The Fourth Floor Visitor

My aunt Marta was a tough old bird, but her body was failing her. A lifetime of hard work and bad food had caught up, leaving her with a failing heart and kidneys that could barely keep up. We, her family, took turns sitting with her during her frequent hospital stays. It was on these visits that I learned the true meaning of patience and the quiet terror of watching someone you love slip away.

Her last stay was in a sprawling, echoing hospital called St. Jude’s, a place that smelled of antiseptic and despair. I remember it was a Tuesday, and I was alone with her while my sister, Elena, had gone to find us some terrible cafeteria coffee. Marta was restless, her hands plucking at the thin hospital sheets, her eyes darting around the room as if she were watching a fly that no one else could see. Her breathing was labored, and she started mumbling, a low gurgle of words that made my stomach tighten.

Then she looked toward the door, her eyes widening, and her voice became clear, almost pleading. “Come help me, Doctor,” she said. The words were sharp, urgent, and my heart gave a lurch. I turned, expecting to see the tall, stooped figure of Dr. Chen, but the doorway was empty, just the long, dim hallway beyond with its flickering fluorescent light.

“Aunt Marta,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “there’s no one there. It’s just you and me.”

But she shook her head, a violent jerk that sent her gray hair flying. Her gaze fixed on a point right in front of the door, and she said, “He’s right there. In the white coat. He wants to take me to the basement. They’re all down there.”

A cold dread slithered down my spine. I told her she was confused, that it was just the medicine, but she wasn’t listening. With a strength that surprised me, she lunged forward, grabbing at the IV line that snaked into her arm. Her fingers hooked under the tape, and she started yanking, the skin around the needle going white and red.

Panic seized me. I dropped the book I’d been holding and reached for her, my hands closing over her bony wrist. “No, Aunt Marta, stop! You’ll hurt yourself!” I tried to gently but firmly hold her hand still, to stop the frantic tugging, but she was beyond reason. Her eyes were locked on something I couldn’t see, and she was muttering, “He’s waiting, he’s waiting.”

We struggled for a moment, a sickening dance of bed and tubes and fear. Then, with a sickening pop, the IV came free. A thin stream of blood and clear fluid sprayed across the sheets and my hand. I let go, horrified, looking at the puncture wound in her paper-thin skin. She didn’t even flinch.

Instead, she let out a long, shuddering breath, and her body relaxed. She lay back against the pillows, her eyes losing their wild focus. She smiled, a serene, almost childlike smile, and looked at me. “Oh,” she said, “he’s gone now. But he’ll be back.”

I was shaking, my hand bloody, my aunt’s arm a mess of bruises and a raw, angry hole. I fumbled for the call button, pressing it with trembling fingers. When the nurse came, she was stern and efficient, cleaning the wound and reinserting the IV, while I stammered an apology. But as the nurse worked, Aunt Marta kept her gaze fixed on the empty doorway, and I could swear I saw her eyes track something that moved in the corridor.

I sat with her all night, Elena having returned to find me pale and shaking. I didn’t tell her what had happened, not fully. But that was the last time I was alone with my aunt. She went downhill fast after that. Her lucidity came and went, but she would often reach out to the end of her bed, as if expecting a hand to take hers. Once, she told me that the doctor in the white coat had come to her, and he had a ledger with all our names in it.

She died three weeks later, on a rainy Thursday. In the chaos of that final day, when the machines flatlined and the doctors swarmed, I saw something that still makes the hairs on my neck stand up. As they pulled the sheet over her face, I looked toward the door, and for a split second, I saw a man in a white coat standing there, his face obscured by a surgical mask. He was holding a silver clipboard, and he was watching the scene with an unnatural stillness. Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps making no sound on the linoleum.

I told the doctors, the nurses, even my own family. They all said the same thing: no one fits that description on the fourth floor. They said it was the shock, the stress, my imagination. But I know what I saw. And sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I think I can hear him walking down the hallway outside my door, his feet soft on the carpet, his clipboard pressed to his chest. And I wonder if my aunt’s last words were not a plea, but a warning: ‘He’ll be back.’ And I know, in the marrow of my bones, that he is not a man at all.