The rows and rows of chairs were packed with people waiting to be seen. Men and women and children, and here and there some individuals who were none of the above and never would be. All of them troubled with wounds and fevers, exotic STDs and partial transmogrifications. A man with his hand stuck somewhere very embarrassing, a hunchback whose hump had slipped, a cyborg with Tourette’s who kept shouting out long strings of binary numbers, and someone whose grip on reality was so weak he kept fading in and out. Half a dozen winged monkeys dressed as cleaners pushed mops and buckets around, labouring to deal with the usual spills of blood, urine, and vomit, and one small but worrying pool of molecular acid.
Typical night, in the Nightside A&E. I even overheard the traditional interplay between a nurse and a patient.
Patient: Nurse, it hurts when I do this.
Nurse: Then don’t do that.
Patient: I am going to have to kill you now.
Nurse: I quite understand.
It’s good to know some people are still ready to keep up the old traditions.
Right over to one side was a miraculous spring, a large pool of murky water contained within a low stone wall. It was supposed to have amazing curative properties, but only as long as you had faith, real faith, enough to make it work. And real faith has always been hard to come by in the Nightside. One very determined mother was holding her son by the ankle and dunking him in the pool, over and over again. Between a lot of sputtering, the boy could be heard saying; I feel much better! Honest! Look will you please stop this I think I’m developing gills!
Interesting and entertaining as all this was, Julien and I finally had no choice but to give our full attention to the receptionist at the desk. It was a really pleasant-looking reception desk, with vases of fresh flowers, neat and tidy in and out trays, and an absolute minimum of clutter . . . but I wasn’t fooled. I could See the industrial-strength magical protections hanging on the air, and the built-in weapons systems.
The receptionist herself was a large matronly figure in a spotless white uniform (that reminded me immediately of the Very Righteous Sisters). She had a pleasant face, cold and unsympathetic eyes, and a mouth like a steel trap. You know the sort; mother was a pit bull, father was a velociraptor. Don’t ask me what they ever saw in each other; but it can get very foggy on the moors. She waited to the very last moment to look up from her form-filling and stop Julien and me in our tracks with a stern warning gaze. She recognised Julien Advent immediately and favoured him with a brief nod. And then she looked at me, recognised me, and one hand moved quickly to a large red emergency button. She gave me a brief, meaningless smile.
“Tell me where it hurts, don’t bleed on the floor, fill in these forms, and take a number.”
“You don’t understand,” said Julien. “Neither of us is in need of medical attention. We are here to speak with Dr. Benway.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the receptionist said immediately. “Not without an advance appointment. Dr. Benway is very busy, and I won’t have her bothered. I can book you in for an appointment, but I should warn you there’s a three-week waiting gap. Minimum. If that’s not acceptable, take a number and get to the back of the queue, like everyone else.”
“I am Julien Advent, representing the Authorities. This is John Taylor, the new Walker. It is vital that we see Dr. Benway immediately!”
The receptionist indulged herself with a harsh sniff, to show how unimpressed she was. “No queue-jumping. We don’t care who you are, here.”
“But this is urgent!” said Julien. “Vital, I tell you! The safety of the entire Nightside itself is at risk!”
“Save your breath,” said the receptionist. “I’ve heard it all before. Are you actually dying? Bleeding out? Missing a major organ?”
“We’re not,” I said. “But you could be. You know me; you know what I can do. So stop pissing me off, or I’ll send your spleen to Mars.”
I gave her my most cheerful smile. The receptionist opened her mouth to say something, looked me in the eye, then thought better of it. Her hand hovered over the red button, then moved away. She sighed, in her best put-upon way, and reached for the phone.
“If you two gentlemen will give me a moment, I’ll ask Dr. Benway if she can make time to see you. But I’m not promising anything!”
“Of course not,” I said. “Why break the habit of a lifetime?”
“Stop it . . .” murmured Julien. “She’ll turn nasty in a moment.”
The receptionist got through to Dr. Benway, spoke quietly for a moment, and listened. She nodded, put the phone down, and gave Julien and me a wintry smile.
“Dr. Benway will see you; but she is very busy right now. So you’ll have to wait. With everyone else.”
Julien grabbed me forcefully by the arm and hauled me away from the reception desk. It took a while to find a couple of seats together, in the very crowded waiting area, and as far away from the more obviously infectious and messy people, but when we finally sank down into the chairs, they really were very comfortable.
“I think we won that encounter on points,” I said. “All right, we still have to wait, but we didn’t have to take a number.”
“Would you really have . . . ?” said Julien.
“Almost certainly,” I said. “I have deep-seated problems with authority figures.”
“But you are one!”
“I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour.”
We sat, and waited. People came and went, many sobbed and whimpered and read out-of-date magazines, but the size of the waiting crowd never seemed to change much. Julien stared patiently off into the distance, tapping one foot in a thoughtful manner. I recognised the signs. He’d already decided exactly how much time he was going to allow Dr. Benway; and then he was going to go and look for her himself. And God help anyone who got in his way. I’d never seen Julien walk right over a receptionist before. I was quite looking forward to it. Reassured at the prospect of loud and nasty unpleasantness in the near future, I killed time by studying the long list of wards, and their particular areas of expertise, laid out on an old-fashioned wooden wall plaque. They were all carefully numbered, but a lot of the descriptions were in Greek and Latin. I nudged Julien in the ribs and drew his attention to the dead languages. He gave me a long-suffering look.
“In my young days, we were all taught Latin and Greek at school.”
“Was that before or after they shoved you up chimneys or down the mines?” I said.
Julien sighed, heavily, and translated the various descriptions for me. With rather more hesitations and uncertainty than you’d expect from someone who was supposed to have had a first-class private education. But after a while he got interested and started a running commentary on what each new description implied.
“Here at the Hospice, they deal with all the more unusual medical problems and conditions of the Nightside. Resulting in some very specialised care and services. There are doctors here to take off curses, put souls or identities back where they came from, reverse transformations, and undo teleport pod mishaps. They can restore kirlian fields and retune your chakras. Can’t say I really approve of all this New Age stuff, but you can’t ignore alternative medicine these days. Fortunately, I don’t see anything here about crystals or flower aromatherapy, or I would have to say something very unfortunate. There are wards here for every need and speciality, including every kind of species you can think of. The Hospice doesn’t discriminate. And then, of course, there’s Ward 12A, though most people don’t like to talk about that.”
“Why not?” I said immediately. “What goes on in Ward 12A?”