This Time, We Choose (Part 1)

The corridor stretched before me, long and eerily silent. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a weirdly transient glow on the pale green walls. Each step down the corridor seemed to echo a little too loudly in the otherwise hushed environment. The walls, painted a faded green, were mostly bare, save for a few notices clustered near the nursing station – a curling schedule, a faded poster about ‘Mindfulness Through Movement.’

The air itself had a peculiar scent, a blend of disinfectant, stale air, and something else indefinable, perhaps the ghost of anxieties and medications. Doors lined both sides of the hallway, identical and heavy, most of them closed. From behind some, a faint, rhythmic tapping could be heard, or a low, indistinct murmur of voices. Occasionally, a sudden, sharp laugh or a hushed sob would cut through the quiet, only to be swallowed by the general silence a moment later.

The air was thick with the smell of antiseptic and something else… something vaguely unsettling.

I started walking, my footsteps muffled by the linoleum floor. Doors lined the hallway, each with a small window. I peered into one, then another. Some rooms were empty, others occupied by patients staring blankly at the ceiling or muttering to themselves.

Suddenly, a voice whispered from behind me. “Psst! Hey, you! Newbie!”

I whirled around to see a young girl, about my age, maybe a few years younger, in the doorway of her room. She was thin and lean, with wild, unkempt hair and eyes that burned with an unsettling intensity.

“Come here,” she hissed, beckoning me closer. “I know what’s going on.”

Hesitantly, I approached her. “What do you mean?”  I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. She finally looked at me. “Do you remember anything?” I hesitated. “No.” But why would she ask? And even if she did ask, what about her? “what about you?” I added.

“Fragments.” She tapped her temple. “They call it Borderline Personality Disorder. But I know there’s more going on. I’ve seen too much. Heard screams from wings they say are closed for maintenance. People vanish. Then nobody talks about them again.”

She looked at me closely. “Do you have a note?”

I showed her my palm. Her eyes flickered to my hand.
“Funny thing about memory,” she murmured, voice low. “Sometimes it needs a little ink to fight back.”
I blinked. She wrote it.
Ira gave me a ghost of a smile. “You were slipping. Someone had to remind you who you were.” She nodded, simply transcending back into her calm and contained self, “They gave me pills too. I flushed them.”

 “This isn’t a hospital,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper “It’s a prison. Maybe the patients are running the asylum.”

My blood ran cold. “What? That’s impossible.”

“Is it? ” she challenged, her eyes gleaming. “Think about it. Have you seen any doctors? Any real staff? It’s all a charade. They’re all playing roles.”

She leaned closer, her breath hot on my ear.

“They drugged us, reprogrammed us. But some of us remember. Some of us are fighting back.”

My head spun. Was she insane? Or was she telling the truth? The note flashed in my mind. Trust no one.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Ira.” she said.

“But something is definitely wrong here.”

 “Even I felt so, but I cannot put a finger to it.”

She replied “You have to help me. You have to help me expose them. ”

Just then, the nurse from earlier emerged from the far end of the hallway. “There you are! ” she called out, her smile still plastered on her face. “I was wondering where you’d gone. Come on, dear, time for your pills.” I dreaded that sinful smile. But just as I was about to follow her, Ira yanked at me and pointed at the person behind me. Phew! The nurse wasn’t calling for me after all. She was addressing someone else.

Ira pulled me into her room and slammed the door shut. “Don’t trust her,” she whispered. “She’s one of them.”

I pressed my ear to the door, listening as the nurse’s footsteps fading away. When I was sure she was gone, I turned back to Ira. “What do we do? ” I asked.

“We need proof,” she said. “Something that will show the outside world what’s really going on here.”

“Where do we find it?”

“I know where they keep their records,” Ira said. “But it’s heavily guarded. We’ll need help.”

Over the next few days, Ira and I worked together, cautiously recruiting other patients who seemed lucid and aware. Slowly, a small resistance group began to form, thanks to our recruit Dhruv. Imagine Percy Jackson from Percy Jackson and the Olympians but caffeinated, disastrously funny, and borderline too smart for his own good. He crash-landed into our investigation like a tornado in a glitter shop.

 “Who are you?” I remember asking him.

“Your future saviour—at your service. Recently diagnosed with ADHD and self-appointed leader of the ADHD squad. Also, unofficially diagnosed with ‘main character syndrome.’ And yes, I do most of my thinking while upside down—because, obviously, gravity helps the ideas drop faster.” Also a reluctant optimist, and recently banned from chess club for inventing my own rules. “You’re trying to break into the truth vault? Count me in,” he said with a grin.

