Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 12.1

"Doctor?" said the young guy at the service station, slowly chewing something that looked like turds. "Nope. Don't reckon there'll be a doctor open this time a'night." He swallowed the turds and fished around in a packet for some more. "What's wrong?" he said, looking from me to Sophie, then to Fred, who was in my arms.

"Nothing."

"What do you want a doctor for then?"

"None of your business."

He shrugged, and went back to stuffing boxes of cigarettes into a display case. He was humming a song. Sometimes he'd mumble out a word like poison! or chains! and he'd hit the bench with his hand in time with the words. He had long hair like a girl's. I wanted to pull it.

When he'd finished stacking the display case he turned around and said: "Still here?

I nodded. We were, after all.

"There's a hospiddle down the road." He pointed vaguely. "Why don't you go there?" He looked me up and down. "Where're your parents?"

"Where're yours?"

"Ooh, a funny cunt."

"Ben, let's go." Sophie grabbed my arm.

We left.

The hospital wasn't far. There were ambulances out the front and people going in with flowers and old people sitting around in wheelchairs waiting to die. All hospitals are the same. There was a green emergency sign where all the ambulances were parked. We went in there. There was a desk with a woman behind it. She didn't seem surprised to see us.

I brought Sophie up to the window and said, "She's bleeding from her vagina."

The nurse looked at Sophie, then at me, then at Sophie again. She took so long to answer that I began to wonder if she knew English.

"How old are you dear?" she said finally.

"Thirteen," Sophie said.

"And you've never bled from there before?"

"No. Please, I'm scared."

"Okay, calm down. You're going to be fine."

This was probably just something you say to dying people to calm them down.

"I'm going to call a nurse to come down and get you. Sit over there." She pointed at some chairs.

We waited for the nurse. When she arrived she took us up a lift into the hospital. As we waited for the lift to go up she kept glancing at me. I had Fred in my arms. She didn't say anything for a while, but then she said: "Where are your parents?"

"They went out for dinner," I said. "Sophie was babysitting us but then she started bleeding." I can be a terrific liar when I need to be.

The nurse nodded. We got out of the lift and went down a couple of corridors, then she told me to wait outside with Fred while she took Sophie in to a room. She wasn't long. When she came out again she went to a desk and spoke to a woman there, sometimes looking back at me and Sophie and Fred. Sophie came over to us.

"Well?" I said, expecting the worst.

"I'm fine. She gave me this to read." She waved a pamphlet in my face.

"You sure?"

"I'm fine Ben. Seriously. All girls have it."

I let out a deep breath.

"We'd better get out of here," Sophie said.

But the nurse was already coming back. She had a pen and a notepad, and she said to me: "What's you phone number, ah...?"

"Joe," I said.

"What's your phone number, Joe?"

I closed my eyes as if I was trying to remember, and said: "Five five three, oh four three two."

"What are your parents' names?"

"James and Elinor."

Sophie gave me a strange look.

"Okay," the nurse said, and went away again. She picked up a phone in the office.

As soon as her back was turned I grabbed Fred and jogged off down the hall in the other direction, Sophie right behind me, silent with amazement at her new vagina. I didn't know where the hell we were going. Everything in the hospital looked the same, and all I remembered about the way we had come in was the lift. Old people with no teeth watched us from wheelchairs as we went past. One old woman waved and smiled at us. There was a guy with thick glasses taking a couple of oxygen bottles for a walk on a trolley; he squinted at us as we went by and muttered something about race tracks. There were nurses and doctors and cleaners everywhere, but they were all minding their own business, and somehow we made it back to the entrance without being stopped.

There was lots going on at the entrance. A woman with wild hair was telling a nurse to stick her form up her stinking cunt, while two huge islanders in white uniforms closed in on her like the jaws of a big brown vise. So I don't think anyone noticed us as we slipped out.

When we got back to Ambrose I asked Sophie if I could see her pamphlet on vaginas, but she told me to mind my own business because it was girl's stuff. I didn't mind. I was just glad she wasn't going to die.