Where malevolence meets malpractice.
Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital
Kingdom is a hospital whose bizarre population includes a brilliant surgeon who lives in the basement, a nearly blind security guard and a nurse who regularly faints at the sight of blood. But when patients and staff hear the voice of a girl crying through the halls and a patient destined for life as a paraplegic miraculously recovers, they are dismissive of any suggestion of mysticism or unseen powers... at their own peril.
Episodes
Artist Peter Rickman is run down by a stoned, two-time loser driving a minivan. He is admitted comatose to Kingdom Hospital, but not before encountering a frightening, ghostly figure whose mission is to use him to rid the hospital of malevolence, both human and inhuman, and to free its nine-year old mistress, Mary, from the hospital's haunted halls. When he awakens in an altered state with newfound but not necessarily welcome telepathic powers, Rickman finds he can communicate with the spirits, good and evil, man and beast, inhabiting the hospital.
Despite being forcibly discharged from the hospital by Dr. Stegman, Mrs. Druse recruits the semi-conscious, telepathic Peter to join her at a seance to identify the spirit whose cries continue to haunt the hospital's elevator shafts. Meanwhile, the man responsible for Peter's condition becomes acutely aware of a much stronger and frightening presence at Kingdom Hospital.
After seeing a girl and finding a toy doll in the elevator shaft, Dr. Hook is convinced to help Druse stay in the hospital while she finds the source of the haunting. Meanwhile, a prisoner and his girlfriend plan out a suicide pact that goes wrong when he is saved by the Kingdom Hospital staff, in a not so common fashion. We also learn that Dr. Stegman killed a patient while in surgery at his last job in Boston, and is now being accused of messing up another surgery with a young girl. The mother now has plans to sue for malpractice. And finally, Peter Rickman is visited in his mind by the beast in his painting, and also comes in contact with Mary and Paul.
The ex-wife of Dr. Traff dies from a heart attack in his care, while his son Elmer has a dream involving the anteater. Lenny passes onto the other side, and tries to help Druse find out more about Mary. After a night of anger and harrassment, Stegman goes off the deep end and starts trying to find out who defaced his car. Finally, while Druse finds out through Lenny that Rickman knows what's going on in the hospital, Paul starts to use Pedersen to make sure Druse doesn't find out.
The psychic Mrs. Druse is called to assist when the trapped evil spirit of a tortured teenaged boy wreaks havoc on the staff, patients and innocent spirits inhabiting Kingdom Hospital. Meanwhile Dr. Hook forges a relationship of the mortal variety.
Using Peter Rickman's drawings as a guide, Mrs. Druse and Hook make contact with Mary and her nemesis, Paul, and begin to navigate through the trenches of Kingdom Hospital's horrifying past. Meanwhile, Dr. Traff's attempt at a love prank on sleep psychologist Dr. Lona Massingale goes terrifyingly wrong!
Still unable to speak, Peter gets a message to Dr. Hook and Mrs. Druse that a very dark presence within Kingdom Hospital is channeling his evil through a hallucinating alcoholic and pyromaniac to harm patients, staff and their most powerful spiritual allies, Mary and Antibus. And Dr. Stegman's unethical medical practices and questionable past begin to haunt him at every turn.
An attorney in need of a heart transplant rues the day he checked into Kingdom Hospital. Meanwhile, Hook discovers authentic newspaper clippings inside Mary's doll that reveal the horrific details of the 1869 Gates Falls Mills fire that killed scores of children on the very ground where the hospital now stands.
When a retired major league baseball player attempts to take his own life and is admitted to Kingdom Hospital, he begins a chain reaction that opens up some horrific old wounds and reverses history for those -- living and dead -- who inhabit the hospital.
When the reverend of the Christ-Oly-Christ mission is sacrificed, new life resurges in and around Kingdom Hospital and the mystery behind Mary's death is revealed. Meanwhile, maintenance man Jack Handlemann delivers a very destructive blow to Stegman's ego and most prized possession.
When two different patients have seizures, they awaken to frightening visions of the living dead haunting Kingdom Hospital's halls, and the reverberations from Mona Klingerman's seizure brings Dr. Stegman's worst nightmares to the surface.
When Peter Rickman has yet another seizure, he witnesses the eventual fate of Kingdom Hospital and makes a tangible connection with its frightening past. When Peter awakes, his drawings help Mrs. Druse make a direct connection to Mary, and serve as the key to correcting evil deeds done by the Kingdom's forefathers. Meanwhile, Brenda and Dr. Hook finally make public Stegman's guilt in the Mona Klingerman medical malpractice incident -- and send him on a crazed and violent tear for vengeance.
The future of Kingdom Hospital is changed forever when Dr. Hook and Peter are sent back to the Old Kingdom, where they find the answers to the secrets of the Gates Falls Mills fire.
