Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm a med student, and last summer I started my
first overnight rotation in a big urban hospital. I was nervous,
but also excited. It felt like the real deal. What
I didn't expect was to leave that rotation with the
story I can't tell anyone in person without sounding insane.
It started with a chart. Around one thirty am, my
(00:23):
attending told me to check vitals on a new admit.
A woman named Karla d in room four eleven. I
grabbed her file, walked down the hall and knocked before entering.
The room was dark except for the monitor glow, and
on the bed was a woman in her thirties, long
black hair spread across the pillow. She was awake, but
(00:47):
lying perfectly still, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Carla.
I whippered. Her eyes shifted to me, but she didn't speak.
I introduced myself, asked if she was comfortable, tried to
check her pulse. The second my hand touched her wrist,
she whispered, so faine, I barely heard wrong chot, I froze.
(01:10):
I I'm sorry, ma'am. This is room four eleven, right,
She nodded slightly. Same last names on the chart. Everything
matched but the way she said it made my stomach turn.
Her monitor suddenly beaped, flat lined for half a second,
then came back. She never blinked, never moved, just whispered again,
(01:33):
wrong chart. I left the room, shaken and went back
to the station. I asked the night nurse about the
patient in four eleven. She frowned and said four eleven.
That room's empty. KRLA decoated in the ar an hour ago.
Didn't make it upstairs. I showed her the chart. She
(01:53):
grabbed it from me and flipped through. The time stamp
was wrong. It had entries from ours in the future,
same handwriting, same initials as the attending but notes of
out things that hadn't happened yet. We both went back
to the room, empty bed sheets tucked tight, no sign
any one had been there. I thought maybe I'd walked
(02:15):
into the wrong room, but no, the door clearly said
four eleven. I wanted to shrug it off, but over
the next two weeks it kept happening, always with the
same clipboard, always with patient names who had just died
or were about to. I'd walk into their room and
(02:37):
find some one there, quiet, pale, staring, murmuring wrong chart.
Before disappearing. One night, I even saw a man in
a gown standing in the hallway outside four eleven holding
an ivy pole. His wristband had a name I didn't recognize.
I wrote it down. The next morning I checked admissions.
(03:00):
He'd been brought in at five am after a car
racka By then I stopped touching that chart, stopped answering
if anyone told me to go to four eleven. The
final night of my rotation, I came in early, trying
to get ahead on notes. The clipboard was waiting on
the counter, clean, no papers attached except for one sheet
(03:24):
my name, my date of birth, and at the bottom
in a handwriting I recognized wrong chart. I didn't finish
the shift. I told the attending I was sick and
went home. It's been months. I'm still in med school,
still working rotations, but I can't step into a room
numbered four eleven. And sometimes when I'm on night call,
(03:49):
I'll swear I hear the sound of a monitor flat lining,
even when every machine on the floor is quiet. I
don't know if hospitals can make mistakes the way people can,
but if that chart still exists, I think it's keeping
track of things that aren't supposed to be seen yet,
and sooner or later it's going to be right.
I'm a med student, and last summer I started my
first overnight rotation in a big urban hospital. I was nervous,
but also excited. It felt like the real deal. What
I didn't expect was to leave that rotation with the
story I can't tell anyone in person without sounding insane.
It started with a chart. Around one thirty am, my
(00:23):
attending told me to check vitals on a new admit.
A woman named Karla d in room four eleven. I
grabbed her file, walked down the hall and knocked before entering.
The room was dark except for the monitor glow, and
on the bed was a woman in her thirties, long
black hair spread across the pillow. She was awake, but
(00:47):
lying perfectly still, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Carla.
I whippered. Her eyes shifted to me, but she didn't speak.
I introduced myself, asked if she was comfortable, tried to
check her pulse. The second my hand touched her wrist,
she whispered, so faine, I barely heard wrong chot, I froze.
(01:10):
I I'm sorry, ma'am. This is room four eleven, right,
She nodded slightly. Same last names on the chart. Everything
matched but the way she said it made my stomach turn.
Her monitor suddenly beaped, flat lined for half a second,
then came back. She never blinked, never moved, just whispered again,
(01:33):
wrong chart. I left the room, shaken and went back
to the station. I asked the night nurse about the
patient in four eleven. She frowned and said four eleven.
That room's empty. KRLA decoated in the ar an hour ago.
Didn't make it upstairs. I showed her the chart. She
(01:53):
grabbed it from me and flipped through. The time stamp
was wrong. It had entries from ours in the future,
same handwriting, same initials as the attending but notes of
out things that hadn't happened yet. We both went back
to the room, empty bed sheets tucked tight, no sign
any one had been there. I thought maybe I'd walked
(02:15):
into the wrong room, but no, the door clearly said
four eleven. I wanted to shrug it off, but over
the next two weeks it kept happening, always with the
same clipboard, always with patient names who had just died
or were about to. I'd walk into their room and
(02:37):
find some one there, quiet, pale, staring, murmuring wrong chart.
Before disappearing. One night, I even saw a man in
a gown standing in the hallway outside four eleven holding
an ivy pole. His wristband had a name I didn't recognize.
I wrote it down. The next morning I checked admissions.
(03:00):
He'd been brought in at five am after a car
racka By then I stopped touching that chart, stopped answering
if anyone told me to go to four eleven. The
final night of my rotation, I came in early, trying
to get ahead on notes. The clipboard was waiting on
the counter, clean, no papers attached except for one sheet
(03:24):
my name, my date of birth, and at the bottom
in a handwriting I recognized wrong chart. I didn't finish
the shift. I told the attending I was sick and
went home. It's been months. I'm still in med school,
still working rotations, but I can't step into a room
numbered four eleven. And sometimes when I'm on night call,
(03:49):
I'll swear I hear the sound of a monitor flat lining,
even when every machine on the floor is quiet. I
don't know if hospitals can make mistakes the way people can,
but if that chart still exists, I think it's keeping
track of things that aren't supposed to be seen yet,
and sooner or later it's going to be right.
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