The Doctor
Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to an actual medical emergency, and graciously defer to my morbid expertise when it comes to matters of the body. There are no arguments when we step foot in the hospital or watch an ambulance pull up before us. It’s just the superstitions that they can’t take my word on. I guess it makes them uncomfortable, the idea that these emergency responders are superstitious. They don’t want to sit in the back of an ambulance one day, in critical condition, relying on someone who believes in ghosts. They don’t want to wonder if the only person that can get them to the hospital alive is worried about the full moon above or the thought of a black cat across their path. So I let the issue drop. But for the record, some paramedics do avoid picking up shifts on the full moon. My parents told me all about the folklore of EMS. How you don’t say the “Q word” on shift. How the full moon is always a busy night for them. How you can’t go on duty expecting to be able to sleep, or read, because you’ll be sure to get a million calls if you do. You have to sleep with your boots on and your stethoscope on your neck before you rest your eyes, and be pleasantly surprised when you wake up to your relief crew at the end of your shift. If you run out of a supply and don’t restock it right away, you’re sure to need it desperately on your next call. And never, ever, try to dine in at a restaurant while you’re on duty. You’ll be called out before you can even finish ordering. I don’t think they ever meant to scare us with these little superstitions. They had plenty of other stories for that. We called them the “Little White Coffin” stories. They functioned like the original Grimm’s fairy tales, a plethora of dark and at times sinister tales meant to keep us safe from things that could hurt us. They established and explained the most important rules we had to follow. “You shouldn’t hang upside down on the monkey bars.” “Don’t jump between rocks at the park” “No riding your bike out of the neighborhood alone” “Stay far away from the wheels and back of the school bus” “No hard candy until you’re older” “You absolutely can’t wear Heeley’s” “No bubblegum machine bouncy balls, even if they’re only a quarter.” We would ask why, and Mom would gently but firmly explain that she had treated a young patient, a child about our age, who had fooled around with such hazards. “And you know what happened?” Mom would ask, “Their mom had to buy a little white coffin to bury them in.” Morbid, definitely. But I never tried to swallow a bouncy ball, and kept to the neighborhood when I went out to play. I survived long past those threats, and as I grew up, so did the Little White Coffin stories. They’d warn us about the dangers of wandering around dark cities at night. The perils waiting in the woods, not only at the hands of wild animals but at the bottom of steep cliffs ringed by slippery walking paths, when travelled alone. They fervently warned us against the street drugs they often saw on the job. I remember one night when I was a junior in high school, when my mom had burst through the door after a particularly difficult call. She questioned me, panicked, about any friends I might have had that could have been pushing me to go to parties and try things. It wasn’t until I had thoroughly assured her of my relative unpopularity that she relaxed, and explained that she spent the last hour of her night tying to resuscitate one of my own classmates after an apparent overdose. “He thought it was just weed, but they’re lacing it with something horrible nowadays.” She explained, shaken. “It took five rounds of compressions to get a pulse back.” It was hard not to wonder who had been her patient when I returned to school on the following Monday. I’ll admit I listened a little closer during attendance, in case there was a name missing. My parents’ stories got much more detailed once I earned my EMT certificate. I gained access to a lot of brand new Little White Coffin stories after I started on the truck, like I had become a peer to confide in as well as a daughter to protect. It’s like they were trying to brace me, to prepare me for the worst things I could see on the job. I took their stories to heart, and even gained a few of my own. After a few years, I didn’t think they could say anything about EMS that would phase me. So when my mom mentioned that there was one story she had held back, fearing it to be too unsettling, I have to admit my stomach dropped a bit. She explained that she had neglected to share it, worried that I would be afraid to go anywhere near the hospital if she told me when I was younger. But I was much older, the day she revealed this. And this is the story she told me. When my mom was a young paramedic, she worked for a hospital located in the mountainous woods of Northern New Jersey. Most of the time, when people think of New Jersey, they think of the area surrounding New York City, with its sprawling urban streets and cushion of brightly lit suburbs. In truth, the entire state is pretty densely