FICTION / SERIALIZED PARANORMAL MYSTERY
Ghosts in Real Life: Chapter 8
Continuing the serialized paranormal mystery. A nurse has a strange experience on the ward when he returns from time off
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- Welcome to Ghosts In Real Life, a strange paranormal mystery serialized into weekly installments. New chapters are released every Thursday. You can find all chapters available so far at the Contents Page >>
He hated taking time off from work, but if he didn’t occasionally do it, the exhaustion would get the better of him, and he hated how he got when that happened. That wasn’t fair on anybody. So once every few months, he took a few days off. A week at most.
Lenny didn’t have much money, but he wouldn’t want to do much when he took time off, even if he hadn’t. He was happiest just to go home, lock himself inside, slip an old LP out of its sleeve and drop it onto the turntable.
Then he’d chill out with the jazz greats — Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk, Dave Brubeck — and block out the rest of the world. He only had to go out for food — and since the pandemic, he didn’t even have to do that. Somebody could deliver it to him.
He didn’t need to watch TV, he didn’t need to talk to people, he didn’t need to worry about anything.
But then he had to get back to work.
Often he found he had paid for his break from the world in another way — because everything always seemed to change on the ward while he was away.
It was alright when things had changed for the better, obviously. If someone’s condition had noticeably improved. If the treatment had started working for one of the kids. If some kind of minor miracle had taken place, and one of them was actually in remission.
But those minor miracles were all too rare.
More often than not, when Lenny got back to the hospital, things had changed for the worse. Perhaps one of the kids had been given bad news. Or the illness had finally taken away the last of the smiles from some dear little bright spark. Or worse still, Lenny got back to find another empty bed in the ward.
That just about broke his heart every time.
Those kids had to deal with things so heavy that it was hard to understand how even a full-grown adult could cope.
Today, Lenny was getting back from two whole weeks off work. His boss, the senior nurse Molly Barton, had insisted he take the days. He’d accrued too much time off, and not all of it would roll over to the following calendar year. Molly didn’t like her team to lose days off.
Two weeks off meant a much higher chance that things had changed in the ward while he had been gone. It made it more difficult for him to get to grips with everything.
Right now, it was still early in the morning. This was the best time to return from a long break. Usually, things were quieter, patients would be asleep, staff numbers kept to a minimum.
Nevertheless, Lenny was nervous, stepping off the bus, walking around to the hospital entrance. His pulse was already quickening as he went inside; perspiration was beginning to break out on his forehead as the familiar disinfectant smell saturated each breath. And his anxiety levels rose further with each step toward the elevator — and then further still as the elevator rose to the sixth floor.
He passed patients in wheelchairs as he progressed down the hallways, patients on gurneys. He nodded silent greetings at orderlies, at fellow nurses. Billy, Justin, Thora. Not too many folks around this time of night. Then he rounded the final corner and entered the brightly decorated children’s ward.
‘Hey,’ he said quietly as he approached Clara, stationed at the unit’s front desk this morning.
‘Nice break?’ she smiled. That was a good sign.
He shrugged. ‘You know. So-so.’ He laid his hands on the corner of the desk and flipped open the staff sign-in book.
‘A nice trip somewhere? Somewhere warm?’
He shrugged, ‘Stayed home, like usual.’
‘Ah, well.’
He slipped momentarily into the tiny staff room — more like a closet than a room, really — and hung up his jacket. He double-checked in the mirror that his uniform was up to scratch — you never knew when Molly might be about. Then he washed his hands and headed back out to get the run-down from Clara.
She seemed pretty relaxed. She smiled at him again. It gave him faint hope that nothing much had changed while he’d been away, that he hadn’t missed saying goodbye to anyone.
‘So, I guess we had an eventful night,’ she said, but then something moving in the darkened hallway to his right distracted him.
‘Hold on,’ he said to her, not wanting to miss anything from her briefing.
He peered down the hallway toward the patients’ area of the ward. Most of the lights were still extinguished, but the night lights were bright enough to reveal a little boy wandering slowly down the hallway toward them. Lenny didn’t need to squint particularly hard to figure out who it was.
It was little Alfie, of course.
The sharp features of his thin face, dark eyes, and floppy black hair were unmistakable.
Sleepwalking, probably.
Lenny smiled at Clara and nodded his head toward the hallway to let her know he was needed, that he could have his briefing a little later when things were quiet again. Clara gave him a nod in return, seeming thankful that he was here now, back from his break.
He turned to the hallway, feeling a great sense of hope. Sure, Alfie wasn’t supposed to be out of bed, but he wasn’t really doing any harm. The important thing here was that if Alfie was wandering from doorway to doorway up the hallway, it meant that his treatment must have taken a real turn for the better.
