basric: (LJIDOL OPEN)
I think last week I may have provided too much graphic reality of what happens in trauma into my writing so I am going to reel it way back and throw mine line out a different direction this week

First, let me say I am not a superstitious person. I am a woman of science, but I have seen things that cannot be explained; things some call miracles. things that should not have happened. I just accept them as mysteries that have yet to be explained.

You can go to any hospital floor and hear of their ghost. Ghost or spirit I’ve seen glimpses of them myself and no longer attempt to explain them. They just are.

Digging through my journals, I find one such time; fittingly it was thirteen years
ago. . .when I worked on 9South. Then it was the Post Operative floor. 9S had a lady ghost. Garbed in a long black skirt, crisp white blouse with her hair piled atop her head Gibson-girl style, she glided the hallways. You’d catch glimpses of her rounding corners, walking behind a column or slipping into a room.

I’ve had new nurses tell me someone just went into an empty room, then described our ghost. Patients have ask who the woman was in their room when they woke during the night, standing and staring out their window or at the foot of their bed then described our Lady.

Urban legends abound because of these 'miracles' and mysterious apparitions. But usually all urban legends are based on facts.


But back to our ghost, spirit, or floor’s guardian angel the night Mr. E. was brought to room 926 from surgery, she disappeared. He had surgery for a bowel blockage. He came to the floor with the usual orders, NPO (nothing by mouth), ambulate, IVF and dressing checks and reinforcement, when needed and a Morphine PCA pump for pain.

Mr. E. was uncooperative from the start. Nasty to everyone, demanding coffee, refusing to walk and refusing to allow the nurse to touch him or check his bandage.

His nurse came to me in tears. She was a seasoned nurse. I had little patience with a nurse who had twenty pounds on a patient and was 30 years younger not being able to get a patient who just had major surgery to comply. You don’t ask patient to get up and
walk. . .you physically assist them.

She insisted he terrified her. A seventy year old man? I finished my admission and went back to Room 926. One of the few times I ever felt a brush with evil.

He looked sinister. His eyes black and piercing. Lips thin and drawn back in a snarl with the sharpest canines I have ever encountered before the vampire craze had people having their's filed. When he spoke it made you want to take a step away from him. He made you feel you were in some Edgar Allen Poe short story with creepiness of . I’d never met anyone so menacing.

I straightened my spine and approached him, “Mr. E., your doctor has ordered nothing by mouth until morning, you can have a few ice chips to keep your mouth moist, if you wish.”

He hissed at me, “I want some damn coffee.”

“You’re not getting it, you can have ice or nothing. Your choice.”

He made a move to get up, “I’ll go find it myself.”

“Good. We have orders to get you up to walk, so please.”

He fell back against the pillows his breath raspy and gave me a look of pure hatred. He was a man used to being obeyed.

I reached to check his IV and his bony, claw-like hand braceleted my wrist. My impulse was to jerk away as spiders skittered up my spine but his grip was strong, those long, bony fingers icy.

Perhaps instinctively I knew it was what he wanted and that I’d end up being jerked down on top of him. That image was like a slap in the face and though I wanted to shudder in revulsion I stood still, “Remove, your hand from me. Now.”

“Or you’ll what?” That flicker of flame I thought I saw in his eyes then, I assumed was a reflection through the window. I tried to rein in my sudden rampant imagination and ignored the malevolent glare.

How I kept my voice strong and steady I don’t know--habit maybe, “I will have your nurse get a sedative, inject it through your IV that will knock you out for the night. We will do what we need to without any interference from you.”

I desperately wanted free from his touch.

He sneered and hissed through his teeth, “That one,” he nodded toward his nurse, “she has no backbone at all. Not worth the effort. She doesn't have the inner strength to go against me.”

“Then, she will call the resident to do it.”

“Another time it would have been my pleasure to have broken you. You’d be worth my time,” he licked his lips, his tongue snaking out to caress those sharp canines. Then he actually growled with frustration and tossed my arm away.

The relief was immediate and shocking, I felt as if I just been release from a current and though I almost stumbled back I just caught myself, “I’m certain I’m flattered.”

He just gave me a look so depraved, I turned my back on him feeling physically ill.

He submitted to the dressing check by his nurse but not even the resident when called, could get him up to walk. No matter the dire threats of pneumonia setting up in his lungs. He wanted to be left alone. Honestly we wanted to leave him alone.

Finally we gave up and left him to sleep. His last words to me as I left his room were, “You dream of me.” CREEPY.

