I've worked as a nurse in multiple hospitals and facilities.

Before the current hospital I work at, I worked at a geriatric hospital 30 minutes from my house. I had experience working

with older patients before, so this was nothing new to me. I had been working at this

hospital for only a couple of weeks, and you'll soon understand why. This was on my second

to last shift at this hospital, unbeknownst to me at the start of that night. I was working

the graveyard shift, and I was running

on negative hours of sleep. I was assigned to the Alzheimer's ward. The patients in this ward absolutely

adored me. My presence as a young girl in her 20s among the residents of this ward who were

otherwise left to themselves to float around in their minds, I'm sure saw me as a breath of fresh air,

someone who could

tie them to the now or to the every day. If you're just left to yourself, you can mentally

go to other places, but with someone else in your space, you're tied to that moment in time.

I was dealing with a number of patience that night, but one was a little more restless than

the others. Her name was Lena.

This was my first night dealing with her, and she kept telling me any time I'd enter her room

about the voices she kept hearing, and the man dressed in black she kept seeing in the corner

of the room.

The other lady in her room requested her curtain be closed before my shift started, so that

Lena would leave her alone.

She was a sweet lady that smiled whenever I was around her,

but she didn't say much and was very forgetful.

Since I started my shift around 9 p.m., most of the patients were asleep by 11.

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