populated. But there are dark, isolating sections of the state that make you wonder just how populated they could actually be. You wonder just how much could be hidden in the trees out there, far away from the bright lights and safe din of the city. The hospital my mom worked for at the time was, and still is, relatively small. It only has two actual hospital buildings with emergency rooms, situated close to the suburbs, but its paramedics were expected to serve the large rural areas to the north with just as much speed and quality of care as the area immediately surrounding the hospitals. So, like hermit crabs finding abandoned shells to nest in, the hospital made a habit of renting old, unused medical complexes for their paramedics to use as their quarters while on duty. Stationing them far away from the main buildings allowed the hospital to extend its reach into North Jersey. This is how my mom found herself spending long, dark nights in a vacant mining hospital, alone except for her crew mates and the chattering woods that surrounded the small building. For cost reasons, the hospital chose to leave the rest of the facility unused, maintaining a small office area for the crew to post up in. Though it was well furnished with cots, Lay-Z-Boys, a microwave, a refrigerator, and easy access to a private bathroom, the bright light of the added lamps did nothing to ease the feeling that they were disturbing a place that had been dormant for quite some time, and probably should have stayed that way. But, the old hospital space was needed once again, to provide aid to the community. Locals had reported enterprising individuals breaking into the nearly abandoned building, so security guards were hired to patrol the area and ensure the crew could return to their quarters without fear. The security team walked through the building constantly during the day, watching for curious explorers and potential squatters. They had been initially hired to patrol the entire building at night as well, in a valiant effort to reassure the paramedics of their own safety. This practice was resoundingly vetoed by said paramedics on their very first night in the hospital. The well meaning security guards shined their bright flashlights into the startled, irritated faces of the medics on duty, waking them up and prompting a string of creative expletives as they expressed their displeasure. So the security guards left them alone. Mom would see them patrolling around the building in their car, and checking the other rooms with their bright flashlights, but they were careful to skip the medic quarters each night. Mom was stationed there for months, and grew familiar with the echoing silence of the empty halls, the creaking and settling of the old building. Watching the glow of the flashlights drifting between beds in the old patient ward across the building, just barely visible through the windows of her quarters, was soothing. In spite of the little bit of anxiety poking the back of her mind, likely a nagging fear that the guards would unexpectedly wake them up again, it was nice to feel looked after on the long, dark nighttime shifts. Emergency medicine, in spite of its inherent dependence on teamwork, has an uncanny isolating effect on most responders. There was this expectation, as my mom had experienced it, that you had to bear your burdens alone. Keep your scene under control, your ambulance clean, and your patient alive. It was, and still is, an exhausting job, and demanded a lot of energy from the paramedics posted in that old building. The deepest hours of the night would settle into a warm, delicate silence as each medic snuck a short nap in between calls. Boots at the ready, bundled in their heavy uniform coats, staving off the ambient anxiety that being on duty imbued them with, they curled up on different bunks and couches, and they rested. It was on a night like this that my Mom first saw something truly strange. She laid in her bunk, kept awake with the fear of missing a call and the persistent snoring of her partner. She felt grimy, still thinking about the filth she encountered during their last call, which occurred at a hoarder’s house. They had barely spent any time in the house itself, quickly moving their patient to the warmth and safety of the ambulance. Still, Mom couldn’t shake the memory of the maggot infested plates of rotten food that balanced precariously atop carefully curated piles of newspapers, plastic lawn chairs, and bags of clothing that stood as tall as she was. The breadcrumb trails of mouse poop that lead from these platters and down to the floor didn’t do anything to ease her mind. It was the kind of detail that Mom would often catch on scene, a quality that made her an excellent paramedic, and made it difficult to move on from such a vivid call. She resigned herself to what was shaping up to be a sleepless night, and crept out of her bunk. She would just have to grit her teeth and get through the rest of the shift, resolving to scrub as much of herself as she could without actually taking a shower. Maybe she’d read