The Window on Floor Seven

I was the night-shift cleaner at St. Andrews Hospital. Every night when I cleaned, I made my way to the seventh floor, to the never-used, practically abandoned Room 714… the room where my younger brother died, years ago.

Room 714 had been empty for months, but every night, after about midnight, when I went in to sweep, clean, and mop, the window was fogged up on the inside.

Some nights, I heard a soft tapping from behind the glass. Like it was trying to tell me to come look. Any time I wiped away the fog and looked outside, there was only the city below: headlights drifting like insects, neon signs blinking, sirens smearing blue and red across streets. I told myself it was just wind, old pipes, and my tired brain.

But the truth was, I was yearning for something I’d never had. And every night in 714, I felt like I might get it:

The chance to say goodbye to my brother.

I couldn’t explain it, but that night felt different.

Delete

During the day, St. Andrews was a hive of elevators dinging, phones ringing, alarms singing, and staff weaving around each other in a practiced dance. After eleven at night, it was a different building, hollowed out. Fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped flies. Vents hummed low in the walls. Gurneys sat empty in the hallways, sheet-draped shapes on metal bones. Patients groaned in their sleep, adding a ghostly rhythm in the background.

I clocked in a little before eleven, the way I always did. Powdered glove smell, disinfectant, coffee. I put on my badge, my back brace, my headphones (one earbud in, one out), and grabbed my cart. The wheels squeaked, protesting against tile.

The schedule said: start on the first floor, work your way up.

But, I always started on seven. It felt better to come down as the night went on.

The elevator ride up was slow, like it didn’t want to take me there. I watched the numbers blink: 2… 3… 4… pausing at 5… then 6… finally 7. When the doors slid open, the hallway looked the way it always did at this hour: deserted. Light like thin glowing mouths on the tile floor, pooled beneath a few occupied doors. Some rooms held sleeping patients, some held machines, some held nothing but air and echoes. A nurse or two sat quietly at their stations, heads bent over charts, paging through vitals. I nodded when our paths crossed. They rarely bothered me.

Then there was Room 714.

The plaque on the wall still said “Evan Brennan” in my head, no matter how many times they’d peeled off and replaced it. Officially, the room was “Temporarily Unassigned,” hospital code for “storage if we feel like it.” No one had put much in there. No one had reassigned it. The nurses avoided it without meaning to.

I stopped outside the door, checked my watch—just past midnight. My fingers tightened around the handle of my cart. My heart was too fast, my breath shallow.

“You’re just cleaning,” I muttered. “Same as every night.”

I pushed the door open.

The air in 714 was always two degrees colder than the hallway. Not enough for a complaint, just enough to raise goosebumps along my arms. The overhead light was dimmer, giving everything a slight yellow cast. The bed sat made, its white sheet tucked in sharp corners no one would disturb. The monitor screen was blank, unplugged. The IV pole stood in the corner like a coat rack without a purpose.

And the window, a tall rectangle looking out over the city below, was fogged from the inside.

Again.

Thick, milky, like someone had breathed against it from up close.

“Of course it is,” I said, my voice too loud in the emptiness.

I set my cart by the door and crossed the room. My reflection in the glass was nothing more than a darker smudge behind the condensation. I lifted my sleeve and wiped across the center of the window. The cloth squeaked against the cold surface, clearing a horizontal stripe.

For a moment, I could see the city clearly: a cluster of downtown lights, the slow blink of a radio tower, the faint smear of the moon peeking over the horizon.

Then the fog crept back over the glass, swallowing my streak.

“Great,” I muttered. “Broken seal. Should probably write that up.”

As I turned to grab the broom, I heard it: a single, soft tap behind me.

Just: tap.

I froze. My music was turned down to almost nothing. The vent breathed softly on my arm. The clock on the wall clicked to 12:07.

I turned back to the window.

Just fog. Nothing else.

“Old building,” I told the empty room. “Wind. Or pigeons. Or whatever.”

The words sounded thin. They didn’t convince me.

The rule was: sweep, wipe, restock, mop. The movements were muscle memory now. I let my body work while my mind drifted the way it always did when I was alone and the world was asleep.

The faded quilt folded at the foot of the bed was from a volunteer project. Handmade, bright squares stitched together in random patterns: sunflowers, footballs, dogs. Evan hated hospitals, but he loved that quilt when the volunteers brought it.

“This one’s mine,” he’d said, half joking, half serious, fingers testing each colored patch. “You can’t wash it. If you wash it, the luck comes out.”

“It already smells like antiseptic,” I’d teased. “No luck left in this place.”

“You never know,” he’d replied, closing his eyes but still smiling. “Maybe we got some leftover.”

Now the quilt sat folded with perfect hospital precision, all its colors pressed into a polite block. I straightened it, even though it didn’t need it.

