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The Library of Records continued to fall to shambles around Violet, the air filled with creaks and crashes, and tears sprung to the eldest Baudelaire’s eyes. Her heart clenched as she was cut off from her siblings, and all she could do was hope that they were able to escape up the narrow chute, and she hadn’t doomed them to die in the cramped space. Sunny, she knew wouldn’t have too much trouble, the baby was not much larger than the bundles of papers that regularly were deposited down the chute. Klaus, on the other hand, was scrawny for a newly thirteen year old, but still significantly bigger than their youngest sibling.
Her own escape efforts would prove fruitless as she raced through the destruction. It was difficult to come up with any sort of plan with the din around her, and her wild hair was getting into her eyes. She didn’t dare spare a moment to tie it back with her ribbon, no matter how much better it’d make her feel. A little control in a situation where there was nothing but chaos.
Violet skidded to a stop at the end of an aisle, jumping back to avoid being squashed by a filing cabinet, and turning into that row would be her fatal error.
An icy hand with nails as sharp as the knives on her “in” high heeled shoes grasped Violet’s upper arm, wrenching the young girl around. Eyes wide, she stared at the glaring yet triumphant face of the psycho that calls herself Count Olaf’s girlfriend, Esmé Squalor.
“No,” Violet breathed, disbelief and dismay flickered across her face.
“Got you.” Esmé laughed, in her horrible candor.
She tightened her grip on the orphan, and Violet winced in pain as Esmé’s nails drew blood. She tried to dig her heels into the dirty tile of the hospital, but without knives on her shoes, she slid across the floor as Esmé dragged her from the wreckage that the library had become, and out into the anteroom.
“Now listen closely, orphan,” Esmé began, spitting the word ‘orphan’ like it was a curse word, “you will stay absolutely silent, you will keep your head down, and you will go with me without a fight, or else I will have my lovely boyfriend find your little orphan siblings, and he will slit their throats right in front of you. Do I make myself clear?”
Violet couldn’t speak with the lump forming in her throat, so she nodded frantically, stray tears flying off her cheeks at the motion.
“Good.”
They walked as quickly as they could, with Esmé’s impractical shoes getting caught in the floor with every step the wretched woman took. True to her word, Violet stared at the ground, allowing her hair to curtain her face. She let herself be dragged up numerous flights of stairs, which was nothing compared to the stairs her and her siblings had climbed at 667 Dark Avenue, but was tiring nonetheless.
She risked a glance up as they burled their way through a set of thick doors, and she noticed the familiar large person in a Heimlich Hospital uniform seemingly guarding the entryway to the… Surgical Unit. Violet’s heart fell into her stomach, and goosebumps prickled along the back of her neck and down her arms. Nothing about those implications could be good.
They stopped at a door marked 922. Unlike the other doors in this ward, there wasn’t a patient name beneath the room number. With a flourish, Esmé threw open the door, revealing a sinister grin plastered to Count Olaf’s face.
“Whatever you’re planning, you won’t get away with it.” Violet spat, wrenching out of the woman’s grip, and the sharp nails that had indented her arm left bloody scratches in their wake.
“Shut up.” Esmé sneered, shoving the younger girl into the room from behind and allowing the thick door to slam close behind them. Violet flinched at the sound, and couldn’t help but feel like a bunny in a wolf den.
“Well, well, well, look who we have here.” Count Olaf, or Mattathias as he insisted on referring to himself as, snickered, and walked closer to the fourteen year old.
“You’ll never get the Baudelaire fortune.” Violet said, voice steady and full of vigor.
“Leave us,” he demanded, ignoring Violet and speaking to his girlfriend.
Esmé’s face flickered in irritation, before smoothing into something more apathetic. She flicked her fur coat behind her and toddled her way out of the room. The door slammed once more, and Violet hadn’t felt this level of terror since living in Count Olaf’s house. Her anxiety mirrored how she felt right before the sick man had attempted to marry her.
“Violet Baudelaire,” he snickered, darkly, “or should I call you… Laura V. Bleediotie?”
She frowned, why would he… oh. Oh! Ana Gram was… anagram, and Laura V. Bleediotie was Violet Baudelaire. Which meant Al Funcoot was… She shook her head, as interesting and clever this all was, figuring out at this precise moment didn’t help with the situation at hand. Hopefully her brilliant siblings will come to the same conclusion, and find her, assuming that Laura was the name that would be written on the door to room 922, and it’s not just left suspiciously blank.
“So you make me a patient here and… what? How does trapping me here help you?”
“Oh you poor, dumb, little orphan.” Mattathias cooed. “Don’t you see? Tomorrow morning Dr. Flacutono will preform the world’s first cranioectomy on a fourteen year old girl… named Laura V. Bleediotie.”
The blood drained from Violet’s face.
