The Monsters We Leave Behind

She shuffles down the hall dragging the stand for her morphine and saline. Half using it for balance. She walks past an open door and out of the corner of her eye she sees an old man. Gray skin, gray hair, gray eyes. He is twisted in the bed. She can see his mouth moving and hear his whispered plea. “Help me. Help me”

She stops in the hall. Not looking in. To look in. To make eye contact would be to commit herself. And she is frozen with fear. Fear of his pain. His helplessness. His loneliness. She can feel it reaching out to her. There were no nurses at the desk. No one to turn to. The sitting area. There might be someone there. There is nothing she could do for him anyways. A nurse, a doctor, anyone else. She shuffles on. Away from the open door and the old man begging for help, all alone.

There is no one in the sitting area. There never is. She sits for a moment but hurts and feels sick. She just wants to sleep but not to dream. Everything feels like a dream when she is awake and feels real when she is asleep. She is breaking. She can’t read. Can’t watch TV. Can’t talk to anyone. She starts back down the hall and stops by the room where the old man was, but the door is shut. Is he still in there? Looking at the doo?. Begging for help that would never come.
Get back to bed. Ask the nurse for drugs. Wait for the food to come that she would not eat. She shuffles back to her room. No nurse. There is food by her bed. She gets back into bed and picks at the bread. The sun is setting when the nurse comes in. She wants to ask about the old man but can’t speak. Her mind and voice are parallelized. She can only comply while the nurse takes her temperature and other vitals. She is losing herself. A little less human, a little less a living thing every day.

Night time. Time to sleep. She didn’t want to sleep. The fear was creeping in. Fear of the remembered pain. Fear of what was behind the half drawn curtain that blocked her bed from the door. Fear that sleep would come and that it would not. The nurse is back. This time with a vial and syringe.

“Ready for your medicine?” She seems pleasant enough with her customer service smile.

“Yes. Thank you.” The words come out but feel clunky and out of place.
The nurse injects the medication slowly into the IV so it doesn’t make her sick. Then the nurse is off to see others with an over the shoulder “call if you need anything.”

She continues to watch the corridor outside her door, or at least what can be seen around the curtain. She could have turned on the TV or read the book next to her or listened to her mp3 player. But her head and heart are numb except the ebb and flow of fear. Gradually all that faded as the narcotics took effect. She felt as if she were floating and growing heavier at the same time. Eventually her eye lids would not open and she was asleep.

She opened her eyes to see the ceiling getting closer. As she rose she started to rotate until she was looking down at herself. She continued to rise until she passed where the ceiling should have been and could look over the top of the curtain. The hospital was dark now. Only the night lighting was on. Deep shadows. She looked down at herself. She looked smaller and far away. On the other side of the curtain, things started to form out of the dark and air. She knew these things. Monsters. The kind that are made of fear and pain. Her entire being was filled with that fear. She knew if she did not wake up before they were solid they would have her. Every nightmare. Every thing that ever frightened a human being was coming for her. There was one now almost solid by the open part of the curtain.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. She tried to scream. Tried to move. Anything something. She could see herself trying to wake up. Groaning and moaning. The terror just kept rising as the creatures continued to solidify. She could hear the murmurs

“This one?”

“Her?”

“Is that the one?”

The one by the curtain started to draw it back and she crashed into herself. With a groan trapped in her chest and finally a gasping breath her eyes shot open. Looked immediately to the curtain. The night nurse and tech were standing there whispering.

“It came from in here”

“Was it her?”

“Sorry. Bad dream” she muttered, brain fogged with sleep and residual fear.

“It's ok” the nurse said and they were gone. Leaving her with the dark and the memory of the half formed nightmare creatures.

She leaves the hospital a few days later. She never finds out about the old man. But he never leaves her. She still hears his pleas: “Help me”. She still sees him where she abandoned him. Alone, frightened, in pain, in that dark lifeless room.