I thought of the last time the nurse called, her voice on my voicemail… too calm, too efficient:

“This is Nurse Becky at St. Andrews. We think you should come in to see your brother. Sooner rather than later.”

I’d been at work back then too—a different job, different uniform, same night shift. I listened to the message on my lunch break. Looked at the clock. Looked at the stack of pallets my manager wanted moved. Told myself I’d finish the shift quickly, leave a little early, and go in the morning.

Morning did come.

But Evan couldn’t wait…

The squeak of the IV stand’s wheels under my mop now made my stomach twist. That sound used to mean something hopeful: medicine, movement, nurses saying, “We’re adjusting your fluids.” The last time I’d heard it in this room, a nurse quietly wheeled the pole out and unplugged cords with a softness that felt like an apology.

I stopped mopping. My throat felt tight. I pressed the heel of my hand against my chest until the ache dulled.

“Just a room,” I whispered. “Just a job.”

The radiator clicked twice, then once more, in a rhythm that reminded me of the way Evan used to tap his fingers when he was thinking.

I gripped the mop handle until my knuckles hurt.

The rest of the floor called for me. Bathrooms to scrub. Bins to empty. Fingerprints to wipe. I told myself I’d finished enough in here; I could come back later. There was no reason to linger.

I hesitated at the door. Then I turned off the light and pulled it closed.

The small window in the center of the door showed me a rectangle of dim room and fogged glass. I stared at it, my eyes burned.

Then I forced myself to walk away.

Hours passed the way they always did: slowly, then all at once. The hospital had its own sense of time. Nights stretched, then snapped back into themselves when alarms went off or a trauma team hurried by with carts and clipped orders.

I moved through it all like a ghost; present but invisible. People saw the uniform, not the person. “Thanks,” they’d say when I held a door, “Sorry,” when they stepped around the cart. No one asked my name. It was stitched on my chest—Daniel.

Delete

By the time I finished, I was making my way back toward seven. The clock in the stairwell read 4:33 A.M. My legs burned, my lower back ached, and my hands smelled permanently like bleach, no matter how many times I rinsed them.

I didn’t have to go back to 714. It was already clean. No one expected anything more from me there.

But my feet turned that way on their own.

The hallway was even emptier now. The nurse at the end of the unit had her head bent over a chart. The TV in her bay played an infomercial with the sound off. My shoes whispered over polished floors.

When I reached 714, the door was still closed. No one had gone in or out.

I stood there for a long moment, hand hovering over the handle, pulse ticking loudly in my ears.

Finally, I pushed the door open.

The air felt heavier this time, like walking into a room where someone had just been arguing.

The window was different.

The fog wasn’t smooth. It had texture now, streaks and smears as if someone had dragged their fingers across it. Lines crisscrossed in vague shapes, not quite letters, not quite random.

I closed the door behind me with a soft click and stepped closer, heart pounding, my breath too loud. The fogged glass glowed faintly from the city lights beyond it, a blurred halo of color.

Something inside me whispered, Don’t, but my hand was already lifting.

I laid my bare fingertips against the cold surface.

As I touched it, the streaks shifted. Slowly. Deliberately.

The lines on the glass blurred, then cleared, moving under my fingers, not because of them. Shapes slid and realigned, like frost forming patterns.

“Jesus,” I breathed, not sure if it was a prayer or a curse.

Letters came together, clumsy but unmistakable.

D A N

I jerked my hand back in shock.

The three letters held there, water beading around them, the rest of the glass still fogged.

Nobody called me Dan anymore. At work, I was either “hey, man,” or just a shape pushing a cart. The only person who used my nickname was—

My throat closed.

I reached out again, fingers shaking, and touched the glass beneath the N. The condensation blurred, then lines formed again, directed by what I couldn’t see.

S T A Y

My knees nearly gave out.

The radiator groaned softly, the only witness.

“Evan?” I whispered. The word scraped out of me, rusty from disuse. I hadn’t said his name out loud in years. It felt like it cut my tongue.

The window answered with a soft, deliberate tap.

Once.

Twice.

I pressed my palm flat to the glass. It was bitterly cold, so cold it hurt. Behind it, shadows moved, density shifting in the darkness.

All at once, the weight of everything I hadn’t said, everything I hadn’t done, slammed into me.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, the words tumbling over each other. “I should’ve— I should’ve been here. They called, and I… I finished my goddamn shift. I thought I had time. I thought…”

My voice cracked. I pressed my forehead against my outstretched arm, leaning into the glass, hoping it would hold me up.

“I was afraid,” I said into the crook of my elbow. “I didn’t know how to see you like that. I told myself there’d be another night. That I could come when it felt easier. I was wrong. I know that. I know it every day.”

The room stayed still. Just me and the breath rattling in my chest.

