Patient File No. 7
The number on the mirror decreased by one each day, with no discernible time pattern. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the middle of the night. Once, when I closed my eyes for only a few seconds.
Five. Four.
I didn't know exactly what would happen when it reached zero, but I knew I had to find a way — not to escape, because escape was impossible, but to truly confront.
I went back to the letters of the five previous doctors, this time with a different mindset — not searching for the truth about Mr. Monday, but for any mention of a solution, however insignificant it might seem.
In the margin of one of the letters, I found a small note I had previously overlooked — written by the fourth physician, in handwriting that suggested urgency:
"There's something I never had the courage to try. If his story draws power from repetition, from never reaching a true ending, then perhaps the only way is for someone, just once, to let the story end completely — not by running, not by fear, but by listening to the very last word, without judgment, without pity, without anger. Just pure listening. I think he fears that more than anything else."
Beneath it, in a hand that showed he had become frightened and regretful immediately after writing it, he had added:
"But I don't know what happens to the listener when the story ends. Maybe none of us will ever know, because no one has ever dared to try."
I sat there, reading that sentence over and over. It was a risk — a risk with no guarantee. But for the first time, I felt there might be a real path before me, not just fleeing from one moment to the next.
---
That night I didn't summon him; he came on his own, as he always did, uninvited.
He was sitting in the chair, the countdown on the mirror now at three.
"You've figured something out, haven't you?" he said, when he noticed the change in my expression. "There's always a moment when doctors think they've found a solution."
"I want to hear your story in full," I said, my voice calmer than I had expected. "Not in pieces. Not with fear, not with pity. Just... complete. To the end. Whatever it really is, not the story you built for everyone else."
For the first time, something in his faceless expression shifted — hesitation, perhaps even something like fear.
"Why do you think that will work on me?" he asked, his voice slightly more guarded than before.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I know it's the only thing I haven't tried. You scared me. You tried to make me pity you. You threatened me. But no one, until now, has ever just sat and listened completely — without wanting to take something from you or give something to you."
A long silence followed. The countdown on the mirror, for the first time, stopped — not moving down, not up. It simply froze, at three.
"If I begin," he said at last, his voice now quiet, almost cautious, "I won't be able to stop in the middle. I've never let that happen before. Because..."
"Because what?"
"Because I don't know what will be left of me, when everything has been said."
I sat in the chair across from him, placed my hands on my knees, exactly as Patient No. 7 had sat in our first session.
"Then let's find out," I said.
The light in the room slowly shifted color — not dimming, not brightening, but taking on a hue I had never seen before, something between pale gold and gray, a color that resembled the dusk of a very distant day.
"All right," Mr. Monday said, and for the first time, in his voice I heard something that truly resembled readiness — not for attack, not for deception, but for something he had perhaps been running from for years, perhaps decades.
"Let me start from the beginning. From the first time I truly... came to awareness."
Outside, through the window, the first light of morning began to break — a light that, for the first time in these weeks, I wasn't sure belonged to which day.
But for the first time, too, it didn't matter.
I sat, ready to listen, knowing that whatever happened after this, there would be no turning back.
---
End of Act Three
To be continued in Chapter Sixteen...