NICU

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:06] I'm Ben and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new camper or returning one, I'm glad you're here. [00:00:19] Tonight's story begins in one of those places you wouldn't expect the dead to linger. The hospital nursery Wings. [00:00:27] This story is about an exhausted nurse whose instincts tell her not to trust a voice that she knows. [00:00:35] Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story. [00:00:43] I used to tell people? The night shift in the NICU was peaceful. [00:00:47] Not easy. [00:00:49] Never easy, but peaceful. Sometimes, especially between 2 and 4 in the morning when the rest of the hospital seem to fall into that strange suspended quiet that only exists in places where people are either born or dying. [00:01:07] The fluorescent lights dimmed in some of the outer hallways. [00:01:10] The phones rang less. [00:01:13] Even the parents sleeping in recliners seemed to breathe softer. [00:01:18] It was as if the whole floor understood that the smallest lives required the gentlest kind of silence. [00:01:27] That silence is what gets to me now. [00:01:30] But back then, the silence is what I loved. [00:01:34] I was 29 when this story happened, and by that point I knew the rhythms of the unit better than I knew my own apartment. I knew which incubators had a tendency to make a soft clicking sound. [00:01:46] I knew which overhead lights buzzed just loudly enough to get under your skin. [00:01:51] And I knew the break room was the only place on the floor where you could sometimes steal a 10 minute nap and feel like a human being again. [00:02:01] The break room sat just off a long central hallway that connected labor and delivery to the nicu. No windows, just beige walls and a vending machine that took all of your money and gave you nothing. [00:02:16] Inside there was a saggy blue vinyl couch pushed against a far wall beneath a bulletin board cluttered with outdated memos and sympathy cards. [00:02:25] People laughed at the room all the time. We called it the bunker. [00:02:30] Said if the apocalypse came, we'd survive in here on peanut butter crackers and day old coffee. [00:02:37] On the night of this encounter, I went in to take my break around 3:20 in the morning. [00:02:44] It had been a bad night. One of my chargers had been weaning poorly from oxygen, and every time her stats dropped, her mother looked at me with those wide, wrecked eyes that seemed to ask an impossible question of me. [00:02:59] Are you sure my baby's going to live? [00:03:02] By the time another nurse only offered to watch my pod for a few minutes, I felt hollow. [00:03:08] I remember heating up coffee. I remember sitting down on the couch, shoes on and checking my phone. [00:03:16] 3:22. [00:03:18] Then I remembered nothing. [00:03:20] No dreams. Just that heavy blackness of sleep you fall into when your body takes over and decides you don't get a say. [00:03:29] What woke me up was the sound of knocking in the break room door opening. [00:03:34] At first I thought I'd overslept, the room still dark except for a strip of yellow light slicing in from the hallway. [00:03:41] Someone stood just outside, backlit enough that I could only make out the shape. [00:03:46] A woman, medium height, her arms folded. [00:03:50] Emily, can you come out here for a second? [00:03:53] I recognized her voice almost immediately. [00:03:56] Sandra was our night manager, mid-50s, with reading glasses on a chain always around her neck. She had that unnerving ability to walk into a room and notice everything. [00:04:10] She wasn't exactly warm, but she was steady. And on the nights when everything started tilting sideways, steady was good. [00:04:18] I rubbed my eyes as I squinted at the microwave clock. [00:04:22] 3:44. [00:04:24] Did I miss something? [00:04:26] We need to talk. In the hallway. [00:04:28] Her voice wasn't exactly urgent, but it was tight. [00:04:32] That got me moving. And the nicu. We need to talk could mean anything from a parent complaint to a lost child. [00:04:42] I swung my legs off the couch and reached for the light switch. Don't, sandra said sharply, but my hand had already found it. The fluorescent light snapped on. [00:04:53] At first my brain refused to make sense of what I was seeing. [00:04:57] The break room was exactly the same as it had been when I fell asleep, except for on the far side of the room. Curled up on the recliner was Sandra, fast asleep, her glasses hanging from her neck just against her chin. [00:05:12] I remember feeling something happen inside me. Not panic, just a total nauseating failure of reality. [00:05:20] Like my mind had stepped into what I thought was solid ground and gone straight through because the door was still open and somebody I thought was still standing there. [00:05:32] I turned around slowly. [00:05:35] The hallway was empty. No footsteps, no retreating shadow. [00:05:39] No sounds at all. [00:05:41] Just that silence I mentioned earlier. [00:05:45] Sandra jerked awake from the recliner. Jesus, Emily, what time is it? [00:05:50] I must have startled