“I hear you in this room,” I went on, the words coming faster. “In the radiator, in the IV wheels, in the way the floor creaks. I come up here like I’m paying penance. Like if I clean it enough, if I stand here enough nights, maybe I’ll balance something out. But it never…”

My eyes burned. Tears blurred my vision, turning the room into watercolor shapes.

“I never got to tell you goodbye,” I whispered. “I never got to tell you I was proud of you. That you… that you made it easier to be alive. I never got to say it. And I know that’s my fault, and I don’t expect—”

The window tapped again. Louder this time. Not angry. Insistent.

I lifted my head.

The fog on the glass had started to thin around the letters, clearing in a slow, circular motion. Like someone was wiping it away from the other side.

As the condensation pulled back, I saw it: a shape, vague and hazy.

It was a figure about my height and narrower, standing on the other side of the glass.

There was no “other side” to the window, not like that. It opened to seven stories of air and the city. But right now, there was someone in that impossible space, a reflection that didn’t belong to me.

I couldn’t see the face. I didn’t need to.

“Evan,” I whispered.

The silhouette lifted its arm. My breath stilled. Slowly, it matched its palm to mine through the glass.

A heavy cold covered my skin. Under the chill, something else bloomed, a warmth, like stepping into sunlight after being inside too long. It radiated across my chest, filling hollows I’d spent years carving out.

No voice spoke aloud. No lights flickered. The building didn’t shake.

But in that quiet, I felt it say:

I didn’t want you to watch me go.

The thought didn’t come from my mind. It sat alongside it, familiar.

I shook my head, tears streaking down.

“I should’ve tried,” I said. “I should’ve—”

The warmth pulsed once, almost like a hand squeezing mine.

I was tired, it seemed to say. You were always the one cleaning up. I didn’t want that to be the last thing you had to do for me.

My knees hit the floor before I realized I’d dropped. My forehead rested against the glass, my hand still pressed to it, my shoulders shaking.

“I would’ve done it,” I choked. “Even if it broke me. I would’ve done it. For you.”

A pause. Then, like a memory of a laugh:

You’re doing it now, aren’t you?

I let out a wet, ugly sound that was half laugh, half sob.

“I miss you,” I murmured. “I miss all of it. The stupid jokes. The way you wrecked every cereal box. The way you tapped your fingers when you thought you were too cool to cry at movies.”

The radiator clicked once. Then again.

The silhouette on the other side of the glass leaned in.

The fog on the window began to reform around our hands, creeping outward from where they met. Letters emerged again, slower this time.

I pulled back enough to read.

I M I S S Y O U T O O

My chest clenched. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe at all.

“I was supposed to be your big brother,” I whispered. “I was supposed to protect you.”

You did, said that feeling again. From the worst of it.

The weight I’d been carrying for years, a thick black stone lodged under my ribs, shifted. Not gone. Not yet. But cracked, just enough to let something else in.

“You’re not mad?” I asked, sounding more like a child than a man.

The fog around the letters shimmered. A new line etched itself slowly and clear, beneath the first.

N E V E R

My vision blurred. I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep from sobbing loud enough to wake the entire floor.

We stayed like that for what could’ve been minutes or hours, my hand on the glass, the shape of my brother a whisper behind it. No more words wrote themselves, but the warmth stayed, wrapped around my shoulders like an invisible quilt.

Gradually, the warmth faded. Not all at once, not cruelly. Just… like someone quietly standing up to leave the room.

“No,” I said hoarsely. “Please, just—just a little longer.”

The fog on the glass thinned everywhere at once, erasing the letters. The silhouette lightened, then dissolved into faint reflections of city lights and the coming dawn, until there was only me again: a tired man with red-rimmed eyes, staring at an ordinary window.

The radiator clicked one last time, that familiar thinking rhythm, then went still.

I sank back onto my heels, wiped my face with my hand, and sat there on the cold floor until my legs tingled with pins and needles.

When I finally stood, the air in the room felt different. Softer. Less sharp around the edges. The bed looked like a place someone might actually rest, not a monument.

On an impulse, I unclipped my badge and set it gently on the folded quilt.

“I’ll try again tomorrow,” I said into the quiet. “At… everything.”

No one answered, but I didn’t feel alone when I left the room.

Delete

My shift ended at six. The sky outside had lightened from black to murky blue, that between-time when the world isn’t sure if it’s still night or almost morning. I pushed my cart down the main corridor toward the exit, the wheels giving one last squeak.

At the front doors, I paused and looked back. From here, I could barely see the sign for the elevators, let alone the seventh floor above them. The hospital smelled like over-brewed coffee and sanitized air, the kind of smell I associated with endings.

Today, it smelled like a place people passed through.

I stepped outside.

Clean cold air hit my face. My breath clouded in front of me, curling away into the early-morning light.

I knew that somewhere on the seventh floor, a radiator clicked once, twice, the same rhythm Evan used when he was thinking.

I didn’t need to turn around.