halls and rooms were empty except for a few ghostly eejits going about their chores.

“I have to tell them to do everything,” said Fiona. “If I don’t give them work, they stand there and jitter, but without patients nothing gets dirty. I have to make them wash perfectly clean floors over and over again. It’s enough to make you run barking.”

Matt was getting used to her odd language. “To run barking” meant to go crazy. “A fair pong” meant something stank.

“I also have to tell them when to eat, sleep, and defecate. What kind of job is that for someone who got an A in her A-levels?” Fiona said. Matt assumed this was an achievement. He didn’t ask about it, because he didn’t want a long explanation. He watched as she disinfected the wounds and, in Cienfuegos’s case, put in stitches. “A knife fight! You bad boys,” she scolded. “Reminds me of my brothers. They were always trying to see who could lean out the window farthest and coming home with dirty great cuts on their heads. It made no difference to their intelligence, for they had none to begin with. However did you come by those scars?” she asked, examining Daft Donald’s neck.

“He tried to blow up the English prime minister and the bomb went off too soon,” said Matt. “He can’t talk.”

“Fancy that! You meet all sorts in this place,” Fiona chirped. “Take Mr. MacGregor. There was a nasty piece of work, seducing poor Felicity and driving her mad with drugs. I was present at his operation years ago. He was getting a new liver and a set of kidneys—they usually do that at the other hospital, the one in the Chiricahua Mountains, posh place really, not like this dump. Anyhow, he was prepped and ready to go when they wheeled in his clone. Gracious! MacGregor hadn’t allowed the doctors to anesthetize it. A transplant goes better without drugs, but I do think they could have given it a happy shot. It was struggling so hard I was certain it would give itself an injury—”

“Are you as stupid as you sound?” said Cienfuegos.

Fiona’s mouth flew open. “Well! Is that all the thanks I get for stitching you up?”

“Do you think it’s smart to talk about clones?”

“I don’t see why not. After all, El Patrón had clones and—and—” Fiona turned pale. “I didn’t mean that! You can’t think I was talking about you, young master! Why, Tam Lin used to brag about how clever you were, and I never thought of you that way.”

“Just shut up,” Matt said wearily. He felt sick at the memory of MacGregor’s clone and yet, buried in the nurse’s ridiculous prattle were the words I never thought of you that way. It was enough to make him forgive her, if not like her. “You have one more patient,” he said. “Waitress’s hands are burned.”

“Oh, but I don’t work on eejits,” faltered Fiona. “There’s the vet hospital for that, over by the horse barn. Only, I don’t think they fix eejits either. They replace them.”

“You will take care of Waitress’s hands and do it immediately,” said Matt. “She’s as human as you are, and despite your stupid prejudice, she can feel pain. Isn’t that so, Cienfuegos?”

The jefe had the grace to look ashamed. “Eejits can feel pain, mi patrón, otherwise I couldn’t train them. I don’t think they suffer in the same way we do. They scream, but it’s an automatic function, like your heart beating or your stomach digesting food. You don’t think, ‘Today I’m going to digest that omelet I had for breakfast.’ The omelet arrives in your stomach and the reaction happens. To suffer implies emotion, and eejits don’t have that.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Matt, and left the room.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with Celia and Mr. Ortega when Daft Donald returned. The man wore a bandage slantwise above one eye, and it was clear to Matt that Cienfuegos had intended to blind him.

“Looks like you poked your nose into someone’s business,” remarked Mr. Ortega.

Daft Donald wrote on his pad of paper. Matt and I were rescuing a lady.

“A lady! Sounds romantic. Was it . . . oh, let me think . . . María?”

“It was Waitress,” said Matt, annoyed. Everyone seemed to know about him and María. Daft Donald scribbled busily, describing the fight and how Cienfuegos almost died because he tried to attack Matt.