Cat Ghosts

Mia, a young nurse, was working in the hospital taking care of a confused man. He was 84 years old and hallucinating. These patients always fascinated her because they are seeing and experiencing something, that others are not. On this day, it was like this patient was dreaming with his eyes open. A foot in this dimension and another foot in another dimension. Where his subconscious mind is fully expressed, with no filter. Almost as if the veil into the unknown mind has been lifted and everyone can see into the dark. The dark places that are shameful and hidden within the subconscious. Or is he closer to heaven? The place you go when you die.

Mia always asked these patients questions about her own life, just to gain perspective. Almost like they are a magic eight ball because perhaps they are connected more closely to that universal love energy that we all come from. Perhaps, maybe he has access to the all the divine answers in life.

The doctor came in to check on the patient. “How are you doing today?”, he asked. The patient replied, “I’m about to go milk the cows. I just need to get the bucket over there.”, as he pointed in the corner, where there was no bucket. “Sir, what’s the date today?”, the doctor asked. “Oh well, I’m not quite sure, do you know the date today?” The doctor chuckled a little, “Yes, I do, but what do you think today’s date is?” The patient thought a moment, raised an eyebrow and said confidently, “February 12th.” The doctor maintained eye contact and said, “What year?” The patient replied back, “Well everyone knows it’s 1994, that’s a stupid question.” The doctor looked worried and corrected him. “It’s actually June 22, 2020. You are a little off. Also, we are in the hospital right now, not a dairy farm. I’ll return later this afternoon to check on you.” and the doctor left.

When Mia came in an hour later, the patient was pushing his feet against the foot of his bed and pulling the sheets, while looking up, and cursing at the ceiling. He was “driving” the bed and had a bit of road rage. He kept jerking his hands, feet, and head like he was in a virtual reality video game and was trying to dodge crashing into something. “Move out of my way! Oh, I’m gonna hit that!”, he yelled out. Mia reminded him he was safe and that he was in the hospital. He looked at Mia blankly and asked if the cats were hers. Mia happened to love cats, but does not own a cat right now. He said there were 3 cats. A blackish one, a white one and another one, whose color was not clear. An interesting a very specific hallucination. Mia wished there were cats in the hospital at my work, it would be so fun. She reminded him warmly that they were are in the hospital, and there are no cats, and he stared at her blankly, again.

Mia thought of a question in her life that she had been contemplating for a while. And she asked him, “Sir, yes or no?”. He yelled back, “YES! Now open that cabinet because I’m going to hit it with my car.” This was the answer that she wanted to hear. She smiled. She had been trying to decide whether, or not, to break up with her boyfriend and move to a different state. Then she asked him what her name was. He answered correctly–to her amazement. Out of all the confusion, he wasn’t wrong about that. He didn’t even recognize his wife, when she was here an hour ago, and yet he knows Mia’s name. Odd. Then he looked at her, straight in the eye. He told her, “There is a place in the town of Springs that I want you to go to. Take highway 28 north, and follow it toward Springs. You will see 3 red boards on a fence on the left and that is when you know to turn right. Pull into the field and park. Walk along the trail, with the lake to your left. You will see an old barn that collapsed. Look to the left and find where the creek runs into the lake. You will know it’s the right place because there is an eagle’s nest across the creek. That is where you dig. Dig hard.” Then he told her there was a little girl in his room earlier. Which Mia found to be somewhat creepy because his room is the nearest room to the Pediatric department. Is he seeing ghosts? Guess there is no way to ever know.

The next morning Mia woke up and was weirded out. Mia dreamt she was at a friend’s house, in her hometown. She was in the garage…with 3 cats. A blackish one, a white one, and another one which she couldn’t quite tell the color because of the lighting and blurry shadows. How do you explain that? She had 5 patients yesterday, with all kinds of stories, and this was her dream? She could have dreamt of so many other details which happened over the course of the 12-hour day. Did that old man place this idea into her subconscious, and therefore she dreamt it? Or does she have 3 cat spirits following her around?

Then, a flash of memory came through and it occurred to her that she had seen 3 red boards on a fence while driving through Springs before. She was so curious about what the man was saying to her. Those were the most specific instructions and hallucination she had ever heard. A lot of the times, she will just disregard a lot of the nonsense that the confused patients talk about, but today, she felt differently about it. Especially, after the dream. She decided to go for a drive to Springs. She brought a shovel. She followed his instructions, exactly as he had said to. She dug for a while and hit some roots. She was discouraged by all this effort and was ready to go. How silly that she would come here. And suddenly she saw something. It was a very large black and white feather. She looked up and saw very high in the tree, the eagle’s nest. What a sight! It was huge. She couldn’t tell if anything was living there at this time because it was so high up, and so large. Then it dawned on her. He said it was “across” from the eagle’s nest. She carefully walked across the creek, as the water moved under her feet. She saw a cleared space and started to dig. She dug for a while and found something. It was a small box. Within the box was a little black book. The writing was old writing. On the first page was the name, “Browning”. It was the family ancestry records for the Browning family, with dates back to the 1700’s. This must be returned to the family. This is a different last name than her patient. How did he know this was here? Did he steal it? Did he know this family?

Luckily, it was a very small town. She was able to find out that the Browning family had married into another family name, Smith. There was a family named Smith in the town she was in. She went over to the house one day and knocked on the door. An attractive elderly woman with striking blue eyes and white hair opened the door. Mia, said shyly, “Hello, my name is Mia and I found this little black book. I think it might belong to your family and I wanted to try and return it.” The woman was surprised. She took the book from Mia’s hand and sifted through some of the pages. She looked up at Mia with tears in her eyes. “This is amazing, I have never seen this before. I had no idea this existed. This is all my family’s records, a true treasure. My grandmother was born with the last name Browning. See, you can see my mother, her twin brother, and her sister here on this page. This is an unexpected and invaluable gift, thank you so much for bringing this to me.” She paused and looked to the left. “Hold on a moment, will you?” She returned and with her check book. She wrote a check very swiftly and handed it to Mia. Before Mia could read it, she thanked her and closed the door. Mia walked back to her car. Then she opened the check and found the woman had written it for $20,000. Mia was amazed by the generosity of this woman. She was also amazed that this all started from her confused patient. She broke up with her boyfriend that night, quit her job, and in two weeks, she moved to a new state and started her life over. The end.