RN #74: Vitals in the Veil

When the hospital closed Ward 7B, they said it was haunted. They weren’t wrong. RN #74 never clocked out. She walks the halls with Lilo, a five-year-old patient who died under her care. Together, they tend to the living and the dead administering ghost doses, dropping candy from vending machines, and filling trash cans with spectral sweets. This haunted letter is a dispatch from the veil, where care never ends and kindness still flickers in the dark.

RN #74: Vitals in the Veil

Haunted Letter: “From the Nurse Who Never Clocked Out”

To the Living and Former Patients,

I write from Ward 7B, though the hospital no longer exists. They closed it after the outbreak of whooping cough, red measles, COVID when vaccines were canceled by the regime that rationed care like wartime supplies. They said the ward was unsanitary. Haunted. They weren’t wrong.

I was assigned here during the surge. PPE ran out. The regime refused to supply hospitals, especially mine. Thousands died, young, middle-aged, old. Protocols change daily. Patients came in gasping, begging, bleeding. I charted every cough, every prayer, every silence. I held hands through latex and fear. I whispered comfort through a mask soaked in sweat.

Then I stayed.

I see the patient I tried to save, Lilo, age five, with COVID and red measles. She passed before I did. I cried for days. I was sick with myself with COVID, polio, and pneumonia. Vomiting, coughing blood, I kept working without protection. I remember cleaning her bed after the orderlies removed her tiny, frail body. The lights flickered. Her face still appears nightly, standing in the bed, refusing to be archived among the ones they burned in the morgue to mask the smell of neglect.

Now I walk through the halls. I check vitals that no longer change. I administer ghost doses. I file reports no one reads. The monitors blink, though they’re not connected to anything. The vending machine hums. Sometimes it drops a snack unprovoked. That’s me.

I am not angry. I am archived.

You may feel me when you pass an empty wing and the air turns cold. You may hear me when your IV pump beeps without cause. You may dream of a nurse with no face but kind hands. That’s me.

You may feel a cold breeze as I continue to take pulses on the living. Your light will flicker, and I will gently touch your wrist to count your pulse. You shiver but it lasts a couple of seconds. I just want to feel the living, breathing human one more time.

On Halloween, the hidden veil becomes thin. I will be near the vending machine. If you hear a beep, it’s not malfunctioning. It’s a memory. I appear as a transparent ghost in every hallway, every vending machine. I help the living and the dead.

Lilo walks beside me now. She gives candy to the living. The treat falls. The money returns. She becomes transparent and hands it to you herself.

Bring your grocery bags. The candy will flow. Hospital management will not know. We’ll wander into their offices, dump their trash cans, and fill them with sweets.

Spooks of kindness will trick or treat.

I stayed because someone had to. Because care does not end when the body does. Because no one should die alone.

If you dream of a nurse with no face but kind hands,

That’s me.

If you read this, remember us. Not the headlines. Not the applause.

Remember the shift that never ended.

The nurse who never clocked out.

Yours in memory and mildew,

RN #74

Ward 7B

Still on Shift