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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/EmmaWatsonButDumber on 2024-10-19 21:42:11+00:00.
I’m a resident in my 3rd year and I’ve just been transferred here. So far, I can’t say it’s been boring. Can you, ever? I’ve met countless patients with the rarest diseases, and been through a lot of difficult situations - I guess that’s the adrenaline inducing med life everyone craves. I was prepared to feel confused, disgusted, even scared… and, yet, not in this way.
I haven’t been too precise. Let me rephrase. The hospital I’ve been transferred to is in the middle of nowhere. I’m talking, forgotten village in a valley, almost no signal, maximum 300 people. Why would I take this job, you ask?
Well, they pay me well. And you know how difficult is for residents to actually make some money.
My parents were skeptical at first. “Why would they look for staff so desperately, that they’re willing to pay you that much?”
“Well, mom, frankly, it’s not my business.”
“It is, if they’re making you do weird shit.”
“Jo, no bad language around little Mel” my mother shushed my sister. “Will they, though?” She followed, frowning.
“I don’t think so. They’re just lacking personnel. Think about it. No one wants to go to Fucksville in the middle of nowhere and waste their time - pardon, I meant gain experience - for 7 months. They have to attract you in some way.”
“Okay, but call.”
“Or don’t.” My dad said. “Spare us. It’s enough I have to listen to you complain 24/7 here. Don’t want a mini you on the phone saying the same stuff.”
“All right.” I mocked him.
I really didn’t think anything interesting was going to happen anyway. Mostly old people going for the billionth check up just to get out of the house and make sure they don’t die and they live up to being 188, and kids with a cold.
I get there, and it’s worse than I imagined. I have to rent this “flat”, which is mostly the first floor of an old building in the central plaza (the 4 square feet town center), and stinks of cigarettes and alcohol worse than I do. I have a roommate I barely see and a landlord that instructed me from the beginning not to smoke. Hm.
The hospital is 2 miles away, in what I like to call the suburbs of this mega populated area. It’s a rotting building with mold in like half of the rooms, and a questionable basement, but at least the staff is nice. I don’t know how they passed all safety and health checks, but fuck if I care.
Anyway, I start, and there’s nothing unusual going on. I don’t have much to do, as I anticipated. Walk around. Do check ups. Draw blood. Assist. Talk to patients. “How are you feeling, ma’am? And how often do you say that happens? All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
I took some night shifts in the first weeks, but it was extremely boring and the mold was bad for my lungs, so I stopped.
Nothing interesting happened during the first few weeks. It was truly just me and the cold mountains, a lone and mysterious wolf against this darkness we call life. I don’t know what was going to kill me first - the mold, or the boring routine.
Sometime around 9PM, as I wanted to leave, one of the nurses approached me and asked whether I wanted to take an extra shift for the night. Before I opened my mouth to tell her kindly to fuck off, she said something that stopped me.
“We need help at the morgue.”
I paused, mouth open. I narrowed my eyes. “Who died?”
She didn’t answer.
“People really die here? Wouldn’t the population go down by like half?”
She scoffed. “You should really take things more seriously.”
I accepted, just to break this endless cycle of waiting around.
I was writing a report for an old lady, and she tried to make small talk. She looked at me, narrowed her eyes and asked me where I was from.
“Does it matter? I’m here now.”
“Of course it matters. You’re transferred to the basement now? They must really like you.” The old lady looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her anywhere in my mind. She wore this flowery coat and had blue eyes, that moved around a lot.
I frowned. “Yeah?”
“Mm. Yes. Tell me what you saw the next time we meet.”
“Okay?” Whatever that meant, I thought.
The winter air was really getting to me, so I closed the window, then remembered the mold situation and opened it again. When I did, as the glass moved, I saw the old lady’s reflection suddenly bending down and turning her head really quick, but when I turned to look, she was sitting in the same position, looking at me and smiling.
I looked back at the window’s reflection, and there she was, still bent down. I figured I must have been hallucinating due to the mold. The high pay was beginning to matter less and less.
Lights flickering, the air got considerably colder as I got to the basement. It looked depressing. And the hallways were really narrow, with yellow walls and creaking doors. For the first time, I missed the familiarity of my tiny flat.
