The Man Who Checked Himself In

By Tejas Gupta

I start each morning the same way, unlocking my office door at exactly 7:58, two minutes before I need to be anywhere, two minutes to prepare myself. Routine is idolized here, not in worship or prayer, but in the way the lights flicker on at exactly 6:30, in the identical breakfasts of grey porridge and through the guards’ boots echoing like a ticking metronome. Even my coffee tastes institutional, like the beans have been infused with the same disinfectant that burns my nostrils. 

Oakhall isn’t the gothic asylum that people imagine with monolithic pillars and stone gargoyles. No, that would be much too exciting for plain old Oakhall. It’s more of a converted government building with pale green walls that fade into grey under the fluorescent lights. The floor was originally planked to give a more homey feeling but the patients would dig their nails into it until they bled, so now it had to be replaced with the now stainless, white marble. However, it is the smell, that you first notice, the overwhelming scent of gasoline, disinfectant and floor polish, burning your sinuses. I’ve worked here for 5 years now. I finished my bachelor’s in psychology and moved straight into employment. At first, I hopped around jobs, working as a private hire in public hospitals until eventually I found this “paradise” of a place.

My mornings often begin with the “easier,” patients, meaning they often don’t need restraints. At 8:10, I see Mrs Henderson, an old lady who refuses to sit down unless her chair is angled exactly towards the window. She spends 45 minutes taking to me about her garden as if it stills exists. I feel the urge to sit up and yell about how her marigolds and tulips have been dead for a decade now, but I remain calm.  

Next in line is Billy, he is our youngest patient, only 19 years old, Billy is someone who I genuinely pity. His parents tell me he was a very vibrant boy but after his sister was killed in a terrorist attack, all he does is stare at his hands in a kind of vegetative state convinced he’ll forget them if he stops concentrating. 

I jot down notes, nod in agreement and most importantly, listen. My job is to witness, part anchor and attempt to put back the puzzle of the mind.

Most days feel the same now, a monotone procession of nonsense, delusions and lost memories. There isn’t much that surprises me these days.

Or so I thought.

Just past 10, the patients begin to head to the mess hall for a snack. Every meal is scheduled here. Snack is usually blackcurrant juice with a touch of medication, a tangerine and on special occasions, an oatmeal biscuit. At around this time, most employees return to the staff room for coffee and what not, but I still feel the caffeine from my latest cup pumping through my veins, so instead I take a stroll. 

It is then, as I walk past the reception, my white coat billowing behind me, that I hear the interrupting buzz of the front gate.

 I glance up towards the front desk, and see a man dressed in a dark overcoat. The receptionist is nowhere to be seen. Typical. She goes for smokes more than her breaks permit. Reluctantly, I trudge towards him. 

 I don’t bother asking him of his purpose- its obvious he’s a visitor- so I slide him a schedule, give him a look and say, “Visiting hours are on Saturday between 4 and 6.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even glance at the paper.

Instead, his eyes make contact with mine. There is nothing confrontational about his stare, nothing unhinged or delirious- just a steady observational kind of stillness, like he’s waiting for me to understand.

I try again, with a touch of impatience.“If you’re here to see a patient, please return during visi—”

He raises a hand slowly. Not to speak. Not to interrupt. But to reach into his coat.

I tense for a moment, my hairs on end— protocol, instinct — but all he withdraws is a crumpled slip of paper.

He holds it out for me, with a strange deliberateness, like the note itself was more important that anything he could possibly say.

I take it between my fingers; the paper is warm like he’d been gripping it tightly in his pocket. When I unfold it, the handwriting is neat and controlled, not like the crazed scribbles the patients converse in.

It reads,

I want to admit myself,

No police

No questions 

Please.

I stare at the words until they blur slightly. Until my vision hazes.I look up.

He still hasn’t spoken.

There’s a small part of my mind — the clinical, pragmatic part — that wants to dismiss this as some eccentric crisis, a man in distress who doesn’t know how to communicate verbally, textbook trauma. But something about him is too composed. Too intentional.

“Sir,” I say slowly, “if you’re experiencing an emergency, we can—”

He lifts his gaze to meet mine again. His eyes are dark, steady, unreadable. Then he extends his wrist toward me.

For a moment, I don’t understand what he’s doing. Then I realise.

He’s offering it the way patients do when they’re ready to be tagged.

Voluntary admission.

Without a word.

My confusion flickers into something colder, something like unease.

“You… want to check yourself in?” I ask, unnecessarily.

He nods once. A single, controlled movement.

This is wrong. People who self-admit ramble. They cry, spasm, mutter apologies or justifications. They explain themselves in tangled webs of fear or panic. But this man stands like someone who’s rehearsed this moment a thousand times, he is so calm, too calm.

The preliminary assessment room is small and deliberately mundane. A single table, two chairs and a panic button under the desk that I’ve only ever used once. The man walks in without prompting, sits as though he’s done this before, and folds his hands neatly in his lap. 

I take a seat opposite him.

“Let’s start with your name.”

He tilts his head slightly. A pause...Then, calmly:

“I don’t have one.”

