The hospital was old, older than the town itself. Its windows were cracked and yellowed, its walls stained with time and secrets. No one knew exactly when it had been built, only that it had stood there for decades, abandoned and forgotten. But every now and then, someone would see a light flicker in one of the upper floors, or hear a distant whisper echoing through the halls. Lena had never believed in ghosts. She was a nurse, trained to handle emergencies, not superstitions. But when she was assigned to the old facility as part of her internship, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. The other nurses avoided the place, muttering about strange occurrences—patients who vanished, doctors who disappeared without a trace, and the sound of children laughing in empty rooms. On her first night shift, Lena noticed the temperature dropping as she passed the third-floor corridor. The air felt heavy, like it was holding its breath. She didn’t think much of it until she found a patient’s chart left open on a desk, the name erased and replaced with a series of numbers. When she asked the receptionist, the woman just stared at her, eyes wide and unblinking, before turning away. That night, Lena was alone in the basement, checking on an old storage room. The door creaked open slowly, as if pushed by an invisible hand. Inside, dust coated the shelves, but one box stood out—unmarked, untouched. As she reached for it, the lights flickered, and the temperature dropped again. A soft voice whispered her name, low and familiar, like a memory she had never had. She ran back upstairs, heart pounding, but the moment she reached the main floor, the whispers stopped. No one else seemed to notice anything unusual. Only the old janitor, Mr. Hale, gave her a knowing look. “You shouldn’t be down there,” he said, his voice raspy. “Some things don’t belong to this world.” The next day, Lena found a photo in the break room—a black-and-white image of the hospital from decades ago. In the background, a group of children stood outside the building, their faces blurred. But when she looked closer, one of them had a faint smile, as if they knew something she didn’t. She started keeping a journal, writing down every strange event. The lights dimmed at certain times, the clocks sometimes moved backward, and the patients spoke in languages she didn’t recognize. One patient, a man named Thomas, claimed he had been here before. “I’ve been here many times,” he said. “I don’t know how, but I always come back.” One evening, Lena followed the sound of laughter to the second floor. The hallways were empty, but the sound led her to a room she had never seen before. Inside, a small child sat on the floor, drawing on the wall with crayons. The room was perfectly preserved, as if frozen in time. When the child looked up, his eyes were hollow, and he smiled without moving his mouth. Lena tried to leave, but the door wouldn’t open. The walls began to pulse, like they were alive. The child stood, walked toward her, and whispered, “You’re not supposed to be here.” Then he vanished, leaving only a single red crayon on the floor. She woke up in the staff room, disoriented and covered in sweat. The clock read 3:07 a.m., but no one else was awake. The next morning, she checked the records and found that the room she had entered didn’t exist. It had been torn down years ago. Mr. Hale found her sitting in the parking lot, staring at the hospital. “It’s not a place,” he said. “It’s a loop. You keep coming back, over and over, until you remember.” Lena didn’t know what he meant, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the child, the whispers, the missing patients. The hospital wasn’t just a building—it was something else entirely, something that existed between moments, between lives. And maybe, she thought, she wasn’t the first to walk those halls. Or the last.