Lights Under Electric Blankets

The hospital’s construction was fueled by the tuberculosis scourge that had captured the country in a stated of paranoia and cruel looks at fellow citizens whenever they offered a cough in public and every cold was treated with a nearly panicked distrust. During the construction, the location had been on the outskirts of city limits. A single two-lane road was the only way into and out of the sanitarium. Though Louisville was still not a major city, it had grown up around the two-lane road and the very road had been expanded. The hospital was still at the top of the hill, marked only by a small sign and completely outside of the public view.

            “How’s my favorite patient?” the nurse asked as she entered the room holding the equipment for the breathing treatment in her hands.

            He smiled and spoke through a strained whisper, “Better.”

            She smiled back and began setting up the breathing treatment on the tray that was also used to serve his meals. “There is a lot of breakfast left on that plate.”

            “Not hungry.”

            “You have to eat. That is important. Your lungs are healing and they need nutrition to do that.”

            He shook his head and watched as she attached the tubing to the nebulizer, opened the plastic bags with strong tears, and extracted the sanitized components.

            “You didn’t answer,” she said gripping his hand with her own.

            His skin was always hot since it happened, and when she gripped his fingers he could feel her skin was cool and sterile. It was comforting. He vaguely hoped she was succumbing to a Nightingale effect for him. He had been in the institution for weeks and she cared for him as if he were an infant. At first, he needed care around the clock and was not even strong enough to feel humiliated when his adult diapers were changed. He still needed a bed pan, and his condition had improved enough to feel embarrassed when it was received purchase.

            “I’ll eat.”

            “Okay, Malcom. Let’s go ahead and do that now. You always get sleepy after your treatment.”

            He took his fork and marveled how a cheap aluminum fork could feel heavy to him, “In bed all day and always sleepy.”

            She touched his hair as he took his first bite, “You’re improving. It just takes time. You were the worst I ever saw. I didn’t think you were going to make it when they brought you up.”

            The scrambled eggs had grown cold and the bacon stressed his jaw when he chewed. The fruit cup was the easiest to eat. He finished it completely, hoping that would placate her.

            During its time as a sanitarium, the two-lane road was a steady stream of new patients on the incoming lane and an equally steady parade of hearses on the outgoing lane. The sanitarium had become renowned for its innovation: both in treatment and technology. The sanitarium had the highest success rate in treating a disease that was always fatal. The success was counted by the amount of time from diagnosis to death. The sanitarium was the first to use electric blankets and X-rays. Also, they focused on filling the lungs with good air and the stomach with good food.

            Furthermore, they made it a point that the sanitarium felt like home. It had flower gardens and the patients scurried around in their wheelchairs through the vibrant grounds. There was a large ballroom inside. The staff would bring in musicians. They played orchestral music while wearing masks over their faces. Sometimes they projected movies on the pristine white wall.

            “You know my parents were children here,” she said. “Both sets of my grandparents were patients. They died here.”

            He shook his head and kept the apparatus in his mouth, breathing in the medicine as white vapors as the pump on the nebulizer hummed the like an upset stomach.

            “There were lots of children here. Most people don’t know that. If you look at old pictures, you can see the playground equipment on the roof. It kept the families together.”

            He continued to feel the medicine enter his lungs. It had a soothing effect since his lungs almost always felt as hot as his skin. The burning was different though and – in truth – the lungs were the source of the heat.          

            “They both contracted tuberculosis as children when they were living here. They became patients like my grandparents. The cure came soon after. It’s the only reason I am here.”

            She took the apparatus from his hand and touched his arm, “You’re getting much better.”

            She took the other device from the tray and placed it in his hands. He knew what to do. He began exhaling as vigorously as he could. A small rubber ball in the device began to lift along a ruler molded into the plastic. He was able to raise the ball a few centimeters.

            “See,” she said. “Two weeks you couldn’t even make it budge.”

            He continued to blow into the tube that fed his air into the cylinder where the ball continued to rise against gravity. He wanted to show her he was trying to heal.

            Her face was a soft one. She was pretty in a very timid way. Every day he looked forward to her entrance, as she came in wearing the light blue or purple scrubs that shrouded her thin frame. Her long dark hair rested free on her shoulders and down her back. He thought her to be in her early to mid-thirties like himself. She did not wear a wedding ring.

            “For decades, this place was full of desperate people, Malcolm,” she said. “This place was full of death, and – at the same time – people trying to live their lives. The nurses and doctors often became patients. All those people just wanted to walk out of here. My grandparents wanted to walk out of here. My parents were some of the few that did.”

