Speaker 1: On the afternoon. I first arrived at Tullmemorial Hospital. Rain
came down in then relentless needles that left the city's
stone and brick dripping, all edges softened by bluish haze.
The hospital itself sat up of the warehouse district, birched
and post industrial isolation, as if the city had grown
around it, and then over time recoiled away. The complex
brawled across the hillside departs of it, seemingly from separate
centuries and schools of architecture, all last together with corrugated
walkways and windowless annexes sunk into the mud. I parked
by a skewed emergency entrance. The lot was slick. I
nearly lost my footing stepping out of the car. Teller's
reputation as in all purpose safety net hospital had drawn
me in for a centennial feature, or at least that's
what was on the assignment sheet these days. I told myself,
A journalists meant whatever someone was willing to pay you
to do. With the notepad in a byline, the wind
carried an early tang industrial run off from below, mixing
with cold hospital air and the unmistakable scent of standing water.
The ring worked in seeping through the seams of my
jacket as I shouldered my back and hurried toward the
loading dark, wishing for once that the job had been
in a warm archive or someone's from Paula. A crowd emerged,
Mercy staff in pale green and navy uniform, shuffling out
on their cigarette brakes had stuck to sneaker, squelching un
cracked yellow paint. I almost missed the man, average built,
shoulder length hair, the kind of face he'd losing the
line up until he turned, pressed something into my left
hand and kept walking without meeting my eye. The rest
of the group funneled ahead, laughed, a rising above the
drone of their exchangers, but he veered sharply and was gone.
Footsteps swallowed around a corner where the wall lapsed into
damp cinder block. I looked down a thick, unremarkable manilla envelope,
the seal already softened by rain, no label. My thumb
left a dark mark amide water spots and smears. Something
inside shifted, weighty and uneven. A wave of skepticism ran
up my spine, mail mix up, saken identity, but a
practical voice inside urged me to get under shelter and
sword it out. I dupped beneath the concrete overhand inside
the packet, I found an old Tully staff pass the faded,
nearly ghosted photo, giving a blowd approximation of a young
man calob dwan orderly room into Next a slip of
line note be torn on one edge, its inc running
as if it had sweated in someone's palm. You only
see what they're willing to tell you find where the
floor plans don't make sense. The message pulsed with a
kind of quiet panic or warning embedded between the vague
official jargon. As I traced the badge, the lemonation colt
and pebbled. I glanced over my shoulder. The entire crob
was gone, except for a single nurse stirring through a rained,
streaked window, unreadable. The man who had handed me the
envelope had disappeared, entirely, vanished through what looked from the
side like a service door leading into blank plaster. For
half a moment, I thought about handing the enveloped to
security or forwarding it by mail to Loss and Found,
but the notes toned the stilted, urgent slant of the
handwriting bothered me. If I let this go, I'd be
thinking about it at two a m. Another loose thread
ied regret not pulling the badge behind glass winked at me,
and the wind twisted the edge of the envelope around
my hand. Tuley Memorial had already taken on the flavor
of a place that held a secret just below the surface,
never mentioning them aloud. In some ways, it felt almost
as if the building itself was watching and waiting, keeping
tell as I'd never understand my heart with exhlaration, edge
with worry. Maybe I thought I'd landed my real story,
after all. I almost laughed at the pettness of the idea.
But the hospital doors yawned open before me, a warn,
a welcome, Visitors signed, curling away from a window, and
I pocketed the envelope. I stepped inside, out of the
cold and drizzle, and into the humming silence of Tully Memorial, badge,
bounding a question against my palm to listen to people.
Hospital work is made up of life and death, but
mostly it's about waiting. In all weeks since I'd accepted
the commission, my own waiting had narrowed a handful of
dollars left in my checking account, and the hope that
this glossy assignment would parachute me to steady at work.
The reality, at least until this afternoon, was interviews wrapped
in platitudes. Dull's stor was about marble fountains and the
loney reunions, and the aching boredom of inscribing old people's
fond memories for someone else's nostalgia. Talus Andennial profile had
promised history, old scandals, maybe or at least a few
human interest pieces about Wharton nurses and doctors with cigarettes
rolled in their sleeve. What I got in the beginning,
where I was inside a building that seemed unable to
decide if it was ancient or just out of date.
I spent half my time peering into half lit always
the kind with wood slap floes shined by time instead
of polish phone caused trailing from walls, and soft spoken
cleaners working a ramppitchel wet Ford signs. My first official
guide was doctor Norcross, chief of staff since two thousand one,
whose rounded vewls and warm Handschack couldn't quite mask a
watchful edge. He met me under the main natrium sun
bleached mural, which featured smiling nurses in starched white and
a surgeon offering a child of flower. The real nurses,
in few war sensible shoes, carried cell phones and poured
over tablets with frown lines. The mural gave the impression
of a place frozen in its own legend. Sintennel Right,
Norcross said, flipping through his own notes before offering his
arm for a brisque escort. He talked about Tuller's post
war expansions, its role as the heart of the community,
and the strategic advantage of a versatility in architecture. His words,
though he glided past in tie wings. When we passed
the old elevator in the north corridor, steel doors boxed
and by cinder block and painted a daring institutional blue,
Norcross's voice shifted. That's just a relic, he assured me,
moving between me and the barrier. I knew out of code.
We really keep to the modern wings. You'll see nothing
to find up there. Did you want to see the
new simulation lab? He was genial, soft edged, but the
deflection landed. I blinked at the half brick shaft to
shape a negative space more than a feature psychiatric wing
used to be up there, he explained, almost cheerfully. Now
everything's integrated, best practices, let's keep touring. The rest for
that first day was all routine photographs for the archive.
Half a dozen interviews with long serving nurses and porters,
most of them suspicily brief, as if pressed for time
or wary of being escorted. A stack of type downecdotes
about miracle recovers, and a generational familist hearers journeys complete
with modesty and a healthy dose of phi pebli. In
a break room, a nurse half my ight rolled her
eyes at the PA cliches. If you want real stories,
come back at night shift, she whispered, It'll just be
you and the ghosts. There was a heavy badge around
her neck, but she flipped it away before I could
read her name. I thought she was joking. Most did,
but in idle moments while waiting for interviews, were sipping
over brood coffee near the vending machine. Means I heard patients,
especially older one's, ask after friends or roommates who were
checked in for routine procedures and ad just went home early,
never packing up their things never sending a word. Years
of freelance work had hone my skepticism. Disappearance rumors were
a staple in hospital stories, urban legend, a way to
pass the slack midnights. Still, after logging into Tuller's internal
site to check dates and staff rosters, I noticed patches
in the past staff section, whole years of missing data
records listing names were two or three letters, then position ended.
I brought it up once with an HR coordinator, who
flashed an apologetic smile. Old data beis crashed years ago.
