Chapter Three: Unbidden Knowledge

“Excuse me! Excuse me sir! You can’t bring that animal in here!”

The nurse swerved out from behind the desk and made a beeline for Ace and Cody, who was now sporting a festive red collar from Convenio-Mart.

“Why is that, ma’am?”

“This is a hospital, sir! We have to keep things CLEAN.”

Her tone of voice, facial expression, and most of all emphasis on the word clean scraped Ace’s nerves the wrong way, and he smiled a very unpleasant smile that even interrupted the momentum of the nurse’s righteous indignation.

“Clean? Are you totally ignorant of dogs? Their mouths are cleaner than any human’s. If it’s disease bacteria you’re concerned about, you should be handing out toothbrushes and mouthwash at a booth by those doors over there! Furthermore, it’s been proven by more studies than I care to count that exposure to animals will cause blood pressure to drop and T-cell counts to rise! This canine here has just as much a right to be here as your defibrilators and antibiotics!”

Cody chose this moment to trot purposefully past the nurse and down the hallway!

“Hey– wait, that, that!” If Ace’s arguement had temporarily derailed the nurse’s train of thought, then her confidence was the captive tied to the railroad tracks. Ace himself rushed past the nurse and called down the hallway. “Cody! Wait up! I haven’t finished making a fool of the nurse! Stay right here, I’ll get him.”

***

“That totally should not have worked.”

Cody stood on his hind legs, looking at himself in the mirror of the men’s room. Ace stood next to him, running water through his hair, slicking it back and washing more of the clotted blood from the scalp.

“Why is that?”

“Isn’t obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“Well… she had the… the… authority! She could have thrown us out!”

“But she didn’t. My attitude was key, I think. The arguement was just random stuff pulled out of nowhere. Actually, given how many times she must have fought with hysterical family members when a kid was dying, she shouldn’t have gotten out of the way that easily.”

“Maybe you hypnotized her.”

“Har har. Let’s just look around. I don’t know a damned thing about where they keep a patient’s personal effects. Except it isn’t with the patient.”

“Desk. Let’s try to get behind a desk. That’s my guess.”

“Fair enough. How?”

“I have a plan, but we’re going to need some glue and a rattlesnake with the venom glands removed.”

“I don’t have either one.”

“Fine then, YOU think of something.”

Ace rubbed his temple, then turned towards the towel dispenser.

“Alright. If the bluffing past the front desk was impossible, this should be doubly so. That way it’ll work twice as well.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

***

Ezekiel Brown lay back on his bed, breathing the troubled respirations of a late stage lung cancer victim. Though perpetually tired from the chemotherapy process, he was having difficulty sleeping. Then agin, given the painkillers he was on, his waking thoughts were pretty much like dreams anyway.

“Chicken… therfore… monorail,” he weezed, and smiled.

“Chicken? I’ll hit that.”

Zeke turned towards the sound of the voice, and was confused by the lack of person.

“Down here, sports fan.”

Zeke obliged and found himself looking at a dog.

“Are you a doctor?”

Cody stared at the man, momentarily nonplussed.

“Are you on drugs?”

Zeke thought for a bit about the situation, then nodded. “I’m taking chemotherapy. Lung cancer. That’s like a drug.”

“Yeah, well, you should tell the doctor to cut back the dosage. It’s obviously messing with your head. You’re hearing dogs talk.”

“Oh. Alright.”

“Good. These machines are just moniters, right?”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind. The nurses ought to come running anyway.” Cody dropped down under the bed and grabbed a cord in his teeth. He didn’t know one cord from another, but reasoned that when medicine was involved, losing even one was bad.

The cord’s minimal slack was played out, and Cody sat near the door with the cord in his mouth. With one mighty yank, he unplugged it and immediately sprinted out of the room into a waiting broom closet. Alarms went off, predictably enough, and he shoved the door closed with his paws.

Down at the local monitering station, a doctor and several nurses made tracks for Zeke’s room. Ace quickly ducked behind the desk and started scanning random peices of paper and folders.

“What are you doing?”

Ace was very, very careful not to pause in his search or look up. “There was a John Doe case who came in here earlier. Gunshot wound in the head. Where’s the paperwork on that guy?”

“Are you talking about the zombie dude?”

Ace stopped and turned around. “Zombie?”

“Yeah, it was the freakiest thing ever. He just clonks their heads together and runs off with Martin’s clothes. Gave him a concussion too. And Amy was totally freaking out because she almost cut up a guy who was still alive. That can’t be fun.”

“Especially for the guy on the receiving end. So did this derail the paperwork?”

