Ghost Halls

There is a time during the night shift when there seems to be an absolute lull in activity, when the patients are or at least should be tucked away in bed, and the nurses can get a cup of coffee. It's typically different for every floor, but sometime between midnight and 6 am there is a break.

On a floor, the charge nurse will typically decide to turn the lights down low and help their patients try and get some sleep by trying to be quiet, or even closing the doors. To be honest, I really don't know the ins and outs of nurse staffing, but it is obvious to me when things are not going as they should.


Getting even simple calls can be frustrating, since you eventually have to go to that floor and sign the order you give over the phone. Too many calls, and you spend a great deal of your night conducting brief phone conversations and trying to catch up with all of your signatures.

I often conduct my "signature rounds" during the wee hours. 3 or 4 am is my favorite time. This I call the "Witching Hour". Almost all the lights are turned down low throughout the hospital, and the staff is at their 24 hour lowest number of people. Clusters of employees group togethor in their departments' stations or lounges like a colony of insects to a light. Often times even the permanent night shifters are too tired or dazed to keep up a conversation. Wierd things occur during this time period. Or maybe this time period is so non-conducive to human attentiveness, it seems like everything that happens is weird.

Silently floating from one floor to the other in the shady dark, I pass by closed doors of sleeping patients to find racks of charts I need to sign. I come across the occasional sleeping nurse, sitting at a station,their head over an open chart, pen in hand, and eyes closed. It's not polite to wake them unless you need something, and then I usually like to find someone else.

One night, when I was relatively new, I remember emerging from a dark hallway to a dimly lit nurse's station. It was empty. About 0330. The computer at the secretary's seat was dinging. This means a patient is calling out for a nurse's assistance. The sound is usually a two tone doorbell sound, but when there is more than one, the patient bells start to overlap one another and sound like a confused keyboardist. This time the dinging sounded so bad it must have been at least 5 or 6 people needing something. No one was answering. No one was around, or even within calling distance. In fact, at that moment, it seemed like I was the only one in the entire hospital, surrounded by a sea of patients in beds, all needing help.

Then down the hall, I head a very old man calling me. He sounded like he was about 80 years old, and he sounded scared.

"HEELLLLP MEEEEE!!"

Long pause. . . .

"CAN SOMEONE PLEEEAAASEE HHEEEELP MEEEEE!"

There was a note of despair and frustration in that frail, old voice I can still remember. I waited for a nurse to emerge from one of the many doors to deal with him. Nobody emerged. As I was signing my charts, I kept getting more and more freaked out. The bells were starting to sound louder, each one a distress call from a patient's room, the strange emptiness of the nurse's station, and finally the wailing down the hall.

I finished my orders and decided to explore the source of the calling, and surprisingly, couldn't pinpoint it. Every time I thought I was going into the right room, it turned out to be the wrong one. Just silent darkness, with a sleeping patient lying in bed. In the hall again, I would stop and listen, looking up the dark hall and down again, eventually becoming very frustrated and a little disoriented. I didn't feel well. I wasn't used to being up so late. I had too much coffee. I was sweating a little, and my pager was vibrating away for another floor. I went into a couple more rooms, thinking I would find an old man lying in bed, in pain or something.

I did this about four times, each room becoming more frustrated, when finally he stopped.

I listened, and could only hear the dinging of the computer bells at the station. Relieved, I began walking away from the floor. It was too weird, and I had stuff to do. The nurse's station was still empty when I left, and the computer was still dinging away.

Looking back, I figured the nurses were probably in rooms draining foley's, checking vitals, but some were no doubt elsewhere. Who knows where.

Since then, I have learned that many patients call out at night for various reasons. If they come in confused, chances are they start acting bizarre at night. Most people in healthcare have great stories about strange behavior, and a man who calls out all night for help is just one in a million.

But sometimes I wonder if he really needed something, and I feel bad for giving up the search. In fact, for all I know, he could have checked into the great hospital in the sky right then when he grew quiet.

Sometimes, I'm embarassed to admit, I wonder if he existed at all - maybe an imaginary voice of all the patients' collective fear and need, or a lost spirit searching for help, the same way I was searching for him. I have never had that disoriented feeling before or since. It's really much easier to think he was just a senile old man who simply called out at times for no discernable reason.

Eventually the lights come back on, new shifts filter into the hospital, and finally sunlight comes through the windows. Patients are seen, concerns are addressed, and the hospital becomes a busy workplace of staff and patients.

A truly different place than the eerie dark halls during the Witching Hours.