Backup was corrupted. It's an eightdy thing. Yet her answers
were too smooth, a little too ready. I logged that detail,
one of many soon enough. It was only when my
tape recorder glitched and needed a hard recept that I
let myself admit the faint call in tension. Something in
the walls of Tully ran ahead of the official story,
something I was not meant to spot. I chalk it
up to occupational paranoia. I finished my bland notes on
the staff newsletter, photographed of photo warthick with sun blind
paper faces, and told myself maybe Tully Memorial was like
any other, just a palimpsyste routines built over too many years,
too many hands, brushing the same rails, everyone forgetting a
few shadows as days slid by. Still at the end
of that week, the envelope sat in the drawer of
my rented room, daring me to look again at the
badge calloped on a young face lost under a coat
of dust. Tully spoiled over five visible floors, but the
lodge of its layout was more jazz than blueprint. Corridors
looping into blind holurs, doors labeled to consult only, opening
into Winterell's closets, stairwalls, the dover get up to locked
access hatches For a future piece, I started sketching the
map myself, marking interview sites and cafes, anything for easy reference.
It became clear within two days that something didn't add up.
I stumbled twice into passageways that ended in drywall, with
the official map said there was a lounge or a
linen closet. One hole in the north side twice seemed
to be a short cut, but brought me around to
the same spot no matter which direction I took. One afternoon,
while jotting down these oddities, I met me, says Scull
of volunteer badge pinnixt to a time bright and silver
brooch while she saw it, donated books by the gift
shop's roundaical shelf. Oh I do remember him, she said,
thumbing a paperback's yellow pages in her What was her
last name? The one who wore blue, always had a
thermos vanished before her retirement, never picked up her pension. Strange,
isn't it? How often does that happen? I prompted, hoping
for details, a name I could trarack, even a rumor.
Missess Gull's eyes narrowed as she plucked at her carut. Again.
More than folks think, I'd say, always some one leaving
without a party. Colors are easier to remember their names,
she trailed off, distracted by the drone of a gurny
rolling past. Then, as if she'd said too much, snapped
the paperback shut. Take care dear that night back in
my rental tell his website was its usual chair piece
of promoting a Fanderisen Gala and meet our team profiles,
But the past staff archave gave me only our pages
for the years twenty twelve, twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen,
the same years Missus Gullig counted on her fingers. I
tried the city archives. Sifting through employment rolls, I found
evidence faintest talk of a few people who'd worked tull
A's lower eschel on Sorderly's kitchen staff that nos is
simply evaporating after their last listed workday. No follow up,
new employer, no overture. I began listing disappearances, a string
of missing orderlies, two nurses cut mid sentence, and employment recos,
one patient who'd entered for an up patient procedure and
vanished into paper climber. Strikingly, these gaps lined up exactly
with moments when Tullie switched to Yo or whether budget
Kise's times, when, by any logic, I should have been
sharpest on all comings and goings. It felt like looking
at a photograph after excizing a dozen faces. The corners
and empty spaces limed larger every time I scanned the page.
The day after my art exchange with Missus gall I
decided to dig into Tully's architectural history, fueled by curiosity
that overrode the voice in my head screaming feature not
Expossy at City Hall. The Perramit came grudgingly from a
sweaty clerk's lock drawer. Floor plans for the original hospital
in every official renovation, some blueprints on faded blue paper,
others sleck as corporate reports. Comparing the stats comatics in
the library table, I saw rooms labeled storage that went
there in person, and spaces that had simply disappeared and
supposedly upbraded wings. Most compelling were two blueprints thirty years
apart that disagreed about the very existence of ward and
admittance restricted fifth four. According to the NUSSET, the hospital
had only ever built four floors for patients. There were
no such words, no restricted entrances, but the older plan,
yellowed and torn, had a clear legend to the contrary
war Den Psychiatric Services Level five. As night fell, my
fascination overcame my sense. I slipped back into tully, convincing security.
I'd forgotten my phone. I found the hallway i'd walked before,
ducked into a supply closet and tried the back wall.
Even in the sickly fluorescent light, I saw the jagged
seam withssin a block met original plaster crouch my phone's
torch in hand. I scraped away appealing paint. A sign
began to emerge Ward n admittance restricted fifth floor, the
letters only half way hidden, as if the wall itself
was built. In a hurry. From down the corridor came
the mop's quak rhythm of a nigh cleaner. I ducked
back inside, already rehearsing excuses in my head. But the
cleaner paused at the far corner, then moved on without
looking at me. I caught her profile, her expression distant
and touched by the strangeness of the place. Back in daylight,
I tried to get answers from maintenance. A tired man
with a patchy beard, till bolt slung low, regarded me
over his coffee cup. Stick to your guide. That's the advice.
Places get breacked off in old buildings, out of code.
Nothing romantic about it. The only ghost we have. Wever
too much over time and not enough sleep. He wouldn't
meet my eye when I asked about ward in or
the fifth floor. He left quickly, coffee half finished, muttering
something about not stirring things up. When I approached Hella's
head of security about old visitor logs and forrited around
the week's people. When missing, she produced nothing, a few
excuses about system upgrades, dat over it. Every date I
checked was a black hole. A pressure started subtle. At first.
I noticed staff who chatted freely now paused or watched
me pass a day. Nurse Chlora, who'd given me basic
time lines of patient turnover, switched her tone. You're not
planning on writing about their renovations or you. The question
was loaded. I told her I just wanted a clear
time line for the hospital centennel overview. Later, when I
found her, while she counted pel trays in a supply alcove,
her voice dropped to a shaky ash. It's not just
patience who ventish, she said, a thumb running over the
seam of her badge. Some of us keep to ourselves.
See you try to help. Next day, you're a sign
up stairs for attempt shift and a gone if you
want more, come back after ten shift change. Not so
many eyes, but don't tell any one. When I checked
my phone that night, a new number popped up Coros,
though it rang twice, then went to voicemail. I texted
a still meeting, no reply, then minutes later and all
to me to bounce number not in service. I should
have left it there, found a way to bill frim
my time, and moved on. But every time I shrived
off the chill, another detail surfaced. Colleagues told me Clara
I'd been shifted to a rural facility out East's quick decision.
The story was planned too easy, and she wasn't answering
her home number either. I left message after message that night,
trying to focus on anything else, transcribing outlining my article
intro again and again. Security officers pause whenever I moved
through the halls now and when I worked late in
the makeshift press room, I noticed the computers locked me
out of the hospital's sever every hour sharp Supposedly nothing happened.
It routine rouccine, routine to night, though nothing fit. The
envelope with calb Dun's badge felt heavier. Every time I
checked my bag, the record gap shone brighter in a
pale light of my rented desk Lamb. I even tried
reaching the last number listed under emergency contact for calib Down,
but it answered only with the click of an Innista line.
Sleep felt foreign. Three times I woke thinking I'd heard
the distant beap of a hot monitor. Each time I
checked my phone, I found nothing new. The next morning,
between interviews, I traced one last oddity and the oldest blueprint,
a hallway that didn't exist any more, running parallel to
staff kitchen, ending at what ought to be a solid wall.
I backtracked, pausing outside the kitchen to check for a door.
There wasn't one, but the corridor nearby was out of use,
blocked by tip file cabinets in a car covered with
an old, chely drop cloth. I pushed past, half expecting
an alarm, half afraid of being caught. There was the
access door, completely hidden except for its slim institutional handle.