“But, but that means you’re gonna remove my—”
“Yes.” Mattathias cackled. “It’s a highly dangerous procedure, one you won’t survive.”
A knock on the door interrupted them, and Matthias called for whoever was on the other side to come in, and two more familiar faces made their appearance in the hospital.
“We have the supplies for the IV.” A man with hooks instead of hands announced upon entry, trailed by another man with a very long nose, who held said supplies.
“Ah, perfect. Set them there.” Mattathias instructed, pointing at a table beside a metal gurney with his chin.
The items hit the rusted table with a clatter, and the room went still. Violet was frozen beneath Mattathias’s glare, and she tried to wager if she could make it out the door and subsequently out of the ward without being grabbed by any of the associates. Before she could decide to take the chance, the two men darted forward and grabbed her, the one with hands circling her thin wrists in his lithe fingers, and the handless man grabbed her from behind, arms circling her middle and lifting her up so that just the very tips of her toes touched the floor.
“No! Let me go!” She shouted, and she kicked out at one associate, and attempted to elbow the other, but being a fourteen year old had many disadvantages, size and strength being two of them.
“Get her on the gurney!” Mattathias commanded. “We gotta shut her up before one of the other patients hears her.”
The wind was knocked out of her as she was slammed on the thin mattress and her arms were wrenched behind her, as if she were being arrested. Again. Cold metal circled the back of her neck, and the point of a hook dug into her lightly, just above her jugular, the threat unspoken but loud and clear anyways. Violet attempted to catch her terrified breath, as rough hands grabbed her left arm and held it out. The pinch and sting of a needle inserting an IV catheter into the crook of her elbow drew a cry from her lips, and the hook moved ever so slightly deeper.
Items clattered beside her, but she didn’t dare try to look, and suddenly she felt liquid hit her vein, and her body went boneless. A word which here means ‘limp from a sedative being injected into her bloodstream via a not very sanitary IV port’.
Her face slumped into the scratchy sheets, and her knees buckled beneath her, and whoever was holding her down handled the brunt of her weight. She was roughly pushed onto the gurney, her purple dress tangling between her legs, and hair strewn across her face made her already bleary vision that much worse.
“Wha—” she mumbled, and her eyelids felt like they were made of lead, and she fought to keep her eyes open.
Violet clumsily felt for her dress pocket, but her fingers felt like they were no longer there, and her wrist was so limp it was as if she were a puppet without a master. She pawed at the fabric, feeling the tiny bump where her ribbon was. She need— she needed— what did she need… Her ribbon! To invent a way out of this… this… her mind drifted, long enough for Mattathias to have already reached into the pocket, and grabbed Violet’s ribbon, holding it above her tauntingly in a pinched grip. He felt the soft material between his filthy fingers, and he sneered at the offending accessory, before stuffing it into his pocket, where he’d inevitably forget all about it.
“N—” she slurred, head lolling to the side, and eyes finally closing after a valiant fight against the drugs running through her system.
“Well that was an effective way to shut the brat up.” The hook handed man commented, and the other men laughed nastily alongside him.
“Alright, the sedative will wear off relatively quickly, so we gotta get her changed and restrained now.” Mattathias said, looking over the unconscious girl with a gleam in his shiny eyes.
The man with the gigantic nose grabbed a grubby gown from a cupboard on the wall, Mattathias propped Violet into a sitting position, and the hook handed man ripped the buttons off the back of her dress in one fell swoop of his sharp hooks. The bits of plastic clattered to the floor, and tattered fabric floated softly to the ground after them.
“Looks like Sleeping Beauty needs a new gown.”
Mattathias and his associate wrestled the long sleeves of the dress from Violet’s limp arms, revealing pale skin speckled with scratches and dried bits of blood from Esmé’s stiletto nails, and the telltale blue of fresh bruising around her delicate wrists. Her collarbones jutted out through thin skin, and they could practically trace her bright blue veins to her heart. The long nosed man lifted her up by her armpits, and Mattathias pulled what was left of the tattered dress down and off her thin legs.
Goosebumps erupted across her bare skin, and the three men took a second to leer lecherously at the underwear-clad girl. Although pale and skinny, she was still very pretty. But they couldn’t look at her all night, not when the sedative was sure to wear off soon. They then wrestled the rough hospital gown onto her, tying the strings in knots at the neck and back. The men straightened her out onto her back, smoothing the gown down to her knees, and brushing her messy hair from her face. Tonight, she would lie there, shackled and beautiful. Come tomorrow, they would have to cover her face up, to not allow her to be recognized as a wanted murderer.
“Get the restraints, we’ll have her drugged all night, but we still can’t risk her escaping.”
“Yes, Mattathias.” The other two agreed, grabbing out thick leather cuffs and linking them to the bed.
“You can leave. Write her new name on the door, make sure everything runs smoothly for tomorrow. Come sunrise, we’ll be down a Baudelaire, and even closer to that fortune.”
