Working in a Psychiatric Hospital is not how most people think it would be. Our minds have been flooded by this Hollywood version of mental illness that brings about visions of frizzy hair and strait jackets. This is not the case: most patients are nonviolent and sign in voluntarily, and strait jackets are illegal in the U.S. The day to day workings on an inpatient psychiatric unit are pretty routine and boring to be honest, and this is even truer of the night shift.
I had been working on the psych unit for about three years. I was only 24 years old and had been hired right out of college. It was nice to be able to rub it in my parents face that I got a job with a Psycholgy degree since they had questioned me all through my undergrad. I didn’t plan on doing this forever, but the pay was too good to walk away from. My job was pretty easy and my coworkers relatively bearable. My job basically consisted of sitting at the end of a hallway all night, making sure everybody stayed in their rooms and doing routine checks every fifteen minutes to make sure nobody was killing each other. The unit was locked at every exit and they key was a magnetized strip in the ID badge every staff member wore around their neck. The windows did not open because we were on the seventh floor and we would frequently get suicidal patients.
So began my sixth night in a row of night shift duty. I had picked up this Saturday night shift up as overtime and I was regretting it as soon as I stepped on the unit. I mentioned earlier that most of the patients are nonviolent, but of course there are exceptions and one of those exceptions was currently occupying a bed on our unit. It is 10:58 as I stumble onto the unit already half asleep from a very recent nap I took. I heard screaming from the C corridor and hurried down to see what was causing the commotion. There was a patient being restrained in middle of the hallway, she was not one of our regulars, and I didn’t recognize her at all. She was small, maybe 5’3” and couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds. She was older, maybe in her mid fifties, but it is always tough to judge the age of someone at the hospital (mental illness and frequent drug use often made patients appear much older than they were). She was yelling in another language that sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, which made sense based on her complexion. This did not strike me as odd, the hospital was in a pretty major city so we got of immigrants who didn’t speak a lick of English (not to mention the patients who would yell at staff in tongues when upset).
She was a small woman, but she was putting up quite a fight and six staff members were already involved trying to get her into the restraint chair. I calmly walked over and asked if they needed any help in the restraint. A staff member who I didn’t immediately recognize (he must have been per diem) looked up from fastening her ankle into the chair and said they had it under control. I believed him, and I figured the nurse would be there with sedatives any minute, so I went to relieve the evening staff from A Corridor. He told me it had been a very long night and handed me the clipboard and immediately left. I pulled up a chair at the end of the dimly lit hallway and began my very boring night.
The unit was retrofitted into and old cardiac unit at the hospital so it was not ideal for psychiatric care. There were three corridors set up in a spoke pattern and sitting at the entrance of one gave you no vision of either of the other corridors. This was pretty unsafe, but there was little we could do about it. The unit was not very large, so if I ever was in trouble any yell for help could be clearly heard by my coworkers even if they could not see me. However, this also meant I could still very clearly hear the screaming of the woman in Corridor C. It sounds bad, but once you are in this field for a couple years even the most sincere sounding pleas are masked by a fog of cynicism and annoyance. I realized I didn’t even ask why she was being restrained in the first place; I guess it didn’t really matter. She would be heavily sedated during the restraint and sleep the rest of the night, so whatever she was doing last shift I would not have to deal with tonight. I heard the pleas and screams become weaker and weaker as I could tell the sedative was setting in. After about a half an hour the unit got quiet once again and I took out my iPad to pass the time.
I had a bit of a tradition when I would work nightshifts, once the unit settled down I would read scary stories. It was a stupid idea, because being on an eerily quiet psychiatric unit at the end of a dimly lit hall all alone reading ghost stories is asking for trouble. I didn’t get scared very easily, but I did always have a split second of shock when I would go to check on a patient and they would be anywhere but lying down on their bed. I wouldn’t call it fear, it was more of surprise that they weren’t exactly where I expected them to be. I started reading a pretty interesting story about oil that turned people into zombies. It caught my attention and I might have missed a check or two because I was so caught up in the story.
