The Concerned Mother

My story is true and occurred about four years ago at my place of work.

I am a Snr. registered nurse in the Emergency Department of a busy public hospital.

It was a busy night shift and we had a young lass in with bad asthma. A middle aged woman approached me at the triage desk enquiring if she could see her daughter who was having breathing difficulties. Having no other respiratory patients at the time I directed her to the asthmatic lass in the Emergency Room, and continued working on other patients. (It is important to note that the emergency room is one huge room with several acute care beds in it.) I noticed a few minutes later that the women was standing next to her daughter at the head of the bed but not talking to her, which I thought was rather strange. After about fifteen minutes I noticed the woman had left. Soon after this I attended the asthmatic lady whose condition had markedly improved and asked her if she would like me to get her mother in again from the waiting room. With this she looked at me rather strangely and said, whilst pointing upwards that her mother "was up there". Assuming she meant one of the wards upstairs I enquired which one. It was quickly pointed out to me that her mother had died three years ago.When I questioned the girl about who the woman was that visited her she looked at me with a blank expression stating that no one had been in to see her. Following this I went to the waiting room to bring the girls husband in. I question him about the middle aged lady who had visited his wife. He also looked at me slightly bewildered and said that other than him and his brother no other relatives were at the hospital that night.

At this stage I was becoming increasingly frustrated and questioned the other staff in the Emergency Room re: this mystery woman. No one else had seen this woman, despite the fact that the patients bed was right at the entrance to the Emergency room. Needless to say I started feeling rather nauseous with a bad case of goose bumps at this point in time.

It is worth mentioning that I am rather a sceptic but found this experience pretty incredible.