The Candle and the Cardiopulmonary Room

It was after Cyclone Marikit had torn through our coastal town, leaving behind a maze of twisted metal and salt-soaked debris. The old municipal hospital, which had somehow survived with its roof intact, became our temporary shelter. My family was crammed into a long ward with other displaced souls, but I found solace in a forgotten corner: a small room once used for cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, with a narrow bed, a metal cart, and a single wooden chair that wobbled if you breathed on it. The room smelled of antiseptic and old paper, and I had smuggled in a dog-eared novel—a psychological thriller by a writer who loved to play with fear.

At exactly 4:30 in the afternoon, when the sky had turned the color of a bruise and the generator was still dead, I lit a stubby candle and placed it on the cart, its flame throwing dancing shadows against the peeling walls. I was alone, my siblings were outside kicking a deflated ball, and the silence was so deep I could hear the drip of water from a cracked pipe. I sank into the chair, the spine of the book cracking as I opened it, and I let the world fall away. The words were good—the kind that make your skin prickle—but every few minutes, a draft would move the flame, and I’d glance up, thinking I saw a figure in the doorway. It was nothing, just my mind playing tricks.

Then it happened. A soft scrape, like cloth dragging on tile. I looked up. The chair—the only other chair in the room, tucked against the wall—had shifted. It had been two feet from the wall; now it was a foot. The air was still; the candle flame barely trembled. I told myself the floor was uneven, that a rat had run over it. But a rat couldn’t move a chair that cleanly. I turned back to my book, but the words blurred. My heart was tapping a rhythm I didn’t like. I forced myself to read a paragraph, then another, and just as I reached the climax of a chapter, I heard it again: a longer, more insistent drag, as if someone were pulling the chair toward me. I snapped the book shut and blew out the candle. The room plunged into gray gloom, and I stumbled out, my pulse hammering.

The hallway was empty, but my siblings called out from the courtyard, laughing. I walked to them, trying to shake off the cold weight in my chest. I told my older brother, Tomas, about the chair, but he shrugged and said it was the wind. I let it go, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

At six in the evening, the sky turned a deeper black, and the first drops of rain tapped on the broken windows. My eldest sister, Lourdes, went inside to get a blanket. She was a practical woman, a nurse before the storm, and she never indulged in ghost stories. But as she walked past the cardiopulmonary room, she saw the door ajar. Curious, she pushed it open. The chair she had seen earlier—the one I had mentioned—was now in the center of the room, facing the door. On the seat lay a small, folded piece of paper, yellowed with age. She picked it up, unfolded it, and read a single line in faded ink: ‘I am still here.’

She laughed nervously and brought the paper to me. But when I read it, the handwriting looked disturbingly familiar—it was the same style as the marginal notes I had been making in my novel, but I had written nothing that day. A chill ran down my spine.

Later that night, as we huddled on cots in the main ward, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the chair, the paper, the way the room seemed to breathe. At midnight, I heard a faint scraping sound from the direction of the cardiopulmonary room. I lit my candle and crept down the hall, my bare feet cold on the tile. The door was open again. The chair was now at the side of the bed, as if someone had been sitting in it and had just stood up. And on the bed lay my novel, open to a page I had not reached. A line was underlined in red ink: ‘The dead do not forget.’

I ran back to the ward, my breath ragged. I told Lourdes what I had seen, and she was pale, the paper still clutched in her hand. She whispered, ‘This room was used to quarantine the sick, before the storm. A man died in that chair. They said he was waiting for his wife to come back.’ I looked at the paper, and the ink seemed darker now, as if fresh. I turned it over. On the back was a new message, written in jagged, hurried strokes: ‘I am not waiting anymore.’

We left that night, our family and a few others, crowding into a relief truck that was heading to the next town. As we drove away, rain lashing the windshield, I glanced back at the hospital. In a third-floor window, I saw a silhouette—a man sitting in a chair, watching us leave. The candle in my hand flickered, and then it went out. I never picked up another book in that place, and to this day, when I hear a chair scrape across a floor, I cannot help but look for the one who sits and waits.