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Curious George Goes to the Hospital is the seventh and final book in the original Curious George series. The book was published in 1966 and is written by Margaret & H. A. Rey.

Synopsis

George is home alone and finds a box containing a wooden jigsaw puzzle, but is unaware of that. He opens the box and pulls out one particular piece and, assuming it might be candy, puts it in his mouth and swallows it. The Man with the Yellow Hat comes home and sees George found the puzzle, and helps him put it together, only to find one piece missing (naturally, the one George ate). Being unable to find it, they give up and go to bed. The next morning, George doesn't feel good at all, so The Man calls the doctor, who examines George and decides to have him x-rayed at the hospital.

In the waiting room, we meet a girl named Betsy, who is in the hospital for the first time for an undisclosed reason, but is so scared she is perpetually sad. (Although George's presence doesn't initially cheer her up, he will have a hand in breaking her funk.) From there he is taken back, given barium, and put on the x-ray table, where they find the puzzle piece. It is decided to admit George and have his stomach pumped of it.

He is taken to the children's ward, where we see Betsy again (still sad) and meet another kid, Steve, who has a broken leg and is in a wheelchair. George is put in his bed, while nurses take numerous vital signs, give him a pill and a shot of anestetic to prepare for surgery, and is eventually wheeled into the operating room.

He wakes up later to be told of the good news that they got the puzzle piece out, but George is still so sick and woozy from the surgery that he falls back to sleep again. By the next morning, he is fully recovered and, after a bowl of ice cream, is taken to the play room. There, he puts on a puppet show, which delights the other kids and even brings out a grin in Betsy for the first time. Next, he stands on a record player in the room, turns it on, then spun around so fast he flies off it lands on a nearby pillow, once again bringing laughter from the others and a smile from Betsy.

After a nap, George notices the other kids watching Steve walk in the cast for the first time. The others fail to notice George has taken his wheelchair out of the room. By the time the nurse notices the wheelchair gone, George is rolling down a ramp towards the first floor at full tilt towards two meal carts, which he crashes into, and flies off the wheelchair and into the arms of the city's mayor.

Despite the mess, the first of the kids to laugh at the whole thing was Betsy, which gets the other kids laughing, and eventually everybody else laughing...except for George, who realizes the mess he made and breaks down crying, only to have Betsy run down to comfort him and thank him for being there to finally make her happy. At that, George cheers up, and shortly thereafter The Man With the Yellow Hat comes to take him home.

Before they leave, the nurse presents George with a wrapped package, telling him not to open it until he gets home. Upon arriving home, George opens the gift and finds the missing puzzle piece, and it is promptly inserted into the place where it belongs.