I worked at Monsour for a year before changing hospitals. In the old hospital their surgical intensive care unit directly above the morgue. I was told that during the night shift, nurses in the unit would often hear babies crying. These nurses were very credible witnesses and I had no reason to doubt what they were saying. I didn’t work the night shift often and only rarely worked in the surgical intensive care unit, so I can’t confirm what they had heard.

This hospital was located along a busy four lane highway. The road ran right past the front door of the emergency department. Accident victims were often brought into the emergency room for treatment, no matter how severe the injury.

It was highly likely that babies and children, as well as adults had died in those accidents and were placed in the morgue until the coroner would release them. At that time there were no air rescue helicopters to fly survivors and some victims would die because the advanced care of larger hospitals wasn’t readily available.

The deceased were brought to the hospital as well. The coroners requested that the dead be taken to a hospital to be pronounced by a physician. Most hospitals have stories of ghosts, spirits and of unexplained sightings or sounds.

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The owners were brothers. One of the doctors was admitted for a chronic back problem. His private room was near another room that held a confused patient who was noisy and called out frequently. He would moan and then yell loudly. The noise continued all that day and evening.

When nightshift started, the man’s loud vocalizations must have annoyed the doctor, because the physician with a “back problem” came out of his room and took a gurney from storage and pushed it into the noisy man’s room.

The doctor dragged the confused man from his bed and onto the cart. The disappeared into the elevator without assistance.We were in a quandary.

Minutes later, we got a telephone call, saying that one of our patients was in the middle of the main lobby on a stretcher. They knew by his identification band that he was ours. He was crying out and disturbing others. He had been pushed to the first floor and abandoned by the doctor. When the doctor came back to the floor, he requested medication for his back pain and disappeared into his room.

We didn’t know what to do. So we called the nursing supervisor for guidance. She reassigned a room for the confused man on another floor.

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Someone in administration, called saying be expecting a woman being brought in by car. The family thought she might have had a stroke and I was told to wait at the emergency entrance, under the concrete portcullis, with a wheelchair. I was instructed she was to be a direct admission and to which floor and which room to deliver her. I felt foolish standing outside waiting, but orders were orders.

About ten minutes later a new, powder blue, convertible Cadillac whipped into the driveway and under the canopy. It stopped right outside of the emergency room doors. On the door, in white script, someone had painted the owner’s initials.

Before I could take the few steps to the car, the chauffer put the car in park, jumped out of the driver’s seat, and came around to open the passenger’s door. Pulling it open so I could slide the chair up to the gap, the muscular driver almost physically lifted the fragile-looking, silver haired woman from the car seat and into my wheelchair. I settled her feet into the foot rests and started to back her away from the car.

The chauffer said nothing and I whisked the lady away to her private room. Registration came to her room to admit her. There was no waiting for her in admissions.

I chose not to be too inquisitive about the whole hush-hush affair when I sawt the chauffer climb out of the car to open the door.had a leather strap that ran across his one shoulder and the bulge under the opposite arm pit.

I learned a long time ago, in the Navy, not to question or argue with the powers-that-be in administration or a large chauffer with a bulge under his arm.