The Paper Trail

At 1 a.m., the nurses' station is yours alone. You've buried yourself in digitized archives, chasing a hunch through decades of medical literature, and there it is—a suppressed 1987 case study, flagged inconclusive and filed where no one would look. Three hospitals. Fourteen coma survivors. Identical drawings.

The physician who compiled the study was named Dr. Ellison Cross. You find his obituary next. He didn't retire. He was committed to Hargrove Psychiatric in 1991 and died there eight months later. The intake photographs show his room wallpapered floor to ceiling with the same rolling hills, the same crooked tree, the same door standing open in an empty field.

Your coffee goes cold. The ward hums around you, full of sleeping people, and you sit very still with the feeling that something has been waiting a long time to be found.