            He nodded still exercising his lungs with the device.

            “You are going to walk out of here. I promise you that. Your lungs are going to heal. You’re going to take me out to dinner, and I am going to make sure you eat every bite on your plate.”

            He reached the end of his ability to push the tiny ball upwards and pulled away from the breathing device, exhaling, “That sounds amazing.”

            “I even think your voice is getting stronger.”

            She gathered up the pieces from the breathing treatment after separating them from the nebulizer. She placed the apparatus on the shelf by the window. She leaned back to look out the door. Then, she leaned in and kissed his cheek.

            “You did great, Malcolm,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

            “It’s thanks to you, Sheila,” he said still using words that required as little air as possible.

            She smiled again and left the room. She would stop by a few more times during her shift. She checked the machines pumping the oxygen through the nubbins in his nose and monitoring his vital signs. Each time she entered, she would offer him a wink or another bright smile.

            He picked at his lunch and napped through most of the afternoon. Prior to ending her shift, she entered his room carrying his dinner tray. It was unusual for a nurse to deliver food as the nutrition team had that duty.

            She placed the plate on the tray and shot him a seductive, “You know what we are going to do after we have dinner?”

            He smiled and felt as if he may blush.

            “We’re going to update your resume. You have to find a new job before you get killed.”

            “No doubt.”

            “Eat every bite. Do it for me.”

            The evening settled over the hospital and the cold concrete walls began to do battle with the gas-powered heat that pushed into his room. The night shift nurse turned on a humidifier that rattled in the corner of the room. He found the sound soothing and watched as the last bit of sunlight came through the door on the balcony slowly turning into shadow cast from the light in the hallway. When the hospital was a tuberculosis sanitarium, each patient would be pushed out the door onto the balcony to breath in the fresh air no matter the weather – that is what brought about the electric blankets.

            He could feel himself getting sleepy. Most of his day was spent sleeping, which was typically a calm affair, but the nights were always different. There was the constant clattering from the hallway and there were nurses entering every few hours to check his vitals and waking him up.

            He tried to think about Sheila. He let his mind wander to the curves of her smile. His intentions were honest towards Sheila, and he now suspected they were mutual. That made him happy, and he hoped his dreams would be about her that night.

            They had not been during his times at the hospital.

            The first several nights had been about the old woman who tried to kill him. He remembered knocking on her door. He inspected her house weeks before, and he had deemed it unfit for human habitation. This required him to order it vacated which was the highest level of action that the code ordinance allowed.

            She answered wearing the oxygen mask over her mouth. He held up his badge with the words METRO CODE ENFORCEMENT colored in blue against the golden, etched surface.

            “You again,” the woman said – her voice muffled from the oxygen mask.

            “Ma’am, I told you I would be back today.”

            “I know you did. Why does that mean shit to me?” her mask became fogged as she spoke.

            Malcolm remembered the house had a powerful smell. The last time it was the smell of decomposition from the dead cats and the smell of the excess of feces. The rotting food in the kitchen had also been breathtaking. He placed the rubber bands of the cotton mask around his ears.

            The smell was strong now. It had a chemical smell that mixed with the stale old air of the place filled with decay.

            “What do you want?”

            “Ma’am, today is the day. You have to be out.”

            “I’ve been working on it for two weeks.”

            “Ma’am, the fifteen days was to give you time to vacate the property, not to make repairs. We’re passed that.”

            This was his first OTV since the ordinance was changed and strengthened. Previously, when an occupant refused to vacate, it was necessary to start eviction, which was time-consuming. If the occupant was also the owner, the process was even longer and required the metro government to foreclose on the property. Now, if the property was occupied at the end of the fifteen-day notice, the code enforcement officer would verify occupancy and call the Sherriff’s office for a set-out. Once the occupant and his or her belongings were removed, the boarding crew would seal the building.

            Malcolm was shocked when the ordinance was passed into law.

            “No, no, no,” she said. “I’ve lived in this house twice as long as you have been alive. You’re not kicking me out.”

            “Ma’am, I have to do this,” he said. He called the special line for the OTV set-outs. The dispatcher took his call and said the sheriff’s deputies and the inmate crew would be on their way soon.

            “Please, officer.”

            “Ma’am, I can’t.”

            “Please, just give me a chance. I’ve been working real hard to get this place right. Please.”

            Malcolm dropped his chin to his chest, “If you’ve made real progress, I’ll see what I can do.”

