when I was seven years old I contracted spinal meningitis I was barely old enough to understand how close to death I was because of the disease I had let alone did I have a clue what was about to happen to me during treatment my mother took me to the hospital and told the doctors to do whatever they needed to do to save my life they required a spinal tap before continuing treatment to look on my mother's face when they said that told me everything I needed to know despite the fact that I had no idea
what a spinal tap was I remember my mother pleading with the doctors to find some way to make the procedure less traumatic for me but for some reason they couldn't put me under general anesthesia instead they offered a new experimental treatment on humans at the time intravenous ketamine my mother had never heard of the drug before and my father wasn't there they explained that it was traditionally used as a horse tranquilizer but had recently been approved for use in humans even the Pediatric Care ever since my mom swears up and down that's all they told
her about it maybe it was a time-sensitive case or maybe the doctors thought if they told her everything that was involved with being under the influence of the drug then she would refuse to let me have it which in their minds would make the spinal tap harder to go through frankly it boggles my mind that doctors would even consider giving ketamine to a child but that's what happened they wheeled me into the operating room and told me what was going to happen that I would have to lay on my side and they would insert a
needle into my back would feel extremely uncomfortable I know that's what they said now but at the time I was so disoriented and scared and even confused that it all sounded like gibberish like how adults sound in Charlie Brown when they just go wah wah wah if you know what I mean all the doctors and nurses were wearing masks and gowns too which made them look almost inhuman I had to get naked and put on a hospital gown adding to the stress of it all because I had to be exposed to a bunch of strangers
the only thing that kept me sane was that my mother was allowed to be there with me so I could hold her hand however before they did the tap they inserted the IV needle into my arm to deliver the ketamine I cried and screamed and I remember squirming just from having that needle put in me and I didn't even understand how much bigger the next one would be then they turned me over to my side and I held my mother's hand squeezing harder than before looking into her eyes and crying and trying to be brave
and sit still at first all I could feel on my back was a cold Hospital error but then something happened everything started to feel weird course I know now that this was the ketamine beginning to take effect but I didn't understand this at the time in all-encompassing dread washed over my body which I also felt like I was losing control of like my soul was slipping away second by second then it literally did feel like I was dying and rising up to heaven I was lifted up from the table and could see my own body
and everyone around what I saw filled me with a mixture of Terror and hatred the doctor was lining up the needle up against my back for the first time I saw how massive the thing was there was my mother watching it all happen letting them do it suddenly I knew I couldn't go through with it anymore screamed and kicked and punched at everything around me Hellbound getting off of that table and running away the nurses tried to hold me down but they were struggling to keep me contained somebody called for more help and that's when
two gigantic muscular nurses rushed and grabbed a hold of me then pinned me down to the table along with four or five other people my mother was crying in the corner now apparently I had hit her in the face but still see everything that was going on around me and the IV drip was still feeding me ketamine straight to my blood which went directly to my brain now all the masks and gowns doctors and nurses didn't look human at all they look like Monsters demons even sick twisted demented creatures that my mom had sold my
soul to and now they were forcibly extracting my soul from my body with that horrible needle I looked to my mother with bitter contempt and screamed that I hated her for letting this happen to me it only made her cry harder no matter how hard I felt back once they all got a hold of me I couldn't even squirm they held me down and finished the spinal tap when the needle went into my back it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside and because I was moving so much waves of pain shot
through my body finally I accepted that I just had to sit still but it was awful I could feel my Essence being trained something I would never get back thankfully after a few seconds it was over but I wasn't the same I didn't move for hours after that and I wouldn't talk to my mother or even look at her being drugged and having a needle shoved into my spinal cord as a child is easily the most traumatic thing I've ever experienced in my life and the stupid thing I hate the most about it is the
fact that it was all just to confirm what the doctors basically already knew that I had spinal meningitis when I was a teenager there was an old abandoned hospital that had been built in the 1800s long since replaced and left to rot he couldn't be torn down as it was a historical sight but it also couldn't be repurposed and ever since it was condemned nobody took it upon themselves to be the caretaker of the place security was basically non-existent so it became a rite of passage in my neighborhood to hop the fence on Halloween and
