Ward C by Christopher Kennedy

Kate Mercer wakes in a hospital bay with a head wound, one eye that will open, and a call bell that rings with nobody on the end of it. The board above her bed says NO VISITORS. Nobody will tell her who wrote it, because according to the records, nobody did.

Ward C looks like every ward you have ever sat in. Observation rounds. Bed management. A tannoy that mispronounces names. But the notices here do not inform, they instruct. Patients who ask too many questions are marked Non-Compliant. Files go to something called Central Review, which meets in the small hours and has never once been seen arriving. And the night sister comes on shift in daylight, hours before any rota could explain.

The longer Kate stays Present, the less the paperwork agrees she was ever admitted. The other patients in her bay know the rules the way prisoners know a regime: keep your name, answer to it, never let the ward answer for you. One by one, the ones who forget are Resolved. Externally.

Kate does the one thing the ward cannot process. She starts keeping her own record.

Ward C is a standalone British horror novel for readers of Catriona Ward, C.J. Tudor and Adam Nevill, set in the one building everyone enters eventually, where the difference between a patient and a record is a single line on a screen.

NARRATION

The files go to Central Review. It meets in the small hours. Nobody has ever seen it arriving.

Kate Mercer is trying to understand a ward whose routines conceal more than they explain.

Each answer seems to make the records less reliable.

Ward C. A British hospital horror novel. Explore more at Medlock Holts.

Ebook exclusively on Amazon. Read with Kindle Unlimited.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HJBY9CYR

Fictional book trailer with AI-generated imagery and narration.