THE PATIENT IN ROOM 13
THE ADMINISTRATOR’S CONFESSION
Thursday, October 19th – 5:30 PM
The administrator’s office was the same as Sloane remembered. Large. Polished. Overlooking the city. But the woman behind the desk was different. The mask had slipped. Dr. Helena Marsh looked tired. Old. Afraid.
“Close the door,” she said.
Sloane closed it.
“Sit down.”
Sloane sat.
Dr. Marsh folded her hands on the desk.
“I’ve been at this hospital for thirty-five years. I started as a nurse on the third floor. I saw things. Terrible things. Things I tried to forget.”
“Did you?”
“No. The memories stayed. Buried. Festering. Eating me from the inside.”
“That’s what the Watcher does. It feeds on the memories you try to bury.”
“I know that now. I didn’t know it then.”
“What did you see, Dr. Marsh?”
Dr. Marsh looked out the window.
“The patients who were sent to Room 13. They were not like the others. They were… different. They heard things. Saw things. Things that weren’t there. Or maybe they were there, and the rest of us couldn’t see them.”
“Your father believed the patients in Room 13 were sensitive. Connected to something beyond the physical world.”
“Your father was a brilliant man. Obsessed. But brilliant. He believed he could help them. He believed he could cure them.”
“Did he?”
“He tried. But the Watcher was too strong. It consumed them. One by one.”
“And you let it happen.”
“I didn’t let it happen. I couldn’t stop it. No one could.”
“You could have told someone. The police. The media. The families.”
“And what would have happened? The hospital would have been shut down. The patients would have been transferred. The Watcher would have followed them. It would have found new hosts. New victims. The cycle would have continued.”
“So you did nothing.”
“I did what I could. I kept the room sealed. I kept the files hidden. I tried to protect the patients who were still alive.”
“By lying to their families? By telling them their loved ones were dead?”
“I was trying to protect them. The families. They would have come here. They would have demanded answers. They would have opened the door.”
“And the Watcher would have taken them too.”
“Yes.”
Sloane leaned back in her chair.
“Who else knew?”
Dr. Marsh looked down at her hands.
“The administrators. The doctors who worked on the third floor. The nurses who staffed it. We all knew. We all kept the secret.”
“How many?”
“Dozens. Over the years.”
“And they all kept quiet?”
“They were afraid. The Watcher—it gets inside your head. It shows you things. It makes you remember things you’d rather forget. It keeps you silent.”
“Not me.”
“You’re different. You’re the Keeper. The Watcher can’t control you.”
“No. It can’t.”
Dr. Marsh looked up.
“What are you going to do now, Dr. Vance?”
“I’m going to tell the truth. All of it. The room. The Watcher. The patients. The deaths. The cover-up.”
“The hospital will be destroyed.”
“The hospital should be destroyed. It has been a prison, not a place of healing.”
“What about the patients? The ones who are still alive? Where will they go?”
“We will find them new homes. New doctors. New hope.”
“And the Watcher?”
Sloane touched her chest.
“The Watcher is with me. It is part of me now. It will not hurt anyone else.”
“Can you be sure?”
“I can be sure.”
Dr. Marsh was silent for a long time.
Then she said, “There’s something else. Something I’ve never told anyone.”
“What?”
“The bodies. The patients who died on the third floor. They weren’t all buried in the hospital cemetery. Some of them… some of them are still here.”
Sloane’s blood ran cold.
“Where?”
“In the basement. Behind Room 13. There’s a chamber. A cold storage room. That’s where they were kept. Before the funeral home came to collect them.”
“But the funeral home never came?”
“Not for all of them. Some of the patients had no families. No one to claim them. No one to bury them.”
“So they were left there?”
“They were left there. For years. Decades.”
Sloane stood up.
“Show me.”
Dr. Marsh led her through the basement.
They passed the boiler room. The tunnel entrance. The door to Room 13. The red light was gone, the symbols dark, the door cold.
At the end of the corridor, another door.
This one was not sealed with iron. It was made of wood, old and warped, with a simple lock.
Dr. Marsh produced a key.
“The funeral home was supposed to collect them. But the owner was paid to look the other way. The bodies were never claimed. Never buried. Never remembered.”
She unlocked the door.
The room beyond was cold.
Very cold.
Sloane stepped inside.
The walls were lined with shelves. On the shelves, forms wrapped in white sheets.
Bodies.
Dozens of them.
“This is where they were kept,” Dr. Marsh said. “This is where they stayed.”
“For how long?”
“The oldest ones have been here since the 1970s.”
Sloane walked to the nearest shelf.
She pulled back the sheet.
The body beneath was mummified, the skin dark and shrunken, the eyes closed. It was impossible to tell the age or gender.
“Who was this?”
Dr. Marsh looked at a label on the shelf.
“Patient 13. John Doe. Died 1975.”
“Patient 13?”
“The thirteenth patient to die in Room 13.”
Sloane covered the body.
She walked to the next shelf.
“Patient 14. Jane Doe. Died 1976.”
Another shelf.
“Patient 15. Mary Smith. Died 1978.”
Another.
“Patient 16. Arthur Vance. Died 1982.”
Sloane’s heart stopped.
She pulled back the sheet.
Her father’s face stared back at her.