"Mr. Pillsworth?" he quavered thinly. "Mr. Pillsworth, please...?"
Meanwhile Toffee had progressed busily along the corridors of the hospital in search of some private—and preferably secluded—place in which to reconstruct Marc. Finally, rounding a corner, she found herself abreast of a pair of swinging doors and started toward them. She stopped, however, and turned in retreat as the doors suddenly parted and a doctor and nurse, deep in conversation, came into view. She started back the way she had come, but was stopped again by an approaching nurse pushing an elderly female patient in a wheel chair flanked on either side by a crutch. Looking for an avenue of escape, Toffee spotted a white linen screen against the wall and darted quickly behind it to bide her time till the traffic had subsided.
This ruse, on the face of it, hadn't a flaw and should have worked like a charm. It should have that is, if Toffee, in her haste, hadn't plumped against the wall and unknowingly pressed the button of the gadget.
The result of this little accident was that the doctor and the nurse approaching from one direction, and the nurse and the patient coming from the other—all four of them suddenly found themselves confronted by a tall, thin man standing bewilderedly in the center of the hall with nothing to grace his long frame but an extremely brief linen shift loosely attached at the back. Toffee had released Marc into reality and good health, but costumed only for the operating table.
No one was more acutely aware of this deficiency than Marc himself. Looking around unhappily at his stunned beholders and taking in his slight coverage all in a single glance, he was taken with a seizure of shocked modesty. Hunkering down into a squat he clutched the hem of his gown desperately to his knees.
"My word!" the elderly patient said, leaning forward in her chair. "What in the world does that man think he's doing!"
"I don't like to think," the nurse said, looking away. "It's bound to be something disgusting."
"Here you!" the doctor called from the other end of the corridor. "You can't do that! Why are you crouched down in that obscene way?"
"I'm naked!" Marc wailed. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I'm downright exposed!"