I walked up the main road to the Huntsville District Memorial Hospital, and approached the front entrance, gliding around smokers who seemed to be caught in slow motion, who couldn’t hope to notice me with their dull old eyes in the night. I had to reorientate myself to the human pace of things.

Running footsteps hit the pavement behind me. I looked back down the road from the hospital entrance to the street to see an odd mirage in the moonlight, a little man who couldn’t be an inch over five feet tall hopping over the pavement and then the grass to chase after me.

“Wait! Wait!” None of the humans heard the voice coming across the distance, and I saw the little speedy man simply pass through a parked car in the lot to get over to me faster. I had stopped and taken a seat on the curb, not wanting to leer over him rudely.

“Are you the watchman here?” Up close I saw a man who reminded me of a squashed Mickey Rooney, with buck teeth in a wide and comical mouth, wreathed in a white beard, and I fit him into the lighthouse-keeper role in Pete’s Dragon. He was a watcher against a sea of dark forests filled with monsters like me, so it sort of fit.

“Yes, sorry, I was down getting some Tim Hortons.”

I looked at him sideways. “You know I drink blood, right? I should try to explain-“

“Margaret told me, we’re all the same channel in this town. You want to take people who want to go in hospitals, yes?” ‘Lampie’ took a seat before he could introduce himself, and I noticed that he had brought me a coffee as well.

“Um, thanks.” I gave him my name we shook hands.

“My name’s not Mickey, it’s Paul Peck. They all call me Polly, like the bird. I was just going out on the horn to see if you were the one Paradis talked about.”

My mind reeled. “You hospital guardians are all on a shared network?”

“Yeah.” Polly shrugged. “Humans finally caught up to us a few years ago with those phones. Library and thrift stores, their watchmen and women keep in touch generally too. Margaret said she snagged a Bible in your pack and looked up that little scrawl in the cover in the records before putting it back, then gave Mrs. Pleurd a call to see what kind of guy you were. She had quite a tale to tell – out in K-bec all the tutelaries are jawing about you. They say you went missing.”

“The thunderbirds and the water cats lost track of me while squabbling.” I started opening my coffee, if only to be polite.

“Oh no, wait! See, there’s a way to do your business this time without actually drying the poor patient out like a mummy! You can take his life and make it about as big as a bit of cream, and after that you can drink the coffee!” Polly grinned hugely, and I realized he was proud of himself. “You’ll get your drink and I won’t have to muddle with minds to cover it all up because it will all look like a natural launching!”

I recalled that Paradis had called those near death as the ‘ready-to-launch’. These hospital guardians seemed to think of themselves as NASA people. But this was going too well. “I still need the man’s permission, of course.”

Polly looked bewildered for a moment. “Oh, yeah. Well, let’s go see.”

At first walking slowly to match the small man’s feet, I eventually had to hurry because he was a scampering, nervous fool. I wonder if he had a boss to report to and yell at him about this later.

I passed the threshold of the hospital’s automatic doors without incident, and went up in an escalator to start walking an upper floor, away from the din of an unhappy kid in pediatrics. A nurse came down the hall pushing a rack of empty dinner trays, and Polly deftly pulled me to the side – she didn’t look at either of us.

“I thought you guys were disguised.”

“Total cloaking like this is … well, it’s expensive. Disguises are for more ordinary days.”

“Then I’ll be quick, but I still must ask. What’s his name?”