The Ward of Unfinished Things

Clara was thirty-two, and the pregnancy had been a siege from the start. The doctors at St. Jude’s in the damp, grey town of Mirefield had kept her in a private room on the third floor, where the radiators clanked like old bones and the windows wept with condensation. She was twenty-eight weeks, and her baby – a girl, they’d told her – was barely growing. Every day, they patched her with fluids and hope, and every night, she lay listening to the heart monitor’s fragile beep, counting seconds until the next scan.

At thirty-four weeks, the placenta showed signs of failure, and the decision was made: the cesarean would happen in two days, on a Sunday. Clara called her father, Arthur, that Saturday afternoon, her voice thin as the hospital paper. She asked him to bring her overnight bag, the one with the baby’s first outfit, the white one with the tiny roses. Arthur hesitated. He told her not to worry, but his voice cracked like dry earth. He said, ‘Your mother, Edna, she’s had a turn. They’ve taken her into the same hospital – not this one, the other one, in Ashford. It’s probably just her asthma, love, don’t you fret.’ Clara tried not to, but she knew her mother’s lungs were failing. She hung up, and the beep of the monitor seemed louder.

The day passed in a haze of fluorescent light and the smell of antiseptic. By evening, Clara was restless. Her room faced the rear courtyard, where a single dead elm stood, its branches like arthritic fingers. She watched the sky turn from grey to bruised purple, and then she saw it – a figure in the courtyard, standing perfectly still, looking up at her window. It was a woman in a long coat, too heavy for the season, her face obscured by shadow. Clara blinked, and the figure was gone.

At 2 a.m., the nurse came to check her vitals. Clara asked about her mother. The nurse, a tired woman named Helen, checked her chart and said, ‘Your father called. Said to tell you your mother’s resting comfortably. They’re doing everything they can.’ Clara numbly thanked her, but something in Helen’s eyes didn’t line up – a flicker of something unspoken.

When sleep finally came, it was troubled. Clara dreamed she was in a long hallway lined with doors, each one slightly ajar, and from each came a sound – a baby crying, a woman sobbing, a man humming an old hymn. She walked to the end, where a door was closed, and through it she heard her mother’s voice, clear as a bell: ‘Clara, don’t open it. Not yet. Promise me.’ She woke with a gasp, the monitor beeping frantically.

Sunday dawned the colour of dishwater. Clara was prepped for surgery, her belly a tight drum, the world reduced to the green-tiled ceiling and the cold sting of the epidural. The procedure was swift, and then – a cried that was too thin, too sharp. They held her baby, a girl with a shock of black hair and eyes squeezed shut, and placed her briefly on Clara’s chest. ‘She’s small,’ the doctor said, ‘but she’s a fighter.’ Clara named her Rose, for the flowers on the outfit that never arrived.

Afterwards, in recovery, Clara asked for her phone. She called her father, but there was no answer. She called the hospital in Ashford, but they said there was no patient by that name. Panic began to set in, and she insisted on being taken to the children’s wing to see Rose, who was in an incubator, a fragile boat on a sea of wires. As she was wheeled past the ward’s chapel, she saw the woman again – the one from the courtyard – standing in the doorway, now wearing a nurse’s uniform that didn’t fit right. The woman smiled, and Clara saw that her teeth were filed to points.

That night, Clara couldn’t sleep. She wheeled herself in her chair to a payphone in the corridor – an old one, with a rotary dial – and dialed her parents’ number. The line crackled, and a voice she didn’t recognize said, ‘You’ve reached the Ashford Mortuary.’ Clara slammed the phone down, her heart jackhammering. She called the hospital operator and asked for her mother’s room, but the operator said, ‘There’s no record of an Edna Mears at this facility.’

And then the nurse – the one with the wrong smile – appeared beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘Your mother is fine,’ she said, too sweetly. ‘And your little girl, she’s thriving. But you know, we have a policy in this ward: no unfinished business. Your mother came here to see you, you know, but she couldn’t make it. She died in the ambulance, halfway between Ashford and here.’ Clara’s blood turned to ice. ‘She wanted you to have this,’ the nurse said, and handed her a small, folded piece of paper. Clara opened it – it was a handwritten note, in her mother’s trembling script: ‘Clara, don’t open the red door at the end of the hall. It’s not your time. Take Rose and run.’

Clara looked up, and the nurse was gone. The corridor was silent, and at the far end, she saw a door she had never noticed before – painted a deep, glossy red, like blood. She read the note again, and then she heard a baby crying – Rose, her baby, and the sound was coming from behind that red door.

She pushed her chair towards it, her arms shaking, and she turned the handle. The door swung open to reveal a room that was all white, and in the centre, a bassinet. Rose was there, but she was older – maybe five or six – and she was weeping, and beside her stood the woman with the sharp teeth, who said, ‘Everything comes due, Clara. You dreamed the future, but you can’t change the past.’ Clara woke up.

She was in her hospital bed, the sun slanting through yellowed blinds. The beep of the monitor was steady. A nurse – a real one, with a kindly face – came in and said, ‘You had a frightening dream, dear. Your baby is fine, she’s in the NICU.’ Clara asked about her mother, and the nurse’s face fell. ‘I’m so sorry, but your mother passed away early this morning. Your father called, but you were under sedation.’ Clara felt a tear roll down her cheek, and she remembered the note, the red door, the teeth. And in the NICU, when she finally held Rose, she saw her baby look at her with an ancient, knowing gaze, and Rose whispered – in a voice too deep for a newborn – ‘She wanted to see you, but I wouldn’t let her in.’