The Flush that Counted

The first night at the Armitage Recovery Center was quiet, too quiet. The building had been a maternity hospital decades ago, converted into a small clinic for minor ailments. My room was at the end of the female ward, a long corridor with eight beds, most of them empty. I was there for blood pressure monitoring, a routine stay that felt like a prison sentence.

It was a Tuesday, the night after Thanksgiving, and the clinic was nearly empty. The nurse on duty, a heavyset woman named Patricia, checked my vitals and told me to ring if I needed anything. She pointed to the bathroom at the end of the hall, past the empty nursery with its dusty incubators. ‘Make sure to use the one at the end,’ she said, ‘the others are being cleaned.’ I nodded, not thinking much of it.

The room was sparse, with a window overlooking a parking lot and a wall of old heating vents that creaked as the temperature dropped. I tried to read, but my mind wandered. Around midnight, I felt the need to use the bathroom. I slipped out of bed, my slippers shuffling on the linoleum, and walked toward the dim glow of the bathroom light. The door was ajar, and as I pushed it open, I heard a toilet flush. The sound was muted, as if from a distance, but unmistakable. I froze, my heart racing. The bathroom was empty, the stall doors open, no one there.

I convinced myself it was the plumbing, old pipes settling, and returned to my bed. But I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the empty nursery, the incubators like glass coffins. Then, an hour later, another flush. This time it was louder, more insistent, as if someone was angry. I checked the hallway. Patricia was at her station, dozing. I called out, ‘Is someone in the bathroom?’ She stirred, looked at me, and said, ‘No, dear. You’re the only one here.’ She yawned and turned back to her paperwork. I went back to bed, but the flushes continued at irregular intervals, sometimes a single one, sometimes a rapid succession, like a countdown.

By morning, I was exhausted. The flushes had stopped at dawn, and I told myself it was an overactive imagination. But I knew I couldn’t face another night alone. I asked my mother to stay with me, and she agreed, bringing a book and a thermos of tea. We settled into the room, me in my bed, her in the one next to me. She fell asleep quickly, but I lay awake, waiting. The flushes started again at 11:47 PM, the same time as the first night. My mother didn’t stir. I wanted to wake her, but I felt frozen. I watched the bathroom door from my bed, and this time, the door was open, and I could see the silhouette of a woman, thin and shadowed, standing at the toilet. She was turned away, but I could see her arm reaching down to press the handle. The flush echoed through the room. I screamed, but no sound came out. My mother didn’t move. The woman turned her head, and her face was blank, featureless, but I felt her gaze. She raised her hand and pointed at the nursery, then at me, then back to the nursery.

Suddenly, the flushes came faster, overlapping, a cacophony of water and porcelain. I scrambled out of bed, shaking my mother, but she wouldn’t wake. I ran to the nurse’s station, but Patricia was gone. The lights flickered. I found myself in the nursery, the incubators humming with a low vibration. Each incubator had a small, dirty blanket inside, and the flushes were coming from inside them, like the gurgle of drowning infants. I backed away, tripping over a stack of old records. A chart on the wall listed the last birth at this hospital, twenty years ago. The name was scratched out, but beneath it, in faint pencil, was written, ‘She returns when the water flows.’

The flushes stopped abruptly. The silence was louder than any sound I’d heard. I ran back to the ward, and my mother was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. She asked, ‘Why are you so pale? Did you have a nightmare?’ I looked at the bathroom, and the door was closed. The light was off. I didn’t tell her everything, but I checked the restroom’s plumbing the next day. The maintenance man said the pipes were fine, no leaks, no clogs. He laughed and said, ‘Sometimes old buildings have ghosts, but this one hasn’t had any problems.’ He pointed to a small plaque near the bathroom door that I hadn’t noticed: ‘In memory of the stillborn infants of this ward, 1950-1978.’ The plaque was dated, and beneath it, in fresh ink, was a handwritten line: ‘She counts the returns.’

I was discharged the next morning, and the clinic closed permanently a week later. I never went back. But sometimes, when I’m in a public restroom, I hear a flush, and I count: one, two, three, until I have to leave, because I know the next one will be for me.