We didn’t question it then; we don’t question it now. Dhruv had that energy that made you trust him. Or at least follow him into the dark. He told us about a hidden room behind the nurse’s station. “That’s where they keep the files,” he said. “The real files, not the ones they show to visitors.”

He seemed too carefree when we had asked him to join us and help us uncover the truth. Even Ira had seemed reluctant. But now, seeing him this involved and his hyper-helpful vibes, somehow managed to make it look like the right call.

That night, under the cover of darkness, we put our plan into action. Dhruv created a diversion, starting a commotion in the cafeteria while Ira and I slipped away to the nurse’s station. The basement seemed determined to stay hidden. But it existed — behind a fake utility door in the janitor’s closet.

We climbed down broken stairs into a world of mould, rust, and silence.

The station was deserted; the only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights. Ira quickly located the hidden door, concealed behind a filing cabinet. It was shut too tightly for me to unbolt it alone. “Oh great. The cabinet from hell. Is this thing bolted to the Earth’s core or just emotionally unavailable?” Said Dhruv after his miserably failed attempt to unlatch that door. But finally with a grunt, we managed to push the cabinet aside, revealing a narrow doorway.

It was a room laden with files, documents and bio-data forms of all those who were being treated-……. or held captive.

We skimmed through an ocean of files, some pertaining to mental disorders, some to non-compliant patients.

 “Look,” Ira whispered. “They all went missing.”

They had been diagnosed for disorders like autism, OCD, ADHD, BPD.

And they had notes. Scrawled in the margins.

“Asked too many questions.”
“Non-compliant.”
“Tried to contact family.”

“You know what? If I had a dollar for every time I was labelled ‘non-compliant,’ I could’ve bought a yacht. Or at least, a therapist who doesn’t sigh before sessions.” Dhruv chimed in.

Ira gave him an annoyed look. I mirrored her expression but deep down this chaotic person was the last string that was keeping us all together in this dire situation.

“This isn’t treatment,” I muttered. “It’s erasure.”

We continued the frantic search, pulling files off of the shelves. Most of them seemed to be routine patient records, but then I found something that made my blood run cold.

It was a stack of newspaper clippings, all reporting on missing persons. And on each clipping, there was a photo. My photo.

The headlines screamed: “Local Psychiatrist Vanishes Without a Trace,” “Dr. Dhara Rajput Missing: Police Baffled,” “Have You Seen This Woman?” Same face. Mine. Over and over again.

My throat closed. “I was a… psychiatrist?”

I stumbled back, gasping.

Memories slammed in — like static clearing. Not clear enough to trust. But there.

White coats. Therapy sessions. A man crying. A woman screaming that she didn’t belong here. Me, nodding, coldly. Prescribing.

And then… a mirror. Blood on my hands. My reflection fractured.

I’d been one of them.

“It’s not your fault,” Ira said quietly.

“I worked for them. I was them.”

Ira knelt beside me. “No. You were rewritten. That’s what they do. You’re remembering because you’re healing.”

“You’re relapsing,” Dhruv said. “But that’s not a bad thing. You’re waking up.”

More flashes.

I was a patient first. Diagnosed with Impulse Control Disorder. Trauma-based dissociation. I fought the system. Tried to escape. They reprogrammed me. They made me get rid of my memories, the good ones and the bad ones alike.

They had turned me into their puppet psychiatrist.

“If they can erase ADHD, what’s next? Empathy? Anger? Love? Where do they draw the line?” Ira whispered lowly.

My hands trembled as I stared at the clippings. It was true. I was a doctor. I had been working here. And then… something had happened.

Suddenly, a voice boomed from the doorway. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

We turned to see the head nurse standing there, her smile gone, replaced by a look of cold fury. Behind her chilling persona, there was something. Something darker, well concealed behind her perfectly seethed voice.

“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” she hissed, her voice dripping with venom, every word curt, her voice well under control. “You were getting too close to the truth.”

“What truth? ” I demanded, my voice shaking. “What have you done to us?”

“We’ve created a better world,” she said, her eyes blazing with fanaticism. “A world where the patients are in control. Where the weak are weeded out and the strong survive.” Her every word, came crumbling down at me, but strangely enough, she stood her ground. Literally.

She just didn’t budge.

I felt the walls around me closing in on me, given the intensity of the situation. I caught Ira’s eye. “We need to get the word out,” I mouthed. “Tell them what’s happening here.”

But as the darkness closed in, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would believe us. After all, who would trust the word of a few “crazy” patients against the authority of the hospital?

But for one thing, I knew one thing for sure: this was only the beginning.