The Invisible Patients
The
second of my Sue Ryder creepy moments involved a late shift one evening on
the upstairs ward. The upstairs wards consisted of two single-bed rooms, one
three-bedded and two four-bedded rooms, a nurse station, treatment room, kitchen,
bathroom and toilet.
I was sitting at the nurses’ station going through some files when I heard one of the patients in the three-bedded ward behind me (who had only been in a couple of days) talking to someone. I knew ‘Tom’ was alone in the room, as the two other beds in there had been vacated a few days before he had come in. The previous occupants had passed away.
Anyway, I walked into the room to see if someone had gone in there without me noticing, to find Tom having a full-blown but one-sided conversation. I asked Tom to whom was he talking to. He said these two men and pointed to the side of his bed and to the empty bed over by the door - where I was standing. I felt a shiver run down my spine.
I asked Tom to describe them to me. He looked at me with a curious expression, as though I was joking with him. Well ‘Jimmy’ here is wearing a red paisley dressing gown, is quite tall, and has a dark moustache and grey hair. ‘Ken’ is over by you in his wheelchair. He said to say thanks. I shivered again and I felt cold. Tom went on to say Ken is wearing green pyjamas and has short dark hair (the details, names etc have eroded with time but you get the idea). I felt the hairs on my nape stand up as he said this. I asked if he fancied a cuppa to which he replied he did but Jimmy and Ken declined. I said I'd leave him to his conversation while I went to put the kettle on.
When I reached the kitchen, I felt a mixture of excitement and concern. I asked the senior staff nurse, “Do you remember Jimmy and Ken in room 5 who died last week?”
The staff nurse said yes, she did. She was on shift with me when Ken had died.
“Well, that new guy Tom, who came in on Monday, is lying in his bed talking to both of them!”
The staff nurse didn't believe me. I said that Tom described them to me and knew their names. I added that Tom said Ken wanted to thank us. She stood outside the room while I went back with Tom’s tea and she heard Tom talking for herself.
Tom could not have known about Jimmy and Ken, as he had not come in until a few days after they had both died. But he described their appearance perfectly and knew their names. Tom was on a lot of morphine and other pain inhibitors, but maybe that helped him to ‘see’, as this was too accurate to be a hallucination.
Unfortunately, I never saw anything, but I always sensed, felt and often smelled things especially in the upstairs ward.
And yes, Tom travelled down the dark corridor a few days later.
This
story was published in Paranormal Magazine,
Issue 17.