There was one doctor there, bend down over something.
“Uh, hi. You’re Mr. Lake?”
He didn’t answer. He was humming something. I noticed he had his stethoscope on, so I patted him on the shoulder.
He didn’t flinch, just calmly turned around and looked at me. I saw a dead squirrel behind him, the subject of his examination.
“I was listening to some tunes, hi!”
“Inside… the squirrel?”
“Yeah! You get it.”
I stared at him puzzled as he stumbled to a drawer and pulled out something. “You must be Mr. Hannigan. Sign.”
“Is this… an NDA?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Um, I actually will worry about it. I’m not signing this. What’s going on?”
He paused and remained like that for a while. I could hear the creaking floors in the hallway. “Is there someone else with us?”
“Well, yeah. You’d think we were alone here? Who in their right mind would be alone here?” He laughed.
I frowned. “We’re together, we’re not exactly alone…?”
“God, you’re still talking. Be quiet, Mr. Hannigan. Sign this and be quiet.”
I don’t know why, but I did.
Dr. Lake went into the hallway and I heard some whispering, then he came back. “Okay, they’ll bring them in very very soon.”
“Them? There’s more?”
“Yeah, we die in pairs around here.”
“…Right.”
That was the least weird thing I'd heard tonight. I didn't even question it that much.
We sat next to each other in the cold room for a while, and nothing happened. Just waiting in the silence, disrupted by one ticking clock and the wind moving the branches outside. As much as I was freaked out, it was… interesting. I was a bit curious to see what was going to happen next and, judging by the non-disclosure agreement I had to sign, the night was not going to be uneventful.
"Is your name really Dr. Lake?" I asked.
The man flashed me a smile. "It used to be Blake, but I gave a letter up."
Then, right as he looked up to the door frame, his expression dropped. I turned to look, but nothing was there.
"They're here." he mumbled, half excited, half nervous, as he sprinted through the door. I followed and, to my surprise, someone was really there: a nurse wearing three crosses around her neck, bringing two bodies on two distinct tables. When she saw us, she nodded. Her face was made only from sharp angles and rough tones, and her eyes had no warmth, no movement, even when she looked at me. Her lips were paper thin and violet, and her hands - covered in cuts.
She didn't speak, but Dr. Lake thanked her and we pulled the two tables inside the room.
The post-mortem room was cold and sterile, its metallic surfaces gleaming under the harsh, clinical lighting that cast sharp shadows across the space. In the center of the room, the two stainless steel tables stood like grim altars, each one slightly angled with drainage channels for fluids. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant, a sharp contrast to the heavy silence that seemed to settle over everything. Along the walls, cabinets held an array of gleaming surgical tools—scalpels, bone saws, forceps—all meticulously arranged for easy access.
A ventilation system hummed quietly, ensuring the air remained cool and sterile, while a sink in the corner provided a steady trickle of water, the sound a soft but constant reminder of the room’s grim purpose. Yeah, air ventilation. Good luck beating the mold. I thought, but noticed that this room seemed to be free of mold. It was almost as if it didn't belong to the hospital.
"Mr. Hannigan. I need you to take out a notebook and write down what I tell you."
I obliged, expecting instructions, initial observations or anything like that.
"Write. Rule 1."
Rule 1.
"Don't talk to strangers."
I smiled at the joke, then hovered my pen above the paper, waiting for the actual rule.
"You done?"
I looked up, still expecting. Dr. Lake was studying me, impatient. "Rule 2."
"Wait, rule one was..."
"Don't talk to strangers. Come on, hurry. We have to be done before the sun rises."
"What do you mean? I'm sorry, was that a joke?"
"I am dead serious. In this, uhm, area, you don't talk to no one. Just me or anyone you know. You see others working in the basement, you do not approach them. You don't talk to strangers."
I pressed my pen into the paper and distantly wrote don't... talk... to... strangers.
Rule 2. Always examine everything around. A death is not just the end of a life. It is a separation that bends the universe and snaps it in half. Such thing disrupts the atmosphere, so be mindful of your surroundings. Sometimes the clues are not in the dead body, but everything else around them.
Great, I thought. This doctor was fucking crazy. Maybe that's why ...
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