I told Heather that when she went into check on Mr. E., take a male Carepartner with her.

The sensation of icy, oiliness around my wrist remained no matter how much I washed it. I remember that touch even now.

At four that morning Mr. E. coded and could not be revived. His heart just appeared to give out.

The nurse went in alone to prepare him for family viewing. We heard a piercing scream and found her unconscious on the floor. Revived, she became hysterical. She claimed she had been facing the mirror gathering things into the trash when she looked up and saw Mr. E. sitting up looking at her his eyes glowing red. Even when the resident tried to explain that sometimes that happens, those body contractions and his eyes were just a reflection of light off their opaqueness of death; she could not be calmed.

Finally her husband came and took her home while two Carepartners took care of Mr. E.

His cousin arrived two hours after his death with his wife.

“Would you care to see him?”

“Are you certain he is really dead? Truly?”

“Yes, of course.”

“My cousin was evil. Truly evil. Not just cruel though he was that, too. I think he’s only lived this long because the devil didn’t want him.”

He spoke of the horrors Mr. E. had done to animals, that he was believed to be a pedophile and a rapist but his money or fear of him always saved him, rumor of the tortures he subjected his lovers to, how he bragged to him of torture and death. He was a predator searching for the goodness in others then reveling in its destruction.

I went home and for the first time I had a nightmare, but Mr. E. was a demon not a man in the dream. I woke in a cold sweat and later discovered everyone on the floor that night were having nightmares throughout our ordeal.

Room 926 was cleaned and the next day a forty-year-old man had prostate surgery. He was in the room two hours when he breathing ceased. He was coded but they could not revive him.

The housekeeper that came up to clean the room stopped at the doorway, blanched and backed away. From Jamaica she insisted the room was cursed and refused to go into it.
They had to send another worker.

That night a nineteen-year-old girl had an emergency appy. Because of her age they did an open incision instead of micro-surgery to remove her appendix.

She was doing well, smiling and talking on the phone. She’d took her IV pole for a walk around the floor a couple of times. At ten she settled into bed for the night. Two hour floor checks found her in the same position on her side, asleep. At four in the morning a tech went in to check her vital signs and found her dead. Her eyes and mouth opened wide as if in horror.

Though the code button was pushed, uncovering her we discovered the bed puddled with her blood. . .it appeared her staples were pulled out through the flesh forcibly with fingertips, an artery severed--so she bled out. There was no way to revive her. . .Time of death was called.

Considered a suspicious death, police investigators brought their lab techs and while everyone on the floor was interviewed the techs took scrapings from under all our nails.

I ask my interrogator how could someone have done such a thing without waking her and why wouldn’t a medical person use an implement made to extract them.

An autopsy finally determined she must have had an unusual amount of gas buildup behind the wound and it ruptured from the inside tearing the artery.

That’s +1.

Another patient was put in during the following shift, a 30-year-old woman had half her thyroid removed. She was doing well until around midnight she called complaining the room was getting colder and colder. We had maintenance come and work with it and brought her blankets. I would have moved her but we were full.

An hour later she pressed the nurse button for help. The room was icy and the neon lights flickering. Her throat was swelling. The resident had to place a trach for her to breath but during the procedure her heart went into V-Tach and neither drugs nor shocks could bring her back. Ten minutes later she was in asystole(flat-lined). They kept working but her death was called twenty minutes later.

That’s +2.

The Puerto Rican RT and the Jamaican nurse both insisted the room was cursed. That evil now dwelled in Room 926. (Very Gothic and Poe). They refused to enter it. It was Mr. E’s evil spirit.

I brushed them off. I am a woman of science. I do not believe in curses or evil spirits. One nurse mentioned that our guardian angel had not been seen since Mr. E. had died on our floor. Still I resisted...coincidences.

I had maintenance back in because the iciness had crept into the hallways. He came, climbed his ladder and held a thermometer in the vent. He smugly showed me seventy-two degrees. I made him set it on the counter. . .fifty-nine degrees. He couldn’t explain it, he would put in a work order.

The next day a thirty year old man with a central line and no history of mental illness, got out of his bed and went through the supply cart in his room, found bandage scissors and cut the three lines on his central line in his subclavian vein inserted just below the neck. He then lay down and bled to death--none of the three lines clotted as they should have. They found him sitting and staring his hands folded in his lap.

That’s +3.

A fifty year old woman having her gall bladder removed in the morning was put in Room 926. Though I’m NOT superstitious I had someone sitting in her room with her all night. As we were leaving in the morning I checked on her.

