The Night Shift by Callum Matthews

The Night Shift by Callum Matthews

Sarah had worked the hospital’s graveyard shift for three years, but she’d never seen anything like Mr. Harrison in Room 412. Something had been wrong from the moment they wheeled him in, but she couldn’t explain why. Like seeing a word spelled incorrectly – you know it’s wrong before you can say which letters are out of place.

His chart was simple enough: male, 68, admitted for routine observation after a minor fall. No head trauma, no broken bones. Just a precaution, the day shift had said. But Sarah had been a nurse long enough to trust her instincts, and her instincts were screaming.

The first warning came during her initial vitals check. His skin felt wrong under her fingers – not cold, not hot, but somehow both at once. When she pressed the stethoscope to his chest, the heartbeat she heard seemed to echo slightly, as if coming from somewhere deeper than it should have been. She counted two distinct rhythms: one that matched the cardiac monitor, and another, slower one underneath, like a second heart beating in a chest cavity that shouldn’t exist.

His blood pressure readings made no sense – the numbers kept changing even though the cuff hadn’t moved. 142/90. 115/75. 160/40. The digital display flickered between impossible combinations until it finally settled on just three dashes. She’d have to note it as equipment malfunction.

“Everything alright, Mr. Harrison?” she’d asked during her 11 PM check, drawing blood for his routine labs.

His smile had been too wide, stretching past where it should have stopped. “Never better, dear. Never better.” The words came out perfectly formed, like they’d been practiced. His teeth looked soft in the dim light, and when she slid the needle into his arm, the vein seemed to move away from it, as if trying to hide.

The blood sample was wrong. Sarah had drawn thousands of samples over her career, but she’d never seen blood move like that in the vial. It swirled without being shaken, forming patterns that looked almost like faces before dissolving again. When she sent it to the lab, the results came back as “Sample Contaminated.” All seven times she tried.

The night shift plays tricks on your mind – Sarah knew this. The fluorescent lights, the endless white corridors, the constant hum of medical equipment. But she’d never experienced anything like what happened at 1 AM.

She was updating charts at the nurses’ station when the lights in Room 412 flickered. Just once, barely noticeable. But in that split second of darkness, she could have sworn she saw Mr. Harrison standing in his doorway, his silhouette somehow too tall, too fluid. When she looked up properly, the door was closed.

The security footage showed nothing. Of course it didn’t.

At 2 AM, she noticed the smell. Like wet leaves and copper pennies, with an underlying sweetness that reminded her of overripe fruit and formaldehyde. She’d changed Mr. Harrison’s sheets, checked for any accidents, but found nothing. The smell remained, growing stronger with each passing hour.

During her rounds, she noticed small changes in Room 412. Water spots on the ceiling that seemed to shift position when she wasn’t looking directly at them. The room temperature dropping despite the thermostat showing normal readings. The mirror that never quite reflected what it should – showing the room a fraction of a second behind reality, like a delayed video feed.

“Just tired,” she told herself, even as she watched Mr. Harrison’s skin ripple beneath the surface during his 3 AM vital check. His chart showed normal readings, but her thermometer had melted, the digital display bleeding black liquid before going dark. The pulse oximeter registered 127% oxygen saturation – impossible for human blood. When she listened to his chest again, she heard what sounded like fluid sloshing where his lungs should be.

Her penlight revealed pupils that contracted vertically, like a cat’s, before shifting horizontally, then spiraling inward like closing irises. The sclera of his eyes had turned pearlescent, reflecting colors that didn’t exist in the hospital’s fluorescent lighting.

She should have called Dr. Martinez then. Should have reported the incident. But something stopped her – the same something that made her delete the footage from her phone as soon as she recorded it. The same instinct that told her this was beyond anything medical science could explain.

At 4 AM, she found his bed empty. The sheets were pristine, arranged with hospital corners so perfect they seemed almost artificial, as if someone had tried too hard to replicate human behavior. The IV bag was full of something that wasn’t saline anymore – the liquid inside had turned opalescent and seemed to be moving against gravity, flowing upward through the tubing toward nothing.

The smell was overwhelming now, and beneath it was a sound – a soft, wet rhythm that reminded her of a heart beating underwater, of cells dividing too rapidly, of organs rearranging themselves into impossible configurations.