He murmurs, “No, I don’t remember. No, I don’t want to say. ”Then again, “I don’t have one I trust.”

“Alright,” I say slowly. “Do you prefer I give you one?”

He shakes his head in denial. “Names don’t matter. Not today.”

He speaks with precision, but there’s something off about him — like he’s choosing each word from a shelf.

“Why do you want to admit yourself?”

He looks down at his hands. His fingers tighten slightly, knuckles paling until they were white. Then his voice drops to a whisper:

“Because there are things I cannot… hold back anymore.”

“A loss of control?” I ask. Its often frequent that patients lose control, common with disorders like schizophrenia and PTSD.

He lifts his eyes. There’s a flicker — fear? No, not fear. Recognition.

“Yes,” he breathes. “And I’m running out of time.”

My pulse ticks faster. I try to keep my notes steady and my mind calm.

“Are you hearing voices? Experiencing external influence?”

“No,” he says sharply, too sharply. Then immediately softens. “Just… a presence.”

“A presence where?”

He swallows hard. “Inside.”

Before I can ask more, his posture changes — subtly, but unmistakably. Shoulders stiffen, chin lifts, gaze shifts into something colder, more sinister, and his eyes, the pupils dilate until his sockets are filled with this deep, stygian black. A different man sits before me.

And he smiles.

Not a joyful smile, not a nostalgic smile. A thin, humourless curl of the lip that had no place in the sterile room.

“You shouldn’t be alone with me,” he murmurs. 

The air seems to constrict, becoming thicker until I choke.

I glance at the panic button but stop myself; I need more information.

“Why is that?” I manage.

“For your own safety.”He leans forward slightly. “He’s trying very hard right now. But he won’t last.”

He. Not I. Not a part of me. He.

Before I can respond, he inhales sharply. His fingers twitch. A tremor rushes across his shoulders. His face contorts in what looks like pain — or rage — or both. Then, abruptly:

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, voice entirely different again. “Please— please don’t leave me.”

I stand, instinctively reaching to steady him—

And that’s when it happens.

He lunges.

Not wildly, not blindly — but with terrifying accuracy. His hand clamps around my wrist, slamming it against the table hard enough to make the wood crack. I gasp, my vision jolting with pain. He rises, knocking over the chair, breathing hard, eyes blazing with a  visceral hunger, something feral.

“Let— go,” I choke out.

But he doesn’t. He squeezes harder.

For a split second, I’m certain this is it — he is going to kill me.

The door bursts open.

Two orderlies tackle him from behind and pry him away from me. Whilst one restrains him and the other sticks a large needle, dripping with sedative into his arm. His grip breaks and pain rushes up my body in a hot wave. The panic button must have been pressed — maybe by me, maybe by instinct, maybe by sheer luck.

He thrashes violently for a moment, then just as suddenly becomes limp. His head droops. Breathing slows. Expression goes blank.

Then he looks up at me with wide, horrified eyes.

“What… what happened?” he whispers. He sounds genuinely confused — terrified, even.

The orderlies hold him firmly as he looks around the room, sweat slick across his forehead.

“I didn’t mean to,” he says. “I didn’t— I swear I didn’t—”

He stops, eyes shining with something like desperation.

“He got through,” he whispers. “And next time… I might not be able to stop him.”

The room freezes around those words.

The orderlies exchange nervous glances.I cradle my wrist, throbbing with heat.

And for the first time, standing in that small assessment room, with its peeling paint and humming fluorescent lights, I feel a strange, unsettling truth settle in my bones:

He didn’t come here to be treated.

He came here to be stopped.

They decided to move him into an isolation room. My arm was still bleeding slightly but the pain had dulled into something distant and manageable by the time the door had closed shut behind them. The corridor that led there was rarely used, a narrow stretch of concrete that seemed to absorb sound as soon as it left your throat. Even the guards lowered their voices as they passed through it, as if the walls themselves were listening.

Isolation was not a punishment, officially. It was a precaution on paper. A pause. A place where the institution could put its uncertainty while it decided what to do next.

I watched from the nurses’ station as he was escorted past the reinforced glass. His posture was slack, almost boneless, the aftermath of adrenaline wearing off. He did not resist, did not look around, did not ask where he was being taken. There was something profoundly unsettling about how willingly he disappeared into the corridor.

The incident report was waiting for me when I returned to my office. It was brief, impersonal, and already half-signed in the language of inevitability. Assault during assessment. Patient volatile and dangerous. Therapist injured. I signed where I was told to sign. When the head nurse informed me I was no longer assigned to the case, I nodded. It was what protocol demanded.

Still, as the day stretched on, my thoughts kept drifting back to the same moment: the fraction of a second before he lunged, when his expression had shifted so completely, it was as though someone else had stepped forward and shoved him aside.

For the first two days in isolation, he said nothing. He did nothing,

Staff reported that he sat on the floor with his back against the wall, knees drawn in, staring at the door until his eyes became bloodshot. He refused food and medication without protest, simply turning his head away. 

