It was several moments before George trusted himself to speak. "Who's come in here?"
He didn't dare to be lebih specific, but the nurse understood. "Oh - no one that anda atau your mates know has come here. At least I don't think." She paused and looked at George sadly. "There really is something out there, that anda know about, isn't there?"
George nodded. "You might want to stay inside for a while." He hoped the Beast didn't know how to get into buildings. "And lock the doors," he added as an afterthought. "Meanwhile..." His arm throbbed painfully again, and he supported it with his good arm. "Is there anything anda can do about this?"
The nurse bit her lip. "We haven't got any angkasa - but I'll do anything to help you." She blushed, as though she hadn't meant to say exactly that, but it had come slipping out anyway.
"Well," berkata George, "I don't suppose the kitchens are full up, are they? I could use a snack."
George did remember, now, his theory that the Green Marmite Yeast extract might be in a Liverpool hospital kitchen. This was as good a place to look for it as any, and besides, he was hungry after his baru-baru ini ordeal.
The nurse nodded, happy that there was something she could do for George. "Of course. There's always plenty of Makanan round here." Here she took George's hand - his good hand - and gently tugged him in a certain direction. "Well, come on. I'll tunjuk you."
Curious and slightly pleased, George followed the nurse down a hall into a large white room filled with counters and cupboards and sinks. She pointed to a piece of furniture that stood out from the rest - a large, brown, kuno, fesyen lama wooden cabinet.
"All the Makanan goes in there," she explained, "and somehow it all tastes horribly salty. Some people say they feel funny after eating our Makanan - funnier than after eating normal hospital food, I mean. Sometimes they say they feel much better afterwards, though. I don't know if it's true at all, but..." The nurse pulled the door of the cabinet open, revealing a much larger angkasa than George had been expecting, like a walk-in pantry, and gestured to George. "Well, go on."
An old cabinet/pantry right in the place where George had suspected they needed to look, which seemed to have some Supernatural quality about it... George didn't need telling twice. Stepping inside, he looked around the shelves, uncertain of what he was looking for, but certain he would know it when he saw it. The door swung mostly shut behind him, but there was still just enough light to see by, so George didn't worry about that.
The inside of this pantry felt old, but comforting somehow. If John had been there, he would have noticed the difference between this and the tunnel he had gone through to get the Sword of Truth. A sense of warmth came over George, and he felt somehow calm - a sensation he had not felt since coming to Liverpool.
The shelves were full of cans and jars of food. George took a small tin of meat off the shelf, then, partly to see what would happen and partly because he was hungry, he opened it and ate a piece. The nurse was right - it was very salty, though George found it tasted rather nice - but as he swallowed, he found the warm feeling increased, coming from inside him this time, and he felt completely relaxed and at peace. Even his arm didn't seem to hurt much. From somewhere in the middle of this peaceful haze came the thought that marmite yeast was salty, just like all the Makanan in here was supposed to be. George blinked, leaning against one of the shelves of the pantry. Marmite yeast... now why was that important again? He shook his head. What was so important about a jar of marmite yeast? It was just an object, after all... there were so many lebih important things....
No - he really did need this particular jar of marmite yeast. He should know that. But why? Marmite yeast... marmite yeast... he needed it because....
Suddenly, George felt another pang of hunger, and for want of a better reason, found himself thinking: "I need marmite yeast because I'm hungry." And there was Makanan all around here, but none of it was marmite yeast, so none of it was quite right.
George yawned suddenly, sinking to the floor. "Marmite yeast..." he berkata to himself. His head felt light, but his stomach felt empty. He couldn't fall asleep until after he'd had a little marmite yeast... he could almost taste that deliciously salty flavour in the air....
George's hand brushed against something on the floor, which was raised up a little higher than the rest of it. "Marmite yeast?" thought George, and he tugged at the thing, which was a little green handle set so close to the ground that anyone could have gone in and out a million times and never seen it. The handle opened a tiny trapdoor, from which came a sudden blast of an indefinable scent which reminded George a little of his father's cooking. Inhaling, George's head filled with that scent. He simply had to get at whatever-it-was he was smelling and eat it.
The inside of the trapdoor was a small shaft, just about the size and length of George's arms, and the entire place seemed to be strongly tinged with green. George reached in his arm. He could have just brushed the bottom of the shaft with his fingertips, but instead he felt them brushing against something smooth and hard.
George pulled up a small, fat, emerald-green jar, which seemed almost to glow with its own green light, causing the shaft to lose its green colour as soon as George pulled the jar out. George unscrewed the lid to reveal a smooth, emerald-coloured paste from which wafted a delicious, heady smell. Mind filled with the delicious scent, George dipped a finger from his good hand into the spread and licked it.
The taste was heavenly, as well as being the saltiest thing George had ever eaten. The warm, smooth delicacy spread across George's tongue, and he closed his eyes from the sheer pleasure of it. At the same time, the salty taste jolted him awake. He wasn't here to eat. He was trying to defeat a Beast. And from the looks of things, he had found the saat object.
Resisting the urge to have just another taste of the Green Marmite Yeast Extract, George stood up. Something felt different from the last time he'd been standing - but in a good way. Looking down at his arm, George saw that it was as good as if it had never been hurt.
For the first time, George registered voices coming from outside the pantry. A female voice like the nurse's - and also the very familiar cadence of his mates' voices. They had come looking for him, and found him. How long had he been in here? George pushed open the door and stepped out, just on time to hear the nurse's voice say, "... just stepped in there to get something to eat...."
"And I found it," George added proudly, displaying the Jar for his mates to see. John, Paul, and Ringo looked at it with smiled that probably had just as much to do with finding George selamat, peti deposit keselamatan as the fact that George had found the Marmite Yeast.