THE FLOOR THAT DOESN’T EXIST

Some hospitals heal you; others wait until you’re weak enough to keep.

I didn’t come to that sentence honestly. I earned it, the way you earn a scar—by pretending you’re fine until you’re not.

By the time we fishtailed into the emergency bay, Omar had both hands clamped around a takeout bag like prayer, and Jessa was counting heartbeats out loud. The sliding doors wheezed open like an exhausted mouth. Inside was chaos: monitors chattering, nurses moving in choreographed panic, someone shouting “ten centimeters” like they’d just called bingo, and the strong citrus-antiseptic smell of surfaces that had given up on staying clean.

“We’re not maternity,” I told the woman at the desk, because apparently I still believed naming problems helped.

“None of us are,” she said without looking up. “Triage is full. Auxiliary rooms to the right.”

“Right where?”

She gestured with a pen that hadn’t worked since 2017. “Right.”

I took them right.

The room was too big. That’s the first thing I hated about it. Like a converted conference space with no windows, a single monitor sleeping in the corner, and a table with paper cups that had committed to being decorative. Omar folded into a chair and went still in that way that means if you move, your body will remember how to be sick. Jessa lay down on the gurney like it had offended her.

“My heart,” she said, “feels like a drumline that didn’t practice.”

“That’s a medical term,” I said, because jokes are my duct tape.

“I’ll get help,” I added, because competence is my religion.

I left the room.

Rule one of hospitals: the map is a rumor. The signs were helpful until they weren’t. Labor & Delivery straight ahead, Diagnostics left, Admitting right, and beneath all of it, a glow of human urgency that makes every hallway look like the one you meant. I flagged two nurses, a resident, and a janitor who moved with the purpose of a man who knew where the only working coffee machine lived. Everyone said, “I’ll send someone.” No one said, “I’ll go.”

The third time I passed a painting of whales that was somehow both soothing and threatening, I realized I’d looped. That’s when I saw the metal window.

At first I thought pharmacy slot. Then I realized it was cut into the wall of a room I recognized by gut, not memory. The stainless-steel flap had a little handle as if you were expected to ask it nicely. I lifted it.

On the other side—one step and a lifetime away—Omar glanced up like he’d expected me to come through the wall. Jessa turned her head; the effort cost her.

“Oh thank God,” I said.

“Door’s stuck?” Jessa asked.

“I can’t find it.” My voice did a weird thing; it came out at a slant.

“Funny,” she said, dry. “We didn’t move.”

I stuck my head into the pass-through, because when the world stops making sense you escalate. Cool air touched my face. The steel edging grazed my collarbone. The room looked identical—same monitor, same insult of paper cups—but the angle was wrong, like I was visiting from a dimension over.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Don’t—just—stay.”

“Was going to do laps,” Omar murmured, eyes closed.

I left the window up and tried two doors: one locked, one with a keypad. Third door opened.

It should have been a supply closet. It was not a supply closet.

It was a long, chilled gallery of clear plastic. Row after row of full-length sheaths, sealed with a heat seam. Inside each: a woman. Not posed. Not prepared. Caught. Expressions preserved like they’d been laminated—fear in high gloss. One had a smear of mascara fossilized in the curve between nose and cheek. Another’s mouth hung open in a perfect O, the afterimage of a shout stripped of air.

There was a smell I won’t describe, because words are a mercy and some things don’t deserve mercy.

I took one step back and my heel slid. The sound the plastic made under me was the sound of a secret getting louder. A sheet stuck to my shoe, tore, and revealed an entire body. Her skin was a color people use for walls and lies. I made a noise I hadn’t planned to meet. That’s when I felt the attention.

Three men in scrubs stood at the far end of the aisle. Not surprised. Not even curious. Their faces had that calm you only get if you already know how this ends.

“I—wrong room,” I said, as if that were a category that could fix this.

They didn’t move.

I moved for all of us.

The hallway bent in ways hallways shouldn’t. The whales painting returned like a bad choice. I ran back to the metal window, slapped the flap up, and shoved my shoulders through.

“Get up,” I said. “Right now. We’re leaving.”

“Is this a bit?” Omar asked. Then he saw my face and decided it wasn’t.

Jessa swung her legs over the side. She stood, went white, and didn’t fall. Small victories count.

“How?” she asked.

I didn’t have an answer, so I turned my body into a bridge.

The flap was wider than I thought, or panic made me flexible. Omar came first, crawling over the counter, breath stuttering. Jessa came second, with a hiss when the steel edge kissed her ribs. I pulled, they pushed, and gravity tried to remind us we were not gymnasts. On the far side, a voice spoke low and close.

“Ma’am,” it said, pure customer service. “You can’t be in there.”

I didn’t look to see whose mouth had filed that complaint. We ran. Past a nurse arguing with a printer, past a father on FaceTime crying without sound, past a sign that said L&D—FLOOR 4 and another that said L&D—FLOOR 4 in the opposite direction.