“Mr. Harrison?” she called softly, noticing the bathroom door was closed. A quiet slipping sound came from behind it, like something heavy and wet being dragged across tile. Something scraped against the other side of the door – not like fingers, but like something that had seen fingers once and was trying to remember how they worked.

She should call security. That’s what protocol demanded. Instead, she found herself reaching for the handle, her body moving forward even as her mind screamed at her to run. Later, she would wonder if it had been curiosity or compulsion that made her open that door.

The door swung open with a soft click.

Mr. Harrison was there, in a way. His hospital gown lay crumpled on the floor, empty except for what looked like a thick, clear gel slowly seeping through the fabric. Each drop that hit the tile made a sound like whispered words in a language she almost understood. Next to it lay his hospital bracelet, the plastic warped and partially dissolved as if exposed to strong acid.

The mirror above the sink was completely fogged, despite the room’s cool temperature. In its clouded surface, she could see shapes moving – not reflections, but something deeper, like looking through a window rather than at a mirror. The shapes reminded her of the illustrations in her old anatomy textbooks, if all the organs were trying to rearrange themselves into something new. Capillaries forming fractals. Neurons branching into impossible patterns. Tissue transforming into something that defied classification.

And there, in the corner, something moved. It was human-shaped, but only in the way that a child’s first attempt at sculpting might resemble a person. The proportions were wrong, the angles impossible. Its skin was translucent, pulsing with shadows that had nothing to cast them. Through its fluid form, she could see bones that bent in directions bones shouldn’t bend, organs that shifted and flowed like mercury. What might have been a spine undulated with too many vertebrae, each one rotating independently like the segments of a centipede.

It turned toward her with a motion that reminded Sarah of time-lapse footage of growing vines. Where its face should have been, there was only a soft, continuous rippling, like a pond in gentle rain. Beneath the surface, something that might have been eyes watched her with an intelligence that felt ancient and hungry. In the thing’s chest, she could see multiple hearts beating in synchronized chaos.

“Never better, dear,” it said in Mr. Harrison’s voice, perfectly clear despite having no mouth to speak with. “Would you like to see why?” The thing that used to be Mr. Harrison reached out with what might have been a hand, its fingers too long and jointed in too many places, trailing tendrils of tissue that kept trying to form new structures. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels like becoming everything you were meant to be. Like finally understanding what these bodies could really do, if we just stopped limiting ourselves to one shape, one function, one purpose.”

Sarah ran. Down the hall, past the nurses’ station, not stopping until she reached the service elevator. Her hands shook as she pressed the button for the ground floor. The corridor lights flickered behind her, and in each moment of darkness, she heard something moving closer, its movement wet and eager. The medical equipment she passed began to malfunction – heart monitors flatlined, IV pumps displayed impossible numbers, vital sign machines screamed out alerts for physiological conditions that couldn’t exist.

As the doors began to close, she caught a glimpse of something transparent and fluid slipping around the corner. It moved like water finding its path downhill, inevitable and patient. In the metal reflection of the elevator doors, she could have sworn she saw it smile.

The next day, Room 412 was empty. Mr. Harrison’s chart showed he’d been discharged at 5 AM, paperwork signed and processed. The signature was perfect – an exact match for his admission forms. The security cameras showed nothing unusual: just a normal patient walking out, his movements so perfect they seemed rehearsed. The only evidence anything had happened was the IV pump, which had to be replaced after it was found displaying vital signs for six different circulatory systems simultaneously.

Sarah almost convinced herself she’d imagined it all, until she noticed her reflection in the break room mirror. For just a moment, her skin seemed to ripple, like water moving beneath wax paper. And somewhere deep inside, she felt something shift, something that had been waiting to wake up. When she checked her pulse, she found two distinct rhythms.

She didn’t go home that morning. She couldn’t. After all, she had another shift that night.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.

Sometimes, in the quiet hours before dawn, she catches herself smiling too wide, her teeth feeling soft in the fluorescent light. And she wonders how long it will be before someone notices that her movements are becoming too perfect, too rehearsed. Before they notice how her blood samples keep coming back as “contaminated,” or how the equipment malfunctions whenever she takes her own vitals.

Like something trying to remember how to be human.

Or perhaps like something finally forgetting it needs to be.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Callum Matthews 2024