a bit, or maybe the partial cleanse would soothe her enough to fall asleep. She snuck into the bathroom, a small single-seater with the added benefit of a shower stall, a luxury that called to Mom as she slipped inside and closed the door silently behind her. She turned the sink on, silently thanking God for keeping the plumbing of the old building intact. Mom watched the steam rise up from the sink, admiring the plumes swirling in the cool, dry air of the bathroom for a moment. She didn’t want to spend too long watching the mirror fog, though. She rolled her sleeves up as high as they could go, turned the cold tap a bit to ensure she wouldn’t be scalded, and dove in. The hot water and cheap hand soap had exactly the effect Mom was hoping it would have. The second her hands hit the water, her entire body relaxed a bit. She washed her hands and forearms like she was scrubbing in for surgery, digging under each and every fingernail, squishing the soap between her fingers, sweeping the bubbles over her elbows and awkwardly sticking them under the tap to rinse it all off. It immediately improved her outlook on the rest of the night. She chased this newly restored peace, washing her face, wetting her hair slightly before braiding it back tight against her skull, even stripping her boots and socks off and washing what she could of her feet and calves. Finally satisfied, she sat back and took in the carnage of her sink shower. Discarded paper towels littered the area immediately surrounding the garbage can, which was already overflowing when she started this clandestine bath. While she had done her best to keep the room fairly dry, a few small puddles of water reflected on the slick tiles around the sink, which was thoroughly drenched. Steam filled the room, condensing thickly on the mirror as it rose from the tap, which was still pushing out wonderfully hot water at full blast. Mom shut the sink off, stopping the flow of water. She hadn’t realized how loud the rush of the water had been, echoing in the small room, until it was gone. She finished drying off, put her boots back on, and opened the door to allow the bathroom to dry out as she finished tidying up. Cold air rushed into the bathroom as Mom collected her discarded paper towels, using them to mop up the puddles she had left on the floor and sink before shoving them into the garbage can. She pressed hard on the pile of towels, compressing them enough to tie off the black garbage bag within. She tugged hard on the bag to try and free it from the can, but the vacuum of air within was working against her. It took an embarrassing amount of wiggling and yanking, but she finally pulled the bag free from the can. Stepping back, triumphant, she turned away from the garbage can. She glanced back at the mirror, and jumped out of her skin. A figure stood directly behind her in the reflection, looking over her shoulder, identity obscured by the condensation. Mom spun around, swearing. She assumed one of the other paramedics had crept up on her, either her partner or one of the men on the other ambulance unit stationed there with them. But when she turned around, there was no one there. She was initially confused, but quickly became irritated. Clearly, one of the members of the brain trust she worked with was trying to tease her. She was intimately familiar with this brand of jackassery, having been both the victim and perpetrator of a number of EMS jokes. Elaborate pranks, running gags, morbidly hilarious uses of cadaver brains and intubation kits, she’d seen it all. And she was not in the mood for any of it at the moment. Mom grabbed the garbage bag and swept out of the bathroom, looking around the main room to see which idiot had decided to sneak up on her in the middle of the night. Her partner continued snoring away in the bunk where Mom left her. Around the corner of the angled room, mom could see both men on the other unit still nestled under their blankets and coats. The only activity in the room was the gentle sway of the oscillating space heater and the glow of the television, which showed only a blank blue screen. Mom considered the relative innocence of the other paramedics, as well as the bad luck she would absolutely summon if she woke them up for any reason but an impending emergency call. She huffed. They earned a wake up call, she decided. One of them had spooked her in the middle of the night at their spooky-ass building, and now they were pretending to be asleep in order to escape her wrath. She started walking towards her partner, ready to poke her “awake”, when she heard something. The sound of running water stopped her in her tracks. She stood there, confused. Hadn’t she turned the water off? She was certain she remembered turning the water off. She dropped the garbage bag by the door to their quarters and went back into the bathroom. Sure enough, the hot water sprayed into the sink basin on full blast, as billowing steam rose up once again. “Huh.” Mom considered the tap for a moment, malevolent prank now forgotten, before she reached forward and turned it off. She