The last time Lenny saw him, the little boy had been bed-ridden, too weak to even lift up his spindly arms, all connected up to his IV. Now, he seemed reasonably mobile — he was moving independently, apparently with good muscle tone.
‘Hey, buddy,’ he said as he approached. ‘You okay?’
Alfie paused by the door into the toddlers’ room and turned to Lenny. He looked pale, tired. But that was completely understandable.
The little boy said, ‘I want my daddy.’
Lenny smiled warmly, wondering if there was a chance Alfie was actually still asleep. He had seen kids sleepwalking before, it was weird how they could walk along and even interact a little with you, but they were clearly still in a dream state.
‘Hey, you know it’s not visiting time yet, right?’ he said, stepping up to the little boy. So glad Alfie looked so well, even if he was a little ashen-faced.
‘My daddy needs to know about the tweedy man,’ Alfie said, and Lenny felt confident he was at least half-asleep.
Chuckling a little, the nurse said gently, ‘Why don’t we head back to bed for now?’
‘But the tweedy man… I have to tell my daddy — ’
‘Okay, when Daddy comes in the morning, we can tell him all about this tweedy fella. Okay?’
Alfie looked up at him, his face suddenly screwing into a sharply confused expression, as though he couldn’t quite recognize Lenny but knew he ought to be able to. Then he said, ‘He’s lost, and he needs the Professor.’
It was just babble, but given what Lenny knew about the five-year-old, he was somewhat impressed the little guy had used as long a word as ‘professor.’ Three syllables. And Alfie was well behind in his educational development, given his years of intense medical attention.
He patted the little guy gently on the shoulder and shepherded him toward the much larger preschoolers’ ward area. Alfie didn’t resist at all — he seemed perfectly happy to be guided back down the hallway to his own little bed.
Lenny helped him climb in and then tucked him up, hoping that if the bedsheet was tight all around him, it might prevent another sleepwalking incident.
‘There we go,’ he said softly, smiling warmly at Alfie as the little boy closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Then Lenny paused for a moment or two to make sure Alfie really was settled — and that he wouldn’t suddenly feel restricted by the sheet tucked in around him.
He was so glad at the improvement. Alfie had always been one of his favorites. Quick to smile, patient when he had to take the medication. Despite the phenomenally unfair circumstances life had put him in, he was always in good spirits.
Sometimes, miracles could happen. Lenny took in a long, calm breath, enjoying the moment. Moments like these made an often-traumatic job worthwhile. Then with peace and tranquility restored within the ward, he wandered back up the hallway to the reception area and Clara.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked him.
Lenny nodded. He said, ‘Alfie…’
Clara sighed, and her brow furrowed as a great, quiet sorrow overcame her. ‘I know,’ she said, nodding mournfully. ‘It’s so awful, isn’t it?’
Lenny was confused. ‘What do you mean?’
She took a deep breath, seemingly only just managing to hold back a sob. ‘After everything he’d been through… a seizure.’
‘Uh… he what?’
‘Then he was just too weak to keep holding out…’
Lenny turned to glance down the hallway from which he’d just come back. He said to her, ‘What are you saying? I don’t understand.’
Clara wiped away a tear. ‘His family wasn’t even here when it happened. They didn’t even get to say a proper goodbye.’
‘Alfie?’ Lenny asked her, feeling his world spinning around him. ‘Little Alfie Myers?’
Clara nodded. ‘He’d just had enough, hadn’t he? Anyone would have — what he’d been through….’
Lenny was scratching his head. He said, ‘Clara, what are you saying? What happened to Alfie?’
She rubbed at her eyes, and now it was her turn to look confused. She said, ‘He had a seizure, and then he stopped breathing. And they couldn’t do anything to bring him back….’
Lenny felt a jolt of fear shoot through his heart.
What on Earth?
‘When did it happen?’ the big nurse asked.
Clara said, ‘During the night.’
‘During the night?’
‘Yeah… I guess just before midnight.’
‘But I just saw him,’ the big nurse said. ‘I helped him back into bed just now….’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t one of the other kids?’
But Lenny didn’t mistake patients for each other.
He led Clara down the hallway to the preschoolers’ area to show her the little boy he’d helped back to bed, tucked in tight. He was baffled by what Clara had told him, shocked by the possibility that one of the kids had passed in the night, no matter who it had been. But he was sure who it had been there in the hallway, sleepily telling him about the ‘tweedy man.’
Only, they came to the preschoolers’ area, and Lenny could see from a way off that the bed in which he’d left Alfie was startlingly empty.
‘What the hell…?’ he said.
‘I told you, didn’t I?’ Clara said. ‘Poor little thing.’
Author’s note: Thanks so much for reading! This is a developing story, so let me know what you think with claps or comments! Please do follow or subscribe if you’d like to know when new chapters are released.