I slow up my breathing, checked twice that no one
was near by, and, feeling more like a trespasudent, A
report eased the door open. A short passageway, dank and
freezing opened before me. Rusted gunness, slouched against the walls,
their wheels long since ceased, roam and four poles leaned
like metal saplings, and a breeze impossibly cold, drifted over
my hands. The corridor bent to the left, terminating at
a large, shap proof glass window. I crept forward to
peer through it, beyond was a ward, silent and pale,
with beds lined up military neat all were made. The
sheets stuck with clinical precision, but none bore any sign
of recent occupation. No flowers, no half read books or
shank wrapped slippers. The wallpaper at the far end peeled
in long culls, drawing it upward. The clock up of
the nurses station was frozen at four eighteen. I waited
for breath, for ambient noise, clatter, a cough, footfalls. Instead,
there was a sucked in vacuum, a hush so total
it felt leaden in my ears. When next hailed, I
heard my own rigage moving, the slow drum beat of
blood in my head. It was an absence of noise.
It was a crushing, deliberate muting of it, as if
itself was bidden from carrying sound. The movement flickered at
the far doorway, a human shadow, featureless, gliding from the
left to right. I swallowed and pressed back, heart pounding.
The silhouette vanished behind a curtain. A minute passed another.
I tore myself away, nearly tripping over a discarded bedside commode,
before shoving back out into the passage. My breath came
in gasps that rang too loud in my own head.
I managed to get the cabinets back into place, wiping
my palms on my jeans, fighting off the urge to
run in a hallway, the noise of a normal hospital,
the clank of a meal trolley. Distant voices rushed back
into my ears. I tried to normalize my pulse, forcing
a neutral expression. Doctor Norcross did less than three feet away,
arms folded, watching my every move. His face no longer
registered offfability. That area is condemned, he said, with a
sudden and cold flatness. Access is restricted for a reason.
If you wish to retain your credentials, I suggest you
stay to public spaces. We have rose for reason, and
your co operation is not optional. It wasn't a threat,
not in the textbook, since it was closer to a diagnosis.
He waited, I'm blinking until I noded. Then he walked
off without a word, due silent on the I watched
him disappear round a corner and realized only then that
all the ambient sound, the murmuring chatter, the gentle scissorer's
of routine, had stilled in his wake. I stowed, frozen,
between the clamor of the world and the vacuum behind
the door. Knowing Tully Memorial had shown me its real edge,
my knees weak, I pressed my back against the wall,
and for the first time, I wondered if anyone would
really notice if I simply disappeared from its halls. Tell
His modern wings, all glass and steel in optimism swallowed
me up as I staggered away from that forbidden corridor.
I moved as though on autopilot, hoping blending into visiting
iyro of foot traffic would help me feel less watched. Overhead,
the fluorescent lights flickered in their ceaseless rhythm, but every
time I blinked, the chill silence of the bricked off
ward press at the back of my throat threatening to
well up into panic. I swiped my badge, the one
with my press photo now oddly heavier around my neck,
at a large door and found an empty table. I
forced myself to set eyes on my phone. I tried
to make my hand still enough to type notes, even
as adrenaline pulsed in the tips of my fingers and
made each light a skip on the screen. Condemn seen
too simple a word for the emptiness I'd seen. There
was a deliberateness to it, not just a relic, but
an erasure, a place pressed out of memory by layers
of bureaucracy, a new paint. I tried to breathe in
a pattern foreign whole. Four up, the normal were of
hospital life folded over my shaken folk's code announcements, the
squeak of rubbist souls, some one laughing three tables away.
I kept my eyes down, reviewing what little had scratched
into my notebook from memory. I didn't trust myself to
go back and photograph what I'd seen, Not yet. When
I finally looked up, I caught sight of a hospital
administrator at the far end of the lounge, her gaze
landing on me for a fraction too long before she
busied herself with the laptop, a mental lists form Norcross's facilitate,
the blank years and the staff archives, patients whose names
faded out of locks, and now this secret ward. Too
much was being hidden here for any of it to
be accidental. I considered emailing some notes to myself as
back up. My phone was just then a corporate text reminder,
please store all confidential notes and interviews on secured hospital
devices only convenient timing Ellie eight tracking, Perhaps or maybe
just coincidence, A second notice arrived, badge access temporarily updated.
Please contact admin officious persist. I texted my editor out
of habit, just a breezy check in. No reply. Well,
no surprise there. She was always double booked and allergic
to anything that smacked of investigative trouble. For though feature,
I'd so far a massed only polite stonewalling, and gount
deep suspicion that the real tulymemorile live crouched in its
own blind corners. I decided for now to perform to
look like the report I was meant to be. I
scheduled too short interviews, one with a pediatric nurse, one
with a physical therapist. Both were genial, their stories familiar
personal triumphs, community resiliency at the hospital's homeland of second chances.
They had nothing to say about ward n or old
structural quirks. When I pressed the therapist, she fixed me
with a confused smile, as if I'd asked about the
male's landing. Couldn't say. If it's not on the map now,
it probably not supposed to be. By mid afternoon, the
earlier shock had drained down to Bruce's sense of a
knees rehearsed normal. Tully was nearly convincing enough to dispel
the memory of the frozen clock the rightless silence. I
told myself I'd return my attention to hospital trivia and
the centennial time. Then this, I meant, after all that
paid my rent. But little things ket slipping past the
hospital's surface. In the cafeteria, an elderly man with a
hospital risp and picked at his pudding and moment something
about his wife coming down from upstairs to fetch him,
though I'd just come from the visible offer floors and
none matched his description. Near By a forebottle, miss waptails
about lost badge keys, ending with the shore, almost joking.
Just don't get sent up where they don't find you
for days bright. Her co worker shot her a blank
look of pause or a calbation, you know, storage, she muttered,
turning back to her chart. I wandered over to the
nurse's break room on a pretext. The same woman who
joked about the ghost and the night shift was there
refilling her water bottle. Quite to day I observed making
small talk while I washed my own mark. She shrugged,
grim face, thin eyed me. You are still doing that
history feature. I wouldn't dig too much if I were you.
People get antsy. She jerked her chin at the corridor
leading toward the north Way. Those places were told not
to go, even for emergencies. They move things around at night.
No one ever explains. Just don't be the curious type,
she advised not Unkindly, It struck me how quickly the
mood shifted when conversation drifted from the script. There was
an ancient, unspoken ecty lives buffered by routine boundaries, police
by custom as much as any key card. But my
every attempt to ask after the quiet erases the missing
staff the blocked always was met by forceable a business,
or more troublingly, by genuine fear. Back in my rental
that evening, the silence was too dense for comfort. I
sorted through the OTTOFACXID masts, the old badge from Calbdan,
the cryptic note, my own sketches of the building, the
list of missing years, the audio clips of perfunctory interviews.
I ran my thumb over the edge of the pass,
feeling the indentations in the faded plastic, I tried to
reconstruct my own map, overlaying the official plans with my notations.
The ad hoc detos and dead ends had cattaloged around
Tully's periphery. No matter how I drew it, there were
spaces left and accounted for wedges and corridors that, if
mapp properly, would yield rooms and floors with no present existence.
Reviewing the photo as I taken, I noticed something. Occasionally,
a door would appear in one image and seemed to
disappear in another, though the shots were only days apart
and taken from the same vantage. More than once at
dark's mod or glimmer in a window would catch may
I upon second look, nothing distinct, just a suggestion of residue.