twisted the valves hard, already trying to explain the phenomenon away. She returned to her bunk, now blissfully drowsy. Sitting on the thin mattress, she wracked her brain, trying to remember when she had turned the sink back on, and why. It was as she considered some faint desire to wash her hands again after handling the garbage bag that she heard it. A small creak, too quiet to wake any of the sleeping paramedics, coming from the bathroom. A second later, the sound of flowing water rose up again. Mom leapt off her bunk and crossed to the bathroom, eyes bugging out of her head as she reached the door. She peeked carefully into the room just in time to see the hot water handle twisting on, completely on its own, before it went still. She stood there for a moment, staring at the running water, awake with fear. Her mind raced, trying desperately to find a reasonable explanation for what she just saw. Nothing came to her. She stepped up to the basin, trying to ignore the figure once again lurking over her shoulder in the mirror’s reflection as she washed her hands one more time. She turned the tap off, dried her hands, and used the paper towel to turn the light off as she left the bathroom behind. Mom sat on her bunk staring at the open bathroom door. Hours later, as the sun rose and signaled the end of her shift, her partner awoke to find Mom sitting there, still staring at the empty bathroom. “Good morning,” Lauren said, swinging her legs off the bed and rubbing her eyes. “Did you sleep?” Mom said nothing at first, brow still furrowed in concentration. “Corinne?” Lauren prompted. “Hm?” Mom looked at her friend, still thinking. “Yeah, a little I think.” Lauren grunted, rising to stretch and collect her things. Mom kept staring at the bathroom, the movement of the other medics soothing her nerves. “Hey, Lauren?” Mom drew her partner’s attention. She tried to think of a reasonable way to ask if she had seen a ghost in here before, or maybe if she’d had a waking dream. She finally gave up. “What’s the deal with the plumbing here?” she asked instead. Ghost stories were not uncommon among emergency responders, but Mom was still reluctant to publicize the fact that she believed in them. They were quite common among volunteer ambulance squads, which could be a tricky group to align with in New Jersey EMS. While average citizens often lauded the EMTs and other responders that volunteered their time to provide free or significantly more affordable emergency medical care to their communities, there was a bit of a prejudice against them in the eyes of paid responders. Certain squads were well regarded, while others were considered completely incompetent. The perception of an inconsistent quality of care among the volunteers as a whole often encouraged a bit of a superiority complex in the paramedics and paid EMTs. Even today, EMS personnel will refer to certain providers as “paid volunteers”, an insult used against a paid first responder whose competency is questionable. Mom didn’t want to be marked as a paid volunteer. So she didn’t discuss what she had seen with any of the other paramedics who stayed in the old hospital with them. The only person she’d talk to about ghosts and hauntings with was her partner, Lauren. While Lauren didn’t think a ghost could really move things or meddle with real objects, and let mom know exactly how crazy the concept was to her, she wouldn’t hold it against Mom for bringing the topic up. Plus, she had been having odd dreams while stationed in that building, which if nothing else had some psychological implications she thought worth exploring. Still, Lauren fell asleep promptly when their unit was given the chance, dreams be damned. Mom, on the other hand, found it much harder to nap in the wake of the “bathroom incident”. She sat up most nights, watching the flashlight bob through the ward, listening to Lauren’s gentle snoring. She tried to explain it away, even going so far as to look into “misbehaving sinks” to see if anyone else had an issue with their tap spontaneously turning on. The only cases she found like hers were in discussions around paranormal activity. While this did nothing to soothe her anxiety, eventually the sleep she was losing caught up with her. Though she worked the night shift, the rest of the world demanded her attention during the day, and left her too tired to be kept awake by ghost stories and malfunctioning plumbing. It wasn’t long until she was able to doze off between calls once again. One dark night, nestled in the cocoon of her blankets brought from home, Mom slept soundly. It had been a long day, trudging through the midwinter chill on an endless parade of errands, and Mom slipped into a deep sleep the moment she laid her head down. Time slipped by quickly while the paramedics slept. An early sunset gave way to a clear evening sky, stars emerging from the inky blue expanse of the heavens as the night wore on. Unbeknownst to them, the swaying beam of a flashlight appeared in the window of the old ward, on the far end of the hospital. It worked its way slowly through the