We hit the stairwell like a lawsuit. Down two flights, up one, because the door at the bottom had a red bar that screamed. At ground level, a security guard looked up, took in the three of us, and gave the smallest nod I’ve ever seen.

Outside, the air was too warm for night. The moon looked like it had been salted. Alarms didn’t go off. No one shouted for us to stop. My car opened like it forgave us; for once the fob did its job. I drove without checking mirrors, because if you don’t look, you don’t have to name what follows you.

We made it three blocks before anyone spoke.

“Did anyone else see that?” Omar asked. “I mean, besides whoever was—”

“Curating?” I offered, because the word “storing” felt obscene.

Jessa touched her sternum. “My heart stopped being rude,” she said. “Just now. Like a switch.”

“Mine too,” Omar said, then corrected himself. “Not my heart. The nausea. Gone.”

“Great,” I said. “Miraculous healings never cost anything.”

The city at night is an x-ray. You can see the bones you live on when the lights thin. I expected sirens. I got none. I expected to taste copper. I tasted sugar, like someone had swapped the air.

At a red light—though at that hour the lights are more a suggestion—I noticed the bracelet on my wrist. Not one of the flimsy admission tags I’d had before; heavier, a smooth band like a watch without a face. Laser-printed along the inside: DISCHARGED: RETURN and a string of letters and numbers that looked like a spell. I didn’t remember anyone touching me long enough to put it on.

“Do you have—” I started, and Jessa raised her arm before I finished. Same band. The glow from the dashboard turned the text the color of a bruise.

Omar checked his wrist, then his other wrist, then his pockets like he could misplace a bracelet. Nothing.

“You didn’t get one,” I said.

“Lucky me?” he said, which is the kind of joke you make when you’re bargaining in public with the part of you that keeps the ledger.

I didn’t take us home. Home felt too specific. I took us to the all-night grocery lot where the lights make everyone honest. We parked under a lamp. Jessa breathed like her lungs were remembering choreography. We sat there pretending the quiet was safety.

“Call them,” Omar said. “Report—whatever that was.”

“Report what?” I asked. “‘Hi, I found a morgue that keeps blinking’? Also, we left. There’s a form for that: ‘Eloped.’ You check the box, and everyone agrees to never make eye contact again.”

“You’re deflecting,” he said, which was rude and correct.

I called anyway. The hospital’s first menu offered me a satisfaction survey before it offered me a human. I pressed zero until a live voice arrived, harried and helpful.

“Emergency,” she said.

“I was just there,” I said. “Maternity floor was overwhelmed, and I—my friends—there was an auxiliary room, and I think I opened a door I wasn’t supposed to, and—”

“Ma’am,” she said gently, “we don’t have an auxiliary room on our birthing floor.”

“You do,” I said. “It’s big. Too big. There’s a metal pharmacy window.”

“Okay,” she said, the way people say okay when the story is going to require a supervisor. “Which building?”

I told her. She took a breath I could hear.

“That building’s fourth floor is renovations,” she said. “Labor and Delivery moved last year.”

“No,” I said. “No, we were just—” I pinched the bridge of my nose like it could extract the right timeline. “Can you… check the security footage? If I come back, can someone—”

“Our footage system’s down for maintenance,” she said, reading off the script life gave her. “I can take your name.”

I gave her the name I give when I don’t want paperwork to find me. I hung up, and my phone screen went black like it was offended.

“Try the photos,” Jessa said. “You took some when we were waiting.”

She was right. I had. I opened my camera roll. The new pictures were there—thumbnails you could count on. When I tapped them, the images dissolved into static, then corrected to old pictures I hadn’t looked at in years. A picnic. A dog that isn’t alive. A woman laughing with a wineglass, who isn’t me.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s fine. That’s great.”

“Stop narrating,” Jessa said. “You’re scaring me.”

“You’re not already—” I made a shape with my hands that meant all of this. “—scared?”

“I do better with a villain I can touch,” she said. “Right now we have a floor plan and a feeling.”

“Floor plan’s a strong word,” I said. “It’s more of a rumor.”

We drove to my apartment because denial has a curfew. I parked on the street where the hydrant is only sometimes real. Inside, the air had that just-cleaned smell that suggests either your place has been respected or it’s been very politely searched. I locked the deadbolt, then locked the chain, then put a chair under the knob because theater has a place in security.

Omar sat on the couch like a human comma. Jessa wandered the small space touching my life: the ceramic bowl, the plant on probation, the photo strip of three idiots at a fair. She picked up the strip, looked at it, and frowned.

“This was four pictures,” she said. “Now it’s three.”

“That’s not how film works,” I said.

“That’s not how floors work,” she said, and put the strip back.

In the bathroom, I washed my hands for a time that could be mistaken for ritual. When I came out, my printer—a relic that only speaks fluent tantrum—had come alive. It made the grinding sounds of a haunted appliance, then spit out a single label. No computer was on. No job had been sent.

