I See Dead People

Esmerelda was not feeling well. Her head was pounding, and she was weak. Not to mention it was late in the evening. After a frantic online search, she miraculously found a clinic that stayed open all night. She hated ER's and avoided them like the Plague (no pun intended).

Driving into the silent, velvety night, which was punctuated by a large, persistent moon, she finally came up on a flickering neon sign that said, "All Night Clinic."
She didn't come to this part of town often, but when she had she never noticed this clinic, although it seemed that it had been here awhile.
Pulling into the parking lot, she saw that there were no cars. She wondered if it was even open.

Peering in, she noticed a bunch of sickly-looking, ghoulish people occupying the waiting room chairs. Trying the big glass door, it obligingly creaked open.
She thought maybe it wasn't so strange after all that everyone seemed to be in costume. It was Halloween night and on Halloween people were often in costume wherever they went.
She went to the front of the dimly-lit clinic to check in, only to find a some black curtains covering the receptionist window. But there was a sign-in page in front of it, so she wrote her name and took a seat next to a grumbling, ashen-looking man. No one in the room really talked; they either sat in silence or grumbled like the man that sat next to her.


For what seemed like forever, one ghoulish patient after another was escorted back to the weirdly dark hallway by a strange-looking nurse. Esmerelda assumed that the nurse had dressed for Halloween too. She had long black hair, pallid skin and bright yellow eyes.
Although it was an interesting costume, Esmerelda could not place exactly what the nurse was trying to be: Spooky RN? Medic of the Night?"

Finally, the nurse called Esmerelda's name. Everyone else had been seen, although the strange thing was, she never saw them leave.
But she was feeling so bad now she didn't care how strange this place was. She breathed a sigh of relief as the nurse led her to the dingiest room she had ever seen. It was grey and musty and had the feel of doom. "The Dr. will see you when the time is right," she said, giving a sinister smile and closing the door.
"Wait!" Esmerelda called out, "He needs to see me now, right now!"
Suddenly the room started spinning and Esmerelda gave in to her increasingly unbearable pain.
She was dead.
But yet she still existed.
She rose up in a fine grey mist and stared at the Dr. who suddenly stood before her. He looked like a pale Frankenstein. He reached out to shake Esmerelda's misty hand, and then she clutched her now ghostly, but still aching, head.
"I can fix you," he said, so you can continue on in the afterlife all healed."
I am a special Dr., for
"I see Dead People."
"Only."