I got up and rushed through my rounds, shining my maglight hastily at the ceiling of every room, assuming the lumps of covers in every bed was a still breathing human. It was my sixth day in a row and I was already exhausted, so my dedication to quality care was falling fast. I finished the story pretty quickly and began another about two climbers trying to explore a small opening in a spooky cave. The buildup was very long and dull so I was not as invested and could feel my eyelids start to flutter. The words on the screen began to blur into double vision and I could feel myself begin to nod off.
Then something strange happened, I dreamt. Usually when I nod off at work (I work overnight don’t judge me) I come to almost immediately and jolt up in my chair. But this time was much different, I had an elaborate dream. It was not unfamiliar, in fact when I started working in the hospital it was a dream that happened almost every night. I go to badge off of the unit and my badge is gone. I began panicking that I had lost it and ran to a coworker. The coworker then attempted to calm me down and assured me that I didn’t need a badge. Confused I would look around and realize I was not in my normal khaki and polo shirt uniform, but rather in a hospital gown with johnny pants on. I began to panic and plead that I was a staff member, not a patient. This lead to a physical altercation and eventually a restraint. As I was thrashing in the chair as soon as the needle entered my skin I woke up.
I sprang up in my chair like an electrical charge had been sent through my body. I was in a cold sweat, not only because of my dream, but also that I had been asleep for long enough to have one. I immediately looked at the clock and realized it was after 3:00 am. I had been asleep for a full two hours. I hurriedly grabbed my check board and flashlight and began my checks like nothing happened. However, as the light shone on the ceiling of that first room I realized something wasn’t right. The bed was empty. This was not what made me feel odd, patients often got up to use the bathroom or get a snack, and I probably would have missed them leaving their room since I had been passed out for the last two hours. What was odd was that the bed was made perfectly. It looked like the patient had never been there at all, like it was waiting for a new patient to come in. I figured the patient might have some OCD tendencies and wrote it off in my mind, I left that spot on the check sheet blank and moved onto the next room.
This is when real terror began to grip me. The bed in the next room was the same: perfectly made bed, no patient belongings, and worst of all, no patient. I felt a cold sweat break out all over my body and my stomach began to sink. I slowly made my way to the third room in the hall and sure enough, it looked identical to the first two. I was now in full blown panic mode. What had happened while I was asleep?! I ran to the B corridor to check with my coworker and see what was going on and there was nobody. The chair sat perfectly positioned at the end of the hall waiting for the next shift to come. I was now in a full sprint to the entrance to the unit, once I reached the large double doors I reached for my badge to unlock the monstrosities and there was nothing. I grasped at my chest again hoping I had missed it, but again, nothing. I looked down and realized I had no ID badge. I sprinted to the front desk to try and use a phone, but they were disconnected. Obviously. I was stuck on a locked psychiatric unit alone without an ID badge or any means to contact the outside world. I threw my back up against the wall and let my body slump down into a crumpled heap on the floor. My breathing began to slow down and as my senses began to refocus I could hear something coming from corridor C.
My heartbeat once again began to quicken and my senses were at an all time high. I could feel the cold tile against my hands, I could almost see the air moving in front of me, almost as if it was a fog. I could smell the unnaturally clean environment of a hospital, all the disinfectant fighting a battle against the illness consuming the air. I could taste the dryness in my mouth; it was as if I was dehydrated. And worst of all I could hear it. The sound was faint and broken, but it was a sound, the only sound. It was until this sound forced its way into my ear that I realized how deafeningly quiet the unit was. Even as I was running and slamming doors none of it had seemed to make any noise. This was the first noise I had heard since waking up from that horrible dream and it was terrifying. It sounded like humming, but not to a tune. It sounded like the sort of humming people would do when they were trying not to throw up.
