Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Careful feet of a waxed tile.
I'm slightly tremping from the cold rising through old concrete.
I pushed the cleaning caught through the empty expanse of
the hospital's eleventh floor. The wheels squeak just enough to
make my skin prickle. The lock heavy kearing sways on
my belt, the hollow chime bouncing off florescentlet cinder block.
There's clean and then there's hospital clean, chemical shop in
the air, not a fingerprint on the handrails, but on
this floor after midnight, no bleach ever feels likeick enough upstairs,
the quietest dance the rest of Saint Agathus never feels
like this. On ten, even at two a m. There's laughter,
or a radio somewhere, a nurse honey, an old tune.
On twelve are terminal, hush too, but softened by the shift, change, bustle,
the sense of somewhere else. Eleven is different, each door,
heavy and cushioned, siled, each patient chart at side, clipped
at the exact same tilt, the wing for recoveries that
never quite finish, comb beds failedry hab a handful, drifting
from one twilight to the next. I ge this every night,
but to night the silence crawls under my cuffs. Each
step stirs nothing but my own breath. Room eleven o seven,
my first stop. There's no reason to expect anything out
of the ordinary here, Missess Pirie eighty four at rest
and rarely more than slow blink behind milky eyelids since
they started this job. Her TV flickers green in the dark.
That's normal. I wheel in, trying not to glance at
the lump of her form under stiff linen a lot
for any sudden breath of twitch. No visitors o logged
to day. It's the trous can that stops me cold.
It's not overfull in the obvious way. No rapp is
stuffed on top, no crumple tissues, but there's bulk and
a variety that doesn't fit. An entire handful of medication
blister packs, none matching the barcoats or colors of the
hospital stock post it notes, crumpled and gray handwriting feathered
into useless sink, A used tea bag, strings wound around
a tiny white ceramic saucer. Missess Pierriy has a peg tube.
She doesn't take solids, oil liquids. I bend closer, gloved
hands spreading the debris. I reckonize none of it. The
pack stamp with foreign lettering make me frown. I prow
to fold its graploes from the pile and hold it up.
The writing is flowing, almost cyrillic. Not a single English
sentence to guide me. None of this could have come
from her, not in the state she's in, not even
on the best evening. I should have left it. There
are rules about personal items and the chain of custody,
but this is stranger than a smuggled lick a bottle
or a missingeran. I slipped the paper into my pocket,
hot pecking at my ropes and double checker chart only
dated signatures, nurseam Dannel's doctor miss row nothing, no mention
of new medications, nothing that would explain foreign blister packs.
I press the intercomment in a low voice, request a nurse.
Five long minutes and Jewel shows up, dark eyed and haired.
I lift the trash, show her whats inside. She looks
in squints edd shrugs. You know how it is. May
be a day shift of forgot to swap bins. She
doesn't check the chart. We're short to night. I have
three baths in and admit she ceased to excuse herself,
shoes squeaking away, left alone, I hover at the threshold.
Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's that no one notices
what happens on this floor unless there's a stain in
the wall or a fire alarm. I finish stacking the
bin on my cart, my shoulder pressed to the door.
As I exit, I feel it's something off in the
hush of the corridor, a sense of movement, a calling
just out of sight, as if behind every closed door,
someone of something which is it, could stand and walk
to meet me. But the only sound is my own,
and the taste in my mouth is sire. I'd like
to say that was an unusual night, but truth be told,
things are always ought up here. That's why I took
the job, and may be why I stay, though it's
harder to admit even to myself. Before landing here, what
I had could barely be called a rougime, let alone
a life long days at the docks, odd ires, no
predictability except the aclap again at dawn, and ended in
fitful sleep. Then came the accident. My brother in law
struck fearing off the expressway. My sister lived, but not well.
And suddenly the world was colored by the grinding gears
of lawyers, the arabysts forms signed in silence. The day
work dried up, just as the settlement paid for one
more month's rent, one more grocery run. It's easier. I
was told to sleep through the night shift. Hospitals always
need someone willing to be invisible. My first manager at
Saint Agatha size me up clean drug test, sturdy references,
no allergies to laydox and hired me on the spot.
But you have to be okay with being alone, she said,
there's nobody to hold your hand. At three a m.
That was the appeal. Darkness on the walk to work,
the city's near im pulsing through mist in the halls.
The world was moved out, every surface marked by fluorescent shine,
every break room abandoned but for the echo of microwave soup.
I learned the dancers of the overnight and nod to
the same tree of blue cloud nurses, the comforting glare
of vending machine lights and the pitied linoleum, The hush
between floors that somehow became my own private music. Other
staff keep their distance. The daytime supervisors like me well enough,
though I catch them locking up their offices before I
come through. A few regular doctors, doctor miss Fratten, doctor
Ristov have always give me a quiet he low the rests.
Even some of the orderlies keep a practice coldness, as
if being friendly meant having to see through me. There's
a camaraderie in being overlooked on the night shift routine
becomes a lifeline. I memorize every quirk which well on
the blue mok cut always jams, the door by Room
eleven nineteen that sticks and needs a good shoulder, the
window on the east end that rattles when the wind
blows in off the park. I know on a deep
level the particular loneliness of this wing. The wave voices
drop off midward, the hush after a pair of shoes
turned the corner. During the first weeks, that solid she
wrapped around me like an old blanket. I could lose
myself in the scrape patterns of old wax on terres
of floors, or the tiny constellation of sealing cracks above
the elevators. There is a kind of intimacy in cleaning
for people who can't respond a one way communion, I
talk to mis says Pei, sometimes low enough that only
she and God would hear. Sometimes she twitches and I
call it response, but there's an a knees under the piece.
Rules that are never written but quickly learned. Never call
attention to yourself if a monitor beaps, wait for the
nurse after two way am. Avoid the fire stairs unless
absolutely necessary, just in case one nurse from Jolly invites
me for a cigarette. Most nights we'd onn our coats
with the sly hush of co conspirators stealing five minutes
in the stuff patier. Sometimes she talks about her little boy,
sometimes about the bruises that patients wake up with claim
to be from tangled sheets. Though I have my doubts.
I mostly listen Orderley's joke about bold ghosts while stacking
chairs for mourning pity. Everyone agrees don't ask too much
about what's happening on the eleventh floor. There are the
posted polises, locked doors, visitor Lulk's inventory checks, but there
are unspoken ones as well. Don't bother the night's supervisor
unless something is literally on fire. If you hear shuffling
past re ignore it. If a light is on in
eleven o nine but the room's empty, No, you didn't
work quick, don't linger. The idea of extra discretion, handed
down as a kind of joke, is a shiell for
keeping things simple. What I didn't realize then was that
it was also camouflage. Most nights, a wash mop gather
the bins, and the time slipped by without incident. The
building sings its minor chords a distant elevator Dane. The
hum of old heater is the way you step sound
different in the back corridor near the linen closet. But
after that night with Missus Pierree's room, the miner cord sharpen.
The second anomally comes two nights later, in room eleven twelve,
where old mister Gujery's is barely alive but listed as
stable for months. I dump the trash and hear the
soft clink of glass in the bag, a brown glass phial,
ancient looking with a cork stained black. There's a thick
dried residue lining the bottom. The label peeled clean packet
wrappers two not for any of the meads in the
supply closet. The patient log says no new orders. Third night,
Room eleven o three bawled up tissue with something dark
and floral inside, smells like lavender in something I can't name,
A folded slip of paper with tiny writing, none of
which look familiar. Again the staff husband's bass. Nothing delivered
here but the standard issue. Now I'm actively searching. I
time my rounds. I watch staff rotations from the corner
of my eye. Who drifts into which room and when
I catch the nurses. But it's the same as before.
