"The Wailing One"

"The Wailing One"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

A friend of mine told me this story on a cold rainy night when the patients were few and the night was deep.

It was set in one of Bacolod's most famous Hotels that I will not mention here. My friend was a fresh nursing graduate and took the job of company nurse in this said hotel and she found herself working with one of the veteran nurses who was teaching her the ropes of the place. 

The story took place in the back parts of the hotel where she was being oriented and doing some paper work. The veteran nurse she was with was somewhat tired of her job and it showed in the poor way that she was instructing my friend. My friend did her best to ignore the sarcasm in the veteran nurses voice the whole night but as she was doing some paperwork in line with her job she could not ignore the sudden sobbing in the room. It sounded like a woman who was crying so sadly in the room where only two people should be. My friend looked at the veteran nurse and asked do you hear that? In which the other nurse simply asked with a sneer , "You haven't heard of anything like that?"

"No" , My friend answered as she tried to continue her work but felt like the wailing was coming from below the big table she was currently sitting at. The crying would come and go but the feeling that the wailing woman was with them the whole night would persist.

One time my friend was on her way home and one guard of the hotel asked her the odd but seemingly welcoming question of. "So have you heard the woman yet?"

"It would have been great if someone warned me about her."

"Oh she's harmless. You see there was a fire in that part of the hotel and that woman was believed to be one of the victims. She is probably still crying because she cannot believe what happened to her."

My friend was able to last 6 months of that wailing but she felt that her sanity might leave her if she stayed so she quit the hotel and now works in more wailing free environments.