The Other Ghost
The hallway of the hospital was busy; everyone was rushing around, except for one young nurse waiting outside a door. The girl was pretty, young, and dark-haired; she had on a nurse's white gown, but her face looked too youthful to even be out of high school. She looked nervous; her fingers fidgeted. She was wondering if she was at the right door, what was going to happen, and what would her new boss think of her. Eventually a tall, blonde nurse with an eyepatch approached her.
"Hello, I am Miss Ramsey, the head nurse of this ward," she said in a friendly voice but without even a hint of a smile.
"I'm Carmella. I was told to report to you for duty," Carmella said with an overly hopeful smile that seemed to annoy Miss Ramsey.
Miss Ramsey sternly said, "Now before we enter, it is a little spooky for new people. This will be your ward, so don't let your imagination get the best of you."
"Oh, you mean the hospital ghost? Don't worry—I don't believe in ghosts."
Miss Ramsey blocked her path with her arm. "Don't make fun of Timmy the Ghost! No, there is no Timmy here. Timmy never comes to this floor, but he is real—I have seen him myself several times."
"I'm sorry." Carmella flinched. "I just thought they were teasing me."
Slowly, Miss Ramsey put down her arm. "Well, don't talk about something you don't know anything about. If you stay in the hospital long enough you will see him—just let him be, and he will let you be. Anyway, back to this room and your job. These people just lie there for the most part, but sometimes they move, make odd noises, and, well, the last two nurses we placed in this ward . . . just got weirded out."
They both finally entered the room. In the dim violet light she could see row after row of people hanging from strings lodged in the ceiling. It was shocking to see so many people nearly naked and hooked to all kinds of hoses, just hanging like the average piece of equipment. The eerie light, the people, the hundreds of indicator lights on the walls and ceiling, the hanging people—it all made Carmella forget what she was doing and just gawk.
Miss Ramsey chose to ignore the young nurse's obvious shock and said, "This is our induced coma ward. The slings constantly move, but very slowly, to avoid fluid buildups or bed sores."
"Wow . . ." Carmella managed. "Where do all these people come from?"
The older nurse pointed at the patients. "Some brain disorders are still untreatable—these poor souls are the failures of the system. Some were on the edge of dying, some were hopelessly insane. They wait here for years for a doctor to come up with a treatment. While they are hooked up to the system their aging slows down to a crawl, and they await a miracle."
Still confused, but trying not to show it, Carmella asked, "So . . . what do I do?"
Miss Ramsey handed the confused girl a large binder, opened to page one. "Here is the check-sheet with your schedule. You will constantly be checking on their monitors and equipment. It really is an easy job—not much happens here. You'll get a lot of reading done."
The two women worked down the checklist, discussing each item, and then started walking the rows, reviewing the chart for each. Ultimately Carmella stopped and stared at one of her patients. "This girl here is listed as Jane Doe. That can't be real . . ."
"Oh, that one! That one was one of Doctor Lukus' patients, now a ward of the hospital. Likely she was a poor person who couldn't afford treatment, and Doctor Lukus was doing it pro-bono. Maybe he didn't even know her real name."
Carmella pointed at the girl's face. "Did you look at her?"
"Yeah, I know—everyone says the same thing. She looks just like poor Katniss Everdeen. If she ever wakes up, I am sure she will hear that for the rest of her life."
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