Why do the patients all report the same dreams? What causes the heart monitors to sync in perfect rhythm? How do the shadows move against the light? Why do the night nurses avoid the old wing? What secrets lie in the abandoned operating room?
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“The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, but now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.”
― Stevie Smith, Selected Poems
Dr. Naomi Blackthorne’s footsteps echoed down the sterile corridor of St. John’s Hospital’s first floor. The night shift always brought a peculiar stillness---a silence that seemed to listen back. Twenty years as a physician, and still the hospital transformed into something else entirely when darkness fell.
Tonight felt different. The air hung heavier than usual, carrying a faint metallic scent that reminded her of old pennies. As she passed the nurses’ station, she noticed the logbook open to a patient she didn’t recognize: Harlowe Thorne, Room 307. Strange. She’d reviewed all admissions at the start of her shift.
The quiet hum of medical equipment provided the only soundtrack as she approached Room 307. The door stood slightly ajar, a thin line of flickering light spilling into the hallway. She hadn’t ordered any tests for this room’s occupant---there shouldn’t be any occupant at all. Room 307 had been decommissioned months ago after the incident.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded thin, even to her own ears. No response came from within.
She pushed the door open. The privacy curtain was drawn around the bed, casting strange, elongated shadows across the walls. The heart monitor beeped steadily, though no one had turned it on. A thin figure sat upright behind the curtain, visible only as a silhouette.
“Sir? I’m Dr. Blackthorne. I don’t seem to have your chart.” She reached for the curtain, her fingers trembling slightly.
The beeping of the heart monitor accelerated as she drew the curtain back. The bed was empty, sheets pristine and untouched. Yet the monitor continued its frantic rhythm, growing faster with each passing second.
On the whiteboard where patient information should be written, a single sentence was scrawled in jagged, unfamiliar handwriting: “I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU, NAOMI.”
The lights flickered once, twice, then plunged the room into darkness. In that brief moment before her eyes adjusted, Dr. Blackthorne could have sworn she saw something standing in the corner---something with too many joints and angles that shouldn’t exist in human anatomy.
The emergency lights kicked on, bathing the room in a sickly red glow. The whiteboard was clean. The monitor silent. But as she backed toward the door, her foot crunched on something. Looking down, she saw hundreds of small, yellowed teeth scattered across the floor---human teeth, worn and aged, as if collected over decades.
Dr. Blackthorne never mentioned what happened in Room 307 that night. She transferred to the day shift the following week. But whenever new staff asked why Room 307 remained empty, the veteran nurses would simply say, “Some patients never check out of St. John’s. And some were never really patients at all.”