I told myself it was no longer my concern. I tried to return to my routine, to the predictability that usually steadied me. But routine felt thin now, stretched over mystery, my life had been so tame, I needed something to happen and it had, but to ignore it, felt nothing but plain wrong.

Officially, I was no longer assigned to his case. Unofficially, no one stopped me from returning.

The isolation room was colder than the rest of the ward. Its concrete walls bare except for a diminutive observation window. He sat on the floor when I entered, but slowly rose to his feet, movements cautious, as though he were testing the limits of his own body.

He looked different now- weaker, stripped of the composed stillness he’d worn so convincingly before. There was no trace of aggression in him, only a raw, unsettled alertness. His eyes flickered across the room before returning to my face, lingering there with an intensity that made me nauseous.

He struggled to account for what had happened during the assessment. Not evasively, not defensively, but as though there were a genuine absence where memory should have been. When I mentioned the injury, he winced and whimpered—not with guilt, but with surprise.

As I observed him, I found myself doing what I had learned not to do: forming impressions that didn’t yet belong in a report.  He was calmer in isolation than he had been anywhere else. The absence of stimulation seemed to strip him back to something quieter, more deliberate. When I sat across from him, separated by the table bolted to the floor, there was none of the tension I had come to expect — only a kind of attentiveness, as though he were constantly listening for something just beyond the room.

We spoke less about symptoms and more about ordinary things. He asked me how long I had worked here. What the building used to be before it was converted. Whether I ever thought about leaving. His interest was not intrusive; it felt almost genuine, like he wanted to know me.

I told myself I was maintaining boundaries. I told myself this was transference, or projection, or any of the neat terms we use to keep emotion from spilling where it shouldn’t. But I began to look forward to those sessions in a way that made me uneasy. The rest of the ward faded around us. The noise, the paperwork, the footsteps — all of it unreal compared to the clarity of those moments.

He listened when I spoke. Truly listened. There was no performance in it, no manipulation. Just presence.

But there were days, something would flicker beneath his eyes, his tone and posture changing in ways that were difficult to quantify but impossible to ignore. It was never as much as the first time during the attack, but still I could sense glimpses of another man hidden under the skin. When I asked what he was feeling, he would shake his head, once even pressing his palms flat against the table as though grounding himself there.

“I’m trying,” he said once, not meeting my gaze. Trying to do what, he didn’t say.

Some days, he was articulate, precise, careful with his words, even insightful. Other days, he was curt, irritable, his gaze sharp. Once, reviewing his written reflections, I noticed that the handwriting varied so dramatically it might have belonged to two different people. I told myself there were explanations. There always were.

And then, gradually, the girl emerged.

At first, only in passing references—an unfinished sentence, a hesitation that tightened the room. Whenever the subject surfaced, his body responded before his mind seemed to catch up. His breathing would become laborious, his shoulders stiffening, his attention twitching and breaking as though pulled in two directions at once.

There were moments when I felt I was intruding on something fragile, something being held together by effort alone.

The board meeting came at the end of that week.

The footage of my injury was played without commentary, slowed to highlight the shift in his expression, the suddenness of the violence. Words like danger and containment dominated the discussion. The decision to transfer him to another facility passed easily.

I requested one final session under supervision. It was granted reluctantly.

The night before his transfer, the isolation room felt oppressive, the air heavy with finality. He sat at the table, restrained, more out of formality than necessity. His exhaustion was tangible, etched into the hollowoness of his face.

When I told him this, his reaction surprised me. He did not argue. He did not panic. He only nodded, slowly.

“I was hoping,” he said carefully, “that I’d have more time.”

This time, he did not circle the truth. 

What he offered instead was a story.  He spoke of watching something happen, of being unable to intervene, of violence experienced at a distance that did nothing to dull its impact. The girl remained an object, her absence more pronounced than her presence. Yet it was clear what had happened to her, and who had done it.

As he spoke, I noticed the familiar signs of strain: the tightening jaw, the shifting gaze. It was as though something inside him was resisting, pushing back.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone else,” he said. “I never did.”

I believed him. The conviction settled in me quietly, firmly, without drama. 

“There isn’t much time,” he said, voice low in a way it hadn’t been all evening. “When he comes back, he won’t stop. Not here. Not anywhere.”

I started to speak, to ground him, to slow the moment, but he leaned forward slightly, just enough to make me still.

“You have to listen,” he said. “This is the only way it ends.”

The words that followed landed with a weight I felt in my chest before my mind could catch up to them.

He told me what he was asking. Not graphically. Not dramatically. Just plainly, though it were a logical conclusion, a final containment measure where all the others had failed.

For a moment, the room seemed to tilt. Every principle I had built my career on rose up in protest. Every rule, every restriction, every boundary. And beneath them all, something dangerously human surged from me.

The knowledge that he trusted me. That he was asking because he believed I could see the difference. That the part of him speaking now would not survive the night intact. 

“Please,” he said. “Before I’m gone.”

And as the change began — subtle but unmistakable — I understood the true nature of the dilemma I had walked into.

I understood then that there was no way to save him — only a way to end what he could not stop.

By Tejas Gupta