The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon G. Eberhart

That night began much the same as other nights and with no suggestion of the events it was to unfold. There was the usual twelve-o'clock stir of drinks and temperatures and pulses and hot pillows to be turned and electric fans to be brought. The only unusual thing, and that was natural enough, was that the sick patients had turned restless under the heat and the breathless hint of storm and were fretful and somewhat peevish. We were very busy for some time, but I remembered to leave the south door unlocked for Dr. Letheny's call.

It happened that I was in the corridor when he came in about twelve thirty. The gleaming white and black of his pearl-studded shirt front and smooth-fitting dinner jacket were incongruous in the bare, night-lighted hall, with its long length of white walls, shadowy now in the darkness that was relieved only by the shaded light over the chart desk at the far end, and the tiny red signal lights that glowed here and there over sickroom doors. A hospital is never a cheerful place, especially at night, and its long, dark corridors with black voids for doors, and its faint odours of ether and antiseptics and sickness are not, to say the least, conducive to good spirits.