I'd began reaching out quietly to form a Tully staff online,
using Facebook and old directory listings. Most messages went on
returned Robouant's back, but warn't. A packle of her likely
descendant or relative of miss Esskull yielded a brief critic reply,
sorry can help, don't ask anyone in Abmon family advice.
Please be careful. Every new clue evasive, though it was
seemed to curve back into the same voyage, blank spaces
in the hospital's memory cautions against meddling staff shuffled out
of sight with no warning. By the end of the week,
something shifted. The hospital's routine defenses grew less subtle, more present.
My badge stopped working at certain doors where it had
functioned before. When I asked a nurse about this, she shrugged.
System was set every so often, she said, who knows.
I even tried returning to this sealed off passage where
I'd glimpsed the condemned ward, but the file cabinets had
been moved. A new CCTV camera hung above the Alkovitz
red light, winking steadily into the gloom. Still I couldn't
let it go. I found myself looking for patterns in
Tullow's incident logs, hospital newsletters, city inspection reports. Here after year,
certain phrases cropped up. Routine fire drill conducted, unscheduled maintenance closure,
sea administration is staff reassigned for operational efficiency. Each time
such a memo appeared, it coincided with the abruptruncation of
at least one staff recorded sometimes a patient trans for
no family member recalled authorizing, and always there was the
same absent language, not fire, not resign, not deceased, just
send it, with a handful of cryptic paperwork entries in
a trail that faded gently to white. One particularly long night,
I sat at my rental desk, my laptop's greened, the
only light in the room, and started cross referencing everything
I'd found my search on oath, a few city newspaper
clippings years, all the tiny blurbs about messing persons, families
seeking loved one's lost scene at Tully please for information,
with no follow up. The stores were brief, invariably vague,
and never ever concluded. It was then, as I scrolled
through the handful of digital shadows, that my browser suddenly
went dead. The Wi Fi snapped off. I checked my phone,
no service. When I reopened my laptop, the draft of
my article, a document had saved siduously displayed only a
spinning load I can before vanishing, replaced by a blue
air screen. A chill ran down my back, not from
the lost words, but from the feeling that even my
devices inside Tala's orbit could be manipulated silenced. I rebooted, tried,
and failed to retrieve my work and stared at my
reflection in the black glass outside. Down in the city,
a freight train groaned against the rails, the only evidence
I was entirely cut off. Unable to sleep, I reviewed
my own note books by hand. I began cross referencing names,
the ones Massesscull had mentioned, the ones missing from staff
arch house, the ones who had been marked as patients
but never discharged. Again and again. I noticed that right
before each disappearance, the hospital's public communications increased, a gale
of fund raisers, press releases about new equipment, words for
administrative excellence, as if each loss was counterbalanced by a
push for positive attention. At sunrise, exhaustion finally rolled over me.
My eyes refused to stay open. I fell into a
restless stows at my desk, badge curled in my palm,
transcript notesmeared under my cheek. A sharp knock woke me.
Some time later. Dull light stretched thin across the floor,
blue and chilly. It was housekeeping there to replace Linen's.
After they left, I found my hospital press badge tucked
under the crack of my door, no note. The silence
in a building felt more acute than usual, almost as
if my movements that night had been noted. Still, I
went back the next day, feigning normal routine. I met
with a dietician in the morning shift who insisted often
that transfers to upper storage had ended a decade ago.
I tried to laugh it off, she only frowned, glancing
down at her palm, as if she expected something to
appear there. Inside the administrative office, the h how staff
i'ed me coolly when I asked about badge changes. Brutine
ordits was the answer, clipped and final, nothing for you
to worry about. I watched as one of them subtly
wrote something on a slip of paper and palmmed it
toward another staff for who in turn watched me leave.
On impulse, I cut through a hallway i'd mapped el
ore one that shouldn't have adjoined the old tech service
area with brisk steps. I moved past a row of
staff lockers and noticed, tapped behind a slant of drywall,
the feinned outline of another door handle. This time the
door was locked and reinforced with a badge scanner and
pinneda drill directly into the frame. I tried my press
badge on the reader nothing. I hesitated, then reached for
the old badge, the one from the envelope mark gallop dun.
The weight of it, the faded, laminate and nit plastic edges,
felt vital, now, more like a key than a talisman.
Without allowing myself to overthink, I pressed it to the scanner.
There was a click, abrupt and chattering in the stillness,
and the lock disengaged. For a slivid second. I listened,
no alarms, no footsteps. At any moment it might fail.
I slipped inside and eased the door shut behind me,
hot thunderer. The air on the other side was thick
with disuse and cleaning chemicals of shade, colder, full of echoes.
I let my eyes adjust. The corridor felt as though
it existed outside of time. Then oleum dull to a macray,
copper pipes exposed, fragments of broken signis reading only a
ward annuition restricted my feet, scuffed to bree bits of tile,
the stub of a pencil and abandoned surgical mass cordon
by age. I caught a glimpse now of how the
hospital skeleton once fit together. Here behind double locked doors
were the traces of overtines a medication closet with a
metal lock, books, fill laundry trolley half filled with ghost
white gowns, stacks of requisition forms carbon to eligibility. Through
a glass pane at the far end, I could just
make out the outline of a nurse's station, as chairs
neatly arranged under a court of stagnant dust. A cold
draft crept round my ankles, bringing with it the uncanny
hush i'd felt before. I paused, lighting my breath, lengthen,
willing myself not to think of the silence as a force.
Pressing back. Had another badge locked door marked access staff only.
I found myself checking the old badge again, but this
lock didn't respond. I pressed my ear to the gam
and the time as quiet. I detected a faint a scratching,
not mechanical as much as deliberate, but it might only
have been water in the pipes from somewhere behind. A
distant scrape. I tensed, but nothing followed. I made my
way down the corridor, legs ludden, pausing every few steps
to listen. At the end of the hall, a wall
of storage cabinets loomed, accidentally concealing the shadowed frame of
a service lift out of use for years, judging by
the dust, but wires led out from behind the panel,
sneaking away into the ceiling tiles. Pulling my phone, I
tried a photo, A flashed fizzle, the screen flicker, battery
dropping from sixty eight percent to nearly dead in seconds.
I swore softly, then hurriedly jotted a sketch. Doors lift
noted odd wiring the shape of the corridor. As I
leaned in trying to decipher a faded label, something moved
in the mirror glass of the lift door, a blare,
perhaps my own reflection, or the shadow of a figure
stepping into the edge of the frame. My pulse doumbled.
I pressed myself against the wall, breath case and silent,
every muscle jangling. Nothing emerged. After a sweat slick minute,
I backshacked, retreating to the door I'd used on my
way out. I scanned the clinal lines of the hospital's
outer wings through a narrow window, daylight bustling beyond till
its future focussed facade and blemish by any language of loss.