Nothing off, Nobody carrying tea bags and glass pials and
foreign pills in their pockets. The notes are shoved deep
in the bins, not left where a patient could have
reached from bed. I even check supplace storage off someone
us an unapprooved stock. It isn't coming for official channels.
The confusion in the nurse's lounge is palpable. When I
bring it up casual as I can, it's always something
up there. One of them says, peeling off gloves. Don't
sweat it. Maybe housekeeping missus sweep, But I'm certain I
never miss a sweet on this floor more than anywhere.
I'm meticulous Finally, I confide in old Carl, who trained me.
Karl's worked here since before the new wind was Bill
always night shift, always silent. We're loading carts at two
forty five a m. When I mention the trash, his
usually lose mouth clams up. Just don't get curious about eleven,
he says, it isn't like the rest of the building.
Let it go. He doesn't make high contact after that night.
I feel myself marked by the word curious, as if
admitting interest is a crime. So I let it go
on the surface beneath, I become obsessed. I start noticing
how the refuse appears only in select rooms and only
after particular nights, but never twice in a row. The
bins in eleven fourteen and eleven eighteen always empty, gleaming
the anomaly, are never entered into cleaning logs or visible
on the shift nurses lock. It begins to feel like
someone is keeping a game alive, just out of reach,
using the trash to send signals I meant to ignore.
By the end of the week, my anxiety is constant.
I fidget in the elevator. It's do the illegible notes
in my pocket. The rest of the cleaning team is
less familiar, now avoiding eye contact, as though proximity to
me is exposure. I come in early, I leave late,
and the pressure grows. Something is playing out in these rooms,
something orchestrated with discipline and secrecy I hadn't imagined possible. Then,
after three consecutive nights of normalcy, I step into the
bathroom by eleven thirteen, and here voices. Though I urge
in two at least maybe three, the voice is on familiar.
No staff was talk with this such tension, and none
should be here after two one word jumped OUTHO opened
in silence. I let the door swing back on its hinge,
heart hammering. The hallway when I peer out is empty.
As ever, the patients through the slit windows lie perfectly still,
machines gently beeping, but the window at the end of
the hole is open two inches, blowing the faint distry
pass my face. I lock it. Shiver's bristling along my scalp.
The sense of being watched spikes. Every blank window becomes
a lens. Over the next week, the anomalies multiply. Room
eleven O five thrash full of dam erbs, strange, black
splotches staining medical forms eleven thirteen, freshly laundered linens, but
a faint smochyodor clinging to the mattress. Sometimes the four
planet itself seems to shift of vending machine, replaced by
a water fountain without warning. The maintenance closet shelf for
stocked in a new less logical order, small disruptions each building.
On the last, My curiosity, by now morphing into compulsion,
pushes me to the security office. I've no vowed reason,
but I fear needing footage for a broken cart donned.
The bridle hair tech grumbles and unlocks the feed for me.
The screens flicker greenish and monochrome. I watch the eleventh
floor hallway camera midnight to four a m. That active
rooms show no entry, no figures, not even a flicker
of a uniform or a face. Yet that's impossible. I
track my own shadow at the far end, But when
I walk into the shop, my body passes through the field,
then pops out again with a jump in a timestamp
more alarming. All night, when I pulled out bags of
weird trash, the recording skips of five minute blank interval
every time I run back security locks. Gaps always correlate
with trash, and the gaps don't affect the other fours.
Ten is smooth, twelve seamless, only eleven flickers and jumps,
as if someone yanked the data over the system covered
its own tracks. This pattern gnaws at me outwardly. The
patients in those rooms never change, but those who do
always after the sket footage sometimes rock it from a
responsor of two following commands in iOS, where they go
the other way, the stable turn critical and the official
trot can't explain why. One target night, I steal a
look at the medical charts. I wait until the new
nurse Linda is called off Urkansos, then drive by the desk,
glance at the folders. At least three files of scratch
outs and unfamiliar notations wedge between the usual print outs
a date, a time, sometimes a second handwriting uneven. In looping,
there are pages misfiled, as though inserted hurriedly. Who has
access to these? And why I'm on edge, missing brakes,
faking confidence even as my hands due to while mopping
every movement feels surveiled. At two thirty in the morning,
while rummaging for replacement mop paid. I noticed something wedged
behind the rusty pipes of the utility sink. The object
is thick from leakage, nearly ruined, but resolutely solid. I
took it free. An ancient online notebook, padded by water
and hands corners blade. Opening it releases a sharp smell,
not quite mold, not quite ink, but something chemical, pungent
and sire. The pages are dense, not diary entries, but
columns of names, initials, times, headings are missing, each page
crammed from margin to margin, and scrolled capital letters relevant
thirteen two forty four in window open, patient breeding, shallow
jay riler, candle replaced, do not speak to nursey M
three seven omnw dosage envelope delivered. There's more empty spaces
where patient numbers would fit. Sometimes cryptic symbols, arrows connecting entries.
When the time matches a known trash bag. Many hands
have written here, some entry blocks faded half to a llegibility,
others clotted with correction, fluid and overriding. It's a hidden ledger,
not staff logs or medical charts, but an account book
for invisible transactions. The minute stretched in my hand as
I rapidly flipped from one water stained sheet to the next,
tracing the code. The realization lands with awful weight ease.
Records match the trash knights, the bizarre shifts and patient status.
The times the security fee blinks to gray of cold.
Sweat builds on my neck. Some of the names repeat
j Ryler, d s, oblique initials, paid, with times never matching,
the nurses, never matching the orderlies. Then among the lists
a catch of full names growled with authority. Margaret Eastley,
Margaret Easily, as in a former charged nurse who died
three years ago and whose fortoe still hangs in the
break room, smiling and alive after her name. The time
sound is dated less than six months ago. A possible
my skin crawls a slow, meticulous operation run off the grid,
within the cracks and blind spots that only a long
term staffer would know. But why and for how long?
Some notes point to specific oddities lie Wavender for Guetier's
midnight lights flickered success. Others end with questions who is
covering the recorder shift? I photographed page handshaking and stood
the ledger in the hollow space behind the motbucket, just
in case the cleaning closet feels smaller by the second,
packed with secrets. I picture the hands over dozens of years.
Maybe who wrote these notes? Did they stand exactly where
I'm standing now? Did they hear the same whisper of voices?
Feel the same verge to run? The next night, I
start mapping the entries at my kitchen table, sticky with
spilled instant coffee and scattered bels. I spread out my
cleaning log and try to match interest. The constellation draws
itself ugly in its logic. Every trash normally occurs within
a window, matching the ledgers au timed entries. If the
ledger says envelope pelven o five one thirty six m,
I find the strange trash eleven o five has been
the following night, and the chart will show a patient
who either wakes up or dies by lunch. Frantic, I
searched staffrecas online. The recurring names in the ledger are
a mystery, no reason, staff no volunteers. A couple like
Eastlei alsted as to cease, but the ledger boks their
presents years later, a haunting organized persistence. Night after night,
I keep a nervous vigil. I am less janitor and
more spy nurves, rayed by the sense of being watched.
Every one in nurses Doctor's night guards seems a possible conspirator.
I find myself crossing self imposed lines, snooping for notches
in the wood, under door handles, or loose tiles behind radiators.
Each time I come up empty except for the trash.
Hall is different, always coated. I sleep little and badly.
My well shrinks to the hospital, and my apartment pale
as chalk under the flicker of foons, greens and florescent overheads.
The ledgers corner's coned of my mattress, a deadly seeker,
wholly my own. One night, a heavy storm hammers the
old building. Rain beats a tattoo on the windows. When
keynes through the alley, I'm mopping near eleven thirteen step,
sticky with humidity. When I hear the door click, my
heart lurches. Some one is coming out, a figure, tall
and swayed, face hidden in a hood, cut loose and
almost ragged. In two smooth strides, the figure seeps past.
