I was a bit early to my appointment at Queen's hospital for my yearly checkup.
You know, the exercising bending and stretching before they finally make you look to the left and cough checkup? Yeah, that one. To my surprise, the receptionist team was already there working fastidiously behind the desk and answering calls and scheduling patients for their appointments and various other things. I sat down and grabbed a magazine and waited until one of them called me to let me know that the doctor was ready to see me.
"Mister Harbottle?" The voice called from behind the desk.
"Yes?" I answered while standing up at the same time.
"The doctor will see you now," it was a tall, slimly built middle-aged local Japanese woman who was dressed in light blue scrubs with Winnie the Pooh designs all over. As she led me down the hallway to what she said was door seven, I happened to glance back and noticed that the other receptionists were busy at the computer and chattering away on the phones or with each other, but the noise was absent. In fact, the entirety of the office was completely silent. Before I knew it, I was ushered into the examing room, and the door slid shut behind me. Suddenly, I could hear the conversations outside the room, and I could hear the phones ringing and the voices answering, There was high shrill laughter, and I could have sworn that I heard my name explicitly mentioned. I slid the door open ever so slightly and popped my head out only to find the reception area empty and void of any human presence.
"Mister Harbottle?" The voice from behind me, pierced the deathly quiet and made me jump and yelp at the same time. It was the tall slim local Japanese woman. "It turns out that you don't have an appointment."
I couldn't form two syllables out of my mouth when the woman dematerialized right through me and appeared on the other side. She walked out of the examining room and went down the hallway to join her colleagues. They were all gathered at their stations. Each one stared a hole right through me as if they were prepared to have my head.
"Mister Harbottle," the local Japanese woman began. "According to our records, you never made an appointment. You can't just show up unannounced and expect to be seen. That's not the way things work here."
With that, everyone disappeared right in front of me except for the local Japanese woman. "You came too early sir, different appointments are set here way before the hour of eight."
"What kind of appointments?" I asked.
"The kind you don't come back from, lucky for you, your name is not on our files." The woman said. Her eyes were deep-set and very intense, everything she felt or thought was in those eyes. "Go home, Mister Harbottle, and come back tomorrow at a more decent hour and not in the dead of the morning."
Just then the real receptionist showed up, she was dressed in purple scrubs and had her hair up in a bun. One arm was filled with files, while the other balanced a cup of coffee and a doughnut. "You didn't get here REAL early, did you?" She asked.
"Uh yes I did," I was scared to the point where I was trying to will myself to shut up.
"It gets eerie here if you show up too early, everyone knows its somewhat haunted, that's why we all make it a point to get here exactly on the hour." The woman took her place behind the desk and confirmed my appointment. She leaned in closer and asked under her breath, "You didn't see anything, did you?"
"No," I lied calmly. "Nothing at all."
"Alright," she squealed. "Have a seat, and I'll call you just as soon as the good doctor arrives."
I really wasn't sure what happened, but I know one thing, this is one place where showing up early might actually get you into trouble or worse, make you disappear. I guess that's what happens when you build a hospital on the grounds of an old Hawaiian temple of human sacrifice.
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