Mattathias instructed, voice sinister.
Once he was alone with the oldest of the Baudelaire orphans, Mattathias fastened the restraints around her limbs, first her ankles, then her wrists. He took care to tighten them as much as possible, and the leather cut into her skin, and he knew they’d leave imprints once they were removed in the morning. Mattathias gave each cuff a firm pull, and satisfied with what he saw, he left the room for a bit, he had much to prepare before the big performance in the morning.
Leather cuffs bit into her skin, as Violet screamed and tears filled her eyes. She attempted to wrench her wrists out of their confines, and her breaths came in panicked heaves. She didn’t understand what was going on, or where she was. All she knew was she needed to escape. There was a moment, when Violet made the horrifying realization that she was no longer wearing her purple dress, but rather a scratchy hospital gown. She attempted to hunch her shoulders, as if the action would bring some comfort to the violation she felt at the knowledge that someone had undressed her while she’d been unconscious. But there was no time to dwell on her discomfort, as there were more pressing issues at hand, such as the restraints on her extremities and the foreboding sound of footsteps rapidly approaching the door.
“Quit your screaming, you’re gonna scare the other patients. Nobody likes an anxious patient on surgery day.” Mattathias admonished, as he entered room 922, having heard the teen’s screaming and crying from down the hall. She didn’t bother answering him, but reluctantly stopped making such a racket, a niggling feeling in the back of her head told her that it’d be bad news for her siblings if she defied Count Olaf’s command.
She’d awakened numerous times throughout the night, but one of Mattathias’s associates had stayed by her in shifts, pumping her full of sedation as soon as her eyelids twitched, or mumbles escaped her chapped lips. Shortly after four in the morning, Mattathias had told them to let it wear off, as they were close enough to surgery time to allow her a few terror filled moments of wakefulness before administering the general anesthesia.
Both of her wrists and ankles were shackled to the gurney, and her gown rode up as she continued to struggle. Mattathias cackled, and his eyes shone brighter than ever before. Terror clawed at her chest, her breaths coming in heaving gasps.
“Oops,” Mattathias mocked, “looks like the sedatives wore off. I think it’s just about time for the anesthesia.”
He grabbed a syringe filled with an innocuous clear liquid. He held it above her, tapping out bubbles as Violet sobbed helplessly.
“We haven’t found your insufferable siblings yet, but rest assured, we will find them.”
“Stay away from them!” She cried.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands.”
He roughly grabbed her arm with the IV port in it, connecting the syringe and pushing down the plunger in one fell swoop.
“I hope you have a good nap, you’ll be sleeping for a very long time.” Mattathias laughed cruelly to himself, as shortly, this particular pain in the butt Baudelaire would be with her parent…s well, at least a parent. Depending on what it said in the Snicket file. They’d all be dead eventually though. Olaf would make sure of it.
Violet only managed a garbled mumble for a reply, as her movements slowed, and her eyes fluttered shut once more, regardless of how hard she fought. The last thing she saw was Count Olaf hovering over her, with a familiar gleam in his eyes, and a cruel smile on his lips.
Once she was still, he reached out and fixed her rumpled gown, pulling it down to her knees, and running a grimy hand through her messy hair. His associates would shortly undo his ministrations, but for a second he could stare at his star actress, before she went into the theatre looking so unkempt.
He poked his head out into the hallway, and called for one of the associates from the night before.
“The brat is out, get her presentable for surgery. Make sure nobody recognizes her. Then find the ladies. I must find my darling Esmé so we can get this show on the road.”
“Shall I get—”
“Yes, yes, get him while you’re at it.” Mattathias interrupted, referring to the hook handed man. With that, Mattathias whipped his lab coat dramatically, and took his leave.
Soon, those orphans would be dead. Unfortunately he had to kill the prettiest one first, and then choose one of the other rugrats to keep, just until he got his hands on that precious Baudelaire fortune. Perhaps the flour sack with the sharp teeth. It seemed young enough for him to retrain. He’d already tried that on the nerdy looking one and, well, that didn’t exactly go to plan.
Within room 922, a man with a gigantic nose and horrible wig removed Violet Baudelaire’s restraints, tucking them away in the cupboard they came from, and he roughly turned her onto her side, ensuring her unwieldy hair covered most of her face. Lifeless limbs twisted together, and a limp arm hung off the edge of the rusted gurney. Her face was stuck in a frown, as if she were asleep and having a nightmare instead of under general anesthesia and not dreaming at all.
Deeming her ready, the associate took his leave, ready to become Dr. Flacutono, the brilliant surgeon to come up with the world’s first cranioectomy to be performed on Laura V. Bleediotie. He’d gather the hook handed man, who for today would become Dr. O. Lucafont, and the powder faced ladies, who would posture as Dr. Tocuna and Nurse Flo.
It was showtime.