building, room by room, as the moon dragged across the sky. Eventually, the flashlight shone on the door to the medics’ quarters. It glanced across the sleeping forms of the paramedics, who remained undisturbed. It wandered around the room, illuminating stray boots, books open and facedown to keep the reader’s place, extra snacks taken from hospital break rooms scattered around the space. One of their radios chirped quietly, too quietly to wake any of the paramedics. The volume had been lowered too far, an oversight that the sleeping medics remained unable to remedy as the flashlight beam fell on the radio. “Hey! Look alive!” Mom stirred, an insistent whisper waking her up. She kept her eyes closed, trying to hold onto the last few moments of sleep. She was working with Lauren that night, she remembered, so surely the man she heard speaking was actually talking to his own partner. The voice spoke again. “Wake up.” It felt like it was mere inches from her ear. Fear jolted her, melting quickly into anger as she sat up, ready to give the other medic a piece of her mind. The other three occupants of the room laid in their bunks, still fast asleep. Mom looked around for a moment, trying to understand what woke her up. But all was still. A few moments later, the radio chirped. “52?” the dispatcher asked quietly. Mom’s stomach flipped as she got out of her bed and crossed to the walkie. “52 here.” she replied. She turned that moment over in her mind as she roused Lauren, got her things together, and loaded into the ambulance. She tried to convince herself that she’d heard the dispatcher over the radio, calling to her, waking her up. But the deep baritone voice that woke her up sounded nothing like the gentle soprano that described the emergency they were responding to. Not long after that night, the medic unit was moved once again. Things were always changing as the hospital acquired and sold buildings around the county, so this was nothing new. Mom and the other paramedics who had been stationed in the old mining hospital were soon redistributed to other units throughout the area, occasionally bumping into each other and speculating idly about the strange things they witnessed in the old building. One day, they decided to reach out to the security personnel who had patrolled their rickety hospital. The men had watched over them, after all, and been kind enough to do so even after getting an earful about waking the sleeping medics. The guards and the paramedics laughed and chattered together at a bar not too far from the old hospital, basking in the joy of a shared evening off. “Hey, by the way,” Lauren said, in a quiet moment, “Thanks for letting us sleep. It was reassuring to see you guys sweeping the rest of the building.” The guards looked perplexed. “What are you talking about?” one asked. Lauren furrowed her brow. “I’m talking about your patrols? How you didn’t wake us up again when you did your walk throughs?” “Oh, we didn’t do any more walk throughs.” The younger of the two guards said offhandedly, finishing his drink. The more senior guard explained. “After we realized you guys were occupying that wing, we just checked all the other doors and did a drive by. Most nights, we didn’t even go into the building, let alone sweep the halls.” He leaned forward, looking concerned. “Did you see any other signs of possible intruders?” Mom’s blood went cold. “We definitely saw you.” She insisted. “We saw a flashlight every night, all night, going from room to room and checking everything out.” Lauren backed her up. “We didn’t hear any glass breaking, no alarms going off, nothing like that. Who else would go wandering through a stupid, empty building, every single night?” The mood shifted. The older guard breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed, leaning back in his chair. “Oh that,” he said, taking a swig from his glass. “That’s just the doctor.” The younger guard suddenly grew uncomfortable, tensing up and rapping on his nearly empty bottle of beer. “What doctor?” Lauren pressed, irritation growing in her chest. The older guard groaned as he settled back in his chair, leaning his arm against the bar top. “Back when that was an active hospital, way back when, it pretty much only serviced the mine and, occasionally, the surrounding town. It was the only hospital most of those people would ever see, but it was still too small and remote to pull a full staff away from one of the bigger hospitals down in Morris county. The staff they did have worked every day, sometimes around the clock. Just a few nurses, some housekeepers, and at least one doctor.” The younger guard started tearing bits of paper off of the label of his bottle, as older guard continued. “He wasn’t the only doctor that worked up here, as far as we know, but he might as well have been for all he did for the area. He lived right next door to the hospital, but most nights that was still too far away for him. They kept a cot set up for him, right there in the sick bay. He watched over the miners like they were his own kids.” He took a swig from his bottle. “Now, at