FOUR

       ROYAL VIC

      The Royal Victoria Hospital was, as always, Runner’s destination of choice, despite or, we suppose, because of the stories of mould in the walls of the surgery rooms that got into the bodies of patients and killed them. Runner loved the Royal Vic because it was flagrantly, royally Scottish, designed in the Scottish Baronial style, which reminded her that she was herself Scottish, or at least part Scottish, that her surname came from a Scottish word for a Danish word for someone who wore hoods regularly, a practice she was planning to take up very soon. Perhaps, she thought, she would take up the wearing of hoods, when the day came that her eyes got too big for her head, perhaps in this very hospital.

      Runner loved the Royal Vic because it was nestled into the side of the mountain, perched in solitude on the slopes. The main building, she would explain to you, had been conceived and constructed as a fortress for the sick and injured among the city’s poor, and so she loved too the fact that, since no one dared to use the main building for the low purpose of privately treating the wealthy, the Ross Pavilion had had to be built up and behind, shamefully sequestered. If the private patients wanted a building, she imagined some nineteenth-century hospital president saying, they could go and chip it out of solid rock.

      There were, she felt, no new political arguments under the sun.

      She loved the fact that nurses used to live in the attics. She wished she could have lived there with them, dressing up in their uniforms and shrieking with delight after hours, scaring the patients in the upper wards. She loved the fact that Emergency was located in the back of the building, up the hill, and required a running start. And she loved that in winter some of the emergency exits led out into twenty-foot snowbanks on the side of the mountain. She wondered whether anyone had ever been buried in an avalanche because some jittery kitchen worker had pulled the fire alarm.

      She liked the balconies a lot. She used to go out onto the balconies and wait for Neil, who liked the cafeteria on the third floor. And she would count the entrances and exits (seven main, plus a hundred and five extra) while he played with his food and looked at the people and wrote in his notebook.

      She had spent a lot of time here. And so had Neil, to keep her company. Neil had taken up the writing of notebooks in this very hospital. He had purchased his very first notebook here in the gift shop. The only family he had ever known was his big sisters Runner and Ruby. And now there was only Runner.

      And now, on 18 March 2003, 10.14 p. m., he sat by the door to Runner’s hospital room and ignored Runner’s condition as best he could, filling his notebook, as he did most of the time, with disparate, irrelevant thoughts.

      He wrote: I like to do my homework in the dark with a head¬ lamp behind the couch.

      Well, who wouldn’t?

      He wrote: I like to roll change with a headlamp in the dark too.

      He wrote: I’ve been making wallets and change purses out of duct tape.

      He wrote: I’ve been studying origami.

      He wrote with an absorbed concentration that he knew could be shattered in a moment by Runner’s voice, speaking up eventually from her bed when the parade of girls had passed and they were finally alone.

      ‘So, Neil, we got them.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘We got them on our side. We get to read all ten tablets. Isn’t that great?’

      Neil put away his pen and nodded vigorously.

      ‘It’s a special, unique book,’ she said, sighing happily and lying back into the pillow that was big for her head if not her eyes. ‘We just have to do it in our special, unique way.’

      Neil was full of ideas for how the Lacuna Cabal could do the book in a unique way, but before they could be expressed they were interrupted by the entrance of the new girl, Anna, bearing a glass of water.

Runner, he could tell, was thrilled that Anna had stuck around. Romy had wept and Priya, arriving late19, had been spooked by the look of the place. Missy would have stayed but she said she had to go home and water her plants. Missy’s father had purchased for her a greenhouse and filled it up with bonsai as something they could cultivate together. But really, she explained, it takes only one person to cultivate a greenhouse full of bonsai. It had seemed like an unnecessarily elaborate explanation. And then she had said how sorry she was about the broken leg and left.

      Anna had hung back. Some spidey sense had prompted her to stay. She handed over the glass.

      Runner said, ‘You’re left-handed.’

      Anna said, ‘Yes I am,’ and blushed.

      ‘How very interesting.’

      ‘Why, um?’

      ‘Some people say that all left-handed people are one of a pair of twins.’

      ‘Oh, I’m not a –’

      ‘They mean at the beginning, before you were born. So you might not know.’

      ‘Oh.’

19 She had stayed behind at the Lighter Building for a few minutes to practise a song she was working on in front of her imaginary audience. Like many people, Priya habitually saw herself as the star of her own movie, and often wondered if this had replaced the idea of God in governing her behaviour, causing her to put her best face forward and leading her to wonder further whether she shouldn’t start writing better songs.

      Runner said, ‘So maybe you pine for a long-lost sister,’ flirting. ‘Other signs are crooked teeth and funny birthmarks.’

      Anna’s hand went instinctively up to her mouth, even as she smiled a little. ‘I do have crooked teeth.’

      Runner smiled back, sharing the secret, delighted. ‘Yes, I know.’

      Anna covered her whole mouth now. ‘My parents wouldn’t let me get braces.’

      ‘Oh no, don’t worry,’ said Runner. ‘It’s like a mole on the cheek: the flaw that accentuates beauty.’

      Anna tried to think what else to say and then she said she had to go. She did like this girl, though. This girl was a crazy chick, but she was smart. She was smart with an open heart, and that made her do stupid things. Anna never did stupid things. Not deliberately, anyway. She was too careful for that.

      ‘Will we see you tomorrow?’ asked Runner, hopeful, failing always to keep her cards close to her chest. She meant for the book club, Anna had to remind herself. It wasn’t her habit to hang around so much with women, preferring the company