She had a lap desk and an address book. She said she was writing out invitations to her daughter’s baby shower. She said she felt fine and really the personal care we gave at this hospital was wonderful. She never coughed or complained of SOB(shortness of breath) I left her putting her reading glasses back on the end of her nose.

When I came in that night I was told her Indian doctor had come to the desk twenty minutes after we left.

“My patient in Room 926 IS DEAD. No need to call a code it appears to be a pulmonary embolism.”

She was sitting still as I had left her with her glasses on her nose, her hands at her side and desk on her lap. She never called out or made any sudden moves. She just died and dropped her head to her chest and hands to the bed.

That’s +4.

Days had just put a twenty year old professional skateboarder with a broken femur right into Room 926. Young and healthy he was cruising the halls on crutches, flirting and chatting up the young nurses. Later, like all patients before him, he complained that the room was too cold and it had weird feelings and strange odors.

I AM NOT a superstitious woman. I am a woman of science. But five consecutive deaths in Room 926 happening to relatively healthy people? I admit to feeling uncomfortable. Science was failing me. I went into his room to check on him. The room was cold and I felt icy fingers dance down my spine.

I had him moved to Room 905.

“What are you going to put as a reason on the incident report?” Buddy asked me.

“Did you not notice all those ants in the bathroom. We stomped and swept them up but can’t have a patient with bugs in his room.”

Maybe I was being foolish, but this twenty-year-old boy wasn’t going to die on my shift tonight.

Buddy asked what I was going to do if we got an admission.

“I’ll think of something but I’m not putting another patient in that room.”

“Let me take care of it.”

Ten minutes later he returned to tell me of how house-keeping had accidentally broken the sphygmomanometer, (BP machine) and there was mercury all over the floor.

Let me note here that the 9th floor was in the process of removing all of these wall units as we were now using portable machines.

Since mercury is considered a major chemical spill the door was shut and red tape over the doorway. Any admissions would go in as overflow to the surgical step-down. I wrote an incident report that an IV pole fell against it and it was broken. That was what was reported to me. It was not legally a false statement."

It was an eerie night, some said they heard noises and voices in 926 that night. At midnight the call light receiver went off.

“Who’s that?”

“Room 926.”

“Cancel it.”

After the fourth time in as many hours the call light triggered. I stood up, “It’s just an electrical glitch in the bed plug.”

“Don’t go back into that room,” Katy demanded, “It’s waiting for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a glitch,” but Buddy insisted on going with me and I didn't discourage him. The room was icy, an ominous cloud oppression hung in the room. I looked at Buddy and shivered. “Unlock the bed and let’s move it.” It was moved and I unplugged the bed and pressed the plug cover in, silencing the pealing alarm. We red-taped the door. An hour later the hall lights began to flicker as neons do when ready to be replaced. The phone rang off and on all night with only static on the line.
The printer/fax machine geared up and began spitting out blank papers. We had to unplug it. Nurse were huddled at the charge nurse's desk or at the work station across from 905--the room farthest from Room 926. I felt like I was in some B horror movie. All night eerie thing happened. We all were happy to see 7 a.m.

After the haz-mat team came and cleaned the room, the Assistant manager (The manager was on vacation) even though I warned her, put a patient in the room from step-down. The patient had discharge orders at four p.m. but at three he had a seizure in the bathroom. He was able to push the button for help but he fell and hit his head on the porcelain sink. He died of a brain hemorrhage two hours later. . .a tragic accident?

That’s +5.

The assistant manager was spooked enough that she called her own priest and asked him to come and bless the room. He came and not being Catholic myself, I guess he did whatever they do to bless a room.

Later that day a forty year old banker had a clot in his leg removed, stayed the day and all night. He was discharged the next day without incident.

The housekeeper declared the curse gone. Room 926 and the floor hallways returned to normal temperatures, the lights stopped flickering, and the eerie feeling in Room 926 disappeared.

Coincidence? But on a floor where a patient codes once few month suddenly has seven consecutive deaths, all in the same room. YOU figure the odds.

Administration have an investigation. But all patients died of different causes, all the autopsies confirmed natural deaths or tragic accidents.

Now, in trauma I still hear new staff members whisper about that week and I listen to them scoff, it was just an urban legend.

I keep my own counsel. I don’t really know what happened during those five nights and I’m not certain I ever do.



Everything written above are true events. If anything due to lack of space I left out the other eerie things that happened on the floor those days.

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basric

September 2013

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