To @thapaswi2014  - Thanks for reading!

I clenched my fists in anger and tore my gaze away.

"Him?!" I seethed. I expected to see him again but not this soon and not to be his Psychologist. I hadn't even prepared myself mentally for this.

Nurse Carter laughed sheepishly. "I'm really sorry, I am but we have little choice. He has requested for you and due to the nature of the patients we tend to, we have little say in the matter".

'Nature of patients' obviously meant rich entitled people with a lot of influence. It also meant I had little choice and neither did most of the other hospital staff which slightly comforted me.

"Am I supposed to start today? I know nothing about him", I asked in a controlled tone.

"Well, you don't need to do anything face to face right now, you can use this session for observations".

"Where is his case file?"

"I'll give that to you in a second, follow me".

I followed behind her to a desk where a thin brown cardboard folder lay. I picked it up incredulously - why was it so thin?

As soon as I flicked through it, my question was answered. There was barely anything in there. I scanned through the scarce information that was given to me.

___

Holston's Institution for the Unwell

Psychiatric file

Name: Malik

Patient number: 0003

DOB: -

Room: B

Supervisor: Dr Patel

Psychiatrist: Dr Carlson

Admission date: -

Admission: -

Mental condition:

N/A

Treatment:

N/A

Psychologist notes:

___

"What is this?!" I spluttered in indignation. "There's nothing in here, no surname, DOB, not even what his condition is!" I rounded on Nurse Carter who seemed to have foreseen my reaction and had already moved several steps back.

"I'm sorry, I don't hold the seniority here", she said with her hands raised. "This is all the information that you have access to at the moment. The rest is classified".

"You want me to treat someone when I don't even know what wrong with him?!"

"You will learn to know him. The longer you spend here, the more information you will learn and the more you will have access to".

"But-", my tirade was cut off by a beep on her pager so she grabbed her notes and with a quick farewell, rushed off.

I was fuming with anger and worst of all, he was sitting there, so casually, seemingly so unaware of what trouble he was giving me.

I walked to the nearest guard.

"Excuse me is there CCTV in the meeting room where the patient is as well as live audio?" as he nodded, I continued. "Can you show me the CCTV room for this floor so I can carry out my observations?"

"Well", he protested. "There is an observation room right there. You can sit there and watch him via the one-way glass".

I stared at him pointedly, my patience was running thin.

"I asked if there was a CCTV room, I can see the observation room and have decided not to use it", I replied sharply.

"Yes, Dr"

He signalled to another guard and directed me to the CCTV room. The CCTV room has multiple screens covering every single angle in the basement with virtually no blind spots and HD. I gestured for him to leave and sat one of the chairs next to a desk. Another lady was also there watching me closely.

"How comes you're not out there?"

"For me to accurately observe the patient, I need to see what he is like without somebody watching", I lied. Honestly, I just didn't want to be that close to him. She shrugged as if to say whatever and continued typing on her computer.

I took out my notebook and pen and began to write out my initial thoughts and observations about him.

-> Seems to have aggressive tendencies.

-> High-risk patient, but why?

-> Security threat

-> Holds a lot of influence (WHY AND HOW??!)

-> Who is he??

->

I had already hit a dead block and it scared me how little I knew. I scanned over his file again. The previous Psychiatrist had made little notes, probably because they had the same problem as me - not being allowed to know much.

I leaned back and spun my pen between my fingers and watched the camera. He hadn't moved since I first saw him and he was looking straight ahead, not blinking.

"What is he looking at?" I asked the lady using the computer.

"Nothing. Like always, he just looks straight ahead".

"By any chance, can he see through the glass?"

"Of course not, it's one way. He can only see his reflection whereas we can see through it like normal glass. You do know what a one-way glass is right? He can't see us but we can see him, like the stuff you see on the TV-"

"Yes, I know what a one-way glass is", I interrupted. "I was just double-checking".

"Okay then", she said dismissively and turned back to her work.

-> Staring straight ahead at the one-way glass (could be very vain or just very creepy).

"That's so strange", I whispered to myself. "This is so strange".

That meant he definitely couldn't have seen me so it was probably a coincidence that he looked at me.

"Is the room he is in soundproof?"

"Yes", she replied curtly without turning.

It was obviously just a coincidence then, he couldn't see or hear me. I felt my nervousness recede a little bit.

At this point, there was not much I could do anymore, so I continued watching him on camera whilst spinning my pen. He hadn't moved a single inch which was unusual. His hair was pushed back and ruffled but in a neat way and was a beautiful shade of dark brown with the occasional glint of something lighter. Stubble framed the lower half of his face and his long, thick eyelashes cast a shadow across his face. Getting lost into his face, I lost my grip on my pen and it clattered on the floor loudly. I winced at the sound and quickly picked it up.

As I lifted my head to look back at the screen, I realised that his head had turned and now he was staring directly into the camera I was looking at and the front of his face filled the screen.

"What the - why is he looking here?" I asked shrilly.

The lady turned around and glanced at the screen.

"Oh, he does that sometimes. The first time I saw it, I nearly had a heart attack", she chuckled. "Just ignore it".

Umm... Okay, yeah I'm going to ignore the fact that he's staring right at us. How the hell was she so calm? That in itself was creepy. I tried to slow down my racing heart. When I looked back at the screen he had gone back to normal, staring straight ahead. I had seen enough so I gathered my stuff and headed off to interrogate other people.

On my way, I bumped into a nurse and I decided was going to be my first victim.

"Excuse me, sorry to bother you but, what does the patient do all day?"

"Well, he's bought into the viewing room for a few hours every day for his routine checks", she ventured.

"What about when he's not in that room, where is he?"

"His room", she said pointing to a large, heavy, metal door at the end of the corridor.

"Where's that, could I possibly take a look at his room?"

"No, we can't. Nobody is allowed to go in there at all".

"Nobody?" I asked in shock.

She nodded in confirmation and excused herself to continue on her way.

Honestly, this was all confusing so I decided to make a rough outline on what the floorplan based on roughly how big the basement was.

I sighed quietly. You could pretty much do anything with the right influence.

On my way out, I paused in front of the one-way glass wand silently watched him. It was a huge measurement to know that he couldn't see me. I was directly in front of him and I took this opportunity to study him. Even separated by thick walls of concrete, I could feel his presence. I leaned in a little closer to the glass to get a better look.

"What are you doing?" an accusing voice rang out.

"I was trying to figure out why he stares as he does", I lied without skipping a beat. I turned to see Nurse Carter standing there.

"Is this the reason why you were acting so weird?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, confused.

"I asked you in the canteen a while back who your patient is but you weren't responding properly".

"Oh, you have good memory. Yes this is my main patient".

"But why is he such a secret?"

"His family have a lot of... influence and it would affect their reputation", she replied.

I hummed in response. That made sense. However, it still did not explain the effect he had on me.

I turned on my heels and headed for the door. I was going to search him up at home, but the only problem is that he had no surname - or at least, I wasn't given one. I would have to scour the internet for small little scraps about him so I could paint the bigger picture.

SUPRISE!

Early update lol :)

Life sucks LMAO

How is the chapter?

It's more of a filler so you can understand whats going on, next chap is exciting!

Question for today:

What's your favourite cereal?

I hope you guys like it.

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