Hospital stay

I was not sure about this job at first. I mean I need the extra money. The place is empty and just sitting until the city decides on what to do. It seems so surreal at the moment. I can hear each of my footsteps as I patrol the East wing. Southwest Hospital used to be a vibrant teaching hospital in its Hay Day. Now it is just filled with humming bright fluorescent lights and echoes. The one thing about being a security guard is that you don't have to do much. This position is not an armed position, so I really do not have to worry about the danger or liability of a firearm. Don't get me wrong, I am fully trained for such an occasion, the Army made sure I knew how to eat sleep and breath firearms. I am still in the active reserves, but when I am not in classes I am working in places like this. There are 2 other guys in the building, but it is such a large campus that we seldom meet except when our rounds overlap. I have a improvised guard station inside an old office. It has a landline and I carry a hand held radio that I can use to talk to the other 2 officers. It also has an emergency call button that will connect you to the local police should you need help. I am not too worried about it. I just walk up and down empty halls listening to the echos of ghost that may or may not haunt this place.

I finish my rounds and go back to the office/guard station. I am currently taking classes at a local college studying computers and finance. I am not really sure what I want to do? I do enjoy working in places like this old hospital though. Lots of people get creeped out by such places but I don't compared to standing watch in a foreign country at war or operating in the field out in the desert, this is a piece of cake. When I get tired of studying, I get up and walk past the old hospital rooms. Right now, they are just bare, almost all of the equipment and furnishings have been removed, but a few of the rooms still have bed frames in them. The kind of beds that have to be raised and lowered manually with a handle or mechanical lever. I bet it took some doing to get a patient positioned in one of those. I can almost hear the staff turning a crank or an orderly cursing as he or she tries to pull the handle that moves the bed around. If I close my eyes every so often, I can hear the sound of people and the echoes of equipment. If I open my eyes quickly enough, I think I can actually catch a glimpse of the staff coming down the hall. A doctor with a group of medical students. A group of nurses in squeaky rubber shoes. It sends chills down my spine. Not in a creepy way mind you, just in a did I just see that sort of way. It is almost like I can see a piece of history as it played out. Now the place just smells of old paint and dank water leaking from old pipes that run through the walls and celing.

I finish my shift and go out to meet the sun. I work 3 days a week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The night shift, mostly 12 hours. Then the weekday crew comes in, you know the Monday through Thursday crowd. I have classes at 9am and 12 pm on Mondays so it works out descent for me. I meet my replacement in the hospitals main lobby. We exchange equipment and perform a turn over. I submit my shift log, not much to report from an old run down hospital. The day shift people call in and I walk out the main door into the parking lot. I can see the sun coming up. It hurts my eyes. I can just imagine the medical staff after a long weekend coming out into the early morning light. Strecthing from fatigue but with a sense of renewal knowing that the shifts are over, at least for a few days. I look back at the stoic monolith of medical purpose and wonder what will become of the place. I am not sure, but I will keep working as long as they pay me, or until I graduate and find more permenant employeement.

My day off pass quickly. I immerse myself in my studies. Nights at the library, days in class then Friday comes around again. I show up at 5:30 pm. The day shift guy is older and this is kind of his second career. I know, you are thinking what kind of person makes a second career out of being a rent a cop. Apparently one with an early retirement from his last company because they outsourced his job but he cannot really find anything else because his skill set is 20 years out of date. I get him early so he can get home to his kid. He has one child still at home, so I cut him some slack. Anyway, I get the turn over, not much from the day shift except some men and women in suits walking around the place with clipboards. I am used to those types. I got a lot of that in the military. Junior officers with clipboards and a chip on their shoulders. Senior brass walking around pretending to actually care about the troops. The ones that came to the hospital were likely city officials or developers trying to determine if the place is worth salvaging or if it should be torn down and something new built. It really isn't my concern, I go to my station and check in. The air seems unusually thick tonight. I read that a rain storm was possible. I turn on my radio and lock the door as I make the first of many rounds. I can hear the other two guards talking, not sure about what. It is all background noise as I begin my 10-minets excursion through the lower wards and up to the second level. It seems like a blur to me, the first round that is. I find myself back at my guard station before I know it. I take out my phone and turn it on. I check the weather app to see if anything is headed my way. It shows a possibility of rain, so I turn it off. I decide to go back to the upper level, the sun is setting and I can get a great view of the adjacent city. I like watching the sun go down and seeing the city lights come on, it is surreal somehow. I look out of the window on the 3rd floor from the corner of the center of the building. It used to be a family waiting area before the hospital was closed down. I just listen quietly then I hear something behind me. I dismiss it as background noise. I then turn around and I see a woman with silver hair and an old fashioned nurses uniform. I let out a squeal like a frightend rat. I stumble backwards and almost trip over my own feet. I am thinking it is true, the place really is haunted. The woman is an older woman around 50 or so with a pail white complexion and grey hair with black streaks in it. Seeing that I am terrified, the specter speaks. She says that she is sorry to have startled me. I am breathing heavy and my heart is racing, kind of like being in basic training when the DI would come up on you out of nowhere. I look at the woman for a moment deciding if I should say something or just pass out. She then smiles warmly and I decided that I will stay instead of fleeing in terror like any normal human would do. My curiosity has gotten the better of me.