            The chemical smell became even more intense when he entered. The woman pulled the oxygen tank on its wheels which squeaked and clattered against the old hardwood floors. The chemical smell was even more pungent on the interior and mixed with the smell of the dead matter in a way that began to burn his nostrils and turn his stomach. He took his flashlight and began surveying the room.

            “Ma’am, I don’t see any improvements.”

            “You have to start in the kitchen,” she said and began to walk towards the only lit room in the house.

            Malcolm followed, clicking off his flashlight and placing it in his pocket. He turned the corner to the kitchen and white lights flashed in his vision. He collected himself and found he had fallen to his knees. He touched the back of his head and could see blood on his fingers. He looked up to the stove and could see a kettle with a thick mist rising from it. The smell in the room was unbearable and his lungs were on fire. He looked up to see the old woman staring at him. She held a baseball bat in her hands and she had removed her mask.

            “You know, baby, this part of town is old – the oldest. Every damn house around here is haunted, just some of the ghosts aren’t dead yet.”

            Her lips began to boast blood and another trickle of red descended from her nose.

            “You’ll see, sweetie. Soon enough you’ll be one of us.”

            She collapsed to the floor, and Malcolm could see blood beginning to pool around her downturned face.

            He began crawling as quickly as he could, following the path he had used to enter. Soon his eyes were burning with an intensity that forced them shut. He peeked through the pain opening one eye for a less than a second to check his way, then alternating to the other to ensure he was staying true. Within feet of the door, he was one his forearms, dragging his body behind him. He could see the door just a few feet away, but he was unable to move anymore. He felt hands grab his tactical shirt and pull him to safety.

            The deputy shouted, “Stay with me!”

            The graveyard shift nurse tapped the metal arm of his bed. He opened his eyes to see her wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his bicep.

            “Sorry to wake you,” she said and began pumping the inflation bulb.

            He could feel the pressure on his arm and tried to close his eyes.

            “Malcolm, I need you to open your eyes,” she said and he complied.

            His vision was hazy from sleep and he looked into the hallway. There appeared to be a parade of shadow people walking pass the door holding lights under electric blankets. He squinted again trying to clear his eyes but felt his eyelids clamp down.

            “Malcolm?”

            “What time is it?” he asked.

            “It’s three am. I need you to open your eyes.”

            He felt the muscles around his eyelids ease. He opened to see the menagerie of shadows wrapped in shining blankets.

            “What’s going on?”

            “It’s mid-shift, Malcolm, it is always busy now.”

            She finished with the blood pressure cuff and encased his finger with the tiny machine that checked his blood oxygen. She ran the thermometer over his forehead.

            “When did they convert the sanitarium into a hospital?”

            “A sanitarium is a hospital,” she answered.

            “You know what I mean,” he said – his words weak and airy. “When did they convert it from a tuberculosis sanitarium to a hospital?”

            “As soon as they cured tuberculosis,” she answered.

            “No,” he replied. “It was abandoned for decades. Covered in graffiti. Pilfered. They were going to tear it down. The state deemed it historical.”

            “No, it wasn’t.”

            “I came here. I was a teenager. I was with my friends. We broke in. We had flashlights.”

            “You’re delirious, Malcolm. You need to go back to sleep.”

            “It was abandoned,” he repeated.

            “Get your rest,” the nurse said. She injected what Malcolm assumed to be a sedative into his IV.

            He felt his consciousness coming about him, and he could hear the faint sound of orchestral music. This brought him comfort as he often skipped the news and television in the morning before work. He would sip his coffee at the kitchen table, listening to the classical music softly emitting from the radio on the counter. He opened his eyes and the music subsided to the typical hospital clatter.

            “Good morning, Sheila,” he said.

            She looked up from opening the components to the breathing treatment with a look that first boasted shock and relaxed into happiness.

            “Did you hear that?”

            “Hear what?” he asked.

            “Your voice,” she said. “It’s your voice. You’re not whispering. It’s your real voice!”

            She gripped his hands and brought his knuckles to her lips, “I told you it was getting better.”

            “Is this real?”

            “What?”

            “Is this real? I feel like I am imagining it.”

            “Everything is real,” she said. “What you see, what you feel – all of it is real. When someone imagines a song, they play it on an instrument. When someone thinks of a story, they write it down. They make their imaginations real.”

            “Is my imagination making you real?”

            She was still holding his hand; she flattened his palm and gripped his hand between hers. He noticed that his body no longer felt hot and he felt his stomach sink when he felt her cold hands.

            “What we have is real,” she said. “This isn’t nightingale, it’s real. I feel like I loved you the second I saw you. I feel like we loved each other in another life.”

            She released his hand and rested it on his chest. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, “I love you.”

