Narrator: Leanne P. | West Yorkshire, England
I was covering nights at a small care home when I met Mrs G. She liked the television left on low and called everyone sweetheart, including a male nurse she otherwise couldn’t stand. She had poor mobility. Getting her from the bed to the chair took two of us and a fair amount of complaining on her part.
She kept asking us to move a man out of her doorway.
I treated it as confusion. I would stand in the doorway and say, “There, he’s gone now,” and she would turn towards the wall. That was how we got her settled. I wish I had asked what she could actually see.
One night I was changing her water when she said, very clearly, “He’s bringing the carpet in.”
Beyond her room was a short corridor that ended at a locked store cupboard. The floor was plain blue vinyl. A dark strip now lay along its centre, narrow at our end and wider near the cupboard. My first thought was that somebody had unrolled a runner without telling us.
Then it moved.
The end nearest me came forward about six inches. No ripple, no dragging sound. It just covered another piece of floor. There was something wrong with its surface. It looked thick, but I could still make out the seams in the vinyl through it.
Mrs G grabbed my wrist hard enough to hurt. She said, “Don’t put your foot on it, sweetheart.”
I stepped backwards into her room. For perhaps ten seconds we both watched the threshold. I could hear her breathing and the canned laughter on her television. The strip stopped just outside. After that I can’t tell you how it went away. I looked towards the call bell, looked back, and the blue floor was clear.
The other carer checked the cupboard. Nothing had been taken out. She thought I was describing a shadow from a passing car, although the corridor had no outside windows.
Mrs G died several weeks later, on a day I wasn’t working. I don’t believe I caused anything by dismissing what she’d said. I know how that sounds. But I remember how quickly she turned away each time I stood in the doorway pretending to make the man leave. I had thought I was reassuring her. Perhaps she had simply realised I wasn’t going to help.