her, but I just stared at her. [00:05:54] I could see her trying to make sense of what I was doing. She squinted at me, and then the open door. [00:06:01] Emily, what's wrong? [00:06:02] I didn't answer. A second later, her face changed. She was fully awake now. [00:06:09] What happened, Emily? [00:06:11] I pointed at the doorway. [00:06:13] I heard you open the door. [00:06:15] You were standing there. [00:06:17] You were wanting me to come into the hallway. [00:06:20] Sandra looked at me for a long second before pushing herself upright in the chair. [00:06:25] I've been in here for 20 minutes now. You were? Yes. [00:06:30] I've been Right here. [00:06:32] But you were just. [00:06:34] I stopped. [00:06:36] There wasn't a sentence that made sense after this. [00:06:39] Sandra stood and crossed the room, peering into the hallway. Empty. [00:06:44] She looked left and she looked right, then pulled the door open wider. [00:06:49] Maybe you were confused. Maybe it was Mary Ann. [00:06:52] No, it was you. [00:06:55] I know your voice. [00:06:58] Sandra got quiet, and then she just asked, what exactly did it say? [00:07:04] She didn't ask me what I said. She said, what did it say? [00:07:08] I looked at her, and for the first time since I'd known her, Sandra seemed vaguely afraid. [00:07:13] It said, emily, can you come out here for a second? [00:07:18] Sandra's face went pale in a way I'd never seen before. [00:07:21] She stepped back into the room and shut the door. [00:07:24] There are few moments in life where the whole atmosphere changes so quickly and and so completely that your body notices before your mind does. [00:07:33] The air felt different after she shut the door. [00:07:37] Smaller, pressurized, like the room had become a sealed container. [00:07:42] Sandra lowered her voice. [00:07:45] Did it ask you to come all the way into the hallway? Yes. [00:07:49] And did you? No. [00:07:52] She walked over to the coffee maker and just stood there with both her hands braced on the counter. For a second I thought maybe I'd imagined the fear in her face. Maybe she was about to tell me I'd had one of those waking dreams instead. [00:08:08] When I started here, one of the older nurses told me to never follow anyone on this floor unless I could see their feet. [00:08:18] I laughed because that was just so absurd. [00:08:21] She looked at me deadly serious, not laughing back. [00:08:25] She told me that if somebody calls you from the hallway, turn the lights on first. [00:08:31] If they're standing in the hall and you can't see below their knees, don't go. [00:08:35] And if you hear someone asking for help, get another nurse before you move. [00:08:40] What are you talking about? [00:08:42] Sandra looked at the door before answering. [00:08:45] The hospital was renovated in the 80s. [00:08:48] Before that, the woman's wing was older, a lot older. [00:08:53] There was a nursery where the family consult room is now. [00:08:57] Back then, babies didn't stay with their mothers the way they do now. [00:09:01] They lined them up behind glass. [00:09:04] And there was a fire. [00:09:07] Never made the news the way it should have. [00:09:10] Officially, no infant deaths attributed to the fire. [00:09:14] But there was smoke, confusion. [00:09:17] The records got muddy. [00:09:20] One of the babies was unaccounted for almost three hours. What do you mean, unaccounted for? [00:09:25] I mean no one could say where she was. [00:09:29] Did they find her? [00:09:31] Sandra looked at me for so long I wish I hadn't asked. [00:09:35] They found her in an old closet where this break room is now. [00:09:42] I tried to say something rational, something about urban legends, about nurses passing down ghost stories to haze the new ones. But there was a part of me, some deep animal part, that already knew this wasn't a moment for rationality. [00:09:58] Not because I believed her story, but because I knew the terror on her face was real. [00:10:05] But what does that have to do with me and this thing pretending to be you, asking me into the hallway? [00:10:12] She likes tired people. [00:10:14] I hated the way my stomach dropped. [00:10:18] She Sandra rubbed her temples and closed her eyes before opening them again. [00:10:24] Over the years, people falling asleep and hearing someone they know call out to them, always from just beyond the light. [00:10:32] Often a co worker. One time it was a doctor, once a mother, who wasn't there that night. [00:10:37] Only one nurse has ever followed it. [00:10:40] What happened? They found her in the corner of the hallway, just outside the door, catatonic, staring into the wall. She never came back. [00:10:49] I wanted to leave. I wanted to march straight out of the room into the bright, noisy center of the units where monitors were beeping and babies were crying. [00:10:58] But the idea of that door opening scared me. [00:11:04] You should go home. You're too tired to be here, sandra said, as if she was reading my mind as I went for the door. The overhead light inside the break room flickered just once, but both Sandra and I froze. [00:11:17] In any hospital, weird