Dear Dirty America

PULP WIRE

HOUSTON – Former president George H.W. Bush has been hospitalized since November 23 with what is being called “a lingering cough.” While the 88-year-old Bush Sr. and his doctors remain hopeful for a full recovery, nurses say a dark, indistinguishable figure has been present in the hospital room throughout the past week.

“Mr. Bush refuses to look in that corner of the room,” an anonymous nurse said, “and he claims he hasn’t seen anything. But it’s pretty obvious. There’s an all black dark streak a little taller than me. Looks like it could be in the shape of a person, but you can kind of see the wall through it, too,” she said.

Another nurse also described the situation: “At first we thought it was a shadow, but when we opened the curtains and let the sunshine in, it still appeared there, in the corner of what we now call the Presidential Suite Intensive Care Room.” The room, she explained, is two feet bigger than the others, and has a more expensive TV tacked to the wall.

“We still think the shape has got to be some sort of illusion. We’ve never had ghost problems here before. Mr. Bush swears up and down that he does not see it,” the first nurse said. “He doesn’t like to be asked about it anymore. None of us like to be in there with that thing, either, but somebody’s got to take care of the former president.”

None of the doctors on Mr. Bush’s medical team were willing to talk about anything other than how hopeful and optimistic they were about the 41^st president’s path to recovery.

The nurses mentioned that whenever Barbara Bush walked into the room, the dark figure quickly dispersed, which has lead to both the former president and his wife’s further dismissal of the shadowy apparition’s appearance.

It’s not just the hazy dark figure that is put off by Barbara’s appearance. “We all kind of scatter when she arrives,” the nurse said. “She doesn’t say much, but she grunts at Mr. Bush and even he seems to get fidgety.”