explore the ruins finally the time came when my friends and I got the bug and we knew we were going to be the next to do it we didn't even bother to wear costumes nobody wanted to go trick-or-treating or go to a party the coolest party in town was me and my friends on the roof of the old hospital all we needed to do was figure out a way up and avoid the numerous hazards along the way the rumors of which were boasted about to a great extent by all the people who had already gone
through it from broken glass Rusty Nails squatters to trapdoors collapsing ceilings and even ghosts supposedly understandably we were all a bit nervous but excited too it was the coolest thing any of us had ever done seemed like there was even an entire path laid out for us by the people who did it before the door at the front entrance was already broken open we just stepped right inside undeterred immediately on the first story was a triage Center it was too dark even with our flashlights to see very far down the hallway staircase was right there
not too much was happening down on that level so we opted not to bother exploring the bottom and moved on to the second of three stories the ceiling had collapsed in on itself at the landing of the second story so we went out from there to look for another stairwell the second story was somehow even darker the floor beneath our feet was soft and felt like it could cave in at any moment so we spread out to distribute our weight we thought we were being smart staying quiet but pointing out all the things we noticed
like piles of old medical waste strange stacks of beds blocking off certain doorways we dared not even think of entering signs I had indicated what had been was so we could get a picture of how the place might have looked in its prime certainly was far from it by the time we arrived mold grew up the walls bind snakes through the ceiling tiles and water dripped from the third floor in every single sound we made echoed in such a way that made it sound like a stranger was whispering around every corner we kept saying how
cool we found everything but deep down I think we were all scared the last thing any of us wanted was for a crazy hobo to jump out at us for invading his home or for one of the many ghost stories about the supposedly haunted hospital to somehow turn out to be true even decades after it had closed and even to naive and careless Boys Like Us we could literally feel the lingering presence of the suffering in damned Souls that had perished in the place we were trespassing however the only thing that lived there seemed to
be rats and flies not nearly as many as we were expecting after a few more minutes of checking things out we finally reached the other side of the building and found another stairwell this one went all the way up to the roof once we stepped in The Damp concrete tube we could hear and feel the outside air blowing in through an open door or a hatch whichever one it was we were dying to know he picked up our Pace as we went up the stairs excited to see The View we barely noticed the Moss that
was growing on the steps which slickened the grip we had under our shoes finally at the very top of the stairwell there it was the open door at the Landing before it we all pause to take a mental image of the site as luck would have it the moon was shining right through it if any of us had brought a camera it would have made a legendary photo at last it was only a moment of appreciation before we all wanted to finish our journey out of the four of us I was the last in line
at the stairs a friend of mine was leading the pack as we all went up in single file we were just seconds away but then the last thing we could have expected happened out of nowhere a flurry of bats exploded from a nest that we hadn't seen my friend at the top got startled and slipped on the Moss and fell back causing a chain reaction that led us to all fall like dominoes three of my friends landed on top of me and my head crashed right onto the concrete that's the last thing I remember before
waking up in a real Hospital I cracked my head right open I fractured my Squall and my friends had to carry me all the way out of that abandoned wreck and get help for me I feel me had to tell me a hundred times before I could finally accept that's what happened sadly it seemed that none of us managed to get to the roof of the abandoned Hospital like we had hoped that night but I'm glad I had good enough friends to help me out when I needed it to this day a lot of people
don't believe me when I say that's exactly what happened and why I fell they say bats don't stay in their nests at night but I guess even nocturnal flying mammals like to sleep in sometimes I'm not an expert it's just what I saw I was a nurse for over 40 years I spent the majority of my career in hospitals working in the ER in my earlier days and later transferring to the ICU I've seen a lot of horrible things happen to people and built up a strong stomach for all sorts of things there are a
thousand stories I could tell but one above all is the worst thing I ever witnessed it happened in my first year of working in the ICU and I still don't have an explanation for it before he fell under my care a man showed up in the ER with strange symptoms delirium vomiting and what appear to be first degree burns all over his body they thought it was caused by a chemical at first which led them to believe they needed to cleanse his skin and Purge his system however when they tried to wash his skin it
