Chapter 15: The Unsettled Spirits of the Nuns who cared for the Miners and that of the injured and dying Miners at the old Sacred Heart Hospital now Salt Lake Regional Hospital

The air in the old Sacred Heart Hospital, now known as Salt Lake Regional, always carried a peculiar chill, even in the height of summer. It wasn't just the recycled air conditioning; it was a deeper, more pervasive cold that seemed to emanate from the very stone and mortar. I’d felt it countless times during my shifts, a prickling sensation on my skin that whispered of unseen presences. But it was during a particularly quiet night, the kind where the only sounds are the hum of machinery and the distant wail of a siren, that I truly understood the source of that unsettling atmosphere.

My assignment that day was the third floor, a section that had been largely repurposed but still held echoes of its former life. This was where the Sisters of the Holy Cross had once tended to the broken bodies of Utah's miners, men who’d descended into the earth in search of riches and often returned bearing the grim harvest of cave-ins and lung disease. The hospital’s history, as I’d learned from the older nurses, was steeped in their devotion and the suffering they’d witnessed.

As I made my rounds, checking on patients house keeping needs and tidying up surgical equipment, I found myself drawn to a dimly lit corridor, one that led to a rarely used storage room. The temperature dropped noticeably as I approached, the hairs on my arms standing on end. A faint scent, like old lavender and something metallic, like dried blood, hung in the air. I hesitated, a primal instinct screaming at me to turn back, but my curiosity, a trait that had both served and haunted me in this profession, urged me forward.