When I finally clicked the door closed behind me, my
mouth tasted metal For several seconds. I simply stood as
half closed, listening to the renewed hum of hospital systems,
the soft music, the beeping of pages, the faint gurgle
of the age track. I rejoined the flow of daytime tasks,
the visible world knitting itself back together. But the hairs
on my arms rose whenever I thought of the cold,
dull corridor behind the second door. I faced a choice,
keep advancing despite every warning, in every new administrative war,
or retreat to safety and reassemble what I found from
the outside, perhaps to craft a clever but in conclusive
piece about a teller's secret history. But even as I
tried to reason with myself, I knew I'd already crossed
the threshold. Tully Memorial was watching, and though I did
not want to admit it, it had begun the slow,
deliberate process of drawing me in. That night, asunder rolled
far to the east and the city shone with a
pattern of damp street lights, I propped open my window
for a air, left my shoes by the door, and
lay awake, with the old badge and the nightstand, its
silent question burning in the shadows. For the first time,
I let myself whisper the truth aloud. Something at tully,
behind lock corridors and vanished names, was shaping events so
quietly and completely that most would never know their a
story at all, and I would have to decide before
long whether I wanted to find myself on the wrong
side of those walls, lost in the anatomy of its silence.
The walk back to my car after Naucress's warning felt
longer than it should have. I barely registered to ramp
underfoot of the sodium lamps, turning the drizzle to a
mineral sheen. Somewhere inside panic and fury clash. I'd been stupid, reckless,
and now every locked door passing glance tingled with the
thread of consequences, my skin harm with exposure, as if
the hospital had more eyes than windows, each taking a quiet,
meticulous interest in me. When this security guard by the
exit scanned my press badge, he took a moment longer
than necessary. All set, ma'am, he said, polite, but clipped
his gaze, flicking between my face and the plastic. Did
he linger over the name or was that professional paranoia?
I gave a tight smile, mumbled thanks, an edged pass,
careful not to run the night pressed in the dreary
sit escape at the edge of Tully's grounds felt less
like freedom than another layer of surveillance. The rental was
silent except for the hiss of rain and the building's eaves.
I tossed my bag on to the sagging sofa, peeled
off my wet jacket, and double checked the locks. My
thoughts crowded out sleep. Each time I closed my eyes,
I saw that hidden wards, hard cold symmetry, the besmeat
but never occupied, the wallpaper curling off concrete, the clock
crusted with dust. The silence I'd felt inside the corridor
seemed to follow swelling in the darkness, crowding out the
hums and creaks of the old building. I made teap
left it untouched. My fingers tapped instinctively over the badge
I'd found in the envelope, tracing its raised edges. Every
moment since receiving it felt connected to what I'd just done.
Would they revoke my access? Would nor cross press charges? This? Concretely,
I couldn't shake the recognition that whatever I now knew,
someone powerful had gone to extraordinary lents to hide. Back
at the table, I attempted to send notes to my
cloud account, only to encounter connection errors again. The more
I tried my article drafts, maps, voters, the more I
found myself locked out or greeted with time outs. I
killed the Wi Fi, reconnected to the hot spot on
my phone, and cautiously drafted a private off flying back up.
There was little precedent for this much self erasure, not
in small town hospital history. Every move I made, tully
with some entity behind it, flicked away my efforts like
lint from a sleeve. Unable to write, I set about
printing any material I could fall plan scans, stuff rosters,
visitor logs from city records. I scotch tape the blueprints
to the kitchen wall, trying not to let my hands
tremble as I triangulated the extra corridor to the sealed floor.
The places the blueprints disagreed. The lines told a story.
This wasn't simply a case of under us space and
administrative neglect. There were deliberate edits, fours erased, entire wings
marked as consult only, and always the same blackness around
what must have once been word. In somewhere past three
a m I heard the building's front door shut, a
metallic thud loss under the rain my heart hammered. Footsteps,
marveled by the narrow hall moved past my door, then faded.
I exhaled still, the neighbor up late or something else watching.
I pressed the palm of my hand to my chest
and counted out my next breaths. When the sun finally rose,
leaden and pale, I was only half awake, but resolved
to finish what had started, and if nothing else, prove
at least to myself, that tully mooral un seen architecture
was not just metaphor not just local myth, but a living,
shifting memory back. Something was happening here and people. The
chloro who had vanished calab Dan, the retired staff who
had never picked up a final pacheck, had becomfitness in
a system that gleamed on the surface but left rot beneath.
Tell his rhythm didn't skip a beat. At tenne M,
I reported from my scheduled interview with one of the
longest serving physical therapists, a compact woman named Krishna, who claimed,
in passing to have worked every floor except the haunted ones.
She delivered it with a sardonic smile, then ducked into
a private staff break room and locked the door, a
deliberate partitioning of her life from mine. Every interaction now
paused was subject the charged nurse and cardiology wouldn't discuss
staffing records. A record's clerk failed to show for our appointment,
replaced by polite memo healthisher schedule. Soon, I looped the
new halways twice, burned time in the library, and asked
reception about the building's anniversary plans. Centennial events are for
outside visitors, the receptionists said, flashing a force grin. We're
focusing on patient care this month. History can wait. The
sense of being closed out was total. I swiped my
press badge again at the north wing's glass entrance. Nothing.
I tried a staff elevator out of habit It didn't
even register. Downstairs, in the cafeteria, the mostly empty tables
were suddenly full of people watching their food and keeping
conversation to a whisper. At noon, I found my car
had a fresh parking ticket in what looked like a
wax crayon mark on the side of the driver's door,
a crude x. I tried not to let my imagination run,
but the awareness of being marked noticed, and now permanently
out of bounds, began to gnaw at me, far worse
than doctor Norcross's earlier threat. The sense of surveillance wasn't
abstruct tables active. Passing through the fay, I felt the
weight of camer's tracking catching each pause. In the short
walk past administration, a man in a facility's polo leaned
out with the mob, eyed my badge, and closed the
supply closet behind him, A movement sharp ormisakable. Desperate for
a loose red, I bought coffee and slept into the
one corner of the cafeteria where the WiFi still functioned. Here,
through public terminal access and a little luck, I uncovered
a string of newsletters from the early two thousands. They
read like typical institutional y nurses honored knew him. My
rice wheed opens, except for quietly placed announcements about facility
improvements that always in the subject reference to operational consolidations
on upper levels. Each match too years with notable gaps
and staffistries and public records. The pattern now seemed chillingly routine.
I needed testimony. I needed something living beyond files and
digital ghosts. The idea was pure desperation. Seek out a
former nurse, any one who could deny or confirm the
old war's recent use. I cycled through LinkedIn olami groups,
even genealogy sites, searching any former Tully employee with a
hint of local presents. Late that afternoon, a reply arrived
to the message sent from my personal account. The address
was unremarkable, a street not a mile from the hospital,
a last name matching the nineteen ninety nine newsletters don't
bring a phone. Meet at the Gray House on Glen,
back porch seven p m. It was unsigned. I spent
half an hour debating whether to go Sen's Warren, with duty,
dread overcoming curiosity, But at quarter to seven I left
my phone behind, repocketed the caliph done badge, and set
up on foot, brain jacket zipped, hoping for answers. The
house on Glen was quiet, tucked behind a tangle of rhododendrons,
its paint more liken than color. I found the porch
light on in the door jar, no attempt to frighten,
just an exhausted acceptance. Inside soft lampite illuminated the lying figure,
wrapped in an afghan, A woman in her sixties, heapin
back spectacles perched on her nose, gazed sharper than her
quiet low. She refused my hand shake, motioned me to
a folding chair. If you're from the paper, you're wasting
your time, she said, immediately, her fingers weaving and unweaving
the blanket's fringe. They'll never print it, I sured her.