            “I’m in love with you too,” he said.

            She continued with the breathing treatment and then with the device containing the ball that exercised his lungs. She marked how his progress seemed to double since yesterday’s session.

            “Have you ever been in love before?” she asked.

            “No,” he said. “I’ve been close, I guess, but not before you.”

            “All the guys I’ve known seemed to want something I wasn’t,” she said. “I never felt anything real. Now I know why.”

            She finished the treatment and the exercise. He was surprised he didn’t feel tired afterward.

            She left with the used nebulizer attachments, returning a few minutes later with a metal walker with wheels on the ends of the front legs and tennis balls on the rear.

            “Okay, Malcolm, it’s time for you to get on your feet.”

            She helped him from his bed, securing the belt of his robe and resting his hands on the walker. He propelled forward slowly as she managed the stand with his IV and oxygen. As they made their way down the hall he peered into the rooms they passed, thinking he noticed a glowing underneath the blankets under which the other patients slept.

            “You’re doing good,” she said.

            “I’m trying,” he answered and continued to push forward towards a door at the end of the hall. When they reached it, he said. “I guess that’s it.”

            “Not yet,” she said. She pulled a key from her scrub pocket and opened the door. She stepped through first, holding the door open with her back and ushering the IV stand through. Malcolm followed her. When he crested the door, he noticed the corridor. The concrete walls were covered with graffiti and it had a peculiar and cold emptiness. There were scrap papers on the floor and the place looked dilapidated, neglected, and vacant.

            “What is this?”

            “This part wasn’t converted. It was called the Five West wing, which just means the west wing of the fifth floor. It’s the part of the sanitarium where they housed the patients in their last days. Oddly enough, if you go to the roof courtyard there is a playground. Weird, isn’t it?”

            “I asked a nurse last night. She said this place never shut down. She said it was never abandoned.”

            “I don’t know why she would have said that. We get a lot of turnover here. This hospital isn’t for everyone. They say over ten thousand people died here in the decades it was a sanitarium. It’s supposed to be one of the most haunted places on the planet. It gets to people.”

            “Why is this part like this?”

            “When it was redeveloped, the decision was made to leave part of the building as it was. Since this is the part where most of the people who were treated here died, it was left untouched,” she said.

            Without the machinery and commotion of the occupied parts of the hospital, they were able to walk side by side down the hall. She stopped again at a door with an excess of graffiti, most of it some derivation of the numbers 502.

            “In here,” she said.

            He followed her inside. There was a soft leather recliner in there, and Malcolm thought it was very out of place.

            “Sit down,” she said. “You need to rest.”

            She assisted him to the chair and pushed the walker and IV stand out of the way. He felt his back sink into the chair. She smiled and sat down in his lap, locking her lips with his. He kissed her back, feeling content.

            “I really am in love with you.”

            “I know. I’m not going to be your nurse anymore.”

            “Why?”

            “Because we are together now; I had to report it.”

            “Are you in trouble?”

            “No. It happens. I just can’t be your nurse anymore.”

            “I won’t see you?”

            “No, I’m still going to come see you. I still work the east wing. You know the east wing still specializes in lung issues. That is what brought you to me.”

            “Where do you want to go to dinner?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Want me to surprise you?”

            “No, Malcolm, I want you to pick and I want you to tell me.”

            “There is a place in the Highlands called Pharaoh’s World Café.”

            “I know that place,” she said. “That will be romantic.”

            She assisted him back to his feet and they walked the hall back to the door into the east wing. They entered to the bustle of the hospital floor and she assisted him back to his room. She helped him to bed. She checked the door to make sure no one was watching and kissed him again. She gave him another wink before she left, and he felt himself drift off to sleep.

            Some of the methods used to the treat the tuberculosis patients were as dangerous and ill-conceived as they were progressive. Needles were inserted into the chest through the muscle between the ribs, as big syringes full of air were emptied into the diseased lungs. Many modern experts believed that many of the patients died from the treatments rather than the disease. It was estimated each bed in the five hundred bed sanitarium would receive a new patient upwards of four times a year through the decades. This led to one of the most legendary innovations in the treatment of tuberculosis: the removal of bodies.     

            Rather than let the suffering patients see the covered bodies being wheeled on a gurney, the architects and doctors devised a system of conveyor belts within the walls that led to a tunnel at the rear of the property. The hearses would be waiting at the bottom of the slanted conveyor. Once the bodies were loaded they would drive the path around to the front and down the little two lane road.