It turns out the woman's name was Carrol, at least that is what it said on her name tag. She used to work here at the hospital and now she works at a nursing care facility just down the road. She thought it would be nice to see the old hospital again. She said that she still has her master key. I guess there was not really a need to change the locks in an abandoned hospital. She says that she was sorry to have frightened me but thought it was cute the way I turned pale and stood frozen. I found the courage to respond to her. We walked and talked as I headed back to my guard station to report in. I decided not to enter her appearance in the log. I decided that she was harmless and not worth my time complicating thing by reporting on it. We talked quiet a long time. She took me around and told me stories about the paitents and the rooms. She talked about the old doctors and the nurses who came to train at Southwest. After a long while, I felt as if I knew the place a bit better and perhaps were a little more a part of the building. She walked another round with me and I escorted her to the entrance she came in. It was a nice respite from the silence of the empty building. Shortly after she left, I headed back up stairs when a thunder storm came up. The first clap of thunder ratteled the building and frayed my nerves again. Then another and another violent clap. I felt like I was in an echo chamber. My radio crackled and popped from the static of the electrical discharges in the air. I made it back to my station and the lights began to flicker. For several minuets the lights flickered and flashed like an the ones in an old horror movie. I could half imagine some masked fiend lurking around the corner with a knief or hachet Then the phone rang! It scared me out of my wits, but broke up the moment of tension. It was the lead security officer. He said that he was going to check the main power room to make sure nothing had tripped or was damaged. It really didn't seem necessary as a great deal of the electrical feeds had been removed and only essential power remained. I hung up the phone and noticed that it was approaching time for my new round. So I grabbed the flash light off of the charger, picked up a fresh battery for my radio and headed out on my rounds. Only a few moments into my rounds, the fire alarm went off! I was momentarily stunned by the loud shrieking noise and flashing strobe lights! I had ear plugs with me, so I put them in, but my ears were already ringing like church bells. The flashing lights I could do without as well. I just tried to focus on the path in front of me. All of this coupled with the thunder made me flash back to combat. For a moment I was somewhere else all together. A place I would prefer not to return but somewhere that I just could not escape under certain circumstances. It took me a moment to compose myself and regain focus. I had to get to the equipment room on the second floor. The elevator wouldn't work with the firealarm going off, so the stairs it is. Up I went, lights flashing and sirens blazing. I finally made it to the main equipment room for my section and opened the door. It took me a few moments to locate the panel with the trouble alarm. I followed the instructions written inside the panel and the system reset after about 30 seconds. I waited to make sure the reset worked and it did take. The indicator lights flashed all Green. I stepped out and closed the door behind me. I looked out an interior window across the way and saw lights flashing in another part of the building. It wasn't my the section but we are all responsible for the building . So I used my radio and tried to contact the other guy. Finally, the lights in his section went off! I did manage to get him on the radio after a few moments of trying. He said call him and that was his only response.

The night passed relatively uneventful after the storm moved on. The lights did go out for a hour or so and the emergency backup battery lights came on. That just added to the mystic of the hospital. The morning finally came and the sun broke the horizon. My relief showed up and I left to go home and study. The contract at the hospital was for 6 months, but I wasn't sure that I would be around much longer. I was sleeping one day when the phone rang and it was my area supervisor. He wanted to meet with all of the officers assigned to the old hospital that afternoon. So I got up and started my day early. When I arrived at the main company office, the main boss was there. The meeting didn't take long but it was actually pretty interesting. Apparently the city had signed a 30 day contract with a movie company who wanted to use the hospital to film a low budget horror movie. I had now idea how this applied to any of us. It was then that the boss said that the company was on a tight budget so they wanted us to sign release so that they could use selevtive video security from the internal cameras. In exchange for our consent, if any stock material with us in it was featured, we would recive a mention in the credits an a 150 dollar bonus. Some of the guys were apprehentious but I figured what the heck. It isn't like I was doing anything really exciting in the place. I signed the release and thought no more about it. Two months later I received a certified letter in the mail with a check for 150 dollars. I had already been reassigned to a new location, but they had chosen footage from the security tapes to add to their movie. When it finally came out, I had to searh for it on the internet since it was a limited thearter release. I finally found the 25 seconds with me in it. It showed the fire alarm going off and me frozen like a deer in the head lights. Right after that, it cut away to some girl who was chased by the crazed mental patient. It showed the guy on the next wing standing there with his flashlight and radio for about 10 seconds. Then the woman made it to a secure room. I lost interest after that. Despite all that went on, I kind of missed being at the old hospital. I really hope that the city finds a permenant use for it. It would be such a shame to tear it down for condos or something like that.