The night shift is quiet except for the machines breathing down the hall. The gray cat, Marrow, walks ahead of me like he owns the place. By March I figured out the rule nobody says out loud: wherever Marrow curls up to sleep, that bed is empty by dawn. Tonight he stops outside Room 14. Then he turns and looks straight at me with flat yellow eyes.

I'm done being scared of a cat. I scoop Marrow up before he can settle and carry him to the far end of the hall. If he can't sleep by Room 14, maybe the rule breaks. He goes stiff in my arms and lets out a low growl I've never heard from him.

I carry Marrow into the empty break room and shut him in. For a few minutes the hall feels normal again. Then I hear scratching. Not at the break room door behind me. At the door of Room 14, from the inside.

I open Room 14. Mr. Avery's bed is empty. The scratching is coming from under the sheets, which are moving on their own. I pull them back. There's Marrow, somehow already inside, curled exactly where the man should be. The break room down the hall is silent now. Whatever I locked in there, it was never the cat.