The Sandman’s Overtime

I was a nurse at a sprawling county hospital in the Midwest, just outside a town that was little more than a gas station and a church. My unit was the ICU, but not the bustling one. We had a step-down ICU for the less critical, a quiet corner on the third floor that usually housed two or three patients, if any. That night, we had none. The charge nurse, Delia, had been with the hospital for twenty years and had a sixth sense for when things were off. She told me, ‘When the unit is empty, you’re not alone.’ I didn’t believe her then.

The floor was eerie in its silence, the hum of the fluorescent lights the only constant. We had finished our rounds, checked the crash cart, and dimmed the lights in the patient rooms. At the nurse’s station, we sat with coffee, talking about everything but work. Delia pulled out a small portable DVD player and a worn copy of a horror film. We watched with half an eye, the dialogue familiar, the scares predictable.

It was about halfway through when we heard it: footsteps from the corridor leading to the supply closet, near the patient bathrooms. They were heavy, deliberate, like someone wearing work boots, trying to be quiet but failing. Delia paused the movie and looked at me. ‘Hear that?’ she asked. I nodded, my skin prickling. We both stood and peered down the hallway. The lights in that corridor were flickering, casting eerie shadows. The footsteps stopped, but a moment later, the door to the bathroom at the end swung open slowly, as if someone had walked in. We called out, ‘Hello? Anyone there?’ No response.

I thought it might be security, checking the floor. But Delia shook her head. ‘Security would have announced themselves. And they don’t wear boots.’ She walked to the phone and called the front desk, asking if anyone was on our floor. They said no. A cold knot formed in my stomach. Delia then did something inexplicable: she went to the supply closet and pulled out a box of fine sand, like the kind they use for traction on icy sidewalks. She spread a thin layer across the threshold of the bathroom door, then returned to the station.

‘What did you do that for?’ I asked. ‘You’ll see,’ she said, her voice low.

For the next hour, we tried to watch the movie again, but every minute we’d check the sand. It remained undisturbed. Then, at 2:00 AM, we heard the footsteps again, this time from the far end of the unit, near the isolation rooms. They were faster, more urgent, like someone running a marathon in slow motion. We watched as the sand near the bathroom door shifted, not by a human step, but as if something dragged across it, leaving a trail that looked like a serpent’s path. My heart pounded. Delia grabbed my arm. ‘He’s here,’ she whispered.

Suddenly, the lights in the patient rooms flickered on, then off, in a pattern that spelled out ‘SOS’ in Morse code. The footsteps grew louder, circling the nurse’s station. We could feel a presence, a pressure in the air. The portable DVD player shut off on its own, the screen going black. Then, from the bathroom, came the sound of a faucet running, and a guttural, low voice that seemed to come from inside the walls: ‘Time to clock in.’

I was frozen, but Delia moved. She grabbed a handful of sand from the box and threw it into the hallway, screaming, ‘I’m not on your clock, you old timer!’ The sand landed, and for a second, I saw a faint outline of a man, tall and gaunt, wearing what looked like an old-fashioned nurse’s cap, and holding a pocket watch that dripped with something dark. He was transparent, but his eyes were hollow pits. He looked at Delia and snarled, showing rows of needle-like teeth. Then, he vanished.

The unit fell silent again, the normal hum of the lights returning. Delia was panting, leaning against the station counter. I stared at her, shaking. ‘What was that?’ I managed. ‘The Sandman,’ she said, catching her breath. ‘But not the one from fairy tales. This one collects the souls of night shift workers who fall asleep on the job. He’s been here for decades. He Appears when the unit is empty, looking for someone to take.’

She told me that years ago, a nurse named Agnes had fallen asleep during a night shift, and the next morning, the night nurse found her dead at the station, a strange grin on her face, and a fine sand covering her body. The Sandman had been seen ever since. ‘I’ve learned to listen to the footsteps,’ she said. ‘And to keep this sand handy. It’s not the kind that puts you to sleep. It’s the kind that reminds him he’s not wanted.’

We never told anyone else about that night, but from then on, every time the unit was empty, I heard those footsteps. And every time, Delia would sprinkle the sand at the thresholds. It happened on every empty night, always at the same time. I left that hospital a year later, but I still can’t sleep without a small pouch of sand under my pillow, just in case. And when I hear heavy footsteps in the hallway at 2:00 AM, I close my eyes and whisper, ‘Overtime is not for the living.’