Rule No. 1 - A Supernatural Hospital Horror Tale
On a never-ending night shift, a maternity nurse fights exhaustion, despair, and an unspoken rule in a hospital where job security is the least of her worries...
It’s the same old slog, day after day—or rather, night after night.
Ground floor. I grab my morning coffee at 11 p.m. I try to find a joke to lighten the barista’s mood, but I’m unsure if there’s a joke funny enough for that.
First floor. I change into my uniform. In the mirror, dark eyes and deepening wrinkles stare back at me. My cross necklace lies on top of my uniform. I slip it under my top. Maybe He’ll be with me today, for once.
As I step out, I run into a young man leaving the men’s changing room. Paul, his name is. He’s just been recruited as a mortuary assistant. It’s his first shift. He asks where’s good for a takeaway after work. He can’t wait to tell his boyfriend about his first day. I wonder if he paid enough attention to the rule book. I stifle a yawn, force a smile, and tell him to try the canteen on the floor above the mortuary. His brow furrows, but I know he’ll understand soon enough.
Second floor. I take over from Cindy, with that typical, knowing look in our eyes as we meet across the clipboard listing tonight’s unfortunate expectant mothers. As she turns to head back to the first floor, I notice she’s still wearing her slippers—and that she still has the bruises from last week.
Mrs Brightburn is only two centimetres dilated after ten hours of labour and suffering from diarrhoea, according to Cindy’s notes. Looks like it’s going to be a long night for both of us.
Third floor. Baby Kildare from Saturday night is still struggling on his respirator. I’ve popped in to see him every day since his birth. I can tell he won’t be long now. Brian, the nurse on the postnatal ward, tells me he thinks the poor boy has still got some fight in him. He says it with a sympathetic smile that turns my stomach. There’s no point correcting him. No point in anything.
Back in the lift, my finger hovers between the third- and fifth-floor buttons. If the patients only knew what lay between them…
Fifth floor. I take my lunch break at 5 a.m. Even at this hour, the canteen is filled with drawn faces, dark with fatigue and darker with grief. I spot Cindy across the room at the vending machine, evidently in search of a midnight snack. She’s complemented her slippers with a hospital-issue dressing gown. Best not to bother her.
I force down some lumpy stew. The food has somehow managed to become even blander since we lost dear old Mrs Espry. One of the cooks reckons she was missing her grandchildren. The thought somehow makes me smile. I delivered those grandchildren when I was still in training.
Sixth floor. I push Mrs Brightburn into theatre at 9 a.m. It’s a difficult one. The surgeon almost gives up at one point. He’s exhausted, thinks it’s futile. He drops his scalpel, which only just misses his other wrist. A look of understanding passes between us. A doctor never abandons their patients. That’s rule no. 1.
An hour later, I take Mrs Brightburn and Baby Brightburn into the discreet staff lift, hidden from the eyes of patients. I lean over the gurney to badge my ID and press the button. As the lift descends, my eyes rest on the telephone button and its “PUSH FOR HELP” message. My fingers find the cross around my neck. I have no idea why I still wear it. Force of habit, I suppose.
Fourth floor. I enter the mortuary. Brian is already there, giving Baby Kildare’s details to the young man on his first shift. I should have been there for the end.
Paul arrives to process Mrs and Baby Brightburn. They are his eleventh and twelfth bodies of the day, he says. I could already tell by the look on his face. So young, so much potential. A man he loves waiting for him at home. Yet here he is, a few hours in, and I swear he’s already destroyed by the reality of this place. At university, a mortuary this busy was unheard of, apparently. Poor boy. I wonder if it’s just all the bodies, or if he’s figured it out already. He will soon enough. But how long will he last once he does?
Once the transfer is done, I head down the corridor to the main lift. No need to badge this time. There’s no risk of patients accidentally stumbling onto the fourth floor. When all this began, the hospital trust wouldn’t listen. The idea of closing down was unthinkable—or, as they put it, “not fiscally feasible.”
They shouldn’t have just closed it down. They should have burned this hellhole to the ground. But no. Better to call the lift company to remove the fourth floor’s button. Maybe then, they thought, if the patients didn’t know the mortuary had to expand across the whole floor, no one would find out why it needed to.
As the lift passes the third floor, my fingers find my cross again. I stifle another yawn. Maybe I have a chance, I think. The lift shudders, and I close my eyes, refusing to think about it. I know what happens if I think about it. Yet I can’t empty my mind. I think about Cindy’s bruises from her fall down the stairs as she ran to leave the hospital last week. I think about Mrs Espry and the grandchildren she last saw when they left our maternity unit twenty-five years ago. I think about the surgeon’s scalpel that nearly sliced his wrist when he considered giving up on Mrs Brightburn. Then the newborn faces of Babies Kildare and Brightburn flash in my mind’s eye.
I didn’t abandon them. I never abandon them. But I fail too often to save them these days.
The doors open. I’ve had enough.
Ground floor. Out of the lift, down the corridor, eyes on the front door. Despite everything, I hope that I have a chance. I almost strangle myself pulling my lanyard off to throw my staff ID in a bin.
I see Cindy getting her morning coffee at the start of a new shift. Our eyes meet, and a rare smile pulls at her lips until her eyes follow my trajectory and find the door. Her cup of coffee trembles in her hand. She knows what I’m about to do yet teeters on the edge of doing something about it. We both know what happened when she tried to leave last week, yet still hope and despair battle it out within her for control.
It’s despair that wins. It always does here.
She shouts for me to stop. I don’t listen. I want out, one way or another. So I start to run. I don’t care what it does to me. My patients deserve better.
Out of a neighbouring corridor comes a gurney and its overeager porter, but I avoid its attack. A slippery floor threatens to send me flying, but I manage to keep steady.
I’m closing in on the door now. I see the sun, low in the sky. The idea of its heat searing my skin again after so long propels me as I launch myself towards the automatic doors.
I pass the threshold. My feet land on the pavement. My heart gives in to the curse.
Fourth floor. Cindy pushes body number thirteen down the corridor into the waiting arms of the young, unknowing Paul. She passes on the message from management that there is no need for a post mortem. Peculiar, that. He sets to work preparing the corpse for storage. He neatly folds the hospital scrubs and places them in a plastic bag along with a cross necklace. I only saw her an hour ago, how could she just drop dead…? He writes out the name, the time of death, and “cause unknown” on a label. With the kindest care in the world, as if I could still feel it, he ties it around my ankle.
Once I’m safely stowed away in a freezer drawer, he types out a few texts to his boyfriend. First day from hell. So many bodies, and it’s not just the patients. My colleagues are dropping like flies. Pizza when I get home? He checks the time. His shift is over in half an hour.
All it takes is a fleeting thought of leaving for a scalpel to fall, stabbing him in the foot.
Only once he has finished bandaging himself up does he think back on the rule book.
Rule No. 1: a doctor never abandons their patients, not without consequences.
It only takes four scalpels before Paul starts writing a goodbye text to his boyfriend.
About this story
It’s been a while since I wrote a short story, but when I stumbled on Kristin Noland’s LinkedIn post with the following writing prompt, I couldn’t resist it!
I’ve not posted a writing prompt before, but this picture is of an elevator at a hospital. I would love it if you could write a few words explaining why the hospital would set up the elevator this way. I can’t wait to hear your ideas! Have fun!
Suffice to say, I had glazed over the “few words” part and ended up with over a thousand, so I thought “waste not want not” and decided it would be perfect for my website.
I hope you enjoyed this story! Don’t hesitate to comment below, restack, or share!