“I’ll sit up with you,” she offered.
“No, I’ll call you. They never come until almost morning.”
The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her awake, led her to the floor below, “There, do you hear it?”
Her expression was confirmation enough.
Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a moment the “Tap, tap, tap, tap” came again from overhead. Up I went. She said she had heard it all right but it had come from over her head. At least my senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts were given greater credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted their slumbers to listen.
One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the staff that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could see I was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three continuous months at such a hard task was far too much. Another nurse relieved me.
After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the private rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well, and this same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call. Being restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had haunted me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, “There it is. Don’t you hear it?”
He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses’ floor. I knew he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, “Did you see anyone?”
“No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms.”
Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door. “You’re in bed? You haven’t been up?” I assured him I had not moved, knowing well he must have heard them as always I had, from above.