The Patient in Room 18 quotes

Once we tried giving the whole wing a new set of numbers but it made no difference.

Room 18 was Room 18 and the patients placed there, with one exception, have never remained past midnight.

I do not know whether this situation is due to the patients mysteriously getting wind of Room 18’s history, in spite of the nurses being forbidden to speak of the unfortunate affair, or to the undoubtedly sinister aspect the room has managed to acquire.

It is a fact that five minutes in that too-still room bring chills up the small of my back, clammy moisture to the palms of my hands, and a singular and pressing desire to escape.

And I have a good stomach, no nerves, and little imagination.

And in the long, dark hours of the second watch, between midnight and early morning, I still avoid the closed, mysterious door of Room 18!

And I have a good stomach, no nerves, and little imagination.

And in the long, dark hours of the second watch, between midnight and early morning, I still avoid the closed, mysterious door of Room 18!

The night it began, Corole Letheny had a dinner party up at the doctor’s cottage on the hillside, at the end of the path from the south door. She telephoned hastily, late in the afternoon, for Maida Day and me.

“Here is the coffee,” she said huskily.

“As coffee should be: black as night, hot as hell, and sweet as love.”

She offered the tiny cup to Gainsay.

At any rate her answer was unexpected.

“Money!” she said. “Money! I think I would give my very soul for money!”

Of course, I knew she didn’t mean that. But Dr. Letheny shot her a glance that fairly pierced the dusk, Corole laughed a little metallic ripple, and Jim Gainsay turned straightway around in his chair to face Maida’s shadowed eyes.

There was something in the air—some familiar odour—but something entirely out of place in an apple orchard. It was—a swift vision of the operating room rose before me and I realized that my nostrils had caught a faint but unmistakable odour of ether.

Ether in an apple orchard! And in the middle of the night!

Why, it was impossible! Something in the heated air, some mingling of alfalfa and sweet clover and growing things had combined to deceive me.

Then the light was gone and, scarcely knowing what I did, I reached the bed and put my hand on his face and sought his pulse.

A seasoned nurse knows when death has come.

Even in the gibbering darkness with the storm outside crashing against the window I knew at once that our patient was dead.

The very storm outside quieted for a second as if to give my words significance.

“He is dead,” I whispered. “And the radium is gone!”

She nodded, her hands at her throat, her face as white as her cap.

What had caused his death?

It is strange how one’s hair prickles at the roots when one is frightened.

My hair stirred and I peered fearfully about the room. A curious sense of something evil and loathsome near at hand was creeping over me. The room, however, was as bare as any hospital room.

Lance O’Leary turned slowly to me.

“Dr. Letheny will not return,” he said, eyeing me keenly.

“Not return? What do you mean?”

The night didn’t go so well after that.

From midnight until four o’clock are the dreaded hours of St. Ann’s regime.

They are gray, cold, dreary hours—hours when pulses lag most feebly, when the breath comes most wearily, when life seems a burden that is all too easily escaped and the other world seems so near that the nurse must cling to her patients with all …

Somehow during those black hours in that hushed and shadowy wing the thing that struck me with the most horror, that brought my heart, quivering, to my throat and gooseflesh all up my arms, was the memory of that locked closet.

Dead men can’t walk. Dead men can’t carry keys. Dead men can’t lock doors.

Who had locked that door? We must believe that it was some intruder, someone outside our little circle at St. Ann’s.

That could have been Dr. Balman. But the idea is absurd. Dr. Balman is too mild, too kind—too—Oh! It is impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible,” commented Lance O’Leary gravely.

“But those lights may have belonged to another car. One driven by Jim Gainsay.”

“But he looks honest, too,” I protested.

“They all look honest. Everyone of you.”

“It seems terrible to consider people one knows in such a sordid connection. Why not all the other people in and around the hospital?”

It was a gold sequin!

I should never have seen it save for that minute reflection of light, for the upper surface was all tarnished and stained, though the under side was still bright.

A wisp of frayed green thread still clung to the small hole for a needle at the top of the flimsy bit of metal.

“What is the matter with it?” I asked, in my professionally comfortable voice. I was not prepared for his reply.

“It feels like a coffin,” he said, staring gloomily at his feet.

He glanced at me sharply.

“But I insist upon being moved,” he said, with an odd mixture of childish pettishness and adult command. What would be the result if the world at large knew these important business men as we know them!

Big babies, they are, most of them!

“This room is exactly like any other room,” I said.

He closed his eyes with the utmost unconcern.

“The whispers won’t bother me now that I know what they are,” he said casually as I moved toward the door.

Still feeling shaken, I walked slowly along the corridor. What could the man mean?

And would you believe it I felt gooseflesh coming out on my arms?

Melvina was never intended for as matter-of-fact a profession as that of a nurse; her talents are wasted.

“Nonsense,” I said again, and repeated it. “Nonsense.”

I remember thinking, as I walked briskly toward the signal, that our words were not unlike those of soldiers going into battle—in spirit, at least. I saw something of that in 1918; I was in a hospital that was once, mistakenly I hope, shelled.

In a choice between the shelled hospital on that lurid front and the dreary, clammy nights of second watch at St. Ann’s, where every stir made your breath catch, and every whispering noise made your skin crawl, I’d much prefer the shelled hospital.

There the terror was expected; its source was known. Here, every doorway was a silent menace; every room and every turn and every alcove might harbour death. The hospital seemed too roomy, too large, too dark.

Ann’s, where every stir made your breath catch, and every whispering noise made your skin crawl, I’d much prefer the shelled hospital. There the terror was expected; its source was known.

Here, every doorway was a silent menace; every room and every turn and every alcove might harbour death.

The hospital seemed too roomy, too large, too dark. Our very skirts seemed to whisper and hiss with fear along those blank corridors and empty walls and half-lights and shadows.

There was not a gleam of light. Every signal light was gone; there was not even a glimmer of light from under the doors of kitchen or drug room or linen closet.

I was suspended in a breathless black void.

And down that black emptiness, only five nights ago, two men had been violently done to death!

There was not a gleam of light. Every signal light was gone; there was not even a glimmer of light from under the doors of kitchen or drug room or linen closet. I was suspended in a breathless black void.

And down that black emptiness, only five nights ago, two men had been violently done to death!

My breath began to come in painful, rasping gasps. I must do something. I must find Maida. I must get a lamp. Must make my way to the basement switch-box and replace a burned-out fuse—or find what had caused the trouble.

“No,” I said thoughtfully. “He did not definitely say it was a man. I—I’m afraid I just assumed it to be a man.”

“Assuming is dangerous,” said O’Leary quietly.

“But he did say that he saw three people?”

Of eating, living, sleeping with problems for days and nights. Usually, just about the time you have decided that none of the pieces of the puzzle can possibly fit, all at once something happens and—Click! Things clarify.

There is a reason for everything. Nothing just happens. Nothing is an isolated fact.

If you have a fact, you know that certain circumstances had to combine to bring it about. It is just logic, reason, the physical, material quality of cause and effect. There isn’t anything mysterious about it. It is just the—the arithmetic of analysis.

She said she felt it coming on owing to her getting so wet and being bareheaded. Which was not only silly, as I assured her, but was not even to be believed,

Corole being as sleek and healthy as a young jaguar, and about as even-tempered.

“But you can stay,” I relented, “if you will do as I say and keep quiet about it.”

I did not hear the rest of the sentence. I sprang to my feet, peering through the semidarkness to be sure my eyes had not mistaken me.

Gleaming above the door of Eighteen was a single, small red light!