ThisTown

The Sleeping Substance

THE SLEEPING SUBSTANCE

The nurse at the Hospital was called Dorothy Pine. She was a large, bustling, woman with a big chest who was always hot and red in the face. She was the one who had bandaged Belle Fellow’s hand after she had fallen over in Duster Alley. Belle probably knew more about Thistown than anyone else because she spent every second walking or running round it and poking her nose into everything. That day she had been her usual stringy, ten year old self, (always been ten.... etc), who generally fell over anything that was in her way. Her real name was Fiona but for a long time - about sixty years or so - she had been nicknamed Dumbelina because she was so clumsy, and as more years had gone by, this had been shortened to Belle. She usually fell over something, or knocked into it, or dropped something else on average three or four times a week. She didn’t seem to mind at all. “That’s what I am,” she said, “Belle Fellows Over. And that’s what you’re going to have to put up with. Because I’m not going to change, am I?” She didn’t seem to mind the blood either, or even occasional broken bones.

Nurse Pine was on the witness bench. She had better things to do than put bandages on Belle (again) and had been impatient with her. That’s what she told the Assembly. Alice, Sam, Fortuna and the other seven Assembly members sat on big, worn, red chairs with the stuffing hanging out of them, around a huge old, scratched, wooden table.

Above them Arthur Pen, editor of the Opinion Newspaper leaned forward over the wooden rail in the public gallery to hear better. Ted Thrust, the editor of the Clarion, the town’s other newspaper, was sitting next to him. Obviously their reports wouldn’t agree, because they never agreed on anything - what’s the point of having two newspapers that said the same thing? But that didn’t mean they didn’t get on. Pen liked Thrust’s big walrus moustache, and Thrust liked Pen’s bald head and ring of white hair. As Nurse Pine was speaking, Thrust gave Pen a mint from a packet. That was the last thing Ted Thrust ever gave Arthur Pen out of friendship.

“I didn’t think about it.” said Nurse Pine. “It was just Belle falling over like usual. She’s always doing it, ain’t she?” She pursed her lips in disapproval. “It was only when I was filling out the report that I asked her, what did you trip over then? For official reasons, see? It’s the Hospital Accident Report Form. We have to know.”

Percy Pike, the Head of the Assembly, was a thin, awkward man with long thin lips, and a nose like a pointed fish’s mouth that stuck out from the middle of his face. He was impatient and pretty snappy. He leant forward and said, “So woman, what did Belle fall over in Duster Alley?”

“I’ll tell you,” said the Nurse with her big chest heaving. “I wrote it in red ink in my Report.” She paused for a second to keep everyone waiting a bit longer, then she said, “As far as I know, she fell over a sleeping man.”

The members looked at each other across the table. They already knew this much and having a nap was hardly something that needed to be investigated by the Town Assembly, was it? There had to be more to it than that. And there was.

“So?” asked Pike impatiently.

“I told the doctor,” said Nurse Pine as if it was the only thing an intelligent nurse could have done.

“Which doctor?” asked Alice, being mischievous. She well knew that Nurse Pine couldn’t have been entirely sure which doctor she’d told it to, as the two doctors were identical twins. They lived in two small identical houses next door to one another on Avenue A. They had identical furniture and identical clothes. It was sometimes said that they couldn’t tell themselves apart. Like most people in Thistown their original names had been forgotten and they’d been called Stitch and Slice for as long as anyone could remember. Or was it Slice and Stitch? It didn’t matter. If you called one, the other would come anyway.

“I don’t know which one,” said Pine. “All I know is, he was talking to Sergeant Willis at the Hospital door, because Flouncy, that is, the Sergeant, had come in to write an accident report.”

“Please will you get on with it.” Pike was getting impatient. He had an idea to go fishing up on the Thistown river.

“He said he’d check on on the sleeping man on his way home.” The Nurse gave Pike a hurt look.

“Then let’s call Sergeant Willis!” said Pike impatiently, wanting to get this ridiculous woman off the witness bench as quickly as possible.

But Nurse Pine didn’t get up, she merely moved sideways and was immediately replaced in the centre of the bench by the huge form of Detective Sergeant Flouncy Willis of the Thistown police in his grey and crumpled suit. He was a nice man with a fat face that flopped and folded when he spoke. He was usually very eager to please and he tried to look as efficient as possible as he snapped open the hard cover of his official Thistown police notebook.

He said “At four o’clock yesterday I was in the vicinity of the First Circle Hospital and I was approached by Nurse Pine who asked if I would investigate a sleeping substance in Duster Alley. I agreed to do so and went to Duster Alley where I came immediately upon the subject.....”

“Subject? What subject?” asked Croker. He was one of the oldest (and deafest) on the Town Assembly and a little slow on the uptake.

“The subject, being the sleeping man,” said Willis, clutching his notebook. “I leaned down and I touched him on the shoulder, like this.” He stuck a finger in the air and demonstrated how he had prodded. “There was no response to this, so I shook his shoulder and said....” He opened his notebook again to check the exact wording, “I said, ‘Wake up you fellow, this is no place to be lying asleep.’” Willis snapped his notebook shut with a flourish and flopped his big face around a nervous grin.

There was a silence in the hall. Everybody was expecting Willis to say something else. He didn’t.

“Then what happened?” asked Sam peering through his glasses. Like Alice, he too, was beginning to wonder what this was all about.

“He wouldn’t wake up. Or couldn’t,” said Willis, beginning to sound a bit less sure of himself. Then he told them that he’d immediately run back to the Hospital and fetched Doctors Stitch and Slice. The three of them with Nurse Pine puffing behind had ran back up Duster Alley. The sleeping substance was exactly where he’d been left. He hadn’t moved an inch. Stitch or Slice, put a stethoscope to the Sleeping Man’s chest and heard nothing. Slice or Stitch held his wrist for a pulse and could feel nothing. Nurse Pine put a thermometer in his mouth and couldn’t read it because she had forgotten her glasses. Sergeant Willis wrote it all down in his notebook. Then they stood back and looked down on the man.

“I suggested we take him immediately back to the Hospital, sir.” said Willis to Pike. “And so we procured a cart from Workshop Way and went back with him the way we came.”