the time, there was still this prevailing belief that women should go home at night. They should rest their weary feminine legs after their grueling jobs which, of course, they still shouldn’t have had.” He looked pointedly at Lauren and Mom with an exaggerated, accusatory stare, who snickered and rolled their eyes. “So he would usually shoo the nurses away at night, and conduct rounds himself.” “The only thing he carried with him was an old flashlight, sneaking through the halls in his slippers, looking through patient charts and noting vitals by the light of his lamp.” He sighed, bringing the bottle to his lips again. “He died right there in his cot, passing away quietly in his sleep. Some people say that it was one of the patients who noticed, woken up by the absence of his hand on their wrist. Others think it was one of the nurses, who realized what happened when he wasn’t there in the morning, greeting her with his diligent report.” The group sat quietly for a moment, silently honoring the loss of a provider in the line of duty. “But,” the guard continued, “he never clocked out.” The young security guard looked away. “We’ve been getting reports for years about a break in with no alarm triggered. Some passerby watches the flashlight bob through the halls of the hospital and assumes it’s a curious teenager, so they call the cops. The cops find nothing, and scold the caller for wasting their time. After enough distinct calls, the property owners eventually hired us to keep the kids out. But it was never kids. It was never anyone but the doctor.” “He tries to help.” The younger guard finally spoke, startling the medics. “You’ll be walking through the hospital after an alarm trip and hear this voice whisper behind you, ‘in the basement’, and you’ll go down and find a bum who broke a window and sliced his hand good. You’ll be patrolling and he’ll thump you in the chest, stopping you, just as a ceiling tile crashes down in front of you.” He looked shyly at the two women. “You’ll go to shine your flashlight in the new medic quarters and hear him say, ‘scoundrel!’ Whatever that means.” The paramedics were dead silent, considering this story. “I mean,” Mom’s co-worker John eventually said, “at least he’s trying to help.” Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. I understood that long before Mom told me this story. But I didn’t realize just how superstitious they could be. As Mom finished her story, she studied me, watching my face carefully. I laughed at first, assuming she was hazing me, or something like that. I had just started volunteering on an ambulance squad that our family had been on for generations, so I figured that this was simply a new member ritual I hadn’t heard about yet. “Did you get to see the doctor again?” I asked, eyes glimmering with the joy of a new story. “No.” Mom shook her head, deathly serious. “That building ended up being abandoned. But I wanted to tell you about him so you weren’t surprised on your first overnight shift.” I crossed my arms. “I mean, I’ve been on overnight shifts before.” She shot me a look I was familiar with, the yeah, right look that dripped with unspoken sarcasm. “A real overnight shift. At a real squad building, with its own ghosts.” I massaged my neck, trying to understand what she was getting at. “What, like Mom-Mom?” Perhaps this whole story was an allegory, to remind me to respect the accrued experience of the first responders who came before me. Especially the ones in our family, like my late grandmother. “Nah,” Mom waved her hand dismissively, “My mom’s not haunting the squad house. But someone is. And he’ll be keeping an eye on you, so you had better be on your best behavior.” “Alright, Mom,” I chuckled, “I’ll be good.” I forgot about Mom and the doctor as the evening sank into night. My shift was fairly uneventful, with only a few calls early on, and I was fortunate enough to grab a few hours of sleep. I wasn’t thinking about ghosts as the moon rose in the sky, crossing the shiny wooden flooring of the room I dozed in. But I did hear something that, being such a light sleeper, woke me up in the wee hours of the morning. A squeak, like work boots sliding against the hardwood floor. As I drifted into consciousness, I heard a voice. A gruff male voice, right in my ear. “Hey!” It grunted, “Come on! Up!” My eyes flew open and I shot bolt upright in bed, ready to apologize to a senior squad member about whatever call I had clearly slept through. But I was alone. My partner snored in the next room over, the only other sign of life in the deserted building. I was about to lie back down when I heard the tones, squeaking out far too quietly from a mobile radio set in my partner’s room. We had a call to respond to. I roused my partner, laced up my boots, and tried to fathom what I had just experienced as we raced towards the emergency. I’ve had a few years to think about it now. And I think the answer has always been clear. Paramedics are superstitious. And now I am too. Credit: Technigoth Official Site YouTube Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.