I shrink against the wall. I catch a half glimpse
of a brown marked and nodded with age, fingers gloved.
The air behind them smells of burning sage, something old
and herbal and wrong. I need to clean in there,
I say, a reflex barely above a whisper. The figure
is silent, but their eyes dark under the shadow of
the hood, paws on me for just one heart beat.
Then they brush a heavy envelope off the linen cat
and vanish around the corner. The weight in my hands
is enormous. I stuff the envelope in my back, fighting
the urge to sprint down the hall. I am certain
that in the chaos behind the storm smeared glass, something
is watching me, something that may have walped these holes
for years, untouchable upstairs, I prey open the envelope and
dump its contents across my small kitchen table. More rough
sheets from the ledger, two crumpled notes, and a press flower,
dry and blackened between the pages. Most horrifying is the
addition a new page written in a strong, fresh hand.
Thank you for your attention. Do not disturb the work
of the night's staff. It's a warning, rendered polite, a
hand jig in the dark from people who know the
game and know I am watching my own name isn't listed,
but at the bottom, in ink blurred by rain, there's
a final line read thirteen window closed to witness present.
I gripped the edge of the table. My hands are shaking,
the ladger and its warnings crowding my mind to night.
I am no longer merely abisted. I have been marked.
The choice now is dark, keep watching, or walk away
before the night staff learns my real name. Outside the
sky is splitting with thunder, but the true storm was
gathering quietly there in the dim heart of Saint Agatha's,
on a floor where nothing is ever what it seems,
and silence is only the beginning of the story. I
slept poorly, twisting and tangled sheets. Every twitch of the
floor board outside my apartment door magnified until dawn. Rain
pattered like nervous fingers across the fire escape. Twice I
started up, gasping from half thawndrea and shuffling the pulse
of a monitor, the flush of a hodron low. My
phone buzz with the new shaft notification just after seven
late start approved, rest up, no sender listed. I drew
on yesterday's clothes a mid tea, wondering if someone at
the hospital was already watching my eyes more closely than
I realized. By the time I walked into Saint Agatha's,
the air was thick with after storm humidity, barely disturbed
by the revolving door. I scan my badge for the
night shift, passing a security guard bleary eyed and muttering
into his radio. Lights in reception stuttered through their time cycle.
A faint hubblodor, burned sage and something like sweet grass
clon to the elevator buttons. I pressed eleven and watched
the numbers climb, my reflection pulsing in the smushed chromb.
My hands shook. I stuffed them in my pockets, pulls
fluttering under my jaw. On the eleventh floor landing quite
sat heavier than before. Lights were dimmed to half strength,
and the long corridor seemed narrower, shadows lingering where the
striped fixtures flickered out. My cart waited by the staff closet,
ready stocked someone's careful order in the arrangement of cuns
and mops. I counted out supplies more than three times,
making sure everything was in place, as if a missing
roll of towels might solve a journey in my gut.
When I ran my hand along the cart's edge, I
found a coarse scrap of gauze, newly tied at one end.
Odd but maybe a left off from an orderly I
moved through the first assignment to collect linen from eleven
o one, eleven O two, eleven o four. These rooms
always came first, so that the patients could be turned
in sequenced by the nerves to night. Every handle was
colder than usual. Blank whiteboard by eleven oh one stor
I swept in, humming softly to myself. Forty seconds of
sheets and towels, cart rumbling behind in the hallway, footsteps
behind me, quick to light for a patient. I glanced
back just animal, the youngest of the orderlies, her ponytail
swinging beneath the weight of her loaded arms. Busy night.
I asked half for cover, half for comfort. She eyed
me with her now normal wariness, shot stuffed in the
east side. You'll probably have to cover bathrooms for eleven
fifteen and sixteen before rounds, then dropping her voice, don't
leave the doors open, okay, I nodded, letting her response hang.
But as I turned into the main hallway, she lingered
at the corner, glancing toward Room eleventh thirteen, before hurrying off,
faced tight At eleven o seven SESSPIRI lay as before,
angled toward the window, TV now black. The trash was minimal,
this time one empty package of standard as she wiped
two tissues. I replaced the liner and bent check the
four for strays. But the only oddity was the faintest
shimmer of dust, now more than a stray hair. If
I'd been less fixated, I kept my cleaning slow and careful,
trying desperately to look routine, but every so often, hearing
that imaginary footful behind sweep, mop cart, rattle's checkboard move
all on, I listened for voices through the walls. In
eleven eleven, the patient, Misserts, whose brother cold daily, whose
flowers always wilted faster than anyone else's, muttered in her sleep.
As I edged a mop around her bed, I discovered,
just behind the head board a folded slip of paper,
slick from condensation. This one, I left my pockets already
heavy with countryband, my mind filling with imaginary accusations if
I were caught. After three more rooms, I dumped my
load in the chute, backing into the two to closet
to count off the next stretch. That's when I realized
my keying hooked always and the same belt loop were short.
Two keys the emergency stairwell and eleven eighteen Hannick's low
bloomed to my chest. Lost keys meant paperwork, scrutiny, possible
dock pay. Retracing my steps, I checked each lock. I
was searching the linnoleum for a glint of brass in
Room eleven o five. Nothing pass eleven to the air
felt subtly disturbed to quick, breathless chill, unlike the usual
h wrek gast. As I double checked the cart, I
caught movement the blind on the window at the end
of the corridor, swinging just so. Some one had passed
her only moments earlier my mouth ride. I pushed towards
the window. The sash was locked, but the frame exueded
cold wet, as if from a lingering hand behind me.
The hole was empty. I turned, hands downed in my pockets,
high per hour of my own noise. Tuesday meant supply checked.
Just after one a m. I told myself routine would
steady my hands, but the mop closet which should have
been spotless, smelled like burntlocks. And there, behind the stack
cardboard of box gloves, I saw my keys hooked neatly
over a steel nail, obviously placed, not dropped. I spun
on instinct, expecting some one to be behind me. The
hole was empty, but the residue of prisons hung lightly
awkward quiet. After a stranger leaves a room, I retrieved
the keys, snapped them back into place. The urge to
lock every door on my floor came and went, replaced
by a growing certainty that no lock here really matted.
At the nurses station, Linda was fulling out her in
forms hair fers by with a glasses perched law. Did
you see any one near the mob closet, I asked,
forth careful. She gave me a quick searching glance. No,
why it just thought I lost something keys, She shrugged,
twisting her mouth with indifference. That closet is always getting
propped by the h track CAUs you know how it
is shared space. She went back to her laptop, dismissing
me with a quick tap of her nails. A mollified
I lingered by the no sustation longer than usual, A
phone rang and Lind excused herself to take a call
in the adjacent office. I shifted over, scanned the board,
found nothing unusual, logged, but perched atop the monitor a
tiny bundle tied with black bed at the same herbal
smell as the envelope from the night before. I left
it and touched, but my heart thought a dully in
my chest. At two seventeen, I ducked into the staff
lunge to log out for my brake. The TV bobal
static from an old news broadcast. All car sat with
his thermis hunched and silent, clicking a ballpon pen and
patterns of threes. I pulled a chair up, stealing myself.
He didn't look at me as I spoke, OK, cal
my voice lower than I intended. Ye ever, lose your
keys up here? His reply was too quick. Note that
told you before. He grunted, eyes fixed on nothing. The
swing's not like the others. Stay on track, don't ask.