The label was small, glossy, hospital white. Printed in the same clean font as the bracelets: DISCHARGED: RETURN and the same string of letters and numbers that had been on mine.

I didn’t touch it.

“Okay,” I said to the room, to the lamp, to the idea of cause and effect. “Okay.”

Omar stood. “I’m going to say something reasonable,” he said. “Maybe we panicked. Maybe it was a training room. Maybe those weren’t—” He choked on the word “bodies,” surprisingly, like it had bones. “Maybe we pulled a fire alarm in a building that does that every day, and we’re just—”

“Just what?” Jessa asked softly. “Alive?”

He and I both looked at her.

She set her jaw, then lifted the hem of her shirt, just enough to show the flat of her sternum. The skin was bare and normal and wrong. Beneath it, in the shallow, there was a geometry—lines like a stamp, not ink, not scar, but as if her body had been pressed into by an idea. A triangle nested in a circle, the circle capped by a notch. I’d seen the shape before and not in art.

“Did you—” I started.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

“Maybe it’s always been there,” Omar tried, brave in the way people are when the cliff has already given.

“It’s new,” she said, and her voice went somewhere I didn’t know.

I didn’t touch the mark. I wanted to. I’m not dumb; I am, however, a moth.

“Let’s sleep,” I said, which is the diplomatic solution to being hunted by geometry. “Morning is when things are ordinary enough to pretend we were dramatic.”

No one disagreed, which is not consent but exhaustion.

I gave them my bed and took the couch because martyrdom looks good on paper. In the dark, the label on the table glowed a little, the way white things do when they’re working with the moon. I turned my face into the cushion and told my nervous system a bedtime story: once upon a time, cause preceded effect, and floors matched maps.

At three twenty-one, my phone rang.

The number had more digits than numbers should and fewer than spam likes. I answered because curiosity and fear share a mouth.

“Hello?”

It wasn’t a voice on the other end so much as a decision. “You weren’t treated,” it said. The tone was flat, like reading a recipe. “You were chosen.”

“For what?” I asked, and my voice didn’t shake because it had left the building.

“For return,” the decision said.

The line went dead. My phone clock flickered, then corrected. Across the room, my printer woke again, thought better of it, and slept.

I lay there until morning made the windows honest. Coffee didn’t help because coffee can’t fix geometry. When Jessa and Omar surfaced, we all pretended we’d slept.

“Plan?” Omar asked, because if you ask for a plan, you get to borrow its spine.

“First,” I said, “we try to go back.”

“To the hospital?” Jessa asked.

“To the floor,” I said. “If we made it out, we can make it in. We get proof. A thing you can hold.”

“And if it’s not there?” Omar said.

“Then we’ll agree to have invented a new species of nightmare,” I said brightly. “Great for parties.”

We didn’t argue about rides. I drove because control is my drug. The city morning was rubber-band calm. At the hospital, a parking attendant waved us through with the warm indifference of someone who has seen the sheen of every emergency.

Inside, the birthing wing was where the menu lady had said it would be—which is to say: not where we’d been. Fresh paint. Signage that made sense. No whales painting. No auxiliary anything.

We found an elevator panel with floors that believed in ascending. I pressed four. Jessa watched my finger. “Between floors,” she said.

“What?”

“Press between,” she said, and showed me—her finger sliding between 3 and 4 as if aiming for a seam.

It shouldn’t have done anything. It did.

The button blinked, unsure. The car moved with a small shiver, stopped, then opened not to a hallway but to a blank wall with a stainless rectangle set into it. A pass-through window, closed.

I lifted the flap.

On the other side: the room. The monitor. The paper cups that had never planned to hold anything. The air moved like it was being breathed by something large.

“We’re hallucinating together,” Omar said. “That’s statistically kind.”

“Look,” Jessa said, and pointed.

On the far wall, a shadow stood without a body, and then a body assembled to match it. A woman, wrapped in clear plastic, lay on a table that hadn’t been there a second ago. Her eyes were closed. The plastic clung to eyelashes like the cocoon wanted to learn to blink.

“Okay,” I said, softly, to no one and to God. “Okay.”

From the near corner, a voice spoke—quiet, shaped, like it had been rehearsed in a mouth that wasn’t currently in use.

“You came back,” it said. “Good.”

“Who—” I started.

“Not yet,” the voice said pleasantly. “We do names when you decide.”

“Decide what?” Jessa asked, and her hand went to her chest, to the mark.

“Whether to pay,” the voice said, and the plastic over the woman’s lips dimpled as if a smile had tried to exist.

Behind us, the elevator chimed politely, like it had an appointment elsewhere. The flap in my hands felt heavier.

“Pay what?” I asked, my throat paper-dry.

“For being discharged,” the voice said. “On a floor that doesn’t exist.”

The metal in my hands rang, very softly, as if something had tapped it from the other side.

And down the corridor we hadn’t noticed because it hadn’t wanted to be noticed, three men in scrubs began to walk toward us, exactly as if the choreography had called their mark.