The Patient

Hearing the sound outside his door, Li Huowang shot to his feet. He threw off the blanket in irritation and stalked toward the door.

When the door swung open, he saw two men in hospital gowns, backs against the wall, eating snacks and debating scripture.

One of them had plastic-rimmed glasses and a slicked-back hair, giving him an air of refined learning. The feverish nonsense Li Huowang had overheard in his room earlier had all been pouring from this man's mouth.

Li Huowang didn't care about any of that. All he knew was that this newcomer was annoyingly loud, his mouth going on and on without pause.

"Get the hell out of here! It's barely seven in the morning, what are you shouting about!"

"Hey there, young comrade, don't interrupt me. Do you have any idea what I'm doing? I'm fighting for the necessary rights of our special community!"

Just as he was about to continue, his companion noticed the handcuffs on Li Huowang's wrist and quickly pulled him away.

Though the man was gone, Li Huowang's drowsiness had been completely ruined. He sighed, turned back into his room, and put on his shoes.

He had to admit, being locked up with these mental patients as a perfectly sane man was sheer torture.

Yet he couldn't even vent his anger at these confused patients. If he did, the doctors would think he was having another episode, and his discharge date would slip even further away.

With his shoes on, Li Huowang had nothing to do in the empty single-occupancy room, so he stood up and headed to the cafeteria for breakfast.

"Suisui, are you hungry?"

The psychiatric hospital's breakfast held no surprises: steamed vegetable buns and thin congee.

Li Huowang grabbed his tray and sat down in a corner to eat, mentally calculating how much longer he'd have to stay before being discharged.

Wei Shili, with his bipolar disorder, had already left. Next in the group, it should be his turn.

Seeing nothing else to do, Li Huowang was about to continue his breakfast when he felt a prickling sensation on his back.

He turned his head and saw Qian Fu, the one diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, staring at him from a distance.

Seeing that Qian Fu was only staring and not doing anything else, Li Huowang ignored him and kept eating.

Living in a psychiatric hospital meant encountering this kind of thing. The trick was to keep a level head.

The place was covered in cameras. That guy probably wouldn't dare pull anything too crazy.

As for the things he had said before, Li Huowang had long since stopped taking them to heart. After all, who would seriously analyze the words of a complete stranger who was mentally ill?

After breakfast came the group therapy session, everyone sitting in a circle. Li Huowang genuinely couldn't see the point.

If encouraging each other could cure mental illness, then why did they have to take medication every day?

The plastic stool to Li Huowang's upper left was empty. He wasn't surprised—Wei Shili had told him he was being discharged soon.

But the stool belonging to Wang Wangsu, who had schizophrenia, was also empty. That gave him pause.

"Sister Wang's gone too? Is she cured?" Li Huowang asked the depressed girl beside him.

Zhao Ting shook her head, her expression grim. "No, she's not cured. Her husband stopped putting money in her hospital account, so they kicked her out."

"I shared a room with her. Sister Wang really wanted to stay—her condition was actually improving. But the doctor said the hospital isn't a charity. No money, no treatment."

Hearing this, Li Huowang let out a soft sigh. Outsiders always thought that anyone in a psychiatric hospital, as long as the doors were open, would want to fly over the cuckoo's nest and dash out like mad.

But that wasn't how it worked. As long as a patient was even slightly lucid, they knew they were sick, and they genuinely wanted to be cured.

Some even came to the psychiatric hospital on their own, packing their clothes, not wanting their families to know.

Only those whose behavior was completely uncontrollable ended up being dragged in by the orderlies, just like in the TV shows.

Mental patients were still people. They weren't any different from other sick people—the only difference was where the sickness was located.

And rather than escaping, they preferred to be fully cured inside the hospital and walk out as healthy, normal people.

But reality was cruel. Hospitals had to make money, too—especially private ones. Without money, even if the doctors knew a patient's condition wasn't optimistic, they would be ruthlessly kicked out.

Without money, you couldn't get treated. Without treatment, you couldn't work. Many people fell into this vicious cycle, watching their condition worsen step by step until they became completely useless, or completely mad.

To avoid adding to the depressed girl's psychological burden, Li Huowang offered some comfort. "Sister Wang's condition isn't that bad. Besides, her schizophrenia is mild. As long as she keeps taking her medicine, she'll stabilize. Don't worry about her."

As the two spoke, Li Huowang spotted Wu Cheng approaching with two new patients.

One was the slicked-back glasses from this morning's commotion. The other was a shriveled old man.

"Good morning, everyone. Our group has lost two people, so we've got two new members today. This elder here is Yuan Heping, and this older brother here is Wang Gang. Let's give them a round of applause."

A smattering of applause followed. Li Huowang didn't move a muscle, his mind already wandering, trying to figure out how to get through this dead time.

The moment the two sat down, Li Huowang noticed that Glasses was sizing him up. When Li Huowang looked up at him, the man quickly averted his gaze.

"Alright then. How about the two of you start with a self-introduction?"

The minutes crawled by. To Li Huowang, it felt like a whole year had passed before the interminable group session finally ended.

Throughout it all, he had gained zero help. The only thing he got was knowing what the two newcomers were diagnosed with.

The old man had OCD. The glasses had schizophrenia. Nothing remarkable.

As the people around him stood up one by one and carried their stools away, Li Huowang took a deep breath and rose to his feet. This torturous morning was finally over.

He was following the others to the cafeteria for lunch when a simple-looking man approached him. It was the mentally disabled one from before.

"Big brother. Here. Tastes good." He held out a small bag of Wangzai milk crackers.

Li Huowang reached out and took them. He was about to say thanks when a figure darted in from his left, brushing past him.

"Be careful! They're already here! Danger is approaching!" The man whispered frantically, his mouth close to Li Huowang's ear, then quickly hurried away.

Li Huowang only caught a glimpse of the back of his head, but he recognized him anyway. It was Qian Fu.

Li Huowang frowned. He stood there thinking for a moment, then finally shook his head and continued walking toward the cafeteria.