His emphasis had a new edge, a kind of sympathy,
but laced with warning. But if he noticed something off
I began. He cut me off, his voice suddenly urgent,
as if words may slip away. I have not forced
out people have been let go for less than what
you're poking at sip of thermos. This hospital keeps its
own order. His words knocked at me. I thumbed at
the edge of my pocket, thinking about the ledger under
my mattress, the envelope oppress bluck and flower. I hadn't
told anyone else, that said quietly. Paul looked up, finally
meeting my eyes with awareness that had the weight of years.
Don't He stood, capped his therm's tight, and walked out.
The doll clake shut in his wake, leaving the stat
of droning. The air charged with the finality that made
my chest ache. Back on rounds, the corridor was hushed.
Room eleven thirteen drew my eye. Every time I passed Elah,
I discovered the window opened, the air heavy with the
faint tang of burning, a different tang from the cleaning chemicals,
something older earther. I sat in alarm trill behind a
closed door. I jumped, nearly losing control of my cart.
Linda heard pass, swiping her badge and ducking into eleven fifteen.
A moment later she called out, help please, a crush cart.
Now the stillness broke and within seconds. Two orderlies rushed in,
one trailing a rolling monitor. Their voices rose and stacatto
urgency clipped, efficient and impossibly distant from the secret world,
I felt growing behind every mock, closet and chart. I
stayed clear, counting on protocol to busy the staff. As
I wheeled by Room eleven thirteen, I noted the door
pulled almost but not quite shut. The light inside was soft,
dimmer than hospital bulbs, barely spilling under the threshold. That
was when I noticed the ID badge for the float
of nurse usually on her Lineaud was lying on the
floor just outside the room. I picked it up and
studded the photo b AsSalt a woman with severe hair
and a forced smile. I stared at the back, written
a nearly invisible pen and number se in a looping
initial m. I slipped the badge into my pocket and
rolled on, but that adrenaline spite trolled in my veins.
I forced myself to focus until rounds Woodan, then waited
for the corridor to clear for the fore a m
lull with everyone distracted by incident report and late shouting,
I drifted back to the closet, retrieved the original ledger,
hoping I might find more. My hands fumbled, I nearly
dropped it. I paged backward, scanning for em dozens of interest,
some so old dank bled into ghosts. The same mam
appeared six times, in varying hands, always with odd instructions.
Badge returned forth, shifted am to observe only it gave
me chills. Movement out in the whole we caught my eye.
I pressed tight to the closet. Will Annibal, the youngest
orderly walked by, pushing her empty wheel chair hummy teamlessly.
She paused a moment at eleventh thirteen stoor, as if
considering weather to enter. Instead, she glanced quickly left right,
then slipped a folded something through the gap and hurried on,
vanishing into the dim end of the corridor. I waited,
counting slow seconds to twenty. Then I merged hard yet
too fast, moving as quietly as possible to the door.
The folded slept still outlined, barely peeking on the carpet
with one toe. I nudged it free and bent to
snag it up. It was a piece of a patient's
meal order form. Reverse sides scribbled with dense lipping text
I risk pocketing it later under bathroom fluorescent I'd puzzle out,
meaning for now, I press ahead outside a clock chan five.
By the end of shift, I'd gathered all. I dared
the badge, the meal chit, and that helble bundle from
the nurse's desk, secured in a clean specimen bag to
prevent the smell from haunting the inside of my locker.
I clocked out dead eyed. As the first wheelchairs of
the day shift rolled in a home. I arranged my
evidence across the kitchen table, page from the envelope black
and flow, pressed between the fresh patient note the badge.
I managed to make sense of the meal chit most
in names and time stamps, initials matching both the ledger
and the staff rosta, but some that matched neither among
them gee again and again, alongside times that stretched back
nearly a decade, each time a symbol next to the initial,
a crescent, a box, a set of four dots. I
started making my own chot, plotting connections with colored Penn's
pilfer from supply trash days mapped nearly identicallys it changes
in patient status names from the ledger interpolated with the badge,
The notes, the packages of art horrible sacheus. Nothing was random.
Each shift fit the pattern of a hidden protocol circulating
through the most comatos of critical patients, never revisiting the
same room twice in a week. Every anomaly had a
corresponding blind spot, a dead security camera, a skip line
in the chart, a missing nurse. For fifteen minutes, I
pressed harder into the older cases. The hospital's public crecords
showed statistical anomalies for the eleventh floor, a higher spontaneous
recovery rate, but also unexplained deaths noted as a failure
to thrive over in natural causes sudden. One article, a
local blog clipping from five years back, featured a miraculous
recovery of a child in room eleven twelve in a sidebar.
A nurse grinned maugt easily umistakably alive, then one hand
resting gently atop the little girl's arm. But the office
at the hospital where her nameplate had once hung was
now empty, her career sealed by a framed o vituary,
the details spare and unconvincing. After a courageous battle with them,
as she passed peacefully at home, Yet here was her
name returned to the ledger, dated months past her death,
written with a clarity that made denial impossible. As the
sun cracked through drawn curtains, I stared at the evidence,
mind racing, body exhausted. There was no easy way to
test the next step, no guide for breaking a ritual
design not to be seen. I felt the circle closing.
Too much curiosity and the wall seemed sure to push back,
but too little in the truth would be lost, hidden
again for another decade. From the kitchen, I heard, faint
and hallucinatoy, the musical chirp of my badge, as if
echoing from some distant hospital corridor. I flinched, awake, face
pressed painfully into the table. The clock read two p M.
I'd slept maybe four hours. My phone vibrated, shift, swap
to night, all hands admon expects corridor check every hour.
Don't be late. No name, only the time I texted
back understood. I ended the hospital that night, dreading what
I might find. Elevators were less reliable in storms. The
thump of disrepair could up the shaft as a road
to eleven. Every button felt sticky, marked by a thousandthms prints.
My palms didn't quit sweating. A check in. A new
figure was posted beside the main disk. Abroad shouldered woman
in a starch blazer and hospital insignia. Her badge reversed.
She scanned each staff for entering the ward. Eyes cold
and yielding staff. Only tonight, she said, sobbing me with
a flat palm on the cart. Her accent was textured
and blazable. Family is not allowed above tend this evening
security measures. She studied me, A flicker of something curious
in her gaze gone in an instant in normal, wrote
to night, I ventured, masking nerves. She hesitated a then nodded,
extra eyes report anything unusual to admin. Not nursing. We're auditing,
pretending annoyance. I moved a lawn, but her presence tisted
my stomach more than a disciplinary visit to sentry, perhaps
or a signal that the hidden line of silence had
shifted sides. The rounds passed with nervous speed. Nurses and
orderlies kept tight to clusters. Conversations were clipped, movements cautious
but watchful. Linda for smile in place, gesture for me
to come into the lounges. I passed by with bags
of laundry. She didn't mince words. You've noticed things, haven't
you taken aback? I nodded her lips went then, but
don't talk to admirnt. Don't call attention to the trash
or the badger's or anything. You like having a job,
I stared, you know what's going on? She shook her
head with frustration. I know better than to poke. Some
patients get visits, others don't. It's not for us to understand.
But there's a pattern. Someone's keeping rechos named time's people
who aren't even alive any more. A flash of something angry. Then,
fear not our business, she hissed. Ask Karl about night staff,
he's She cut off ies, darting to the door. Annabel
chose that moment to bustle with her untouched dinner tray,
halting conversation. Linda moved her away, waving off my questions
with hands that shook just slightly. I left, feeling the
invisible threads in the hospital drawing tighter around me. Later
in the linen room, I saw to cheats, mind numb
from me, playing the night's exchanges. That was when I
heard feigned stumbling footsteps coming from the hidden tunnel, barely
worked into the blue prints as shore cutboard. Between eleventh
thirteen and the fast air roll. I ducked behind the wrecks,
hiding by instinct. Footsteps paused just outside the door repair,
possibly three. Their voices low and measured still here, a
woman's voice and accent I couldn't quite place. He listens
too much. A murmuring reply led him. Not all will believe.
