THE PATIENT IN ROOM 13
THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN
Wednesday, October 18th – 6:00 PM
The hospital library was on the first floor, a large room with tall windows and shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling. It was used mostly for storage now, filled with old medical journals and dusty textbooks that no one had opened in years. But Sloane knew that somewhere in this room, hidden among the discarded volumes, was the history of the hospital.
The history of the land.
The history of the forgotten.
She walked through the stacks, her fingers trailing along the spines of the books. The voices in her head were restless, sensing that she was close to something important.
“The records are here,” Marian said. “The ones your father found. The ones the administration tried to destroy.”
“Where?”
“In the basement. Beneath the library. There is a room that has been sealed for decades.”
Sloane stopped.
Another sealed room.
“How do I get in?”
“There is a door. Behind the reference desk. It is locked, but you have the key.”
Sloane reached into her pocket.
The key was warm.
She walked to the reference desk.
Behind it, a small door, painted the same color as the wall, almost invisible. She pressed her hand against it.
The wood was warm.
She inserted the key.
The lock turned.
The door swung open.
The room beyond was small, barely larger than a closet. Shelves lined the walls, filled with ledgers and files and boxes of documents. The air was thick with dust and the smell of old paper.
Sloane stepped inside.
The voices in her head grew louder.
“The records,” Marian said. “The names. The children. The forgotten.”
Sloane pulled a ledger from the shelf.
It was old, the leather cover cracked and faded. She opened it.
The pages were filled with handwritten entries, the ink brown with age. Dates. Names. Causes of death.
“1689. Child. Female. Approximately 7 years. Cause of death: suffocation. Buried in unmarked grave.”
“1692. Child. Male. Approximately 5 years. Cause of death: starvation. Buried in unmarked grave.”
“1703. Child. Female. Approximately 10 years. Cause of death: exposure. Buried in unmarked grave.”
Page after page. Year after year. Children. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
All forgotten.
All buried.
All waiting.
Sloane turned to the next page.
“1720. Child. Female. Approximately 4 years. Cause of death: unknown. Buried in unmarked grave.”
No name.
No history.
No memory.
“The first one,” Marian whispered. “The one who started it all.”
“The Watcher.”
“The Watcher. The child. The memory.”
Sloane traced her finger over the entry.
The paper was warm.
She closed the ledger.
She spent the next hour going through the records.
There were dozens of ledgers, each one covering a different time period. The entries became more detailed as the years passed, but the names remained absent. The children were identified only by their ages and the dates of their deaths.
Some of the entries included notes.
“Child was found wandering the streets. No family. No home. No name. Committed to the poorhouse.”
“Child was brought to the sanitarium by church officials. Accused of witchcraft. Refused to confess.”
“Child was deemed incorrigible. Parents requested confinement.”
The stories were all the same. Children who were different. Children who were difficult. Children who were unwanted. They were locked away, forgotten, buried.
And their memories lived on.
In the Watcher.
In the tree.
In the room.
Sloane closed the last ledger.
She sat in the darkness of the small room, the weight of centuries pressing down on her.
“They were children,” she said. “Just children.”
“Children who were forgotten,” Marian said. “Children who were buried. Children who became something else.”
“Something hungry.”
“Something desperate.”
“Something that refused to be forgotten.”
Sloane stood up.
She walked out of the room.
She had what she came for.
The corridor outside the library was empty.
The hospital was quiet at this hour, the day staff gone home, the night staff just beginning their shifts. The lights hummed, casting long shadows on the floor.
Sloane walked toward the elevator.
The key was warm in her pocket.
The voices were quiet.
But she could feel the tree stirring.
“You have learned the truth,” the tree whispered. “The children. The forgotten. The ones who made me.”
“They didn’t make you. They fed you. There’s a difference.”
“They are part of me. I am part of them. We are one.”
“You are not one. You are many. And you deserve to be remembered.”
The tree was silent.
Sloane pressed the elevator button.
The doors opened.
She stepped inside.
The third floor was chaos.
Nurses ran through the corridors. Patients stood in doorways, their faces confused. Alarms blared.
Sloane grabbed a nurse’s arm.
“What happened?”
“Patient. She collapsed. Her heart stopped. We’re trying to resuscitate.”
“Who?”
“Iris Delaney. Room 312.”
Sloane ran.
Iris’s room was crowded with medical staff. A doctor was performing CPR. A nurse was preparing a defibrillator. Machines beeped and screamed.
Sloane pushed through the crowd.
“What happened?”
“Sudden cardiac arrest. No warning. She was fine an hour ago.”
“She’s not fine. She’s never been fine.”
The doctor looked up at her.
“Dr. Vance, you need to leave. We’re doing everything we can.”
“She’s not having a heart attack. Something else is happening.”
The doctor ignored her.
The defibrillator charged.
“Clear.”
The shock sent Iris’s body arching off the bed.
The monitors beeped.
No change.
“Again.”
Another shock.
The monitors beeped.
A rhythm.
Weak. Irregular. But there.
“We have a pulse,” the doctor said.
Sloane pushed to the bedside.
Iris’s eyes were open.
Her lips moved.
“Remember,” she whispered.
Her eyes closed.
She was alive.
But she was not the same.