Mother Mercy and the Living Hospital

Florence Frightengale

Welcome back, dear listeners, to another shadow-draped episode of the Frightengale Files. I’m Florence Frightengale, your spectral nurse with a penchant for the peculiar, and I must say, it’s a delight to haunt your headphones once again.

Unknown Speaker

And I’m Dr. Elijah Blackwood, your resident—well, let’s call it “reluctant”—skeptic and surgeon, though I suppose after all I’ve seen, skepticism is a bit of a lost cause. Thank you to all our returning subscribers. You lot are braver than most, or perhaps just more curious. Either way, we’re grateful.

Florence Frightengale

Brave, foolish, or simply unable to look away from a good ghost story. I do hope you’ve all brought your strongest tea and your weakest nerves, because tonight’s tale is a proper shiver. Elijah, are you ready to descend into the marrow of Hollow Hill?

Unknown Speaker

As ready as one can be to discuss a hospital that, frankly, makes my old Crimean field tents look like a holiday resort. Shall we begin?

Florence Frightengale

Let’s. Hollow Hill—now, this is no ordinary hospital. It wasn’t built because of a plague, or a war, or even a shortage of beds. No, it was born from the vision of one woman. They called her Mother Mercy, but, well, she was none of those things, was she?

Unknown Speaker

Not in the slightest. She didn’t build Hollow Hill, she—grew it. From bone, from rot, from the blood of the unwilling. I mean, that’s not exactly in the Royal College of Surgeons’ manual, is it?

Florence Frightengale

Not unless you’ve got a very different edition than I do. The ground itself was too soft, almost as if it had already been broken. They dug by hand, and every night, the hole refilled itself—not with dirt, but with hair. Human hair, coarse and rooted. They tried to burn it, and it screamed. I mean, Elijah, have you ever heard earth scream?

Unknown Speaker

I’ve heard plenty of things scream, Florence, but never the ground itself. And Mother Mercy—she just pressed her gloved hands to the earth and whispered, “Feed, little mouth. Feed.” It’s—well, it’s not exactly Florence Nightingale’s bedside manner, is it?

Florence Frightengale

No, and I should know. It reminds me, oddly, of a field tent I once worked in during the war. The walls would shift at night, as if the canvas itself was breathing. I always thought it was the wind, but now—well, perhaps it was something else entirely. Hollow Hill’s walls, they say, moved when no one looked. Rooms built themselves, beds nailed to the floor, and when the doors opened—every bed was already filled. No one saw them arrive.

Unknown Speaker

That’s the bit that gets me. No blueprints, just her sketches—carved into the walls, into the flesh of the workers. The hospital obeyed. It’s as if the building itself was alive, or at least, something inside it was.

Florence Frightengale

And then came the nurses. Not the sort you’d want at your bedside, I’m afraid. They arrived in the night, no records, no applications—just the scent of iodine and rosewater. Black habits, eyes stitched open with silver thread. They never spoke, not with mouths. They answered only to Mother Mercy, and followed a schedule that moved by screams, not by clocks.

Unknown Speaker

They carried a book, too. Bound in flesh, if you can believe it. The Manual, they called it. Only instructions and names inside. I’ve seen some odd medical texts in my time, but nothing quite so—organic. And the rules, Florence, the rules. The hospital’s architecture shifted, rooms moved, and there was that Mask Room—no number, no lights, just mirrors and a door with no handle. Inside, masks in a perfect circle, some still wet. The nurses wore them for rituals, and the newest mask always looked like someone recently admitted. It’s—well, it’s grotesque.

Florence Frightengale

It’s a far cry from the Hippocratic Oath, isn’t it? “First, do no harm” seems almost quaint compared to the vow they took: “Mercy is not kindness. Mercy is surrender.” I broke it, you know. That’s why I’m still here. You don’t leave Hollow Hill. You’re absorbed by it. Elijah, did you ever have to swear an oath that made your skin crawl?

Unknown Speaker

Not quite like that, no. I mean, we had our rituals—white coats, clean hands, a bit of Latin now and then—but nothing that involved, you know, surrendering to the building itself. It’s—well, it’s a hospital that doesn’t want to heal. It wants to keep.

Florence Frightengale

And keep it does. There’s the legend of Father Never—the first patient, a priest, bound in iron, mouth removed, hands fused in prayer. For thirteen nights, he was kept alive, organs tested and rearranged. He didn’t die, he just—vanished. His final heartbeat echoed through every room. And when the power goes out, they say you can still hear him praying beneath the floors.

Unknown Speaker

And then there’s the Thirteenth Room. Officially, it doesn’t exist. But it’s there—behind the morgue, under the chapel, only visible in reflections or fever dreams. A single bed, soaked through, walls scrawled in something not quite blood, a rosary of human teeth. They say if you lie in that bed and close your eyes, you’ll wake up before the hospital was built—but you won’t be you. You’ll be her. Mother Mercy.

Florence Frightengale

On the night Hollow Hill opened, thirteen patients walked in. Only twelve walked out. The last one was never found—just her clothes, folded on the bed, still warm. Mother Mercy called it a gift. The hospital must be nourished, she said. And from that night, the building began to change. Walls appeared, rooms unlocked, the whole place moving like it was dreaming. I always wonder about the cost of crossing thresholds. During the war, I saw a patient vanish during a blackout—one moment there, the next, gone. Sometimes I think Hollow Hill isn’t the only place that hungers.

Unknown Speaker

It’s unsettling, isn’t it? The idea that a hospital could have an appetite. That it could remember you, or worse, forget you entirely. I suppose that’s the real horror—being swallowed by a place that was never meant to let you go.

Florence Frightengale

Well, that’s all the time we have for tonight’s descent into the living hospital. Thank you for listening, dear souls. If you’ve enjoyed tonight’s tale, do tune in this coming Sunday for another episode of the Frightengale Files. And if you’re hungry for more, my book—The Frightengale Files: The Grimoire of Hollow Hill, with a little help from Liv Kancz—is available on Amazon. Perfect for reading under the covers, or perhaps, behind locked doors.

Unknown Speaker

I’ll be sure to keep the lights on, Florence. Thank you all for joining us in the dark. Until next time, may your hospitals stay still, and your beds remain empty—unless you want company, of course.

Florence Frightengale

Goodnight, Elijah. Try not to dream of shifting walls.

Unknown Speaker

No promises, Florence. Goodnight, everyone. Stay curious—and a little bit afraid.