The Proxy Haunting

"Code Blue, Room 3! Code Blue, Room 3!"

My heart, already a steady drumbeat of adrenaline, lurched. Code Blue. The two words that could turn a routine shift into a life-or-death sprint. Without a second thought, I dropped my logging chart down on the medical cart and was off, my worn out sneakers squeaking on the polished linoleum.

The hallway, usually a bustling thoroughfare of medical professionals and anxious families, seemed to part before me like the Red Sea. I could hear the distinct, rhythmic sound of someone counting compressions even before I reached room three.

Pushing through the swinging doors, my eyes immediately swept across the scene. A man, pale and still, lay on the gurney, his chest rising and falling only with the aid of the rapid, practiced compressions being delivered by Dr. Evans, an experienced doctor in our ER. One of the most distinguished nurses in the division, Linda, was already bagging him, the whoosh of air filling his lungs a desperate symphony"

"What do we have?" I asked, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands.

"Fifty-two-year-old male, suspected MI," Dr. Evans grunted, not missing a beat. "Lost pulse about thirty seconds ago. Just started compressions."

I immediately moved to the head of the bed, my mind already racing through the protocol. Airway, breathing, circulation. The ABCs of resuscitation. I grabbed the intubation kit, my fingers flying as I prepared the equipment. Every second counted. Every breath, every compression, every drug administered was a desperate plea for life. This was the ER, and for me, it was where I fought my hardest battles.

4:21 AM- “Erin, can I see you in room eight?” Our charge nurse, Jackie, beckoned me over while peeking out through the curtains of room eight. Jackie was known for being stern and even menacing at times. Once you get to know her, she practically has a heart of gold. She’s been one of my closest friends since I started working here a year ago.

As I slowly approach the room, one of our medical residents, John, greets me, his long hair pushed back into a neatly tucked ponytail, his glasses drooping down his curved nose.

“Kavanagh,”

He murmurs softly, his lips curving into a slow smile.

I give him a curt nod and wave, as I dodge the corner of the nurses station; at least five other of the fellow nurses and medical residents, monitors lining the walls of the space.

The adrenaline from room three was still a metallic hum in my teeth. Fifty-two years old. A massive myocardial infarction. I could still feel the phantom resistance of his sternum under my palms, the way the human body fighting for air feels less like a person and more like a failing machine.

I pushed into Room 10, the quiet of the empty suite hitting me like a physical weight. Jackie was already there, leaning over the mobile workstation. The blue light of the monitor carved deep, unnatural hollows into her cheeks.

"He’s stabilized," I said, reaching for the sanitizer. The foam felt cold, stripping the tacky residue of the code from my skin.

"We got a pulse back. Barely."

Jackie didn't look up. Her fingers danced across the keyboard with a frantic, bird-like precision.

"Did you check your notifications, Erin?"

I paused, a damp paper towel halfway to the bin. "I’ve been alternating compressions and bagging for forty minutes, Jackie. I haven't checked my pulse, let alone my phone."

"You should." She finally turned. Her expression wasn't scared—it was perplexed, the way a scientist looks at a specimen that refuses to die. "I thought you were orphaning your shifts again. I almost reported you for a no-show."

"I’ve been three doors down the entire time. You were the one who called the code."

"I know," she whispered, her gaze drifting back to the screen."But according to the internal staff portal, you just clocked out. From the parking garage. Twelve minutes ago."

A small, cold bead of sweat—separate from the heat of the code—slid down my spine.

"System glitch. The server's been laggy since the update."

"Maybe."

Jackie stepped aside, inviting me to look.

"You're hovering, Erin," Jackie said. She didn't look up from her clipboard, but her voice cut through the fog in my head.

"I'm just... I'm thinking about his eyes," I whispered. I leaned against the cold laminate of the counter.

"When we finally got the ROSC, and his pupils constricted... he didn't look relieved. He looked terrified. Like he’d been pushed back into a room he’d already moved out of."

Jackie finally looked at me. Her expression was unreadable, her eyes tracking something just behind my shoulder. "Maybe he realized what he left behind. People like Henderson... They have a lot of digital footprints. It’s hard to pack all that up on short notice."

I frowned, the word footprints snagging on a jagged thought I couldn't quite smooth over. During the code, I’d noticed his smartphone vibrating on the bedside table. Not a call. Just a constant, frantic stream of banner notifications that seemed to pulse in time with our compressions. It felt intrusive, like we were reviving him just so he could answer his emails.

"He's stable, for now,"

I said, more to convince myself than her.

That night, I woke to the sound of my kitten, Brione, crying out soft hisses, scratching at my door. My feet slide over the cool tile as I make my way to the door slowly, rubbing sleep from my eyes. My mind is still racing with the sound of cracking ribs, each rhythmic thrust of my hands only a weapon. The patient, Mr. Henderson was lucky to have made it.; his Cardiac Arrest was more than sudden — it was inevitable. I kept looking at my hands. They were steady now, but the muscle memory of those forty minutes was trapped in my marrow. When you perform CPR on a man like Mr. Henderson, you aren't just a nurse; you’re a tether. You’re the only thing anchoring a five-thousand-dollar suit and a lifetime of high-yield dividends to a world that is actively trying to let him go.

