Lisa had been a nurse at this hospital for over 20 years. Contrary to her colleagues, she enjoyed taking the night shifts since she felt it gave her the time and space to finish all the books she wanted to read. She had always been a night owl and avoided contact with other people most of the time. Working in a loud, busy hospital during the day was unthinkable for her.
In this empty hallway, with only the occasional beeping sound echoing through the corridors, she felt at ease. The tranquility of the remote care facility, which mostly took on comatose and paralyzed patients, was the perfect environment for her to unfold. It was almost 4 a.m., and she was just about to finish a book that marked the last volume in a series of fantasy romance novels. After that, her shift would be over, and she would go home to get some sleep before starting her day.
Most of her colleagues avoided the night shift because they found the hospital uncanny at night with all those empty corridors, but Lisa loved it. Only once had an incident occurred where a patient needed to be transferred at night for an emergency operation. Such occurrences were rare, and Lisa could not remember more than three or four incidents in the last two decades.
After she closed her book, she got up to greet her replacement, the next nurse who would take over the reception for the following shift. She could see Mary leaving her car and walking toward the entrance with a coffee in one hand and a pack of Adderall in the other. “We all deal with early shifts in different ways,” Lisa thought to herself, smiling at the approaching Mary.
As Mary opened the door and noticed Lisa, she began to smile and greet her tired-looking friend and colleague. Just as they were about to hug, a loud noise rippled through the hallway, and a tremor shook the ground, causing the two women to stumble into the walls and press their bodies against them in fear.
Mary and Lisa looked at each other in shock, with Mary crouched on the ground covered in her mocaccino and Lisa standing, pressed against the wall, clutching her book against her chest with both hands. “Is this an earthquake?” Mary asked, her voice trembling. “Earthquakes in this part of the country?” Lisa responded, confused. “I have never heard of it.”
“Maybe they started fracking somewhere…” Mary added, not really believing it but desperate for an explanation. “On a Saturday morning? I doubt it. Maybe there was a pipe explosion somewhere,” Lisa suggested. “It sounded like there was noise upstairs in the west wing of the building, where the comatose patients are.” As Lisa finished her sentence, she offered her hand to Mary to help her up and began running toward the staircase. If this really was an explosion in the patient rooms, things could get ugly.
“I’ll check on the patients and try to locate the source of the… whatever this was. Call the police, fire department, and Carl to be safe,” Lisa shouted as she ran toward the stairs. Carl was the hospital manager, likely asleep at this hour, but he would be furious if they failed to contact him in such an emergency.
Lisa made her way up the stairs and carefully walked through the first-floor hallway. She tried to pick out any detail that might indicate danger to her or her patients. Were there any wires? Holes? Did it smell like gas? Were all the lights still on in each room? She gradually moved down the hallway, peering through each door window to see if anything looked unusual.
Suddenly, she heard a loud crackling sound, then Mary’s voice came through the speaker system: “I’ve called everyone and they’re on their way. Carl was furious. The fire people said we have to leave the building and wait outside. I’m going out now, so let’s wait together in my car.” Then the speakers crackled again and turned off.
Lisa kept walking during Mary’s announcement. The patients’ safety came first, she thought. She should at least check if anything needed immediate attention before leaving the building. She continued down the hallway until she reached the last door. It was immediately obvious to her that this was the source of the sound and the tremors. The window was broken, and all the medical devices and stands that had been around the bed were scattered across the room.
Luckily, this was a single-bed room with only one patient in it. She remembered the patient—or rather his parents. They had paid extra for the private room at the end of the corridor, which had a beautiful view of the garden and several hours of direct sunlight. At the time, Lisa thought it was a waste to give such a room to a comatose patient, but Carl had a business to run, and whoever paid premium got premium.
Now the room was a mess. She carefully inspected the scene to see if she could find the cause of what looked like an explosion, but what she saw utterly confused her. Judging by the objects strewn around the room and the stains on the floor that resembled burns, it was obvious the origin was the patient’s bed.
The metal bed itself was broken, the bottom bent downward as if an elephant had sat on it. She approached the bed to check for blood or any body parts, but it seemed the patient had not been in his bed when the explosion occurred. She found no traces, just ashes and burn marks. Closer to the bed, she spotted small white and orange debris on the burned sheets, as well as something that looked like tissue with a few drops of burnt blood around it.
“Maybe the patient exploded?” she thought to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. As she turned to leave and meet Mary to wait for the fire department, she glanced one more time at the bed and stopped in her tracks. Pulling out her phone, she switched on the flashlight and aimed it at the sheets. Yes, she thought, there were letters burned into the sheet. She took a photo and left the room.
Inside Mary’s car, parked outside the hospital, the two women had been staring at Lisa’s phone for more than five minutes already. They looked at what used to be the hospital bed of a comatose patient who had shown no sign of movement or consciousness in years. Burned into his bedsheets, one could clearly read the following message:
“Heard everything. Love you. Will heal & return. Do not look for me”
“I think we have a problem,” Mary whispered.