Enter The Night
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 that it gave her the time and space to finish all the books that she wanted to read. She had always been a night owl and avoided contact with other people much of the time. Working in a loud and filled 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 that mostly took on comatose and paralyzed patients was the perfect environment for her to unfold. It was almost 4 am and she was just about to finish a book that marked the last volume in a series of fantasy romance novels. And with that, her shift would be over and she would go home to get some sleep before she could start her day.
Most of her colleagues avoided the night shift since they found the hospital to be uncanny at night with all these empty corridors but Lisa loved it. Only once, an incident occurred where a patient needed to be transferred at night for an emergency operation. But such occurrences were rare and Lisa could not remember more than 3 or 4 incidents in the last two decades.
After she closed her book, she got up to greet her replacement, the next nurse that would take over the reception for the next shift. She could see Mary leaving her car and walking towards 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 and smiled at the approaching Mary.
As Mary opened the door and noticed Lisa, she began to smile and greet her tired-looking friend and colleague. As they were just about to hug, a loud noise rippled through the hallway and a tremor shook the ground leading the two women to stumble to the walls and press their bodies against it in fear.
Mary and Lisa looked at each other with a shocked expression, with Mary crouched on the ground covered in her mochaccino and Lisa standing pressed against the wall pushing her book against her chest with both hands. "Is this an earthquake?" Mary asked with a trembling voice. "Earthquakes, in this part of the country?" Lisa responded, confused. "I have never heard of it."
"Maybe they started fracking somewhere..." Mary added, not truly believing this to be the case but being desperate for an explanation. "On a Saturday morning? I doubt it. Maybe there was a pipe explosion somewhere," Lisa added. "It sounded like there was noise upstairs somewhere in the west wing of the building where the comatose patients are." As Lisa finished her sentence she gave her hand to Mary to help her up and began running towards the staircase. If this really was an explosion in the patient rooms then this could get ugly.
"I will 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 was running towards the stairs. Carl was the hospital manager who was likely asleep at this moment but he would be furious if they did not contact him in such an emergency.
Lisa made her way up the stairs and carefully walked through the first floor hallway. She tried to take in any detail and see if there was any danger for her or her patients that was visible to the eye. Are there any wires? Holes? Does it smell like gas? Is the light still on in every room? She gradually made her way through the hallway and looked through all the door windows to see if there was anything unusual.
Suddenly, she heard a loud crackling sound, then she heard Mary's voice through the speaker system, "I have 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 throughout Mary's announcement. The patient's safety comes first, she thought. I should at least check if there is anything urgent that needs attention before leaving the building. She kept making her way through the hallway until she reached the last door. It was immediately obvious to her that this was the cause of the sound and the tremors. The window was broken and all the medical devices and stands that were placed around the bed were thrown over, being spread 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 paid the extra fee for the private room at the end of the corridor which had a beautiful view across the garden. It also had multiple hours of direct sunlight coming through the windows. At the time, Lisa thought what a waste it was to give this 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 if she could find the cause of what looked like an explosion but what she saw was utterly confusing. Based on the objects that were spread around the room and stains on the floor that looked like burns, it was obvious that the origin was the bed of the patient.
The metal bed itself was broken and the bottom was bent downwards as if an elephant had sat on it. She carefully approached the bed closer to see if there was blood or if she could see any body parts lying around but it seemed like the patient was not in his bed when the explosion occurred. She could find no traces outside of ashes and burn marks. As she got closer to the bed she could make out some small white and orange debris that was lying 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 while shaking her head in disbelief. As she wanted to leave to meet up with Mary and wait for the fire department, she took another glance at the bed and stopped in her tracks. She got out her phone to turn on the flashlight and placed it directly on the sheets. She was right, she thought, there were letters written on the sheet with burn marks. She took a photo and left the room.
In Mary's car which was parked outside the hospital, both women had been staring at Lisa's phone for more than 5 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 over 3 years. Burned into his bed sheets, 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 uttered quietly.