Adrian tapped his fingers against his desk, staring at the hospital database screen. The white glow of the monitor illuminated his face, reflecting off his thin-framed glasses.
The words "No Record Found" stared back at him, stark and absolute. A cold prickle crawled up his spine.
He had tried Daniel's full name.
Daniel Reeves.
Then, just the first name. Then the surname. Then every variation of Reeves he could think of—Reeve, Revés, Reaves.
Nothing. It was as if the man he had spoken to just hours ago had never existed.
Adrian leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temple. A clerical error? A system glitch? That had to be it. Hospitals weren't immune to administrative incompetence. Records got misplaced all the time.
And yet…
Why did it feel like something was deliberately missing? He tried another approach, navigating the internal system to access patient admittance logs. Every new intake was documented—name, condition, attending physician.
Still nothing.
His frown deepened. That wasn't normal.
Exhaling slowly, Adrian reached for his office phone and dialed the front desk. After two rings, a tired female voice answered.
>"Psychiatric Admissions, this is Anna speaking."
<"Anna, it's Dr. Adrian Sinclair. I need you to pull up the hospital records for Daniel Reeves."
There was a slight shuffle of papers on the other end.
>"Daniel Reeves?"
<"Yes. He was admitted last week. He was found wandering, covered in blood. He's my current patient. And I have already conducted sessions with him."
A longer pause this time.
Then, in a puzzled tone:
>"Dr. Sinclair… there's no patient under that name in our system."
A sharp tension knotted in his chest.
<"That's impossible."
>"I'm looking at the records right now, sir. No one by that name has been admitted in the past month. Perhaps ... Maybe..."
Adrian's fingers tightened around the receiver.
<"Check manually. Someone might have filed it incorrectly."
There was a sigh. He could hear Anna shufling through the record papers.
>"One moment."
He could hear muffled voices in the background as Anna spoke to someone else. Then, after a long pause—
<"Dr. Sinclair… are you sure about this patient?I mean maybe you are mistaken? Someway?"
His grip on the phone tightened.
>"What do you mean?"
<" Ummm..I just asked Dr. Graves—he was on duty last week. He says the only new admission we had was a woman in her sixties suffering from schizophrenia. and last month, umm.. yeah.. we had another patient. She is suffered from adverse Bipolar psychosis."
His breath slowed.
>"I checked thoroughly sir. There's no Daniel Reeves, sir."
The room suddenly felt colder. He swallowed.
>"That's impossible. I've been treating him. I had a full session with him just today."
Anna hesitated before responding.
>"Sir, are you sure you're not… mixing him up with another patient?"
A spike of irritation flared in his chest.
<"I know who my patients are, Anna."
How could he not know? A famous psychiatrist, renowned for his papers on psychology and psychic problems. He had even gone as far as to have meetings with international doctors who seeked advices and guidance from him and had even been invited to prestigious events.
Such a person could never mistake one patient as another. Atleast not him.
It was popularly said- When you become a psychiatrist, you become some of a psycho yourself.
But Adrian Sinclair was and he himself knew , that he was one of the sanest psychiatrists out there. So there was no chance of such a silly mistake.
>"Of course, Dr. Sinclair,"she said quickly. >"But… if he was admitted, there should be records. And there aren't."
Adrian clenched his jaw. His eyes flickered to the empty file sitting on his desk. The one meant to contain Daniel Reeves details.
The one that should have been filled with notes from his intake evaluation. But the papers inside?
They were blank.
By the time Adrian hung up, his mind was whirling. A missing patient record was one thing. But an entire staff insisting Daniel was never admitted?
That was something else entirely. It was too foolish, carelessness, and it made Adrian annoyed.
But a creeping unease settled in his chest as he picked up the empty file. The weight of it in his hands felt strangely heavy, despite its lack of contents.
He opened it again. Stared at the first blank page. He was certain he had written on these pages before.
Hadn't he?
A faint pulse of doubt stirred at the edge of his mind.
With slow, deliberate movements, Adrian took a pen from his desk drawer and pressed it against the paper, writing in bold strokes:
DANIEL REEVES.
The ink bled smoothly into the paper. Nothing unusual. He exhaled, relieved. Maybe he was overthinking.
Then, just as he was about to set the pen down—
The letters faded.
Slowly.
One by one. Until the paper was blank again.
A sharp breath hitched in Adrian's throat. His fingers went cold.
He ran a hand over the page. The surface was smooth. Unmarked.
His own handwriting had simply… disappeared.
A slow, creeping dread curled around his thoughts. He scratched it, fast. Suddenly he was frenzy.
What the hell was happening? He needed proof. Something tangible.
If Daniel Reeves had been admitted, then he would have been captured on the hospital's security cameras. There was no way around that.
Adrian pushed away from his desk, striding down the dimly lit corridors of the psychiatric wing. The halls were quiet, most patients asleep or confined to their rooms. The only sound was the rhythmic hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.
He made his way to the security office, knocking twice before pushing the door open.
Inside, a young man in a hospital uniform looked up from the multiple monitors displaying live footage of the hospital halls.
"Dr. Sinclair?"
"I need to see last week's footage from the patient admission area," Adrian said briskly.
The security officer frowned but nodded. He typed quickly, pulling up the archived surveillance files.
Rows of timestamped clips filled the screen.
Adrian leaned forward as the footage began playing.
The timestamp flickered—one week ago.
He watched as nurses moved through the frame, wheeling inpatients, assisting doctors.Then—
A paramedic entered the frame, pushing a stretcher.
A body lay on it, restrained. Adrian recognized that body. Daniel Reeves.
There. There he was.For a brief moment, relief settled in Adrian's chest. He wasn't imagining things. But then—
The paramedic stopped. Turned.
And the moment his back faced the camer.
The stretcher was suddenly empty.
Adrian's heart stopped. He rewound the footage. Played it again. The paramedic wheeled in Daniel Reeves.
The stretcher was full. Daniel was there.
Then, as the paramedic turned—the body vanished.
The restraints were still in place. The sheets slightly wrinkled where Daniel's body had been. But he was gone.Like he had never been there at all.
Adrian stepped back from the screen, his blood running cold.
"Doctor?" the security officer asked, glancing at him in concern.
Adrian barely heard him. His mind was spinning. This wasn't just a missing file.This wasn't just a clerical error.
This was something else. Something far worse.
Daniel Reeves wasn't just a patient with no past. He was a patient who probably... shouldn't be existing?