The Cardigan

My sister, Elena, has been a nurse for over a decade. She’s seen things that would make most people’s blood run cold, but the story she told me last Christmas still makes my skin crawl. It happened at a private hospital in the outskirts of Penang, a place she still refuses to name. She was on the night shift, assigned to the third floor, a ward for women recovering from surgery. That night, she was working with two colleagues, Mei and Farah, and the three of them were the only ones on the floor.

A couple of days before that shift, Elena had come down with a nasty flu. She was burning up, her head throbbing, but it was her on-call shift and she couldn’t afford to take leave. So she dragged herself to work, popped some strong medication, and tried to keep it together. The ward was quiet, patients were settled in for the night, and the doctors were off-site unless an emergency arose. Around eleven, the medication hit her hard. Her vision blurred, her legs felt like jelly, and she knew she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She told Mei and Farah she was going to lie down for an hour in the empty room at the end of the corridor, the one used for storage and occasional overflow. They promised to cover for her.

Elena stumbled into that room, which was lit by a dim, flickering fluorescent light. There was a bare hospital bed, a metal trolley with old charts, and a window overlooking the parking lot, where the night mist hung low. She didn’t bother with a blanket; she simply lay down on the thin mattress, still wearing her white uniform and her cardigan, the one with the tiny blue flowers. She fell asleep almost instantly, sinking into a feverish haze.

She didn’t know how long she’d been out when she felt a cold draft sweep through the room. Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw a figure standing at the foot of the bed. It was a woman in a faded, old-fashioned hospital gown, her hair long and lank, obscuring her face. Elena’s heart hammered; she tried to move, but her body was paralyzed, weighed down by sleep and sickness. The figure took a step closer, and Elena could see that the woman’s hands were clasped in front of her, as if in prayer. Then the woman spoke, her voice like a dry rustle: ‘You’re in my bed.’

Elena tried to scream, but no sound came out. The woman slowly raised a hand, pointing a bony finger at Elena’s cardigan. ‘That’s mine,’ she whispered. ‘You took it.’ Elena looked down at her cardigan, which she’d worn for years, a harmless, comfortable thing. But now, under the flickering light, she saw that the tiny blue flowers seemed to be writhing, as if alive. The woman leaned in, and her face was gaunt, with hollow eyes that held no mercy. ‘Give it back,’ she said, and reached out to touch Elena’s chest.

Elena’s scream finally broke free, a strangled gasp that shattered the silence. She sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat, her fever breaking. The room was empty. The light flickered once more and steadied. Her heart pounded, but she told herself it was a nightmare, a fever dream. She checked her phone: she’d only been asleep for twenty minutes. But she couldn’t shake the feeling of cold fingers on her chest. She took a deep breath, stood up, and decided to go back to the nurses’ station, thinking a cup of tea would steady her nerves.

As she walked down the corridor, she noticed that the door to the room opposite hers, which had been closed, was now slightly ajar. That was odd, because she remembered that room was empty too. She peeked in and saw a woman sitting on the edge of a bed, facing the window. The woman was wearing a blue flowered cardigan exactly like Elena’s. Elena’s blood ran cold. She wanted to run, but her feet were rooted to the spot. The woman slowly turned her head, and it was the same gaunt face from her nightmare. The woman smiled, revealing yellowed teeth, and said, ‘You left your cardigan.’

Elena looked down and realized she was no longer wearing her cardigan. Panic surged through her. She turned and fled, not stopping until she reached the nurses’ station, where Mei and Farah were chatting quietly. They looked up, startled by her pale face. ‘Elena, what’s wrong?’ Mei asked. Elena tried to explain, but the words tumbled out in a jumble. She told them about the woman, the cardigan, the empty room. Farah’s face went white. ‘Elena, that room… the one you napped in… a patient died there last week. An old woman who loved to wear a blue flowered cardigan. Her family donated her clothes to the hospital, but her cardigan went missing.’

Elena felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. She looked down at her chest, and there, wrapped around her torso like a snake, was the blue flowered cardigan. She hadn’t taken it off. She tore at it, but it seemed to cling to her skin. Mei and Farah had to help her peel it off. They threw it into a biohazard bag, and Elena left the hospital that night in a taxi, refusing to ever set foot in that place again. She later learned that the room where she’d slept was used for storing deceased patients’ belongings, and that the old woman’s body had been kept in that very room overnight before the funeral. Elena never wore a cardigan again, and to this day, she can’t stand the sight of tiny blue flowers. She still wonders if, somewhere in that hospital, a woman is waiting for her cardigan to be returned.