Something heavy thumped. I heard a breath as someone leaned
against a wall. Don't do it before four too many eyes.
They moved on, shoes nearly silent, and I surface shivering.
I followed just far enough to see the hallway empty
save for a crumpled slip of paper wristing atop the
waist bind by eleventh airteen's door. I snatched it, concealing
his Muntell's as I wheeled my cat down the hall.
Inside it was an Indus card printed with knee blocking
tight not handriton on one's side, a jumble of initials,
room numbers, and mirror script on the other. An admonition
services rendered, must not linger in the light, remove witnesses.
I pocketed the card, swept beating on my forehead at
the end of shiff nerves, raw A cought cow before
he left, cornering him by the surface elevation. Who are they?
I whispered, low as I dared in the sterile light.
He looked more tired than ever. He said nothing, but
in the moment before the door slid open, he glanced
back over his shoulder. We clean what others want? I
stood there in the service hallway, with Karl's words echoing
every syllable, heavy as ballast. We clean what others want?
The elevator doors closed on him, and I was alone,
his retreating form reflected in the silver paneling, my own
outline vaguely doubled, as if they might be more to
meet In the shadow. I cast my glove grip on
the handle of the cot went bloodless. The corridor behind
me ticked with sounds so familiar and yet now charged.
My mind turned for what was left and said, was
he warning me? Or confessing? By the time the next
shift rolled around, I'd memorized every word on that index card,
reciting the mirrored snippet in my mind until it lost
its meaning, then disturbingly found it again. Above all, the
final freeze stuck removed witnesses that was aimed at me,
or at someone like me, a pussin foolish enough to
look too closely at what others would let lie and
seen in the dark. I spent the hours before my
next shift at home, lights on, blinds drawn. My kitchen
table was stream of pedal fragments, wrinkled notes, the false badge,
print outs of old obituaries, and my tablet's greener washing
reports of patient deaths, some listed as an expected improvement, others,
I said, an unexplained decline. There was a pattern, all right,
but not one with the neat notive of a hospital drama.
Nothing on this floor was ever resolved, only transformed into
something unspoken, filtered, done through rumor and cold fact, until
no one could be certain what they'd seen. Unable to sleep,
I called up public records through the hospital's web portal,
cross referencing every name I could decipher from the ledger
against staff directories going back fifteen years. Many simply weren't there. Some,
like margot Essay, were turned not to staff bulletins but
in narrowly worded Farewell's tributes to a valued friend and
mentor mention of a garden dedication, nothing about the late
night inters in the damp pages under my bed. More
troubling were those names I found reference to only in
death obituaries dated years before the most recent ledger enters
in their hand or burying their mark. How could someone
sign in for a shift years after their funeral? Sleep
deprived logic told me that someone else else must be
borrowing names and expedient mask, perhaps for the real night staff.
But if so, why continue to fiction enough to those
who bored the names? Had larm since vanished? And why
did the initials the handwriting so carefully change from year
to year, from one's signature to the next. In the
digital silence, I dug up a post on an old
hospital employe's message board a half decade gone, the discussion
to reds frozen buried. There I found a handful of
haunted illusions. If you work eleven, don't ask for next
of kin, Never clean room eleven th teen after three
unless you want a ghost story to the lighter is
how they keep you safe. Most I was sure were
jokesnatcheft agitations to pass the time, But under them pooled
something else. If you know what to look for, fear
leaves marks in language. It was almost evening when I
forced myself into fresh grubs, badge reversed on my chest
as the Abmin had demonstrated, and made my way to
Saint Agatha's with a sense of drawing close to something final.
The sun never fully broke through, just down behaze in
the clouds over the city, stole lights glimmering and pools
along the street as they stepped across the glassy law
beyfloor to night. The elevator up till eleven was emptier
than usual. The few staff riding up, faces new and old,
each blinking their electronic badges as if in a daze,
avoided meeting my eyes. No one spoke. The silence magnified
the hum of the cabin, the faint sound as static
from a portable radio in some one's coat pocket. When
we stopped at eleven, I stepped out, heart beaten, quick
and heavy, and nearly collided with some one waiting just outside.
She was a hospital administrator, a mess drew. I'd seen
her number enough times on staff females, but never spoken
to her face to face. She was tall, iron gray
hair coiled in a bun, sharp eyes that never seemed
to blink. She fixed me with a look both professional
and somehow personal. You're aunt scheduled to night for the
East corridor. It wasn't a question. I nodded, setting my
cart's brakes. That's right, she paused, hands clasped behind her back.
The board is conducting an audit. Difficult month. Be certain
your logs reflect exactly what YE do, and only that
her gaze cut through me. There are things upstairs best
left alone for every one's sake, you understand. I met
her stair. I saw then a day depth of tiredness,
or perhaps a knees deep set behind the corporate lines
of her face. Of course, she nodded, and with a
step she was off her He was barely touching the tile.
Not a glance back, the warning was clear. I wasn't
the only one being watched, but someone wanted to make
explicit boundaries ended on this floor, and consequences would not
be ambiguous. Despite a chow she left behind, I continued
to my closet, laid my hands to routine stocking paper, towels,
counting gloves, checking WT water, all the while he was
tuned to every stray step and shuffle. When I stepped out,
onto the corridor. The air was sire with bone dorbs,
thuscent lingered from room to room, stronger by every vent fan,
as if someone had tried to sweep it out and
only succeeded in painting it across the entire length of eleven.
Passing the staff lounge, I caught the tail end of
a conversation Linda, again, hushed and sharp. If anyone asks
about the charts, just tell the might slow uploading. Don't
mention the gap. I mean it. Through the narrow glass,
I could make out two other nurses, heads close, one
nervously twisting a corner of this mark. I heard a
family once to see if that poor fellow in eleven
oath ree gets any worse, wa whisper. But they'll never
get a straight answer, for records go missing here all
the time, old ghosts muttered the other. They all laugh
to brit a little note like Glouster just before it shatters.
I moved on rolling the car, quietly, feeling the paranoise solidifying.
Whither or not I was being watched by them, as
certainly was by everyone else. Every time I sat for
past the threshold of a patient's room. A scanned for
science stray notes, out of place objects, the faintest shift
in the orientation of a trash bin, the glimmer of
another helbl sash tat in a corner. My work was
more investigation and janitorial, each step a calculation of risk.
But beyond the objects and the ledgers, the real evidence
was in the air itself. The wing felt poised, expectant,
as though waiting for a verdict that would never quite arrive.
After a nervous ire, I excused myself to the bathroom
off the corridor to gather my thoughts and dig the
tiny USB STPY camera out of my jacket pocket. I
bought it at an electronics shop the afternoon, a cheap
key fob looking device meant for car security, easily disguised
among cleaning supplies. I taped it behind the hand sanitized
this station opposite Room eleven thirteen, training it unseen above
the dozed lintil, the tiny red recording dot masked by
the over bright hallway bulbs. I set my phone to
receive the camera's feet, then retreated to the mock closet
just down the hole, careful to where's the door for
visibility of the corridor. My heart hammered in time with
the hospital's ancient ventilation, a pulse that grew shopper with
every quiet minute. The crept by just after midnight, The
entire four seemed to cease in a hush. At first,
nothing happened. I fidgeted, watching fin size with graphs of
digital snow flicker on my phone screen, cursed the blur
of cheap optics. Three time staff drifted in a out
of bedside rooms, nurses, orderlies, a physician, shadow each routine
documents signed, hands, washed, carts, wheeled briskly past all legitimate.