I only wanted to know of what I glimpsed on
the hidden floor had ever been real. Her face changed,
fear sharp and ancient shot across her features. She looked
at the porch door the kitchen beyond, as if expecting
someone to walk in. Her voice when it returned, was
determined they still used that floor. I helped move people
up there, sometimes for ativation, sometimes not. She closed her
eyes as if seeing backwards three years. Walls come down,
go on again. If your name's on nor Chris's lists,
or if you see something you should not, you're moved
off schedule for a training rotation. End that's it. Don't
end upon that list, she repeated. But don't write it down,
don't draw attention. For a while, I tried to keep track.
People disappeared, files gone, lockers cleared. Only thing left is
the draft in that hallway and the buzz and quiet.
I pressed for details. Has it always been like this?
Who manages the records de families? Ever? Ask her? Reticence
was not from age or confusion. It was fear shot
through with the weight of keeping a poisonous secret to survive.
She nodded, once exhausted, you can't prove it. They erase
the paper, swap the badges, change the locks that place
whard end four five. It exists for one thing, not
the patients, not the staff, for the hospital itself, to
breathe and make clean lines out of old messes. I
thanked her over her protests and tried to offer a
phone number if she ever needed to talk more. She declined,
take your questions and go. You're almost marked already. I
won't see you again. There was finality in her voice.
She would take the rest to the grave. Back on
the sidewalk, the city seemed reconfigured. Every empty window pausible
cover for eyes wall, every passing car crawling too slow,
idling with the niche of just a fraction longer than
decency allowed. I returned to my rental by the longer,
pausing at every street light every time a cass had
light swung past a ducked poles quickening inside. I was
convinced of two things. I needed undeniable proof, and time
was almost gone. My next attempt to access the hospital's
digital records failed. Upright passwords had been changed overnight emails
to trusted colleagues's bunce. With the mail books full of errors.
Even the note apps on my phone lagged freezing for
agonizing seconds before coming back blank. I pulled open the
file folder that contained my physical print outs, only to
see that somebody housekeeping or otherwise had moved it to
the kitchen counter. Nothing was missing, but every sheet was
slightly shuffled as subtle disruption, no cause to complain, but
enough to set alarm bells ringing. Sleet's comfort felt distant.
The knowledge of what waited inside that old corridor pounded
at me skull. If I didn't act fast, I'd become
one of the footnotes left behind too. At some rise,
the city was blue and trembling. I readed my bag
can put on the oldest travers clothes I owned. I
hid the badge deep in my front pocket, calling it
plan was generous. I meant to slip in find one
piece of direct proofered graphic physical human enough to push
the story into delay before the hospital's machinery erased me
from record. That afternoon, I returned to Tully moving as
one of the for traffic an anonymous visitor coat zipped
up head down, pressed badge reversed in my pocket. Instead
of the main entrance, I cut through the service lot,
passage vac units and bins of old file stacked for recycling.
A maintenance cart abandoned by the corridor offered cover. I
crouched behind it as level with the bisboard, waiting for
a break in staff movements one, two, three, Then the
corridor cleared. I slid the caliph, then badge from my pocket,
pressed it to the security pad near the hidden door,
and caught a trembling green light open my hand has
stated only a second before gripping a handle and slipping inside.
The interior world closed to over me heavy percussive with
the sound of my hobby, then nearly still. As the
padded silence settled, the stair well led down into the left,
the air changing from disinfection to the stale, muddy notes
of old insulation and disease. The first landing delivered me
to another keep it. I prayed the badge would still work.
It did, a minor miracle or a sign of deliberate indifference.
Behind the door, the world exhaled into a different logic.
The fifth floor corridor torpid with silent waiting, lit by
a wan fraction of elied bulbs, half shrouded in dust.
My phone was useless for calls, each out spinning without
a network, no Wi Fi, no bars, denial nod at
the edges of my panic. At least the camera for
now allowed it self to flick to life, the faint
lolow enough to guide my way down the main hold.
There were signs of fresh disturbance. Paper towels still dumpushed
into a janitor's closet, the shine of a new room,
and four pole a sealed box with medical gloves dated
last month. This was not a crypt not abandoned storage
here were carried on out of sync with the clock
and calendar above the beds seen through windows in the
war doors bore new pillars. Each patient shot hung at
the foot was hand labeled names a half recognized from
missing Pussin's circulus and old jar listings, though each was
just off. Melinda Beane was now Meloney bun Franklin pee
had been Franklin piss, never exactly the same as any
public record, but closed enough to chill. A fleeting shadow
across the Foreign Nurses station. My breath caught. I pressed
myself into an alcove and hunched slow. The old badge
cool against my chest. Echo slipped by, not speech, but
the hint of movement, shuffling slippers, the roll of a
medication card. I muttered phrase abruptly cut off. I crept
farther in. In the far corner, a pair of double
doors were secured by only a small pin with a
plastic cap. No security badge require. I tested the handle,
no alarm, only the faint sound of friction as the
sill drew free. Inside overhead lights cast a jaun disworsh
over rows of metal cabinets areco's room filled to choking.
File boxes, manilla envelopes, clip ords, binders, each labeled in shaky,
hurried block print. I found myself in a low aisle,
the smell of paper and dust thick enough to taste.
I rifled the nearest folder inside into forms color coded.
Many entries ended abruptly, always with the same phrase transferred
n H f minus five. The handwriting vary, but the
notation style was the same. Decade after decade, the names
leaped out, Jue Malmot and Tiuan Calvin Pier saw much
to run it off, termination dates that corresponded perfectly to
the months when the city or the hospital had lost
truck of them. The realization pressed a colt onto my neck.
This was the place for overflow or poorly maintained files.
This was a carefully tended grave art of paper. Each
document stone laid for someone in the hospital had chosen
purposefully to unrite entire staff and patient histories, lives. Identitiscended
here with the tidy signature in a vaguely official code.
The sounds are side thickened. A voice murmured. I duped
behind a low filing cabinet, breath shallow, the door creaked,
I weed it. A man in a doctor's coat, face
obscured by a blue surgical mask, entered and began humming
a childish, wandering melody broken only by the shifting click
of his shoes. He raffled, drawers, whistled, and then as
quickly was gone. I stood, hand shaking and stuffed a
handful of documents into my jacket shots from recent months.
The patient bracelet, a frotor clipped to a staff form
with a badge matching the one in my pocket. The
evidence was weighty and rough, the climax of a week's
worth of suspicion and fear. I retraced my steps, hugging
the wall. The estayed, thick smell, shifting from institutional bleach
to the moody, metallic tinge of old plumbing. Nearer the
end of the hallway, as series of offices flickered past
one light on his eide, narrow shadows moving in Russels's figures,
their features indistinct. Suddenly a voice behind me, not friendly,
not surprised. In man's clipped and distinctly administrative. You shouldn't
be here, I spun Paul's spiking doctor norcross blocked. The
corridor is colted, immaculate, his presence absolutely in control. My
mind raised calculations, turning to MUSHes. My hands tried to
hide the evidence in my jacket pocket. He stepped closer,
crowded in my escape. There are protocols for visitors, he said,
the words clinical, measured. Lacking any real concern for my safety,
I reached for excuses I got lost to my badge.