Thump. Recoil. Thump. Recoil.

I could still feel the unsettling give of his chest. It’s a sound they don't teach you in nursing school—the way a body becomes hollow when the electricity stops. He had been a person at 02:14 PM. By 02:15 PM, he was merely a physics problem we were trying to solve with 200 joules and a prayer.

I always thought I could handle the ghostly presence of a patient who is barely with us, and suddenly brought back. I’ve handled codes millions of times, yet, this one felt personal. A tether tied to my existence.

My thoughts are interrupted as soon as Brione curls up by my side, her nose pressing to my waist with a gentle nudge.

The 4:00 AM chill had finally settled into the marrow of the apartment. I sat at my small kitchen table, the wood scarred by a ring from a coffee mug I’d left there three months ago. The refrigerator hummed—a low, rhythmic groan that seemed to mimic the ventilator back in Room 3. I stared at a bowl of cereal, the flakes turning to grey sludge in the milk. After a code, I was always either starving or nauseated; tonight, I was both.

As I stare up into the reflection of the kitchen window, I notice something. My pale, freckled skin is overcome by dark circles under my eyes, and my once exuberant green eyes are dim with exhaustion. I didn’t think my work schedule had been so busy, to the point where I look like this. Picking up my phone, I log into my work calendar, punching in a date in the spring for me to take a day off.

March 23rd.

An abrupt memory hits me in the head like a bullet going 500 feet per second. Fia, ever the artist, is [c]sketching in her notebook at the small, round kitchen table. I’m leaning against the doorframe, sipping my mug of chamomile tea, the warmth seeping into my hands and bones. The morning sun, filtering through the window, illuminates dust motes dancing in the air, creating a serene scene, worthy of a painting.

The clinking of ceramic as Mom sets down a fresh loaf of sourdough, the soft scratching of my younger sister Fia’s pencil, the distant chirping of birds – these are the sounds of our old life. It's a symphony of old memories and thoughts of new beginnings, a constant hum of love and adaptation. It's a life where our father, John, is ever-present in our hearts, a silent observer of the new chapter we’ve written for ourselves as we prepare to depart from our country.

A loud purr for attention ripped my focus out of the memory and onto Brione, who is now rubbing along my leg, her eyes shut tightly.

Eventually, the exhaustion won. But as I drifted off, the last thing I saw wasn't a dream. It was the soft, blue glow of my phone screen illuminating the ceiling, triggered by a notification I was too tired to silence.

The next night, in the dim light of the kitchen, I stand by the sink, my back pressed against the cold tile. It’s quiet tonight in the neighborhood, each townhouse dimly lit, a dog howling in the background like a siren.

It was 1:14 AM, the kind of hour where the world feels thin, stretched between reality and the slow creep of exhaustion. I scrolled aimlessly on Instagram, the rhythmic flick of my thumb the only sound in the darkened apartment—until the image appeared.

I freeze.

On my feed was a candid shot, the composition tight and intimate. In the photo, I was lying on my side, my hair fanned out across the pillow like spilled ink. My mouth was slightly parted, my features softened by the heavy, defenseless slack of deep sleep. The lighting was dim, caught in the grainy, sickly-sweet amber of my bedside lamp.

A cold, hollow sensation opened up in my chest. I recognized the pajamas. I recognized the way my hand was tucked under my cheek.

I was looking at myself from three nights ago.

It wasn't a repost or a tag from a friend. It was my own account—the private one, the one with the password I hadn't changed in three years. The caption was a single, solitary period.

My chest tightens. My breathing comes in shallow, jagged hitches. I look from the phone to the empty space on the bed beside me, then back to the screen.

I scrolled through my "Recently Deleted" folder. Nothing. I checked my login activity. There were no new devices, no suspicious IPs. According to the data, the post had been uploaded from this phone, from this room, while I was dead to the world. I tap the photo to see the tags, my fingers trembling so violently I nearly drop the device. There were no tags, but as I pinched the screen to zoom in on the dark reflection of the window behind my sleeping form, I saw it.

In the glass, obscured by the grain of the low-light filter, was a silhouette. It wasn't a person standing; it was the faint, unmistakable reflection of a hand reaching out from the darkness of my closet, holding a phone steady.

The closet door in the photo was cracked open two inches.

I looked up. Across the room, in the heavy silence of the 2:00 AM dark, my closet door stood exactly the same way.

And then, my phone buzzed. A notification banner dropped from the top of the screen:

[Your Account] (1) New Draft Saved.

I couldn't stay. The house didn't feel like mine anymore; I felt like a trespasser in my own life. The breaking point came when I walked through the front door after my shift and the smell of gas hit me—every burner on the stove was twisted to 'high,' hissing into the empty kitchen."

