Human Error

It started with small things, things you would hardly notice or pay mind to. The kind of things we all experience through our lives, like Deja vu. Those times you could have sworn that you told someone something, belongings impossibly going missing, things we put down to human error. But then it was memories of whole conversations that were never had, appointments that were never made. At first I thought it was my memory, that maybe I was working too much, too stressed, too tired. I took time off, did yoga, learned to meditate but it continued.

One day while walking through the park I noticed a young couple running, I turned to dispose of my used coffee cup and when I turned back, they hadn’t moved. They were still running, trying to get to a destination they would never reach, but they didn’t seem to notice. I gradually learnt how to ignore these things and carry on with my life. Eventually I decided to go back to work nursing, but I kept getting the patients confused, it felt like I was writing the exact same patient notes four or five times a shift.

Then one day on my way to work something bigger happened. I was driving along the highway toward the hospital where I work then next thing I knew; it was an hour and a half later and I was driving in the opposite direction with no memory of what happened. I pulled over and called my work, they told me I never arrived. I called my partner; I hadn’t gone home. Later that day my partner told me their parents had seen my distinctive blue beetle on the side of the road during my missing time. I however was nowhere to be seen.

After this I went to doctor after doctor, did test after test and took drug after drug but it was no good. As the strange occurrences increased and everyone questioned my sanity more and more, I began to question my sanity too. I had been labelled as delusional, schizophrenic, a liar. Maybe they were right, maybe I was all those things, but I couldn’t fight the feeling that something more was going on. My partner started asking me why I never went to work, my work mates asked me why I never left, spending shift after shift there never going home. Time began to lose all meaning; I never knew where I had been or what I had done. Inevitably I lost my job. When I told my partner he looked confused “what do you mean you were fired, you’ve never worked there”.

To try and ground myself I decided to go through old photo albums and diaries. My partner sat with me reminiscing about our holidays. Then I came across a photo from our first big trip together. We were snorkelling in the coral reef on the coast of Norfolk island. I remembered cutting my foot open on something sharp on the reef while snorkelling. I knew what the next photo would be, and sure enough it was a photo of me in the tiny hospital that was far more like a small clinic. My foot was wrapped in bloody towels and I was in good spirits making faces at my partner behind the camera. I started to remind him about this story when he stopped me and asked me if I felt ok. I didn’t understand until I looked back at the photo book, the photo of me in the clinic was gone, as was the one of us snorkelling. I started to get angry, yelling frantically that his joke wasn’t funny. All he kept saying in response was “it’s not a joke, I don’t know what you’re talking about”. I then had the idea to show him the permanent souvenir I had from that day on Norfolk Island. The jagged red scar that weaved its way down the bottom of my foot.

A scar that was now somehow gone.

I fell to the floor fighting panic and fear, little did I know the worst was yet to come. For the next week or so things went back to normal. A new normal full of doubt, fear and confusion; where nothing could be trusted, but normal none the less. After just over a week of this peculiar new normal the strangest occurrence of all happened.

A dear family friend, Annie, had passed away some years ago, I had mourned her with my family and her husband Don, remembering her strength and kindness, I had grieved her loss. Then one day something happened that chilled me to my core. I was talking to my mum on the phone, discussing an upcoming dinner party. When I asked who would be at the dinner mum started rattling off the names of the usual friends and family. That’s when she said something I will never forget, “Oh, Annie and Don will be there too”. My blood ran cold and I felt sick, it couldn’t be real. I stopped being able to hear my mother’s voice as she continued to speak, unaware that I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. I tried to make sense of what should not be possible. I convinced myself she had meant only Don will be there and had said both names out of habit. I put most of my time over the next few days into convincing myself that the impossible was just that, impossible.

A few nights later it was time for the dinner party and sure enough who should walk through the door but Annie, a living ghost made of flesh and bone and coursing blood. I started to feel dizzy, someone around me started screaming. Wait! no, it was me, I was screaming.

What happened next, I don’t know, I was suddenly in this hospital, a mental health facility they tell me. The usual sterile white walls, white floors, white clothes; to keep us calm, or so they say. It’s not so bad here except I keep getting lost, it’s like the layout changes every five minutes and I never seem to see the same staff member or patient twice. But it’s not so bad here except I keep getting lost, it’s like the layout changes every five minutes.