It led meat. He raised a hand, cutting off the performance.
He received something not intended for you. You've tampered with
patient files, breached restricted areas. Security is on its way.
I did the only thing I could. I darted into
the nearest side doorri gatorial cloth. It fumbled for a
latch and slaid a heavy trashpin in front from the corridor.
The muted echo of Norcross's footfalls slow and measured, as
if he knew exactly where I'd haul up. I yanked
at a vent in the closet ceiling. It came free,
a relic of pro maintenance. I climbed, pulling my knees up,
awkward and desperate, waging myself into the cross pace of
red in the gloom, I held a breath, sliding forward
inch by inch overcoated cables and old insulation below. The
door thudded. You can't hide nor Cross coal. But the
fete held no anger. This was professional, the system, indifferent
to individual intentions. The silence in the air deepened. Taking
on a menacing patience, I worned myself forward above the
suspended ceiling until I encountered a rusted grill and a
shaft of faint light and exhaust vent, leading to a
side stare, praying my weight wood and collapse the whole grid.
I dommered the great loose and dropped softly on to
a cold landing, stifling a grunt bruised cradling the stolen
files against my chest, I checked the stair empty, let
by the thin si a glow of a night light
half snarled with dust. I risked two flights down, opening
a battered fire door at the base, A new corridor
not on any plan I'd seen, ran north, then opened
into the back of the laundry. The wall flooded back
with sound, hum of washers, slosh of water, the ordinary
grind and fossible weak day it tallly, keeping my head down,
I slipped past a tech with headphones, drifted to the
end of the laundry, and outvert battered unsigned exit into
the east parking lot. At the curb, I hesitated every instinct,
tore in between the need to flee and the force
pulling me to record, to tell the files in my jacket,
clung to my roots and finished stories, each one a
clear At administrative death, A siren whipped far up the street.
I slid behind a dumpster, shaking with cold and fear,
and reviewed what I'd pulled. Patientless with last seene dates,
staff shift cards with abrupt termination codes, letters from grieving families,
clipped a clean dismissal forms, and most chilling and medical
bracelet bearing a name I recognized immediately, Clavoss, my contact marked,
and h FN as five no discharge. The enormity hit
me even as I zipped the documents deep into my back.
The details were refutable tully at least some select handful
wielding its schedule and keys and paper, had built place
where people were disappeared, names effaced, and all responsibility discharged
with the tidy note. I crouched there for minutes, too
rocked by the enormity of the truth to move the knowledge.
It was almost physical, abrasive inside the mind. But I
started myself. I had what I needed, I could leave,
turned everything over to the outside. I checked my phone,
no bars, but I knew that would change once I
left Heello's grounds. I pressed the power off, feeling the
need to break the last fiber of connection to the
hospital's internal systems. I watched the street for movement. Two
security staff appeared at the main doors, scanning the lot,
I hunched lower a rat in the city's plumbing, painfully
aware of every window above. Eventually I bolted for the coroner,
heart pounding, praying no one marked my face among the stragglers.
Shifting between visitive vehicles. The walk home was a gaundlet.
I tried side streets, doubling back, all the while recalculating
the safest route. Every man oll cover every dust being held,
the potential for someone in uniform step out and ask
where I was from who I was twice a costlea
of license plate, unreadable, windows too dark to read. Each
time I crawled ahead. After a moment too long, a
threat held unreleased inside my rental, breath coming in short
shot bursts. I dumped the files on the kitchen table
and checked the holes empty. I closed every curtain. The
clock ticked. At last, the adrenaline had enough that I
could act. I organized the files, scanning them to emailers jpigs,
lightly redafted to old habit from earlyest stores, then keyed
up a master file to my personal cloud, the back
up to thumb drive. When the connection finally flickered on
one two three bars of cell service, I uploaded everything.
I copied the documents to a private thread with my editor,
then blind cop at another look over port and known
for not blinking at threats for a moment, I let
myself breathe. Within fifteen minutes my phone range. The number
was listed as my editor's cell, but the collar at
d read private. I picked up in your silence every
sense on edge. Don't pursue this, the voice said, grating
with panic. The hospital was sue for liable. They threatened
to have police involved. I already received three legal threats
and two calls from the board. I can't run the
story de l hue files. I don't call me again.
The line went dead. I called the local reporter of voicemail.
I tried again. A woman answered at tide, irritated. I
don't know who you are. This number isn't accepting sources. Goodbye.
The call died, abrupt as a guillotine. My email in
box refreshed, new messages failed to arrive. I watched as
my up box emptied, each sent file, disappearing, my draft
sloading as blanks. My phone rebooted itself, then simply switched
off entirely, even though the battery had been nearly full.
When it came back, every file was gone. I ran
to grab my physical evidence, only to find the bag
itself moved subtly but definitely touched. I peeled it open.
Files were intact, but strip of notepaper was left on top.
Typed official and ensign. Cease all interference with hospital or
police business. You have been warned, My heart hammered. I
turned off every device in the apartment, double locked the door,
and checked the street outside. A black caught idled at
the curb for a time, then slipped away into the dusk,
disappearing like a smudge under rain. My thoughts spawned the
hospital not just as a structure, but as a system
with arms and eyes extending through the city. All lines
of escape, communication, redress collapsed. Even with the evidence. The
machine could erase people, erase records, and silence any story.
Deemed the threat and certain. It slept only in fits,
waking to imagine sounds of footsip on the stair, a
door closing in the hall at six in the morning,
an unfamiliar van idyl at the lot's entrance lighted only
a medical supply. I watched it from behind a blind
until it left. That afternoon, packing for a trip to
the Locome newspaper. Off is on foot, I heard the
elevator shudder to a halt on my floor. My building
had keyed access for only six tenants. The door at
the hallways end rattled once, then stilled. I swung my
pack on to one's shoulder and crept for the stairs. Quieter,
less exposed downstairs, my mail box were sealed, and police
taped the official warning plane in its language. I was drew,
eyeing the mail slots for any sign of movement across
the street, and a marked car rested with the engine running,
pale face behind dark glass. Defeated for the moment, I
returned inside, intent only on survival. My foe remained dead.
My lapt up a pail blinking cosat that refused to
boot past its log screen. Two hours later, as I
sat hunched over the kitchen table, a sharp rapichat at
my apartment door. Not law enforcement, nothing so loud or brush.