Then the pattern broke. At two eighteen a m. The
camera caught shape at the edge of the frame movement
in the periphery, just where shadow met light. The figure
paus hooded, face indistinct. It slipped to the far side
of the corridor and seemed to wait. Moments later, two
more joined, one with a rolling gait, the other tall
and thin as a drip pole. None were wearing staff's smocks. Instead,
the coats puddled at their knees, scars or collars covering
the lower house of their faces. Their movements precisely synchronized,
as if they had practiced this choreography for years. They
stopped and converted, barely recognizable a speech more hisses than words.
The camera's microphone was junk, but now and then a
word registered to night, already left alone. At two thirty
two a m. By the fund's timestamp, the three slipped
into eleven thirteen, ten minutes, nothing, just the door jaw.
The corridor, hungry was silence. I counted my breath, watched
a red dot flicker. At two forty four, they emerged
in the leader's hand, a man or some one, broad
shouldered face. Hidden was a folded slip of paper. He
dropped into the trashpin by the door, then glanced directly
at the lens, pausing a moment too long. My phone
screen FiOS with digital static. I waited, paralyzed until the
frame cleared again. Now empty, terror took me shop as
scratched down my sternum. I waited five more minutes, then,
unable to resist, cracked up the hallway. The hush so
completed that the squeak of my sneakers might as well
have been a siren. The trash can yielded prize afresh
and crumpled sachet. This one tie closed with medical tape
and a card burying three sets of initials a day
to nights. Two hours passed and a set of small
black dot's hand punched along the margin. I tacked the
parcel into my jacket, already certain that my own name
had been added to some private list. In a lad
of summer back in the closet, I replayed the footage
my body cycling between coldsweat's and anxious jedter. On a
second watch, I caught a reflection in the glass of
eleven thirteen's window as the group past, the flicker of
some one's eyes pale against deep shadow, watching not the
camera but me and the feed, as though the view
between observer and observed was fully reciprocal. After this, it
was only a matter of time before the work of
the night's staff in my own came face to face.
I was desperate for explanation. None was forthcoming from the
official channels. Staff barely spoke to each other, now conversations dying.
The second I entered a room, some one had posted
a sign at the elevator ward allD it in progressive spectolaise,
but no audits were taking place in daylight, and the
only names ever written on the whiteboard were ADMIN initials.
Driven by need. I broke another unspoken rule. After my rounds,
I waited near the stairwell's staff shifted between duties. When
Karl appeared, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the ground, I
cornered him by the hot water machinevoislow, I have footage now, Karl.
I saw them last night, three people not on staff
doing something in eleven thirteen. Who are they really? He
shook his head. Lives together. T he think you are
any safe for knowing their names? His voice was a rasp.
Don't ask about what's been kept running. We all have
our secrets. Some get to keep them longer. He looked
at me with the resigned sorrow, and left tin cup
steaming in his hand. That night, drawn by pulsing dread,
I lingered by the entrance to the prohibited hallway near
eleventh thirteen, pretending to polish glass and the fire doors,
phone clipped in my waist, bent and eyes never quite
looking directly at the room's over window. After fifteen minutes,
long enough for my hands to start clawing at each
other in nervous habit, I saw the corridors light flicker
and a ripple of movement trees down the linoleum. First
the woman stooped, shouldered, wrapped in a hospital of volunteer's
coat decades out of date. Then the tall man Hans
gloved his step, not so much walking as gliding, breath
measured and unhurt. Last, a third, smaller face, buried in
scarf fingers, wearing a cloth bag. They melted into eleven thirteen,
as though the air had parted for them. I did
not run. Instead, I waited, spine press to the wall's
cold tile, feeling more like a suspect than a staffer.
Monitoring the sounds, A memor grew, low, speech blending with
the beep of machinery, the soft rhythm of a patient's airway.
I edged closer. It stepped down to the clank of
the heating duct from inside cane chanting not religies, not
quite ceremonial, but rivic, a series of syllables rising at falling,
punctuated by the click of glass, the snack of tape,
the soft sigh of a window opening, then a sudden silence,
sharp as a blade. I couldn't help myself. I rapped, lightly,
pomming my badge in a way I helped looked official.
The chanting stopped instantly I heard feet shifting on the floor.
A moment later, the door cracked open. The face that
met mine was so familiar it forced the air from
my lungs form a head no smugget easily or the
perfect image of her hair, pulled back features and changed
from the faded photo in the staff lunch frame. She
didn't look cold or six you lolf free, vital, awake,
as steady as she judged me, she was alive or
had simply never left. To my astonishment, she gestured me
in with the weary kindness, as if I were expected.
You've seen more than you should already, she said. Our
voice was calm, almost gentle, but underneath wrote something stony.
Behind her, the two others stood in the dame. One
was the tall glove man, heavy lines in his face,
hair white as a pillow, steady hands already recapping a
glass vial. The other a smaller scarf figure with a
face too young for the heaviness in her eyes. The
patient in the bed, an elderly woman whose charth had
reviewed a dozen times, lay rigid face, ereene, bereath of
dried flowers, at her chest or und Her candles got
heed low in glass cups, but the room's true light
was a hush that felt expectant, not funereal. Margaret didn't
raise her voice. We owe your explanation, if nothing else,
she said, nodding to the others, who seemed to accept
her authority without question. Enough quiet, I found my words.
What is happening here? The latter your name, isn't it
after you were supposed to have died. Patients get better
or they die, and it's kept off the books. Why
the tall man stepped forward, hesitation, gazed and deliberate. We
came to this because of those the hospital. For God,
there has never been enough staff, not at night, so
that he would not let go who had no hope,
no miracle cure, need a gentle passing, or one last
hand to hold. He nodded at the younger woman, who
only studied me without emotion. Some are healed, some are
simply allowed helped. You might say to let go when
the chart says do not misuscitate, But the family went
sign Margaret's force cut through. It started out as kindness,
then it became something covert. Her eyes flicked to the
vigil of candles to the ledger resting open in the
work station, A batted book turned to night's date. Three
new names signed the board condons it. I press, horror
and awe interwoven. You are not supposed to be here,
any of you. There are laws, and the tall man's
lips poll tight. There are laws, and then there is mercy.
We do what we must. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
His gaze held grief, not guilt. I have to report it.
And macome Mott Margaret studdied me, the flicker of the
candle light making her face all then young again. We
will vanish and you will take our place, or you
will be believed mad and they will sweep you somewhere
quiet for everyone's protection. At that the heart monitor's quaked,
a flat, insistent tone, breaking the spell. The patient's chest still,
stone rose, once, shuddered, then ease flat. The three sprang
into motion. Ad instinct over ridden, I followed, watching as
they closed the woman's eyes, folded the flower wreath atop
her chest, and quietly taped the note to the Roman
for comfort procedure natural notify family At six SIROI m
none of this would survive the next frownd in the trout.
They moved her with ritual efficiency, and the lighter was closed.
They'd be gone before morning, leaving nothing but the impression
of precision and a septic and impersonal Margaret returned to me,
the others already slipping out into the hallway as averted.
You can join us, she said, Or you can keep
cleaning and pretend you never saw some things never leave,
and then her face cracked just once with a flicker
of sadness. Or you can go up to the board
right now and sound the alarm. Your choice, but remember,
sometimes silence keeps more safe than truth can. She vanished
behind the curtain as the others swept away the exit
a whisper. I was left with the ledger my hand
and the humm of the monitor echoing in my ears.
Whatever choice I made, nothing would erase what had happened here.
I moved down the hallway. I'm sure if I was
being followed or observed. Every stafface now unreadable. I finished
cleaning in a numfog, the regular trash and sheets a
minor miracle for their sheer. Normaldy at the end of shift,
light just beginning to bleed into the hospital's east windows.