electrical stuff happens. Bulbs go bad, circuits hiccup, equipment throws strange little hissy fits. [00:11:27] But then from outside the door came the soft squeak of a sneaker. [00:11:32] One, then another, then another. Sandra and I looked at the door. [00:11:38] Slow, measured footsteps passed outside. [00:11:41] They weren't hurried. [00:11:43] They weren't the cadence of anyone on staff. [00:11:46] Sandra mouthed, don't move. [00:11:49] Don't make a sound. [00:11:52] The footsteps stopped directly outside the break room. I realized with a sudden rush there was no shadow under the door. [00:12:01] The door had a big gap at the bottom, maybe half an inch, enough to let plenty of light in from the hallway. [00:12:08] If somebody was standing there. [00:12:11] I should have seen the interruption from their shoe. But that strip of yellow light remained whole. [00:12:18] Sandra? Emily? Are you guys in there? [00:12:20] Came Marianne's voice. [00:12:23] I don't know why, but I wanted to believe it. I bolted up to open the door, but Sandra caught me. Are you insane? What are you doing? [00:12:33] It's Marianne. [00:12:35] Wait. [00:12:37] The voice came again. [00:12:39] Guys, open up. I need you. [00:12:41] It was Marianne's voice, perfectly. [00:12:44] Sandra didn't let go. I could feel my pulse kicking in my wrists against her fingers. [00:12:49] The voice changed a little bit. It softened slightly. Emily. The way it said my name was somehow the worst thing that happened. That night. Not because it sounded monstrous, because it sounded familiar in a way that reached deeper than mimicry, intimate. [00:13:08] I felt tears spring down my eyes because this was no longer Mary Ann's voice. [00:13:15] It was my mother's. [00:13:16] My mother had been dead for three years now. She died of a stroke two months before I ever took this job. [00:13:23] Emily, come here, sweetheart. [00:13:26] My knees gave out and Sandra caught me and she shouted to the door, you are not welcome here. [00:13:33] We are not coming out. And just like that, the hallway fell silent. [00:13:38] My eyes moved down to that yellow line of light coming in from under the door, still visible, except slightly interrupted. [00:13:49] There weren't shoes, not a shadow. [00:13:52] There were fingers. [00:13:54] Tiny fingers. [00:13:56] They started slowly, curling into the gap, pale and impossibly small, like the hand of a newborn, yet they were somehow too long, with too many joints, bending where human fingers don't bend. [00:14:13] Sandra kicked the door, and the fingers vanished. [00:14:17] At that exact second, all the alarms in the unit went off. Not one, not several. [00:14:23] All monitor chimes, oxygen alerts, a cascade of electric sounds erupting all at once in the icu. [00:14:31] Sandra yanked open the door, and the hallway was empty, the alarm still going off. There was no Mary Ann. There wasn't my mother, and there was no phantom, dead newborn child. [00:14:42] We ran into the alarms. [00:14:44] We asked Mary Ann what was happening, but before she could answer, all the alarms stopped. [00:14:50] We checked the monitor logs. [00:14:52] There was a cluster of alarms that had registered, all at nearly the same moment. [00:14:58] It was like all the machines glitched at the same time. We called it, and they said maybe it was a network issue, but I never believed that. [00:15:06] I also never took another nap in that break room. [00:15:09] Actually, that's not true. I just never set foot in that break room again. [00:15:14] I still work nights, though, but I transferred after the pandemic to a different hospital across the state. It's a bigger unit, a newer building, better staffed, though still, sometimes at three in the morning, the floor gets that quiet. [00:15:29] And every now and then I wake from a heavy, dark kind of sleep. From the chair at my desk. For that one awful second before I look up, I am back in that break room, hearing my mother's voice telling me to come into the hallway. [00:15:47] Thank you for listening to this story. [00:15:50] This story was sent to me recently, and I think it scared me because it plays on something so simple, so human trust. [00:16:00] We spend so much of our lives learning which voices mean safety, which faces mean help, which doors are safe to open without thinking. [00:16:09] But a story such as this reminds us how terrifying it would be for, or something unknown to slip inside that trust and wear it like a mask. [00:16:20] Maybe that's what makes some hauntings feel so much darker than others. [00:16:25] Not that you feel threatened for your life, but that the hauntings themselves threaten those very instincts you rely on to survive. [00:16:34] I have no show announcements this week, but if you'd like a shout out at the end of an episode, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear a ghost story? [00:16:43] But as always, I'm just glad to have you all as campers on this journey. So please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. If you are enjoying the show, please leave a review. I would love to hear from you. [00:16:59] Until next time.