Once upon a time when you were just a little girl you had a friend, a best friend at that, named Alfred. You called him Alfie. You two would do everything together. All of this came to a halting stop too soon. When Alfred was just eight years old he witnessed the brutal murder of his father during a home invasion. After this he was suddenly and unexpectedly pulled out of school. Your parents told you something terrible had happened to his family, something they wouldn’t tell you. You wanted to see your best friend again but you weren’t allowed to. Alfred’s memory faded as the years went by. You always wondered what happened to him, but just came to accept the fact that you’d never see him again…

In the present time you’re studying psychiatry and starting an internship at the state psychiatric hospital. The psychiatrist assigned to you, Dr. Wilson, a friendly but serious older man with grey hair, has given you the files of four patients to read over and select which you’d like to see for your internship. The patients on the files seem to have diagnoses such as generalized anxiety, ADHD, or depression. But that’s when you notice a fifth file. There are only supposed to be four, this one definitely isn’t supposed to be here. You take a glance at it, your eyes immediately widening.

“Alfred Simmons.”

The name suddenly takes you back into a spiral of memories, memories of the friend you once held dearest to you as a child. But this can’t be him, can it?

As you continue reading you can see it says his date of birth, age, height, weight, as well as diagnosis…

“Paranoid Schizophrenia, Catatonic Schizophrenia, Psychosis.”

You just can’t believe somebody you once were so close with, somebody who was so sweet has such a horrible disorder. But could it be really him? There’s no way to know for sure.

“I’d like to choose this one,” you say abruptly.

Dr. Wilson looks up with a friendly smile, taking the file from you. His smile slowly fades as he looks at it. “Dear heavens, this one shouldn’t be there.”