I decided to spend the night at my mothers house.

When I arrive, after driving for what seems like hours, she steps outside, her eyebrows furrowed in a puzzled expression. I frantically scanned the shadows as I hurried toward her. Fia sits straight up on her lawnchair, putting down her book onto her lap with a soft thud.

“Erin, it’s nearly 8 o’clock. What in the hell?” My mother greets me, holding my shaking shoulder steadily, her eyes flickering back and forth between me and Fia.

“Ma, the house — it’s not safe. Strange things have been happening — the stove randomly turning on, an Insta post I didn’t make on my profile; I don’t know what to do, Ma.”

Aoife only shushes me, her hands rubbing gentle circles on my biceps, corded with light muscle I’ve acquired with my years of nursing.

“I always knew you’d work yourself to the point of delusion. You need more sleep, my love.” Aoife sighed, a sound of weary patience as she poured boiling water into a ceramic teapot. "Erin, you’ve always had a vivid imagination. Even as a young girl, you’d swear the shadows in the hallway were moving. You’re exhausted. You’re working in a high-stress environment, seeing people at their worst... it plays tricks on the mind."

"Tricks?" I shoved the phone toward her, the screen displaying the grainy reflection from my closet. "Look at the door, Mum. Look at the hand. Someone was in my house while I was sleeping. They used my stove tonight. I walked in and the burners were on."

Aoife didn't look at the screen. She reached out, gently pushing my hand down. Her eyes were full of a terrifying kind of pity. "Love, you probably left the stove on this morning in your rush. And as for the 'hand'... it’s a shadow. A smudge on the lens. You’re seeing patterns because you’re looking for them."

"She’s not seeing things, Ma."

Fia stood in the archway, her face pale, her hand gripping the doorframe. Her heart was clearly racing—I could see the pulse thrumming in the hollow of her throat—but her gaze was steady.

"Fia, stay out of this," Aoife warned softly. "Your sister needs rest, not encouragement."

"I’m not encouraging her, I’m telling you the truth," Fia said, stepping into the room and navigating the distance to the sofa with practiced care. She held up her own tablet. "I’ve been tracking Erin’s location through the family sharing app. Yesterday, while Erin was at the hospital—I saw her car parked in the lot on the map—her 'identity' logged into the library computer in town. Someone used her library card to check out three books on forensic pathology."

I froze. "I haven't been to the library in months."

Fia looked at me, her green eyes dark with an emotion I couldn't name. "And that’s not the worst part. I got a DM from 'you' an hour ago. It was a link to a private playlist. Every song on it is a recording of us talking at dinner last night. The clinking of the silverware, Mom’s voice, the sound of Brione purring... it’s all there."

The teapot slipped from Aoife’s hand, clattering onto the tray. Hot water splashed across the lace doily.

"That's impossible," Aoife whispered, her face losing its color. "We were alone. The doors were locked."

"They weren't just watching from the closet," I said, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow. The shadowy figure in the microwave reflection wasn't just a ghost—it was a blueprint. "They’re not just stalking me, Mum. They’re becoming me. They’re learning how I talk, what I read, how I treat my sister... they're replacing me piece by piece."

Fia scrolled down on her tablet, her fingers trembling. "There’s a new post on your feed, Erin. Ten seconds ago."

I snatched the tablet. It was a photo of the three of us, right now, through the living room window. The caption read: Family dinner is always better when everyone is home.

I looked at the dark window behind my mother. The night was a black mirror, and for the first time, Aoife didn't tell me I was imagining the eyes watching us from the trees.

[My house]: 12:39 AM The streetlight below my window is dying, pulsing like a failing heart. Glass glitters on the pavement, but the street is empty. Yet, the air in the room has shifted. It’s heavy. It’s occupied. The hair on my arms stands up as a phantom chill crawls up my spine. I know that prescense. It’s the look of someone admiring a prize they’ve finally caught.

I turned to run, but the shadows were faster.

A hand—heavy, cold, and gloved—clamped over my shoulder. I spun, a gasp dying in my throat as a massive weight slammed me against the wall. Before I could scream, a thick arm locked around my throat in a crushing chokehold.

I thrashed, my heels drumming uselessly against the floorboards, my fingers clawing at an arm that felt like corded steel. There was no face to plead with, only the dark silhouette of a hood and the rhythmic, terrifyingly calm sound of their breathing.

A voice rasped out a hush—distorted, mechanical, and impossible to pin to a gender or a name. "Don't spoil the transition."

My vision began to fracture into dark spots. A heavy, chemical-smelling mask was forced over my face, the coarse fabric scratching my skin. A sharp, searing sting ignited across my cheeks and forehead, a sensation like liquid fire that made my ears ring with a deafening hum.

As the world tilted into total darkness, the figure leaned in close, their whisper vibrating against my ear.

"Say hello to the new Erin Kavanagh."