my r/nosleep favorites | volume one

Pretty damn sure HIPAA no longer applies. (Update about the three girls.)

Pretty damn sure HIPAA no longer applies. (Update about the three girls.)
by somenurse193433

Sorry if my post last week was hard to understand. It's hard to be 100% sure about some things that are happening right now, but here's a quick recap and summary of what's going on so far.

Three girls were allegedly found in a garage, being held there against their will by a local man.

The cops brought these girls into my ER, and myself and another nurse, Laura, examined them. Except I'm pretty sure we didn't. I can remember both versions of events now, and they're both a little hazy. Like, have you ever woken up from a dream and for a few seconds you're not sure what's real and what isn't? It feels like that, kind of.

I think that we were tricked, by some kind of mind control or maybe we got drugged, I don't know, into thinking we'd done the exams but really we hadn't ever touched the girls. If they can do that, that makes me really damn scared about what else they can do.

Then there's Laura. She's pregnant, and I'm pretty sure I found some of her hair in the supply closet where we'd talked that night the girls were there. Some of you all suggested that I take a pregnancy test but there's no need for that - I can't have children, I had a hysterectomy years ago. But I am worried about Laura. Either she's so stressed out she's losing hair, or something weird is going on with her. Something to do with those three girls.

I figured calling the police asking about a kidnapping that no one else wants to talk about would raise some red flags, so instead I looked at the arrest records for that day. There were blurbs in the police blotter for the five other arrests made that day, but the byline under Paul LaGrave was suspiciously blank.

As a nurse, I don't have a whole lot of free time but I carved out a few hours and drove down to the county jail where Paul LaGrave, according to the mobile Sheriff Department app, was being held with no bail set. I knew there was a pretty good chance I wouldn't get to see him, that I wouldn't be on his visitor's list or he wouldn't have visitation privileges, but in the end I just filled out my name on a sheet, showed my ID, and emptied my pockets before going through the metal detector.

I said I was Paul's friend, when the officer asked, and no one asked any other questions.

I went with the dozen other visitors into a windowless, barren room, separated into two sections by concrete and plexiglass, and sat on some of the most uncomfortable steel stools anyone ever invented. Part of me still doubted that this man would come out - or that he was the one involved with this whole thing - but the second I saw him I was sure that my doubts were wrong.

He was tall and too thin, his bony arms pointing in strange directions at odd angles and his legs equally long and clumsy. There were no chains around his ankles but he stumbled anyway, coming into the visitation room. His skin was pale, eyes sunken in and rimmed with dark circles. The kind of unhealthy where you can tell that it's been a lifetime of bad choices, leading up to here. The rattle in his lungs from smoking three packs a day. The lack of teeth, either from terrible oral hygiene or maybe meth or crack. The yellowed skin, the dirt under the nails.

But there's more over that. His stringy dirty blond hair is missing in big, obvious patches. The haunted look in his eye is a stark contrast to the big, almost uncontrollably gleeful smile on his face. People in jail come from all walks of life, but usually they all have one thing in common - they are not happy to be there.

"Paul," I greet him, trying to remember that I'm supposed to know him. That's what I told the officers, though honestly I'm sure as long as I don't try to give him any drugs no one will give me too much trouble.

"Hello, there," he greets me cheerfully and sits down, and there's only a quarter-inch of plastic between me and him. I'm glad for it, judging by the state of his teeth.

"I'm Claire," I tell him and he's all smiles. "You seem like you're in a good mood."

Another big, shit-eating grin from the mostly-toothless Paul LaGrave and he nods his head. "Oh, just a dandy mood, Claire. Just a dandy mood."

"Why?" I ask him. "Can't be a good thing, you being in here."

The way he looks at me is almost as creepy as that night in the ER when the girls started screaming. There's something so serene in his eyes - big, blue eyes so light they're almost all while - that just doesn't fit with where he is. The concrete and steel, the violence, the bad food and harsh rules... it's jail for God's sake.

That's how I figured that it was him. Because those girls are something else, something terrifying, and only a man who'd been dealing with that could find peace in a jail house.

"Paul, are you in here because of three girls?" I ask him, and the smile is gone from his face immediately. What's left is fear, and he leans closer to the clear plastic to speak, his voice lowered.

"Don't matter why I'm here," he insists, his breath fogging up the screen between us. "I don't gotta talk about it and I get to stay locked in here."

This is somehow exactly what I'd expected. "Get to?" I ask him.

His eyes are closed, and I can almost see tears. Little drops of spit and snot splatter against that plastic when he talks. "I get to be free," he whispers, and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his striped jumpsuit. "If I don't talk about them, I get to be free."

I didn't get much out of him after that. It was all I needed, really. He was a victim just the same as all of us. Those girls, whatever they are... they're the dangerous ones.

From the jail, I went to the hospital. My shift was going to start soon, and Laura was in the middle of a shift so I wanted to check on her. I stopped to get us both lunch in the hospital cafeteria, going for healthy. Sandwiches and fruits.

I find Laura on her way to the nurse's station and toss her an apple, and she stops to talk to me for a minute. Says she's sorry about being such a bitch the other night. Hormones from the pregnancy. I tell her to stop being silly and just take care of herself.

She's wearing a scarf over her head, and it's stylish so people wouldn't usually wonder if it was hiding something. But it's a red flag for me. "Are you feeling all right? You're not losing hair, are you?"

She looks at me with a touch of hurt in her eyes and yeah, I know, sometimes I'm not really the most tactful person. It's hard to be when there's shit like this going on. "Sorry, Laura, nevermind," I say before she has time to answer, giving her what I hope is an apologetic smile.

I start to peel my banana and Laura bites into her apple, and I hear this strange little pop in the midst of the apple crunching in her teeth. Then I see red dripping down her jaw and hear the sounds of panic and terror that Laura makes when she looks down and realizes that the copper she's tasting is blood, a result of one of her front teeth being stuck in the apple.

She's still clinging to the apple when she makes a run for the ladies' room, blood dripping down her hands and onto the tile floor. Laura's crying when I catch up to her, sobbing and trying to stop the gap where her front tooth used to be from bleeding. She's pressing on the spot with her fingers and that's when I hear a quiet snap, and Laura's other front tooth falls out too, clattering against the porcelain sink and swirling, going down the drain before either of us can stop it.

I wish I could tell you that either of us knew what to do at that point, but all I could do was pack gauze and wait for an oral surgeon.

I wish I knew what to do. I wish I knew more, but all I know is my shift's about to start and I've got Laura's blood all over my scrubs. What are these girls? What's happening to Laura?

I hate to say this, like somehow putting it into words is going to make it real, but I feel like the girls are close. Like they're watching me.