I found myself in admin, summoning the courage to report
what I'd seen. The HR manager greed in me, feaceblelant,
smile tied. When I tried to describe the events on
the eleventh floor, her face shuddered. We appreciate your concern,
she entoned, writing nothing on her pad. It's been brought
to our attention that you might need a less stressful placement.
Effective immediately, your schedule will shift to laundry support basement floor.
You'll find the pace much quieter. I understood, without needing.
It spelled out that I was being shunned side, was
not fired, not threatened, just a race from relevance. Even
my bowged privileges were quietly revoked. My alevichiki no longer
working for upper floors. Over the next weeks, news trickled
down from above. Sudden improvements among long term patients on
a life heaven whispered about in staff rooms as if
it were a matter of whether luck or the hand
of God. No mention of the ledger or the comfort group,
as it were stylized by those who chanced to reference it.
Most kept their heads down, repeating the institution's catechism, We
do our best by all our patients. Here rumors circled
among night shift colleagues, but nobody would say I'd write
what everyone already sendsed. My life shrunk to the rhythm
of hospital laundry. The clang of machines are silence, broken
only by the rumble of dry drums and the sharp
o's and tan of bleach. I imagine the eleventh floor
above me, the night stafs ritual still proceeding, the ledger's
pages filling a new haze script. The dread that once
filled me did not entirely fade, but transformed into annoying unease,
as if I had glimpsed the machinery of mercy working
in its own shadow cast manner. I caught myself compulsively
checking laundry tags, the numbers on the Nincot's old habits
of surveillance that would not die more than once I
startled a familiar scent of crushed er of dwafting from
a load of sheets, or found a name badge ducked
at the bottom of a supply bin, recognizable but never,
according to records, ever assigned to any one on the
currant roster. Each night A slept worse, dreams of flickering monitors,
spectral hands, passing papers in the dark corridors, endlessly looping
back on themselves in psalmia planted. It took behind my eyes,
and in moments of stillness, I wondered if in chasing
the truth, I'd only dug a deeper grave from my
peace of mind. A month or two passed, the cycle
of the hospital's secret continued to deaths, unexplained, to recover
as miraculous, always dismissed by official domos fratrudas never probe
with the seriousness they demanded. One Tuesday, coming off an
interminable double shif, sweat and bleached in my arms, I
returned to my lockstaff locker, ready to collapse. There, set
neatly atop my folded jacket. Inside was a plain Manila envelope,
no stamps, no handwriting on the outside. I slid it out,
heart raising with that old familiar sense of fatal anticipation.
Inside a single fourth cup, a page from the ledger
to Night's Day printed at the top and broken dark
matrix type. There my full name written above the words
final shift, Floor eleven two fifty seven, A m at
the bottom, a tiny loopercursive, thank you for your service,
do not return the sting of terror. Rose not shop,
but resigned, as if I were being knotted out of
a secret society, not with violence, but with a warning.
A veil drawn, prominent and unyielding. I sat heavily on
the rough bench, envelope limp in my hands. After a
long time, I wiped a shaking palm over my face,
gathered my things, and stepped out into the lawn, humming
corridors below ground, the institution's cyclesun broken and indifferent. Later
at night, as I entered the lust of the soiled
linen into the sort and drum, my hand brushed against
something that didn't belong. A slip of crumpold paper, torn
at the edges, bundled in string and TOCTI hurious anoan
the bundle inside a sashef drieder arb, sweet, fragrant and pungent,
and a name badge not my own face, smiling name unfamiliar.
There was a mark, four black dots punched in the margin,
the coat of the ledge's guardians. I turned it over,
studying the badge, the sachet, the paper. Then I placed
the badge atop the heap, covered it with fresh linens,
and closed the lid, shutting away whatever ritual remained somewhere
above me. Patients slept, and the night staff moved and
seen work continuing precisely as it always had, no longer
record q yiring me as witness, as if I had
become at last something safely unremarkable. In the hush of
the hospital's infinite night. My footsteps rang in the basement corridor,
hollow and off keet, trailing me down. A whole hung
with sagging pipes, the only light a humming line of
fluorescents flickering in sequence. The laundry rooms, heat pressed in,
damp and iron flat, as if some PreCure sat on
my chest all shiff long. The hospital was a body,
and I was passing through its veins. No windows down here,
the ceiling pressed lowered the deeper, I wondered, as if
the whole hospital hovered, waiting to be letten through some
one barad door. I'd convince myself that whatever passed on
eleven was done with me. That the ledges last page
closed a door, but dread works itself between the cracks.
It grows roots and waits for quiet. That night, half
lost in the shuffle of disinfected sheets and saled laundry bins,
I heard something skew or faint metallic clink, as if
a ring of keys had dropped in the next room.
My skin prickled. I glanced at the clock two twenty three.
A m silence, then a soft hammin it wavered at
the edge of hearing, unreal and familiar, at the shape
of a forgotten lullaby. I wanted to ignore it. I
made myself keep folding, sealing bags, cataloging fresh smelling uniforms
into piles. Still, the tune drew me cooxing. I marked
its rhythm against my pulse, too regular for the building's quirks.
I stepped out, feet silent on tiles, leaving the laundry
door swinging behind. The air changed at the threshold, dry
and faintly, sharp, cut with herbs, just like the hospital's
upper halls and the worse nights. I pressed my pond
to the wall, steadying myself listening. The humming continued, now
punctuated by soft, wet shuffles, perhaps slippered feet dragging on tile,
perhaps only rags shifting against metal With each step, the
air grew thicker, the scent of something burning tickling my nose,
and roughening the back of my throat. I passed the
storeroom on the left, The janitor supply closet in the
right door slightly ajar, a white sliver of light knifing out.
I held my breath. My own supply closet in a
basement rarely used this time of night, would have been locked.
The hospital's master coves taken from me weeks gir could
and open at door now, or so I thought. Yet
there it was open, humming, The light inside faintly golden,
not for reescin at all. It possessed a quality like candlelight,
though our new candles were forbidden anywhere in the hospital
for fire safety. Their hairs climbed my arms. My steps
carried me across the firs, shoulder and certain the clawset
reeked of bleach and bitter leaves. In the far corner,
passed the bins of mop heads and folded towels. Three
figures crutched shoulder to shoulder. Their faces were masked. One
more starch nose a smot cut in a pattern decades
out of use. Another familiar, I realized with a shudder,
at the same avine as the tall stranger from eleven.
The third unmistakable in her burring was Margaret Eastlely. They
did not look up. Their hands moved carefully over a
folded sheet, a bundle of paper scraps, a line of
small amber glass bottles arrayed like chessmen across the battered
closet shelf. The humming, I slowly realized, came from Margaret herself.
A phrase repeated, soft yet unmistakable, something about passage, endings,
for rest. My presence, though silent, sent a trummer through
the group, as if on cue. The tall man flicked
his eyes up. Margaret's hands froze on the sheet. Did
you come to return something? Margaret asked, her voice level
almost gentle. She did not turn fully, only enough so
I could see the sight of her face lit by
the strange, soft glore. There was a piece in her features,
but no welcome. I swallow, fingers tightening on the strap
of my laundry bag. I heard, I heard some one,
I thought, maybe, I faltered at her unblinking gaze. No denial,
no such fuge. She simply waited, as if she could
weather me forever. In this leminal space, I found another batch,
not mine, the herbs that ah my foreclose and embarrassment.
I know what you've been doing. I saw what you
did for the woman in eleven thirteen. I don't want trouble.
