i’ve heard the stories. i just never paid attention.

when i found out i have to stay in room 1 the whole shift, because a patient needed to be watched constantly, i didn’t even think about the room’s reputation. yeah, that it is the haunted room.

nurses confirmed the authenticity of the claims. call light goes off even if the room is empty. it also goes off even when all three patients were physically unable to press the call button. blood pressure cuffs automatically inflate without being started. telemetry monitors turn on and off without being touched. unusual sounds heard were interpreted as moaning, sighing, begging, lingering. sounds of souls long dead but still living, souls lost and never found. some even went to the extreme by saying they actually saw somebody/something who/that gave them the chills. you know, some sort of a white floating human image outside the window.

i was watching a female patient in her early 80s who has advanced alzheimer’s and was very uncontrollable before admission. in ER, they had to literally watch her constantly to keep her safe. she was not combative, she was not trying to pull IVs and catheters out, she was just constantly trying to get up and get out of bed, wanting to go. where? anywhere. she kept talking, mostly in french, and would occasionally raise her voice to make a point. since she just fell and had a hip fracture, walking was not really a good idea, but that didn’t seem to register, because the ER nurse told me she was just very determined to get out of the gurney the whole time.

well, it could be my lucky stars aligning a certain way. or, it could be the pain medication. whatever it was, the lady was really sleepy when she got to our unit. we placed her in bed 1, right at the door, and i sat on a chair next to her bed. i was ready to repeat the line “stay in bed L, it is not safe for you to get up”, the whole night, but she didn’t really let me. she slept like a baby on the first hour. and the second hour, and the third hour, and…the whole night.

i got up and checked my patient in bed three, when something caught my attention. outside the window, there was something. or someone. i looked closer, adjusting my eyes to the usual darkness. i looked more… and i saw her! blurred face but definitely a face. a face that looked troubled and pained. she was wearing what looked like a white something. a gown, a robe, a something. her hair flowing loosely on her shoulders and her feet unseen, she looked like she was sort of moving away, very slowly.

i closed my eyes and shook my head a couple of times.

i defintiely felt that chill. you know, that feeling when you thought you just saw something out of the ordinary, and you are extremely terrified, but you just have to look again. slowly, acting like if i turn my head faster i will scare her, i looked at the window again, expecting to see that lady in white, floating, outside the 6th floor. it was blurred, but it was real. moving away, but real. i heard my heart beating like it will explode. for a moment, i realized that my usual smug statement “i’m not afraid of ghosts” was a lie. there, i was, scared out of my wits, i could have peed in my scrubs!

i didn’t know what i will do next, but i noticed that my body appeared like it was going to start running out of the room. only, my eyes were shut, it would have been stupid. slowly, i opened my eyes, looked over the window for the last time, and the image was gone!

i could have let it rest and just got out of there, but that wouldn’t really be me. so, being the proverbial brave person that i was, i wanted to know what it was that scared the living daylights out of me. i reasoned she or it can’t just scare me like that and then leave me clueless! in slow motion, i walked to the window and looked outside. there was the expected 2 o’clock in the morning darkness, but it was not really dark. there were lights everywhere, enough to kind of kill total blackness.

there was nothing.

all i saw was me. the reflection of me. i stood there breathing heavily, thinking. actually, pondering. maybe there was nothing! maybe it was just me. the reflection of me. it was probably what i saw. the ghost that was within. the things that scared me most. the thoughts that occupied me. the emotions that drained me these past days. maybe, those were the things i saw. the image was not real, the stuff that i am terrified of, were real. the ghosts within were the ghosts that followed me. i told myself this, but  i got more scared. mostly, of the things that were real, more than the things imagined.

i sat next to my sleeping patient’s bed, my knees still shaking. i told no one in the unit. i will not give them the satisfaction of gloating, claiming their stories were real, nodding their heads in unison, saying “we told you so”. and i will not embarass myself by claiming their stories were not real, because there i was, still feeling all the goose bumps all over.