April 23, 2025By Natalie M. Perkins

Hospitals at night feel like a different world. Fluorescent lights flicker just a bit too much, and everything’s either dead silent or absolutely frantic—never in between. I’ve worked a hundred night shifts in the ER, but there’s one I don’t talk about much. Because even now, it gives me chills.

It was just past 2 in the morning. The kind of hour where even the walls seem tired. We’d already had some weird cases—one guy swearing he was going blind, but it turned out he just had shampoo in his eye. Then the call came through: incoming ambulance, female, late 50s, unresponsive. No history, no known cause, but paramedics sounded… off. Not panicked, just unsettled.

When she arrived, I understood why.

She was enormous—maybe 500 pounds, maybe more. Her flesh seemed to absorb the stretcher beneath her. But that wasn’t the shocking part. It was the quiet. No moaning, no labored breathing, just this eerie stillness. Her eyes were open but unfocused, like she was looking past us. Or through us.

We started the routine—vitals, oxygen, labs. But as soon as we touched her, something shifted. The air turned heavy. The machines started glitching—first the pulse ox, then the monitors. No signal. Then a smell hit us. It wasn’t infection or decay. It was something worse. Like burnt plastic mixed with rotten eggs. Chemical. Wrong.

I was with two nurses and a resident. One of the nurses, Julia, whispered, “Do you hear that?” I didn’t, at first. But then I did—a faint humming. Almost like a chant. We looked at the woman, who hadn’t moved an inch. But her lips… they were twitching. Not full words, just a rhythm, barely perceptible. We tried suctioning. Nothing.

Then the lights cut out.

Just for a second. Maybe two. But in that darkness, I swear—swear—I heard a voice whisper my name. When the lights came back, the woman was gone.

Not dead. Not coded. Gone.

The stretcher was empty. The straps still buckled. The machines still flatlined. We checked security footage later, and the recording just… skipped. It went from us working on her to us standing around an empty gurney, looking confused.

The hospital called it a system error. Said the patient had probably walked out (how?!), and security must’ve missed it. But all four of us who were there that night? We know the truth, even if we can’t explain it.

She didn’t leave.

She just wasn’t meant to be there in the first place.

I haven’t worked a night shift since.