I finish the words tumbling in a nervous heap. No
one would even believe me if I tried one of
the others. A wiry woman with a cap of iron
gray hair pressed a folded slip of paper into a
waiting envelope. Fain is fluttering over it, as if in Benediction.
It isn't a but belief, she murmured, for as clearer
than Margt's, but just as measured. It's about completing what
was started, Margaret studded me with a cautious patience. Some
burdens are shared, others are given away. She gestured to
the bowe hucked inside the linen pile. You should throw
that away. No need to keep old ghost cly. I hesitated,
then spoke low, What about the people upstairs, the new
name on the badge, someone else, someone who is about
to start looking. We always find who is willing. The
tall man sad voice resigned the institution needs its stewards,
even if it never acknowledges them. Someone always watches the angles.
The day shift doesn't see. My veins buzzed with mingle,
fear and exhaustion. Why still meet down here? Didn't the
warning I got mean I was supposed to stay out
of it, I said, not quite believing the brazeness of
my own question. Margaret slips pressed. Then warnings are not boundaries.
There remind us you are part of the circuit. However, unwilling,
that doesn't end with a change of fore or shift.
Her words fell over me like cold water. I searched
her face for malice and found none, only the weary
sadness of someone who'd warn too many masks. Please just
tell me, I pleaded. Is it really mercy? Or is
it just a way to keep the peace for everyone
but the patience? At this there was a long and
settling silence. The only sound was the faint hiss of
all pipes behind the wall. Finally, Market placed a hand
on my shoulder, weightless but bracing. Sometimes it is mercy,
sometimes it is necessity. Sometimes it is just cleaning up
after the living and the dead. You choose whether you
carry it with you, or let it become someone else's burden.
Her hand fell away, and I knew the conversation was over.
I stepped back, letting them resume their quiet work. The
closets light dimming as a door inch closed on its
own in the corridor. My feet stumbled with wariness, my
breath stuttered, shaky as the door latched behind me, sealing
whatever had transpired in the privacy of its gloom. I
returned to the laundry room. The badge in the herbal
bundle felt hot in my hand as I shoved them
deep into the trash, fighting the urge to turn them over,
and studied unfamiliar face again. Beside the shoot something else,
A Manila envelope, folded and waited by a silver pen,
waited atop a pile of clean sheets. I almost left
it untouched, but I could not my name again in
careful script in the front. Inside a photocopy from the ledger,
a single new entry some one had written in black,
looping hand service rendered burden shifted line unbroken below it,
a simple four block circles in a diamond, the same
as in the badge I just discarded. I stared until
the lines blurred I felt not watched, but mapped my
place replace. If not by choice, then by ritual. The
hospital would always have its night staff, and someone would
always be called forward. If not me, then the next
nobody who worked too late and asked too many questions.
A cool draft wound around my ankles from a flow
of vent. I pressed my hand to the page, half
expecting it to feel warm, alive, But it was just
regular paper and slightly damp. I slid it back into
the envelope, tucked it into the inner pocket of my jacket,
just in case precaution or habit, I couldn't tell. The
rest of the shift dragged each bag of linen heavy
than the last. The machines roar, rattling my teeth. I
felt the urge more than once to prowl the basement
to listen for that humming again, to press the old
questions to whoever would still answer. But every time I
tried to leave, the crump circle of fluorescent light dread
root to my feet. Toward the end, as I double
checked a lope and locked up the supplies, someone banged
in the metal service door. The sound jowled me. I
peered up, just carl late to night, I shadowed face
Rain Street from the midnight down partside. He looked at
me something like apology in his pasture. You all right,
he asked, awkward, like a man who'd long forgotten the
shapes of ordinary concern. I nodded, uncertain whether to tell
him about the envelope, the closet meeting, or the badge. Instead,
I said, I think someone's picked up my old rout upstairs.
I saw a badge, new name, Have you noticed? I
let the question float unfinished. Karl pressed his lips tight,
a grimace more than a smile, always another You did
what you could, didn't you? Did I my voice creaked?
Or did I just watch until I became part of it?
For the first time, He met my eyes square on.
We're all part of it, the hospital remembers, even when
he tried to forget. He reached into his coat, pulled
free a mesh bag inside sage leaves in some unidentifiable
route they sent wafting out chop and medicinal it. Don't
take it home, he muttered voice thick, burn it or
trush it, but don't keep it by your bed. They
find their way through things like that. He hesitated, then
added take care knight stuff, look after each other as
best we can. And then with an unceremonious nod, he
slipped up the stairs, the click of his boots fading.
Pocketed the mesh bag, unsure whether to destroy it, frame it,
or just hand it over Tadman as another meaningless found object.
I finished my shift on not a pallet, washing up,
turning the key for the last time. The holes behind
me swelled with steam, and the endless churn of machines above.
The high four was eleven especially seemed impossibly distant, like
dreams were called only in the smallest irs. The only
real difference now was knowledge, the shape of what others
managed not to see. When I got home, dull, leaking
blow across my living room blinds, I laid the day's
haul on the table, the envelope, the empty badge, the
mesh bag, pocket full of lint, and the stub of
the pen that had weighed down the ledger copy. I
looked at it all, the detritus of a secret who
broad to be concealed by official reprimand of formal procedures.
Whatever the rituals did, whatever side of mercy was silence,
they fell on. I had served my turn as the keeper.
Even unwillingly, I tossed the mesh bag on to the
stove grate, and with a deep and steady breath, let
it with the match. Smokes biled up a bitter medicinal
scent flood in the kitchen. For a moment, I was
afraid it would raise alarms, send neighbors pounding on my door,
But the smoke faded quickly, leaving only the faintest trays
a huss so profound they stared at my own trembling
hands and confusion. Later, I doze, bowled on the couch,
half dreaming through the endless background noise of hospital life
that never left my ears. Beeping monitors, shuffle sheets, the
faint click of a pen in some distant brake room.
In the days that followed, my dreams grew lighter. No
more running through looping corridors, no larger pages fluttering behind me.
I still worked pallid, with the pulse of dread and
coiling now and again. But here was something faintly resembling relief.
The badge and the envelope remained buried in my coat pocket.
I would sometimes reach for them without meaning to the
mildly circling the age of the cart, and SiGe, reassured
by the ordinary texture of paper between my fingers. One night,
months later, a new roomor foltered down from above. Patients
on eleven were improving more rapidly or slipping away more
gently than ever before. A new janitor's name appeared on
the breaker master, a face I didn't know. Trash bags
from upstairs sometimes held the faintest trace of tea and oats.
My skinch with old recognition. Whenever I tied them off.
I never saw market ease again, not in a hallway,
not in a lobby, not even in remembered dreams. But
sometimes I glimpsed in unfamiliar shape and hospital corridors, pale
and quiet and almost smiling, caught in the reflection of
a vending machine, or the far glass of abasement supply causet.
Did I envy them? Did I wish to warn them?
I couldn't say. Each person finds their own boundary, some
will cross, some will sweep up. After my place was here,
now silent, anonymous, tucked behind the machinery that kept the
hospital alive. Mercy or necessity or just the ordinary tide
of suffering and relief. These things flowed together in the
dark beneath Saint Agatha's, just above the reach of all
ordinary explanation. The old fear softened, but never vanished. If
a slip of paper appeared in my lockernal, I would
only nod and added to the slow and visible palquet
by those who see what others simply pass by. A
new cycle had begun, and hour clean up after it,
as all night staff do not for thanks, not for legend,
but because some burdens, once accepted, can never again be
fully set down. Some were Insaint agathas in the unending
hush of midnight, that Leigh's final lines continued to be written,
and outside the sealed doors of the eleventh floor, the
hospital's pulse went on, unnoticed and changed, still turning in
the hidden hands of the living and the dead. And
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one.