General Ward

General Ward

Being in a vegetative state is a strange feeling. I can’t move my body, not even my tongue—only my pupils shift. Thank God the doctor still checks my heartbeat. A part of me feared they would declare me dead and cremate my body. I knew that wasn’t true, yet my negative thoughts kept circling back.

I don’t really know what depression is. If I had ever gone to a psychiatrist, maybe he would have declared me depressed. I never bothered to check it online. But now, everyone—doctors, friends, even relatives—say I overdosed on pills and alcohol, marking it as suicide. Deep inside, I know I can fight pain. Depression takes time to cure, but my soul knows I can endure it.

But no one believes I am that strong. I can deal with depression, but not with stupidity—and stupidity is why my body is paralyzed for the past two days. Now, all I can do is breathe, eat, piss, fart, and shit.

I can’t even tell anyone what’s coming next.

People keep entering the ICU, glancing at me with disappointment. My father is the most disappointed of all—that’s why he had me shifted to the general ward. Oh God, it’s so fucking boring here. Now I have to share a room with strangers. They turn the lights off at 7 PM, leaving me alone with the darkness and my thoughts.

The hospital is old, its walls cracked, as if the whole building could collapse any time. I once read a rumor online: this hospital is haunted, like any place more than a hundred years old. Some say illegal medical experiments were done here, patients mutated into something unspeakable. Conspiracy theories never end… but here, lying paralyzed, they crawl into my head.

If this building falls, I can’t even run to save my life.

Paranoia is all I have left.

Oh God, please let me out of this place. I keep trying to move a finger, a toe—anything—so I can escape before 7 PM. I hate the dark. I need a miracle. Please, God, help me move my body.

I’ve never been this religious in my life. Never prayed for anything. But now, the only thing I want is to walk again.

Then I noticed someone lying in the bed next to mine. I hadn’t paid attention before; maybe they brought him in while I was asleep. His body was completely covered with a blanket. My paranoid mind whispered, What if he’s dead? No, they wouldn’t put a corpse in a ward. Unless… there was no space in the morgue.

Or 

What if he wasn’t dead when they brought him in… but now he is? Oh God, they wouldn’t leave me alone in this ward with a corpse… would they?

My thoughts raced like a wild horse until exhaustion dragged me into sleep.

When I woke, the digital clock read 2:59 AM—a minute before the Devil’s Hour. My neck was tilted slightly left, and to my surprise, I could feel it. My consciousness was back! For a moment, I thought I could finally move again… but the cruel reality hit: I couldn’t even brush a fly off my nose.

Dark thoughts returned, mixed with boredom, served like a cocktail of despair in the Devil’s Hour.

Then it happened. I felt something licking my foot. My heart leapt with joy—Yes! Sensation has returned! I thanked God for the miracle. But my joy froze into terror when I realized: What the hell is licking me?

His teeth was  scrapping against my toes. My blood ran cold. I kicked with all the force I had, and that thing recoiled into the shadows, screaming, snarling from the distance.

From the faint silhouette, it looked like a large animal—a cougar, maybe a cat. Its eyes glowed, unblinking, fixed on me, growling as though ready to leap.

Then, before my eyes, it rose. From four legs to two. Its shape stretched taller… taller… until it loomed nearly seven feet high. The sound it made was neither animal nor human—a cougar’s roar twisted with a cat’s cry.

“Oh God,” I whispered in my head, “I prayed for a miracle—but not of this kind.”

A sudden crash echoed in the ward, like glass shattering. The creature shrieked, terrified, and darted back beneath the blanket on the next bed, shivering like a child. It whimpered with a sound almost like a kitten.

Relief hit me in two waves: first, I realized I could move my neck fully now—left to right. Second, the creature was no longer advancing toward me. But when I turned my head back, the bed beside me was empty. Vanished in thin air.

The clock still read 2:59 AM.

And then… I felt it again. Something licking my hand, sharpness of his teeth grazing my fingers. A shiver of joy and horror struck me together.

My body was healing. My miracle had begun.

But at what cost. I thought?