Free A Witch In Time by Madelyn Alt

delivery carts and patient gurneys were fewer and farther between. Nurses huddled around the center stations on every floor, catching up on paperwork and trading both gossip and information about potential patient issues. The low drone of relative inactivity should have been restful... but I disliked hospitals. I don’t know how Steff handled working here, day after day. I had actually tried a stint as an after-hours candy striper way back in my high school days. “Tried” being the operative word. I lasted a whole two days, the second only because my mother and grandmother made me go back... although after the second day, which I spent hiding out in the ladies’ bathroom in full meltdown mode, even they agreed that perhaps the medical field wasn’t going to be my calling. The relief I felt when they gave up on the idea so quickly was monumental. I never, ever told them the real reason for my anxiety attack. Funny—I’d almost forgotten it myself. Had I stuffed it that far back into the little-used corners of my memory banks? I’d been to the hospital since then, of course, with the births of my nieces, with Grandpa’s health issues, my mother’s hysterectomy... but never alone.
    Never alone, at night, in the darkened corridors, with all those... well, at the time, I didn’t know what to call it. What to think. I only know what I felt as I walked the long halls that looked empty... but somehow, weren’t. I knew they weren’t. I knew, even though I couldn’t see anything... and somehow that made everything worse. Hence the bathroom as hideout. For some reason it was the only place that felt safe. Strange, but true.
    It did make me wonder: How much do we experience as children and teenagers that we conveniently “forget”?
    Standing there with my hands full, waiting for an elevator to arrive at my level, I realized with a shock just then how very alone I was at that moment. Crap-a-doodle-doo. I looked back over my shoulder. The main part of the cafeteria looked very far away now, farther than it was in actuality, and the few lights left on here and there for security’s sake didn’t do much to dispel the pooling shadows. Beyond the windows, darkness pressed in against the glass. Everyone had gone back to their workstations, leaving me pretty much on my own here. And the elevators were not cooperating.
    Come on, I thought impatiently and not a little nervously as I watched the arrival light above the closed metal doors, waiting for the ding.
    Don’t be ridiculous, Margaret, You’re scaring yourself silly. Look around you, Do you see anything you need to be worrying about?
    At least this time Grandma C’s observation came as a thought in my head, the way it usually did, rather than a voice in my ear. Maybe that was a sign that the problem was only temporary.
    And no, I didn’t see anything. I probably was scaring myself, without reason. Whatever I used to feel here in the hospital, it didn’t mean that the presences that had scared me back then were still there. Er, here.
    Still, I wished I hadn’t sent Marcus off ahead of me with Grandpa G. At least with Marcus I felt like I could handle whatever spirit-y stuff came my way.
    Spirit, schmirit. A woman’s strength comes from within, Best to come to terms with that now, my girl, while there’s still time.
    It was a good point, to be fair. But how did a girl truly come to terms with something that she has gone through her whole life believing was either (a) her imagination run amok, (b) nerves, (c) hormones, or (d) sheer coincidence? It required a major shift in thinking. In even existing, because suddenly, all the rules changed.
    Hey, wait a minute. While there was still time for what? How was I supposed to come to terms with anything with threats like that hanging over my head?
    Finally, the elevator doors whisked open in front of me, exposing the utilitarian carpeting, faux wood paneling, fluorescent lighting, and the usual assortment of previously