| abstract | - I spend most of my time in a hospital bed, occasionally walking the halls to break the monotony. Yet no matter how much I wish I were able to leave, I'm simply stuck, in this purgatory like building. My room mate is an elderly man, his nurse said one day that he is 95... I can't even imagine living to 80, let alone nearly a century. I hear his cries of pain, he doesn't talk, or even really move. Just repeated cries of pain. I one time called the nurse wondering if there was something she could do to help him. She replied, "This patient has requested no medicine, and has signed a DNR order, we can do nothing for him." When she said this my face went pale with the thought of the pain he must be in. She offered me my own room that night in order to get some peace from the anguish of the elderly man. I was relieved for the break. I had been up for many nights because of the gentleman's bellows of pain. As I lie in my new bed, silence aside from my I.V. fluids doing their job, I softly drifted into slumber. I awoke in the middle of the night to a mechanical sound. It sounded like...it was the empty bed next to me... I... it- it was moving itself up and down. I'm a fully grown man, not many things frighten me, and this I kind of shrugged off as an issue with the bed itself, nothing to get worked up over. I called my nurse and explained... She also explained, "You will be moving back to your old room in the morning sir, try to rest." Well, that was... Whatever, it's a hospital, people can seem complacent very easily. I closed my eyes and tried my best to block out the sound from the bed. When I awoke in the morning I sat up. It was raining outside, and even though the sun should've been somewhat noticeable, it felt like a winter's evening, ever getting darker. I flipped through the TV channels in the hopes of finding something, anything to make this situation better... The TV didn’t work, no channels reached the pixelated glass and I grew increasingly frustrated. Then...that damn bed started moving again... I'd had enough. I called the nurse and asked to be moved back to my old room. With no expression she complied and pushed me by wheelchair to my old room. But...it was empty. The man was gone. I knew that could mean only one thing... He had passed away. That's why the nurse seemed cold, the man had died and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it. I felt awful, I looked at the bedding still sprawled across his bed and choked down the urge to vomit. Creeping feelings of horror and regret flooded my body as I crawled back into my bed. In the back of my mind I repeated, "That's what he wanted, right?" As more time passed my medication had started to settle in and I was feeling tired, so naturally I closed my eyes... But when I did I heard something... Something chilling... I heard a wheeze, and then a soft sickly laugh. I immediately opened my eyes and saw nothing, an empty bed next to me. I tried closing my eyes again, confident it was just my mind playing tricks... This time what I heard full on scared the shit out of me. An old voice, sickly, and slightly amused said, "They'll never let you leave," and then trailed off in laughter. At that moment the bed next to me, the old man's bed, began rising up and down on its own just as the previous bed had. I was going nuts, I thought, so I turned on the TV and again, no channels, just static... But through the television set I heard that same sickening laughter. I shut it off and called for my nurse thinking there had to be some explanation for this. I grabbed for the button and pressed it, but the damn thing shocked me! It was like the old man was just toying with me now so I began to scream for help. No answer, the lights went out. I yelled again, no answer, the bed next to me just continued rising and falling with short clanking robotic noises. I was scared shitless, I don't believe in the paranormal but then how do you explain this shit? I gave one last try on my nurse bell and to my amazement it worked. The bed stopped and the safety lights turned back on. Relieved I sprawled back across my bed, I felt heavy with stress from all of this. I lied there in wait for what must've been an hour, I was chomping at the bit to tell my story to my ever so expressionless nurse. Then, as the overhead lights flickered back on my door opened followed by my nurse pushing a new patient toward the bed next to me. With every fiber of my being I tried to speak, tried to move, someone had to tell them something was very wrong with this room. But it was impossible, my body was useless. I heard that evil snickering again in my head, but all I could do was blink while it said, "Told you so." As the nurse finished hooking the next patient up to her IV and explained a few things she slowly made her way to the door. She looked down at me with an awful, maniacal grin and said, "This is Mr. Frashier. He has refused all medication and signed a DNR. We can do nothing for him."
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