“Hells yes. We can’t identify the guy, we can’t find next of kin… total enigma.”

“That’s why I came down here for the file, actually. Some weird guy showed up at the front desk with a dog claiming to be the guy’s cousin. Says his name was… dammit, I was just there… started with a Z. God I’m tired.”

“It happens.”

“I need some more coffee. I’m gonna get some. Would you mind hunting this guy’s file and personal effects down while I recharge?”

“I guess. Get me a cup too.”

“Sure thing. Sugar? Black? Cream? A little umbrella in it maybe?”

The man laughed. “Black’s fine.”

***

Cody hid under the bed of a very sick girl, bored out of his skull. Ace still hadn’t given the all-clear signal even after twenty minutes, so Cody risked running for other cover. Elizabeth Mur’s hospital bed was the closest he could come to ideal camoflauge; she had brought a whole zoo of plushies and stuffed animals with her along with whatever it was that landed her in the hospital to start with.

“…Mr. Dog? Are you down there?”

“What the- I thought you were asleep when I came in here.”

“I can’t sleep. There’s to many beeping thingies.”

“Oh. Well, a hospital is like that I guess.”

There was an awkward, but short, silence.

“How can you talk if you’re a dog?”

“Oh… well, a mad scientist gave me a human tongue.”

“…that’s gross.”

“Tell me about it. Human mouths are dirtier than dog’s mouths. Even if we do have worse breath.”

The girl giggled. “Why are you here Mr. Dog?”

“I’m hiding from the doctors. Why are you here?”

“I don’t know. The doctors won’t tell me and daddy just says it’s not serious when I ask. I’m getting worried though.”

“Well, they keep your medical data on your chart down here. I’ll pop out and have a look.”

Cody slid out between a giant Tigger and a stuffed Star Wars Jawa, and took a look at the vital stats.

“Hmmm…”

“What’s it say?”

“It says… huh… okay, I totally can’t read that. It’s in latin. But the word before that… okay, there’s something that means the pancreas.”

“What’s a pancreas?”

Cody walked around to the girl’s side of the bed and propped his head on the covers next to her. “The pancreas is an organ that helps you digest food once your stomach is through with it. Lots of fluids and disgusting stuff, but very important.”

“So am I going to die?”

Cody paused. There was no fear in that voice. Either she was too young to appreciate the facts of life and death, or too stoned on painkillers. Actually, it seemed everybody in this stupid place was high as Mt. Everest.

“I’m just a talking dog. I can’t read the future. I guess your chances are about fifty-fifty.”

“What’s a fifty-fifty?”

“Fifty-fifty means even. Think of it like a coin toss. If it comes up heads, you’ll survive. If it comes up tails, you won’t.”

“…heads means I stay with daddy and tails means I go live with mommy?”

“In all essentials, yeah. You got it.”

“Okay. Thanks Mr. Dog.”

“No problem. Just don’t tell anybody I’m-”

The door swung open a crack and Cody froze. “Oh hell.”

“Cody!” It was Ace’s hourse whisper. “You in there?”

“Ace? What took you so freaking long?”

Ace snuck in and closed the door. “I had to get coffee for eight people. I’ve got my stuff, let’s– is that girl awake?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about the talking thing. People don’t beleive kids even when they tell the truth.”

“What about kids who are traumatized?” Ace pointed at Liz, who had her hands cupped over her mouth, eyes wide.

“What? Hey Liz, what’s up?”

“You said a bad word!”

“I did? When?”

“When the door opened!”

“What? Oh. Right. Hell. It’s okay. I’m a dog. Dogs can say bad words. It’s part of the constitution.”

***

“So what’s the haul?”

Ace looked through the bag he was holding. “Let me see… some very ragged clothing… a baseball hat with a bullet hole in it-”

“That looks Faaaaabulous!” Cody lisped.

“Hah. Hah. A Rubik’s cube, a folded peice of paper, and a pencil.”

“What’s the paper say?”

Ace unfolded it. “Ahem. ‘Note to self: Apartment key behind the wainscotting. Buy more milk. Still haven’t solved the puzzle cube.’ Guess I had a lot of free time.”

Cody sniffed at the bag. “I don’t smell plastic. Aren’t Rubik’s cubes made of plastic.”

Ace stopped in his tracks, mouth open. Cody turned in front of him. “Ace? Ace? Helloooo? Are you still awake?”

“…I made this cube.”

“Huh?”

“I remembered making this cube! I was at a desk, a wooden workbench thingy, I had all the parts, I was tightening something with a… a seven-ninths’ torsion pic. I made it to hide something in here.”

“Hide what?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”