Journey To The Haunted Mountain

A healthcare horror story.

By Iris Eisenman

Illustration by Isabelle Oh

On a dark and stormy night, a Barnard freshman takes the treacherous journey across the vast expanse of Broadway. Every step is a gamble in her pink fuzzy slippers on the slick brick paving. Nevertheless, she persists, midnight munchies guiding her path. Will she ever arrive at JJ’s pearly gates? It is possible that no woman has ever walked this far. Shuffling past the half-living spirits floating in the Marlboro mists in front of Butler Library, she quickens her pace to escape whatever hex they are casting: internships, graduate school, senior thesis, they chant. Her teeth chatter just hearing the wicked words. But she arrives nonetheless, chooses a JJ’s crispy chicken sandwich placed so daintily below the golden light of the heat lamps, and chows the fuck down. Balance is restored. Back to the Quad she goes, and gets snuggled into bed.

Anon, something stirs. The chicken sandwich is reanimated deep in her bowels. It cannot be stopped. The communal bathroom is soon graced by the stench of half-digested meat. After her fourth rendezvous with the toilet—she has acquired intimate knowledge of that white porcelain’s delicate curves—something must be done. She dials the number. She calls them. She calls CUEMS.

Just before they arrive, alerted by the clacking of kitten heels, she hears her roommate return from “da clerb” (a Sigma Nu party). The navy- clad troopers descend upon the room. She recognizes one as Hot Guy from Italian, of course. Her roommate makes her own quick work.

“Wow … you guys work all hours of the night just to help people?” she says to Hot Guy, twirling a lock of hair around her finger, eyeing his chest, a stethoscope hung around his neck. 

He looks over his wire-rimmed glasses at her with a grin, “It’s just what we do … you know … ‘cause I’m pre-med.” She giggles and strokes his shoulder.

As they gear up to go to the ambulance, our JJ's victim walks to the hall to check how she looks in the communal bathroom mirror one last time. There, poised to ensure her public humiliation, sits the ambulance stretcher in the hall. She protests but no, no, it is required. She must be rolled out of Barnard through the main gate. It’s The Policy. They go on, parading her out into the street in her jammies. Tonight she had donned her “silly goose on the loose” shirt she bought to wear ironically. 

As they take her information down, she can hear her roommate in the passenger seat, Hot Guy letting her push the woop woop-ing siren. “So fun!!” she titters from up front. Arriving at Mt. Sinai hospital, CUEMS dumps her in a hallway full of other wan and ghastly figures. They go to leave and her roommate follows.

“Could I hitch a ride back?” she says to Hot Guy, brushing against his shoulder.

“Of course. Also I love your fit. Did I mention I’m pre-med?”

The freshman is abandoned at Mt. Sinai. Slowly, spirits visit her. A doctor, who looks about sixteen years old, appears sheepishly at her bedside and fails at an IV. Blood spurts all over the bed. He scuttles away. A nurse comes next, shaking her head. 

“Doctor messing up my patient?” The nurse turns to her and winks. “I would never do that by accident.”

The sickly white ER lights flicker. Faint screams echo down the hall. An old woman paces back and forth. Hours, maybe days go by. The freshman begs, calling out to someone, anyone.

“Please! Let me get out of here! How do I leave?”

The old woman drifts back. “Nobody ever really leaves here. You kids think you have friends but we’re all alone here, in the end. You’ll be back … you’ll be back.”

“Please! I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ll be good! I’ll never go to JJ’s again!”

A nurse peeks around a curtain, a phone in his hand blasting slime tutorial Instagram Reels, the source of the squelching noises she has been hearing for about an hour now. “I wouldn’t wanna be a patient here either!” He laughs in her face.

By some miracle, the freshman gets her discharge papers. She will sign anything that lets her leave. Paper after paper, her signature is no more than a wobbly line by the end. As soon as possible, she jumps out of the bed and makes a run for the emergency bay doors. She runs back to Barnard, passing every single one of her professors on their way to campus. Locked in the safety of her musty Brooks double, she sees her roommate tucked in bed across the room, cuddling a stethoscope. 

She wakes up. Was it all a dream? She checks her phone. Mt. Sinai has emailed her: You have been billed $1,000,000.