Autophobia, Chapter one

There's the guy with the Schizophrenia

some guy who is often very sick and claims to be followed,

Daniel, who has extreme Amnesia and highly paranoid which at some points causes him to become violent.

Mandus, claims to be seeing and hearing children when there is clearly none in sight.

Those are only a handful of the patients here...

I haven't been here long, only 7 months, and I've recently been assigned to my first patient. I found it strange when they had handed me the papers. I had absolutely no idea who he was, so it took me a few moments to grasp the reality that this would be like a brand new experience.

The only thing is that I've heard rumors about this patient, Mark Fischbach, its said that he's one of passive-aggressive patients. I've also heard that he supposedly got put into this place because he was diagnosed as insane. I don't know much of his story besides those facts.

Knock knock...

Pause

Knock Knock...

No response

"Hello, Mr. Fischbach?" I ask nervously when there isn't a reply from the room. He can't be sleep, its too late into the day for dozing. I give the door another soft knock, and this time the sound of shuffling answers my knocking.

"Who is it?" A voice asks from the hidden room on the other side of the door. I gulp and for a moment my years of training seem to just melt away. As I stood there trembling and thinking some of the worst case scenarios that could happen, I barely managed to give out even a professional response.

"It's your new doctor, Mr. Fischbach. May I come in?" As simple as the sentence was, I had a hard time thinking it up. In the same instant I heard his invitation for me to enter, my brain somehow clicked and I returned back to my professional structure.

Grabbing onto the door knob and pushing it open, I was met with a spine chilling look from my patient as he sat on his bed. His hands were resting on his legs and he looked as if he had been focusing on the door even before I had entered the room.

Taking a deep breath to stable myself, I closed the door and held by clipboard tightly towards my body as if it would protect me from him. "Hello, Mr. Fischbach. As said before I am your new doctor, you may call me Heather."

I greeted him, giving him a small nod. He didn't really respond to the nod, just kept his stone-cold eyes in my direction as if I had trespasser into his territory.

Finding someway to distract myself from the holes boring its way through my act, I took a gaze around the room. Of course, this being a room belonging to an insane patient I wouldn't expect much to be in here. The walls were obviously cement walls, coated over with white painting. There was a single window on one of the walls, permanently bolted down seeing that we were on the second floor. Even the bed he was sitting on was a simple spring bed with a couple of black covers thrown over it. There was a few books that laid on the floor beside his leg and there was also a wooden chair sitting in the corner. The only thing that was off about the room was that there were a couple of pictures on the wall, hand-drawn.

I didn't pay much attention to them, thinking of them as nothing more than a project that was done to accompany his time.

"So, Mr. Fischbach..." I started, sitting down in the chair. When I looked back at him, he was still staring.

Examining.

Watching.

Penetrating my courage.

"...How are you feeling today?" That's the only thing that I could think of at the moment. I waited for his reply, but I got none, not even his gaze flickered.

After about a few seconds of silence, I was about to write down that the patient was unresponsive, but when he had suddenly splintered the air with his voice, I was forced to look up.

"How else am I suppose to feel when I am forced to do nothing, but stare silently at words on a page of a book." He said, with an empty voice.

I was unsure of what to write down, just stared at him cluelessly for a few moments before I decided not to write down anything.

"Okay...did you sleep well?"

"No."

"Have you eaten today?"

"Yes."

This continued for a while, me asking simple questions and him answering and me recording the data on my paper. After reading over the stuff I had written down, I was quick to almost get up and leave but there was a question that had been nagging me.

"Mr. Fischbach?" I asked him to make sure he was paying attention. His emotionless eyes gazed at me and he gave a hollow sigh "Yes?"

"Do you have any idea what happened to the last doctor you was assigned to?"

All that followed was silence and I knew that I was walking a fine line now. I gathered my stuff up and made my way towards the door without an answer.

"Wait!" He snapped "Don't leave me."

I gave him a bewildered look seeing that this was the most emotion he had displayed the whole time I had been sitting here.

"I'm sorry Mr. Fischbach, but I have rather important tasks to attend to. If you don't mind..."

"Take me with you." He said, his snappy words had smoothed back into his boring voice. "I know everything about this room. All the cracks, where the bugs get in from. Take me with you. Show me something new."

"I can't do that, Mr. Fischbach." I tensed, pushing the key I had into the lock. It seemed that as soon as those words slipped out, the air in the room seemed to have more malice in it.

Head snapping towards me, he stared at me with the same emotionless gaze he had been giving me the whole session, but when he talked I knew that he was feeling otherwise. "Then, get out!" He snarled.

I paused, considering staying to see what would happen. When I saw him shift as if he was about to get up, I rushed out of the room and closed the door behind myself. The door couldn't be opened from the inside, so there wasn't a way he could get out without a key.

I stood at the door of the room for a moment before turning on my head and marching my way to the front office.

"Kenneth." I almost shouted as I slammed my clipboard onto the office desk of his. He looked at me as if I had just interrupted him while he was doing something important, which he wasn't.

"What is it, Ms. Suthers?"

"You know the insane patient, Mark. Mark Fischbach."

"Yes, I am very much acquainted with him, what is it you need?" He said in that usual calm voice. I narrowed my brown eyes at him and brown eyes looked back.

"What happened to his doctor before me?" I asked.

"That is superficial information, Ms. Suthers." He scoffed.

"Don't give me that 'Ms. Suthers' shit. How is the information superficial if he's my patient? I should have everything I need to know about him. I should know where he's from, his age and how he got in here. I won't be able to do my job correctly without that information." With every sentence I said, my words grew louder. Not like anyone could hear me, visiting hours were over and most doctors were with their patients. Those that did hear, probably wouldn't come mess with the situation.

Now it was Kenneth's turn to narrow his eyes. At first he gave no reply, just tried to stare me down, then he seemed to just cave in.

"Alright. Ms. Suthers. We don't have much information of Mark, but the essential."

"Why's that?"

He hesitated "Because the few doctors before you weren't able to pull that much information from him."

Then, he slid the folder over to me. On it, written in black, it said 'Mark Fischbach'

It was small compared to the other folders that had been on other patients. Tucking it under my arm, I turned to leave.

"Ms. Suthers-" Ken called after me.

"My name is Heather."

"Yes, Heather... ...have a safe trip home." He said, waving me away. I just huffed at him, moving brown hair from my face before walking out of the asylum to go read over the papers at home.

Mr. Fischbach might be a harder patient to figure out than I thought...