Patient File No. 7
I didn't dream that night. I didn't sleep at all.
I sat at my kitchen table, a cup of coffee gone cold in front of me, staring at my notes. The last line I had written was the sentence I'd put down just before the clock in the room stopped: Patient is describing a delusional entity with a dual salvific/harmful function — classic pattern...
I hadn't written anything after that. Because after that, the clock had stopped.
I knew there was a simple explanation. Batteries sometimes die at the same moment as a power fluctuation. It was a coincidence. Random things happen every day, and our minds — especially when tired and entangled in a strange story — look for patterns where there are none.
With that thought, I convinced myself to go to sleep. I couldn't.
The next morning, when I got to the office, the first thing I did was check Patient No. 7's file. I wanted to see who had worked on it before me, since I had only recently transferred to this clinic and had taken over most of the cases from my predecessor.
The file wasn't there.
Not that it had been misplaced — it had never been entered into the system at all. No admission number, no date of first visit, no signature from any doctor before me. The only thing that existed was the sheet I myself had opened yesterday, with that handwritten sentence.
I asked the receptionist when this patient had been admitted. She looked at me as if my question made no sense.
"You told me yesterday that you already knew him, Doctor. You said to just transfer the file to your name."
I hadn't said that. I was certain I hadn't.
But something in the receptionist's eyes — a brief moment of hesitation, a blink that lasted slightly longer than normal — made me drop the question. I just said it was my mistake and went to my office.
The second session was at three in the afternoon.
When he came in, he sat exactly as he had yesterday, hands on his knees — but something was different. His hair. Yesterday it had been streaked with gray. Today it was almost completely white.
I didn't say anything. I wrote: Notable change in appearance within a single night — to be examined.
"You think I've gone insane one more night?" he said, with a bitter smile. "Don't look at my hair, Doctor. That's not what you should be worried about."
I asked what I should be worried about.
"Last night," he said, "you went there too."
My heart stopped for a second. Or at least, that's how it felt.
"What do you mean?"
"You dreamed it. A short street. A bakery at the corner. The sound of three swings moving in the park, even when there's no wind."
I hadn't dreamed. I was sure of it — because I hadn't slept at all.
But in that same moment, an image sparked in my mind: the smell of fresh bread. The creak of swing chains, that slow, rusty sound. And a shadow, beside a tree, watching me.
I didn't know where the image came from. I hadn't slept.
And yet, there it was. Vivid, like a real memory.
"This isn't possible," I said, more to myself than to him.
"For him, everything is possible," he said. "You think the boundary between waking and sleeping is a wall. For him, it's a door. And last night, without knowing it, you put your hand on the handle — because you heard my story. That's all it takes."
I set my pen down. I couldn't write anymore; my hand was shaking.
"Why me?" I asked. "You could have gone to any other psychiatrist."
"I did," he said, and for the first time I heard something like real fear in his voice. "Six people before you. That's why my name is Patient Number Seven, Doctor. You're the seventh person I've tried to tell the full story to. The six before..." He paused. "The six before, somewhere in the middle of the story, went to find that street themselves. They wanted to prove I was lying, or they wanted to save me. None of them came back."
"What do you mean, 'came back'?"
He looked at me. That familiar gaze, as if he were looking at some distant point behind me — but this time I understood what that point was.
"I mean there's another doctor right now, on another Monday, starting to count days that never end."
That night, when I got home, the first thing I did was check the calendar on my fridge.
It was Monday.
Nothing wrong with that — it was Monday of that week, the day it was supposed to be.
But the next morning, when I jolted awake and looked at my phone, the date was still the same.
Monday.
I thought maybe my phone was frozen. I turned it off and back on. Checked again.
Monday.
I looked out my apartment window. The sky was the same gray as yesterday. The neighbor across the street, the one who walks his dog every morning, was following the exact same route as yesterday, wearing the same jacket, at the same hour.
I don't know how long I stood there staring outside.
All I know is that when I finally sat down, I reached for my notebook — the one I used for Patient No. 7's sessions — and on a fresh page, without meaning to, I wrote:
7:22.
It was my own handwriting.
But I hadn't written anything.
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To be continued in Chapter Three…