The Lofton County Free Voice knew how to pour salt in the wounds of those finally losing their grip of Lofton County, which had held on to its good old boy type of leadership for as long as possible. A whole bunch of people had always defied that in a whole bunch of ways, and Marcus Morgan was one of them.
“Oh no,” Capt. R.E. Ludlow Sr. said as he saw the first paragraph, and then sat down and had a good laugh.
“You know,” his seven-year-old granddaughter Amanda said, “there's a way that Papa laughs that is safe for everyone, and there's a way that Papa laughs and it means the world is coming to an end for somebody and they are not safe at all!”
“Ain't it the truth,” her eight-year-old bestie Gracie Trent said from next door, “but the good thing is, if your grandfather is getting a good laugh out of the paper my cousin Tom works at, that means he's safe for everyone now. We gotta take what we can get in this world and be thankful!”
“Yep, that's what my grandma says too,” Amanda said.
Capt. Ludlow was laughing because he knew the punch line of the story; he knew Marcus Morgan, and he knew what his father,, Edwin Ludlow, had known about Mr. Morgan even then – but said nothing, because Edwin Ludlow admired the hospital administrator and had actually built the lost ward at Mr. Morgan's request!
“If you look at the building plans for Lofton Dynast Hospital, it was hidden in plain sight. Most things numbered in terms of floors and sections in the English-speaking world do not have number 13 attached because of that old superstition about the number being unlucky, so you can look at the blueprints for Lofton Dynast's new building and see that there is a thirteenth ward, but because of convention, you would expect to see it numbered 14, and think nothing else of it in practice. And indeed, that is what happened.”
Capt. Ludlow's six-year-old grandson Grayson looked at the blueprints his great-grandfather had made, and looked up with his gray eyes wide in a confused face.
“But Papa, it's right there. I'm six and I can see that.”
“And, what your great-grandfather and Mr. Morgan knew about most adults is that we see what we want to see,” Capt. Ludlow said as he gently stroked his second-youngest grandchild's head to calm him a little.
“Is this why the stuff Big Papa Edwin built keeps standing up while whole neighborhoods are going into the underground sinkholes and high schools are having to be condemned that other folks built?” Grayson said.
“Yep,” Capt. Ludlow said. “It's really bad as an architect and engineer if you only see what you want instead of what's there.”
“OK, no,” Grayson said. “I'm glad I'm six because now I have twelve years to work on not going blind. It's right there in the blueprints, Papa. It's right there. I don't get why all these people missed it, and I'm not trying to ever understand. No.”
“So, Lofton Dynast's new Ward 13 was lost on purpose,” the paper continued. “The elevators open to the public were numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, and 15, as expected, and the emergency stairs were too – after all, only in an emergency would people be walking down those flights, and probably not noticing in the situation that, once again, the thirteenth ward was still there.”
“OK, so adults can't count either?” Capt. Ludlow's eleven-year-old granddaughter Eleanor said, with disappointment in her voice.
“That's not it – they were miscounting, on purpose,” Capt. Ludlow said. “This is a lie common in standard practice.”
“So scared of a number,” Eleanor said. “Folks are supposed to be strong, but they are really not – but, hey, if I was doing the dumb stuff that the people who missed the thirteenth ward were doing, I suppose I wouldn't have been a strong person anyhow.”
“Nope,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“Nevertheless,” the paper continued, the emergency stairs did go to the thirteenth ward, and so did a very large freight elevator that went to the thirteenth floor. So, if you were in need, and could not be served anywhere else, there was a way for you to get medical help: you found a way to climb the back emergency stairs and knock on a door that only opened from the inside, or get into the freight elevator.
"Many, many packages were delivered between 1950 and 1975, when at last Lofton Dynast officially opened to all of the public – thousands were quietly treated in the meantime, and many lives were saved. However, because of the known dedication to all humanity of the volunteers who manned the lost ward on their off days, the ward did not actually close until 1990, when time and age made the ward impossible to staff without revealing the great secret.
“Why did Marcus Morgan and those who saw the vision with him take this risk – and why did Edwin Ludlow help him do it? Mr. Morgan was raised by his full-Black grandmother after his mother died in childbirth, a death that could have been prevented except that mulatto women were not permitted in Lofton Dynast Hospital. That same grandmother had been a nursemaid and babysitter for Edwin Ludlow. So, Edwin Ludlow knew Marcus Morgan was passing for white, running one of Lofton County's most important institutions – and Mr. Ludlow decided, because of his respect for Mr. Morgan and love for Mr. Morgan's grandmother, to not only keep that secret but build the lost ward and hide it in plain sight.”
“That's deep, Papa,” his ten-year-old grandson Andrew said. “Marcus Morgan was just fooling everybody to help the people, and Big Papa was out here using his skills to help out!”
“And now the secret is out,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Wow, indeed.”
“In 1990,” the paper continued, “the lost ward closed and the things in it were allocated to the rest of the hospital, or thrown away, except for the nurses' station. There sat the records of all that had been done, kept until the proper time to reveal the history. The proper time is right now.”