Just a courier in a blue jacket, face downcast, holding
a manilla envelope. A delivery, he said, and thrust it
into my hands. He was gone before I could ask
for a name. I checked the envelope, a familiar weight
inside a hospital staff badge, but this time buried. My
photo not torn, but Crispin knew. Next to my name
it ree patient NHF minus five status admitted. The laminade
was cool, almost wet, reeking faintly of antiseptic, the scent
biting veru layers of paper and time. Beneath the badge
a single type transfer order Hospital admission authorized NHF minus
five effective date one week. There was no signature. My
heart pounded. The date was neither in the future nor
the past. It was every day. I ran to the
window in time to see an ambulance idol at the crabs,
slights off, but shadows behind the glass. They didn't move,
merely watched in sight. The silence that poured through the
rooms became total of physical pressure that tidened around the chest,
held the limbs, and built up at the base of
the skull. I grew up the back of the nearest chair,
as if bracing for an aftershock. In that hush, the
room seemed to shrink. I could still hear within the
silence the drone of Tuller's floors and their endless weight
into consequences of unquiet curiosity, echoing from brick paper and
erased names. I fetched the physical evidence, the original badge,
the staff log clippings, the bracelet marked n h F
RENEZ five and stuffed them into the deepest pocket of
my coat. I left my apartment quietly by the back stairs,
listening with every step for anyone else breathing on the landing.
The lobby was deserted, the hole outside was still at
the cove. The ambulance remained white and impassive. No one emerged.
I ducked my head, stuffed the envelope into my backpack,
and walked away from the block, crossing three streets before
glancing behind me at the intersection. The ambulance still idled,
lights off, the figures behind the winchy barely flickering. I
didn't stop or wave or make a call. As I walked,
every window seemed to look back. I cut off from
the main road side step toward the receding lights of
the city, keeping Tuller's looming slowet at my back. My
last thought, as the sky shifted from late afternoon great
to dusk, was at the hospital, in its patient machinery
driven silence would wait forever, raising those who did not
obey its rolls. In the hush of my escape, with
evidence press against my chest, I realized the hardest truth
of Tuller's hidden floors. The silence was never empty, It
was always listening, and it never forgot a name. In
the hush of my escape, with evidence pressed against my chest,
I realized the hardest truth of Tulli's hidden floors. The
silence was never empty, It was always listening, and it
never forgot a name. I didn't let myself stop walking,
not while the white ambulance still hovered in the edges
of my vision, or the weight of the envelope drived
at my shoulder. The city's November sheill cut through every layer,
sharpening each step law increasingly unfamiliar blocks. Within ten minutes,
tull Immemorial had vanished behind warehouses and the slope backs
of closed shops. I kept to allahs in secondary streets,
checking every few moments for dark vehicles in the nearer distance,
or for footsteps that might be artificially muffled by experience.
It struck me that I had nowhere I truly trusted,
Not the rendered apartment already visited by hospital eyes, not
the newspaper office a mile away, nor the cafes and
caulkin species where I'd finished so many of the less
threatening stores. The city felt re arranged, all previous blowing
confidence gone. Only now did I notice how easily simple
matter's mail messages, a glance exchanged, and a whole week
could become sources of threat. Eventually, exhaustion and coal forced
me toward a laundromat that blinked with old fluorescent tubes
and drew little notice. I bundled into a cracked plastic
chair in the corner and kept my pack across my laps,
quinting at my jacket's pockets for any sign that my
hands were unsteady. There was nothing for me to do
but wait, let my pulse slow, and the oser just
to the ordinary white noise of conversation, rattle of dryers,
metallic cough of the change machine, the living backdrop of
the city, its most basic social chair, and felt somehow
both heartening and ili in proof that not every silence
was a signal. Even now, my phone rebooted itself at last,
screen blinding even at its dimmer setting. I watched the
little stats bar as strawberry to fill as if the
signals were literally clawing their way back into the real world,
no new messages nor owing mail battery in nine percent
and falling rapidly for the next hour, I forced myself
to act methodically. I took photos of the physical patient
bracelet that redacted stuff formed the forge badge, this time
using the battered camera at the laundromats conopp photobrew, not
my phone. I wrote a crocery outline of what had
happened penanton note but paper, signed with the simple hope
that some kind of physical record could at last what
tappened to my digital ones. By the end, my handwriting
had grown cramped and urgently fast, looping in directions that
made even me squint to read the chronology. As the
night deepened at tide and the laundromats cried into a
pair of old women and a teenager asleep across a
pile of towels, my possibility shrunk. I reviewed every option,
thinking of former contacts, advocacy groups, even city council representatives
whose cars are kept in my desk, but their numbers
too were unreachable, either disconnected or forwarding to voicemail. The
world had narrowed and sealed like a casket. Anxiety arose
in me with every discarded possibility. At one point, desperate,
I even considered marching to the police station two blocks north,
demanding to file a formal compleat into not that I
believed for a second that such a report would make
its way to any honest investigation. Too many badges, too
many administrative links back to Tully. Still, the compulsion remained,
do something before the machinery ground me out. Instead, I
caught a city bus head in west, taking a seat
behind the back wheel, and watched the marshaling yards and
dosal traffic until my stop. I got off by a
late night diner, not because it was safe, but because
it was bright, public, open all night, and unfamiliar to
anyone who might know my usual habits. Here beneath the
pulled light, I tried to catalog the evidence paper clipped
and arranged at a table sticky with old syrup and
worn sugar packets. It struck me at the secret in
the protection the hospital extracted lay not in avert violence,
but in quiet prollusses it inflicted. Every measure of resistance
was countered with administrative silence. Erratic surveillance loss of access
and the quiet suggestion that I was already half way
written out. At four in the morning, when my mind
could no longer make the leap from action to hope,
I wrapped up the evidence, divided it between zipropockets in
my pack, and resolved to make one last attempt at daylight.
It was now war never either I told someone who
could force daylight onto the fifth floor, or I was
vanishing into one of Tull's carefully prune files. A sliver
of daylight appeared across the horizon. The morning staff at
the diner changed ow. I recognized a local TV crime
string and a booth near the window. Someone I'd met
once at a conference. Against every reasonable instinct, I flagged
him down, voice brittle from fatigue. He eyed me warily
as I slid the patient bracelet, blurred copy of the
n h F men his five file, and a scribbled
chronology across the table. He heard of Tuller's missing people,
I asked, keeping my tone steady. Ye, well, there is
a story there A secret floor staff vanished patients readmitted
his ghosts. I coughed, awkward, you want an exclusive or
at least a chance to verify. He scanned the pages,
gave me a look hard with skepticism. People disappear all
over the city. Hospitals eat staff for breakfast. Tone of
his brutal io was worse. He paused, then tapped the bracelet, frowning.
But this no discharged paperwork. Staff falls don't just vanish,
not without somebody at admirin running cover too. Sure this
is real, his suspicion wasn't unkind just a reporter's All
I want is for you to try, I said, my
voice smaller than it had any right to be. He
pocketed the files, promised he to float it up the chain.
I thanked, Hi meant hot pounding. Left the diner, half
expecting the sidewalk well to snap back to normal, But
the feeling of exposure, of being hunted did not fade.
For ires, no new event broke the surface. I drifted
through downtown, rode the subway, found a bench in the library,
and watched the entrance, certain that at any moment, the
shadow of that ambulance would glide past the glass. By noon,
where Resolf fused into something like resignation. If the hospital
wanted to raise me, there was little left to prevent it.
But the story bat out and frayed. Now it coppers
in the hands of at least one journalist with enough
skepticism to check the file room or try to pull
badge locks. It would have to be enough