Chilled to the Bone

I was born wall-eyed! Well, for those of you who don’t know, wall-eyed is the opposite of being crossed-eyed.  I needed three operations to fix my eyes. I can still remember the third operation quite clearly. It happened right after my father’s construction company folded.   Since Father or Mother weren’t bringing in a paycheck, I became an “indigent” case.   Before Father had lost his company, he’d been able to afford one of the best doctors in the country and this doctor had operated on me, twice. It was rumored that he could perform an eye transplant. Now, I was a charity case being sponsored by the Florida Council for the Blind. This doctor, refused to accept me as a charity case. I never liked the doctor, anyway.  He was so mean! I had to sit perfectly still in the chair in his office, like a robot, as he put drops in my eyes that stung. 

          This final surgery would take place at the same hospital, where I had the other two, St. Joseph’s Hospital. There were nuns that worked there. Now, one might think of a nun as someone kind and sweet. Yeah! Right! Some were demon spawn. Evil comes in many disguises, I had discovered.

          Some of the staff at that hospital were just plain rude. They’d move their eyes up and down, staring at the clothes you wore on your back and when they did that to Mother, her face had turned beet red. She gritted her teeth to keep from telling them off. What choice did she have? If she told them off, we’d probably get thrown out of the hospital like a bag of trash.

          As such, Mother showed up for brief visits, with the head nun standing next to her. I couldn’t understand why the nun bothered to come. She didn’t do anything, but stare at me.

          Now, I was the only child in this ward who had parents. The other children were orphans. They weren’t treated right and neither was I! If we had to go to the bathroom, we had to hold it. The nun described it as practicing "self-control." There were bed pans, but we weren’t allowed to use them. If we soiled the sheets, we were threatened with being tied to the bed posts or worse poked with a needle (a needle used to draw more blood, when it wasn’t needed!).

          A nurse would come at a scheduled time and take us to the bathroom, but it wasn’t often enough. There was a boy across from me, who was about my age. He’d climb out of his bed and go to the bathroom on his own. One time they tied him to the bed posts, but he managed to get free. Then, they raised the railings on his bed and tied a net across the top of it. He couldn’t get out. He yelled and screamed, hoping someone other than the staff would hear him. A couple of nurses and the head nun came and took him away. I never saw him again.

          It didn’t take long for me to have an accident. It was Mother who smelled the stench.  Of course, the head nun was with her. Mother was no longer able to hold her tongue and told them she’d go to the newspaper about the treatment of children in their hospital. Let’s just say from her making that threat, I could leave my bed and walk down the hall to use the nearby bathroom.

          However, the head nun was determined to get even. That night, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I knew something evil was lurking near the door. Cautiously, I turned around to peek. The light in the hallway, helped me to recognize this evil presence. The head nun stood at the door and growled, “Face the wall and go to sleep. If you turn around, you’ll be sorry.” I did as she ordered and faced the wall. My ears strained to pick up any sound of her leaving, so I could turn back around. I don’t know how long I laid facing the wall, but to me, it seemed like forever, until I felt a dark cloud had been lifted. I knew before taking one quick peek, the evil nun had left. Standing at the door, was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, but I knew she wasn’t really a nurse, since she had a soft glow surrounding her. “Close your eyes and go to sleep,” she whispered. “Everything is going to be okay, little one.”

         Her words felt like a warm blanket giving me comfort and I drifted off to sleep. When I opened my eyes, the sun was shining brightly through the window near my bed, a signal the next day had arrived. About an hour later, I was wheeled into the operating room for surgery. I remembered smelling the ether and then waking up in bed. There was something covering my eyes. I knew it was the bandages, since I had two previous operations. There was no warning, no sick feeling in my stomach of someone hovering over me, because as soon as I touched those bandages, I felt an icy hand grab me, tying one arm and then the other to the bed posts. “NO!” I moaned.

          Whoever had done it, merely chuckled as if it were some kind of joke, and left. Soon after, the air felt lighter along with the sweet smell of roses. I heard the whispering words, “Everything is going to be okay, little one. Your mother is coming.” Peacefully, I waited, thankful that this wonderful light being had offered comfort in my time of need. Mother arrived a few minutes later. When she saw my arms tied to the bedposts, she was madder than a hornet: “Who tied my daughter up like this?”

             The head nun confessed. She told Mother I was trying to remove the bandages and it was the only way to prevent me from doing it. Of course, Mother didn’t believe her and really felt like calling the nun a liar to her face. But she didn’t! It took every ounce of energy she possessed to remain in control of her emotions.

  For years, after being tied to the bedposts and kept in the dark from having my eyes covered, I was afraid of the dark. If someone really wanted to scare me, just put me in a room at night, with the lights turned off, and close the door.

         My younger brother, Warren, knew this and would sometimes play a joke on me.  Somehow, he’d find a way to outsmart me, get me into a darkened room and do just that.  Eventually, I conquered my fear by replacing it with wanting to get even with my little brother. Let’s just say he stopped, and my fear of the dark was gone!

Now, not only did I have to conquer being afraid of the dark, but also my dislike towards nuns. Yet, that was handled too. Sometimes, we can’t explain why something happens, it just does. For one day, I was talking to one of my childhood friends, Debbie, when a nun came walking towards us. She was visiting her mother, who lived in a nearby small house. Her home was about half the size of mine and my childhood home wasn’t that big to begin with.

She walked towards me carrying a bible and didn’t stop, until she stood in front of me.  Later, Debbie had described the incident as if God had summoned her to come. The young nun didn’t really say much, except she was home visiting her mother and thought she’d take a walk. In her possession was a little prayer book. She handed it to me and told me to be sure to read it. After all, God is always listening.

I don’t know what became of that prayer book, except that perhaps Warren got a hold of it. As a young boy, he had a habit of taking items from me and burying them under our swing set in the backyard or under our house, pretending to be a pirate. As he grew older, he stopped doing that. Unfortunately, he never could recall all the items he had buried.

My experience with the head nun was not the only time I felt chilled to the bone. In fact, having that feeling has protected me in knowing when something evil is wearing a disguise and how to confront it.

Sharon Oberne grew up in the Southern sticks and has witnessed what can’t be explained.  She enjoys writing about unexplained phenomenon.  She has been a previous author for Story Sanctum with the story, “Escaping a Predator," and she is the author of "Born Magnet: Attracting Evil," which is available on Apple (and other digital platforms) here: https://books.apple.com/us/book/born-magnet-attracting-evil/id6476158178.