just came off what had looked like a first degree burn was actually just the tip of the iceberg an iceberg of total tissue disintegration at this point the ER team had no idea what they were dealing with this was decades ago long before the internet the man refused to answer any questions about what happened to him and he had no forms of identification in his possession it was like he had just been dumped there however the doctors eventually figured out that the man was suffering from acute radiation sickness but the dose he received and the
severity of his case was still unknown all we knew was that it was bad and he probably wouldn't survive he was transferred to the ICU and that's when I met him I knew it wouldn't be long before it would be impossible to get any information out of him even if he wanted to tell us anything so every time I did anything for him whether it was changing his IV or getting his vitals I berated him with questions I asked for his name if he had any family and how he had been dosed with radiation if
he had any idea how much he had received but he didn't answer many of my questions the only thing he really ever said to me and apparently the only thing he ever said to anyone was I wish they would have just shot me it was like the words just slipped out of him despite his best effort to keep it in he immediately looked like he regretted saying anything I kept asking who they were but after that one single sentence his lips were sealed days passed and his condition worsened his skin started to turn a rainbow
of colors as it gradually withered away and liquefied oozing through all the bandages we put on him and separating from his body at the slightest touch thought he would scream from the pain more but most of his nerve endings had already turned to mush the damage was all over his body but it was concentrated in his hands and feet crawling up his arms and legs leaving his vital organs for last almost like it was intentionally and cruelly making sure he was alive and sentient for the ruining of his body for as long as possible we
would have never found out who he was or how he got radiation poisoning if his family hadn't randomly shown up on the third day they had been traveling all over to every hospital in the area asking for a man who had disappeared three days prior they described the man's appearance in great detail which meant the man they were looking for was the one who was turning to goop upstairs in the ICU these days we might have had to deny them on account of HIPPA regulations but things were different back then and everybody in the hospital
wanted that poor man to have something good before he died we allowed his family upstairs to see him but they couldn't stand to look at him without breaking down into hysterical tears after the reunion we asked them for information and that's when we finally got some he worked for the government as a nuclear waste management worker he was one of the guys who buried the barrels of radioactive leftovers and had been compiling a long list of complaints against the lack of safety regulations unfortunately he was found out by some government agents who they believe started
a fire in his office destroying all of his work the same day he disappeared what I gather from that and what he said to me is they forced him to clean up some deadly toxic spill and keep his mouth shut about it unless he wanted his family to suffer similar Fates that explained why he wouldn't tell us anything but so many things still didn't make sense but none of it mattered however he was terminally ill but unfortunately his family wanted us to give him every chance he had to make it out alive all of us
knew this wasn't possible and would only make him suffer more however I wasn't prepared for how it would happen slowly the Flesh of his arms and legs melted away he exposing his bones which forced us to amputate I was assisting the surgeon at the time I'll never forget how his bones had become soft almost like rubber after that he was just a torso and a head but the horror continued to spread when it reached his face his skin melted over his eyes blinding him he almost choked on the flute of his own disintegrating tongue his
gums receded causing his teeth to fall out he could still breathe however and he had to gurgle and gas through the goop just to get a breath burns are often considered the worst type of damage to a human body to witness but that level of radiation damage is somehow worse he was rotting like a corpse but he was alive he was still breathing I can't imagine the mental anger she was going through that entire time trapped in your body as it slowly becomes unrecognizable and eventually everything washes away the whole time you can't move or
speak and you can barely breathe and at some point you can no longer see or hear but you know you've turned into a grotesque monstrous looking thing that should never exist and it's the last memory your loved ones will ever have of you I can only hope he didn't feel any of it but I'll never know finally after weeks of horror his family finally agreed to stop trying to keep him alive then he was able to die at last ever since then I've had nightmares about it I think it was the slow progression of becoming
an abomination of existence that mess with me the most of all the ways to die that has got to be the worst
