In February 1994, 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez was rushed to the emergency room at Riverside General Hospital in California.
Within an hour, she was dead, and the doctors and nurses who had tried to save her were collapsing one after another.
Gloria had been diagnosed with late-stage cervical cancer just six weeks earlier. That night, she arrived struggling to breathe, with her heart racing and her blood pressure dropping fast.
While trying to save her, the staff noticed that her body was covered in a strange oily sheen. A fruity, garlic-like smell was coming from her mouth.
When a nurse drew her blood, it smelled like ammonia. Small yellowish particles were floating in it.
Then the nurse fainted.
A doctor who examined the syringe began to feel sick and collapsed too. A respiratory therapist went down next. Others started shaking, vomiting, and struggling to breathe.
The emergency room was evacuated. While other patients were moved out to the parking lot, a small team stayed behind to keep trying to save Gloria.
She died about 35 minutes after she arrived.
In total, 23 hospital workers became ill that night. Five were hospitalized. One doctor spent two weeks in intensive care.
State investigators blamed mass hysteria, possibly triggered by an unusual smell, but the staff refused to accept that.
Scientists later proposed that a substance Gloria may have used for pain relief had reacted during treatment, producing a highly toxic chemical.
That chemical was never found in the samples tested. The explanation remains a theory.
More than 30 years later, no one can say for sure what happened in that room.
I think the love you receive from someone who knows how to be alone is the most sincere. a solitary soul loves you by choice, not out of need for company.