With the Ghost Festival approaching, I hadn’t planned to take my truck out lately.
But Bành Hữu, who ran a logistics company, suddenly came to me. He said an abandoned hospital urgently needed a heavy-truck driver to haul away debris after demolition.
The pay was good, and the work wasn’t hard. Three old friends of mine—Đại Thuận, Vương Thành, and Lão Trương—had already agreed.
I wasn’t particularly interested, but when I heard the hospital’s name, I hesitated.
It was the oldest maternity hospital in the neighboring city. Locals called it the No. 3 Maternal and Child Health Hospital.
More than twenty years ago, its pediatrics department was famous far and wide. When children in the surrounding villages fell seriously ill, their families would sell every pot and pan they owned if they had to, just to get them treated at No. 3 Hospital.
But that hospital was a place my parents and I would later refuse even to speak of.
I agreed to go with Bành Hữu. That night, I had a strange dream.
I was walking down an empty hospital corridor when I suddenly heard a newborn crying.
In the dream, it seemed I had come to find that child.
I followed the crying and hurried toward a hospital room. But the door was shut tight, and no matter how hard I pushed, it wouldn’t open.
Peering through the narrow window in the door, I saw a baby’s crib in the middle of the room.
I could just make out a tiny, chubby hand waving in the air. I grew frantic and tried to ram the door open. But no matter how hard I pushed, it wouldn’t budge.
Just then, I saw a dark figure slowly approach the crib.
“Someone took your little sister…”
A familiar voice suddenly sounded behind me.
Startled, I turned around. The hospital corridor was gone. Somehow, I was back in our old home in the countryside. My mother sat on the old wooden bed, her eyes red as she looked at me, holding an empty swaddling cloth in her arms.
“Trường Đống, your little sister is gone.”
The dream was a muddle. In the blink of an eye, my mother disappeared, and my father was standing in front of the bed instead.
He looked at me in a panic, but what he said made no sense to me.
“Wasn’t your little sister taken to the hospital for treatment? How can she be missing?”
The next moment, village chief Diệp was standing in the doorway of my house.
“Trường Đống, your father called. It looks like your little sister isn’t going to make it. Come with me to the hospital and comfort your parents.”
I staggered out of the house with Chief Diệp. But then I heard my parents’ voices behind me!
I spun around and saw my parents standing together outside the house. They stared at me, still holding the empty swaddling cloth in their arms.
“Trường Đống, we can’t find your little sister. Go look for her!”
Someone slammed into my left shoulder, and the nightmare vanished at once.
I opened my eyes. The left half of my body was numb. I turned my head and saw that my son, Long Tiểu Bảo, was fast asleep, clinging to my left arm like a little koala.
I reached over and stroked his head, but the scene from my dream still hadn’t completely faded. I hadn’t dreamed about my family in a long time. Maybe it was because I’d agreed to go to the No. 3 Maternal and Child Health Hospital—I’d dreamed of my late parents and my little sister, who died young.
I was twelve when my little sister was born. My parents had always wanted a second child, but after I was born, my mother suffered several miscarriages in a row.
My sister’s birth was a tremendous joy to our whole family. Even after twenty-six years, I still remember that tiny child’s oval face, bright, sparkling eyes, and gentle voice. She was nothing like me. I’d been a burly, fierce-looking baby from the moment I was born.
Back then, every day after school, I’d stop by her crib and talk to her for a long time.
She wasn’t afraid of me. Whenever she saw me, her round eyes would roll around.
I knew she was sickly, and my parents took her to the hospital often. But I thought she would grow up.
When she got a little older, I’d go out and earn money to buy her milk and meat buns. She was sure to get better. But I never imagined that the little sister our whole family cherished and watched over so carefully would live for only seven short months.
Back then, the hospital where my sister was admitted was the No. 3 Maternal and Child Health Hospital in the neighboring city.
I still remember the day I went to the hospital with Village Chief Diệp. The hospital corridor was stark white, and it seemed everyone was crying.
My head was buzzing, and I stumbled as I walked. It had been a beautiful sunny day, with bright sunlight outside, but the hospital was gloomy, not a ray of light getting in.
I vaguely remember that every hospital room seemed to be lit by a harsh white light, washing all the color from people’s faces.
On the way, Chief Diệp told me to comfort my parents when we got to the hospital and to be strong, like a man.
But I was only twelve then. I didn’t even really understand what death was.
Outside my sister’s room, my mother sat slumped in a chair in the corridor, her face as pale as the hospital’s white walls.
My father held my mother tightly. She wasn’t even crying; she just stared blankly at the hospital-room door.
I followed her gaze, and just then a nurse came out of the room.
I caught a glimpse inside the room of several empty cribs arranged in neat rows.
My mother suddenly sprang to her feet and rushed at the nurse, gripping her arm. “My daughter isn’t dead! Someone took her! I saw it last night. I saw…”
My father hurriedly pulled her back, apologizing to the nurse over and over.
The nurse was older. She held my mother’s hand, her eyes red and her lips trembling. After a long while, she finally said softly, “Please accept our deepest condolences. We truly did everything we could…”
My father pulled my mother away. She collapsed to the ground, wailing. The words of comfort caught in my throat. I had no idea what to do; I could only walk stiffly over to her.
When my mother saw me, she threw her arms around me and whispered something in my ear that I still don’t fully understand: “Someone took your little sister!”
After that, my mother fell seriously ill.
I once asked my father what those words meant. He said my mother had probably had a nightmare that night.
Since family members weren’t allowed to stay in the pediatric ward, my parents took turns keeping watch in the corridor over those next few days.
That night, my mother had probably dreamed that a pregnant woman had entered my little sister’s hospital room and carried her away.
When my mother woke up, my little sister had already died.
Countless times, I wanted to ask my mother why she had been so certain that someone had taken my little sister. But after that, she wouldn’t say anything more. Whenever I pressed her, she only said it had been a dream.
After the incident, rumors began to spread that No. 3 Maternal and Child Health Hospital was haunted. Not because of my mother’s dream, but because on the night my little sister died, seven sick newborns died at No. 3 Maternal and Child Health Hospital at the same time.