            Malcolm dreamed again of the woman whose house he had vacated. He could see her lying in the pool of blood and her body began moving down the dim hall like a worm slithering through the soil digesting all the dead things it contained. He woke with the sensation that the worm woman was eating his flesh as his own body decayed.

            He woke with his body feeling cool, especially his hand that seemed to be wrapped around a tube of metal. He pulled the cover back and lifted the thing. It was a flashlight. He examined it, thinking it was the one issued to him by the department of code enforcement.

            “Some guy dropped that off,” Sheila said. “He said he worked with you.”

            She was out of her scrubs and wearing jeans and a dark blouse. Her hair looked like it was recently washed and it was hanging about her face and shoulders in long, dark curls.

            “Did he give his name?”

            “I didn’t speak to him,” she said. “I’m not your nurse anymore.”

            “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Haven’t you finished your shift?”

            “My shift is over. I took a shower in the locker room and now I’m visiting my boyfriend.”

            Malcolm felt himself smile and felt a little embarrassed, “Oh.”

            “That’s right. ‘Oh’ indeed,” she said. “Now come on.”

            This time he felt like the walker was only minimally necessary. He took the flashlight and rested it in his robe pocket and began pushing the walker down the hallway. The autumn evening was settling in and he could see the lights like candles in the rooms as he passed. They walked towards the door again as Sheila pushed the stand that had his IV and oxygen. She walked slightly ahead of him and he thought of how the scrubs did not do her shape justice.

            When they arrived at the door, she took the key from her pocket, and they entered the abandoned corridor of the sanitarium. He noticed the glass seemed to be missing from the windows in most of the rooms and that the autumn chill was blowing through the place. He imagined the tuberculosis patients taking in the crisp air. Each room seemed to have the singular candle light. He couldn’t tell if it was a trick of his imagination or possibly a safety measure to keep the abandoned Five West illuminated.

            He walked as diligently as he could, watching the light in the dim hall reflect on her hair. They arrived at the room with the 502 graffiti, and as he turned the corner he noticed there was a table covered with a white tablecloth. A single candlestick lit the room. There were two plates of food that appeared to be delicately prepared on the table with two glasses of red wine. There was a twin-size bed along the wall.

            “What is this?”

            “I couldn’t wait until you got out of here,” she said. “It’s our first date.”

            She helped him into his chair and they toasted with their glasses.

            “This is amazing,” he said.

            “I’ve waited for you for so long, Malcolm.”

            “I feel the same way,” he said.

            “I can remember you in this room, so long ago. I remember you in that bed. I remember those last wet breaths you took.”

            “Sheila?”

            “There are ghosts all through this building, Malcolm,” she said. “Eat. You’ll need your strength.”

            He held the fork in his hand feeling his labored breath. The food was red meat with vegetables. He could see the blood pooling around the filet the same way it did around the old woman’s face when the vapors tore her frail lungs out and weakened his.

            “You’ll be strong again, Malcolm, you’ll be well.”

            “We’ll be happy together?”

            “We will, Malcolm.”

            “Like I was saying, this place is full of ghosts. I’ve been here since the beginning, I would know,” she sipped the wine before she continued. “Before they found the cure for tuberculosis, it seemed like someone was dying here every few minutes, but people were trying to live their lives too.”

            “You’ve told me,” he said.

            The meat was hot and the juices filled his mouth. He chased it with the wine and it warmed his stomach and he felt stronger. He continued to dig his fork into the food, knowing it was the first time he had really felt hunger since the old lady poisoned him.

            “When people died, the nurses would put lights under the electric blankets. When the orderlies walked the halls, they would see the lights glowing underneath the bodies, and they would know which ones to send down the corridor.”

            Malcolm took the flashlight from his pocket and looked at it. He hadn’t noticed how old it looked. It wasn’t his code enforcement flashlight, but more of an antique. “This is the one you placed in my bed.”

            “I came to work here as a nurse, and I brought the disease home to you. Then to our children,” she said. “We can’t keep nurses here. There are ghosts who don’t know they’re not alive, so we wait for our families to come home.”

            He reached across the table and took her hand. She looked at him through the candles, and he could see the stillness in her eyes. She rose from her chair and helped him from his. Then, she helped him to the bed, bringing him to rest on his back. She joined him on the bed, laying her head on his chest with the old flashlight clutched in her hand. He covered them up and looked at the graffiti lit in the chilled light.

            He could hear the voices of the children playing on the equipment just outside the door. Their laughter filled him, and he felt his breath strengthen as she rested her head on his chest. Something dying and ancient woke up within him, and he felt the fury of disease want to take him over.