I approached the entrance of Corridor C and it seemed different than the other two. It looked the same, the dim fluorescent lights flickering, coating the hall in a dull yellow twilight. The same chair perched at the end of a hall, abandoned by the person who was sworn to protect this hall and obviously failed. I could hear the humming coming from this hall, but I could not pinpoint where. I was drawn to it, as ominous as it seemed it was the only thing alive in this hospital and I needed to know what it was. I began on the left side, room 725. I shined my flashlight directly at the bed and it revealed the same perfectly folded sheets that every other room had displayed thus far. Next, 726, same. 727, same. 728, I could hear the hum getting louder as my heart was beating out of my chest. My arms barely had the strength to lift the flashlight over my head to shine into the room. Same. 729, I shined the light at the bed and my heart nearly burst. I always said whenever a patient was somewhere I didn’t expect I got spooked and jumped, but this time I felt actual terror.
There she was, the frail middle eastern woman who had been restrained earlier that night. She was sitting on the edge of her perfectly made bed, staring forward at the blank wall. The glow of the flashlight didn’t even seem to affect her at first, she just kept staring. It was probably only about ten seconds that she sat there motionless, but it felt like minutes. After a while she began to turn, acknowledging my existence only on her own terms. Fear had already paralyzed me to do nothing but stare as I saw her turn slowly toward the door. Her body did not turn, only her neck, forcing her head to face the door in a very unnatural position. However, this was not the most unnatural thing about her, it was her eyes, or where her eyes should be. Staring back at me, or what seemed like through me, were two deep black holes. Empty sockets that seemed to go on forever.
Illuminated by the soft glow of my flashlight I could see everything, It was a rush of every feeling I had ever felt all at once. The pure bliss of Christmas when I was young, the slightly awkward pride that came after my first kiss, the love I had felt the first time I had sex. All of this rushed into me ten times harder and faster than the original sensations. However, they were gone just as fast, and as I stared into those deep dark holes I felt the guilt of being caught lying to my parents for the first time. The absolute fear of when I flipped my car at 17, the penetrating loneliness of having my heart broken. And worst of all, the panic of the situation at hand right now began to set back in. Was this my life flashing before my eyes? Was I dying? It was only sensations though, I could not see the memories, only feel the sensations and make the connections undoubtedly through that.
I was still frozen, but it no longer felt like fear was the cause. It was her! She was holding me here! Her neck, already bent at an ungodly angle began to turn again, almost like a dog trying to comprehend something it couldn’t. I was stuck, unable to move, unable to speak, only able to stare into the deep dark holes. This is when I first felt it, like I was disappearing. I felt myself losing grip with the world. All the senses that seemed so strong just a few moments ago began to fade. I could no longer feel the grip of the flashlight in my hand. I could no longer taste the dehydrated saliva in my mouth, nor smell that overpowering disinfectant. Even the humming seemed to cease. My sight was the last to go, everything slowly faded out, from the outside in until all I could see was her. She was still in a seated position, yet there was nothing supporting her weight. Her head began to straighten out, and then eventually turned forward again and once again seemed to ignore my presence. She then faded away and I was left in darkness. Pure darkness, frozen and senseless.
…
I awoke in a very different hospital, in one of those stereotypical hospital beds at the University Campus of where I worked. I was hooked up to all sorts of different machines and had wires sticking out of me in every direction. It took me weeks after coming back to even begin to comprehend what the doctor’s had told me. Apparently I had been legally dead for close to an hour and they were only able to bring me back to life because of a new machine known as an “AutoPulse”. Thanks to this machine I was able to cheat death and I have been slowly regaining use of all my senses.
When I nodded off that night in the hospital my heart stopped. It is still a mystery exactly as to why, but I can’t help thinking it was because that was my time. I have stared the reaper in the face and those soulless black sockets will haunt my sleeping and waking dreams for as long as I stay in this world. I have never been a quitter, but I can’t help but feel like I am not long for this world after venturing beyond it.
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Credits to: deathofaeris
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