Clown Game
Chapter 152 - 152 147 Numbers One

Chapter 152: Chapter 147 Numbers One Chapter 152: Chapter 147 Numbers One Whenever mental hospitals are mentioned, the general impression is one of high walls, iron-locked gates, gloom, dimness, strict terror, and an omnipresent sense of being “caged in.”

The patients are often unkempt, disheveled, babbling nonsense, raving mad, while the nurses are burly, wielding electric batons, and the doctors do little more than prescribe sleeping pills and tranquilizers.

Well… this perception, aside from being perpetuated by various artistic and film representations over the years…

Is mainly because mental hospitals a century ago really were like that, or even worse.

In that era, the mental health medical system was completely chaotic. People who became mentally ill or those whose extreme behavior made them difficult to convict were sent to mental hospitals. And once inside, they virtually had no chance of seeing the outside world again. Some hospitals even strictly limited family visits, claiming it would interfere with treatment. Additionally, due to imperfect laws at the time, “mental hospitals” were effectively isolated into a lawless domain. So, all those things about patient abuse and using patients for human experiments in movies were indeed real.

At the same time, the treatment methods for mental illnesses were incredibly varied: hydrotherapy, beating, electroshock, and so forth. What’s shown on screen is just the tip of the iceberg; even more absurd treatments were performed, such as “internal sterilization,” “forced castration,” “solitary confinement,” “extirpation of motor nerves in limbs.”

In short, anything that could be conceived was tried on patients, and society back then believed these cruel methods were beneficial for treating the mentally ill.

Oh, and speaking of which, we must mention the most infamous surgery in human history—”lobotomy.”

It entails a doctor taking a long, slender ice pick, piercing it “thunk” above the patient’s eye, straight into the brain, and then… “click-click-click” stirring it around. Since there was no “CT” or “MRI” back then, the whole procedure was done

By! Experience!

Continuing until the doctor felt that they had sufficiently mushed up the frontal lobe.

The consequence was that the patient became as meek as a little lamb.

Because the human brain is only so large; once the frontal lobe was removed, a person lost many functions: no crying, no laughing, no anger, no acting up, no speaking—naturally, they wouldn’t have a mental breakdown anymore. In plain terms, they turned into a walking corpse, the only thing they had in common with a normal person was the ability to breathe.

In the eyes of their families, however, this meant… the patient was cured.

So, this barbaric treatment method actually won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Its nomination was—for the complete cure of “manic depression.”

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Now, let’s talk about the present. Today, laws regarding mental illness have become much more refined, and neither medication nor nursing is as brutal as described above. Modern mental hospitals have long been spruced up, spacious and bright, with garden-style courtyards, beautiful living environments, doors that are always open 24 hours, and gentle, adorable nurses to help you bathe…

Even the wards are divided into male psych, female psych, geriatrics, pediatrics, psychology, psychosomatics, mood disorder, sleep disorder, addiction departments, and so on. Different diseases are treated in dedicated departments, each with their own characteristics and expertise.

Ahem… that’s about it.

And XX City Mental Hospital is a prime example of these modern institutions—clean, orderly, rational, standardized, humanized, and there are even rumors of patients who were cured but didn’t want to leave. Whether true or not, it is highly favored by both “relatives of mental illness patients” and “the media,” and without any surprises, it’s likely to be the “top specialized medical unit” by year’s end.

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At 6 p.m. sharp, everyone had already left work, and the entire hospital was eerily quiet, except for the “crackle and pop” of the air conditioner’s cold air vent.

Dr. Zhang felt a bit cold, so he got up to turn off the air conditioning switch and then sat back down by the computer.

He had been on night shift continuously for four shifts now, and all at his own request; the director and his colleagues had all urged him to take a break and go home, but he had refused each time. Such behavior was extremely abnormal, but since the man wanted to keep going, no one else said much.

At this moment, Dr. Zhang locked himself in his office, staring at the computer screen with furrowed brows. The reason he kept working overtime was certainly not due to a sudden obsession with work. He felt that something was amiss in this psychiatric hospital.

This feeling had first surfaced five days ago, when a patient from the “Psychological Disorders Department” suddenly became agitated, attacking people indiscriminately and almost stabbing a nurse with a needle. Although the patient was quickly calmed down by an anesthetic, and despite a history of manic episodes, the final decision was to simply increase the medication dosage without much attention being paid to the incident.

But Dr. Zhang found the situation peculiar because that patient should have long been out of the symptomatic phase and was about to be discharged.

As expected, the next day another inconceivable event occurred: a schizophrenic patient who had been hospitalized for nearly ten years… was discharged.

It should have been a cause for celebration, and a few reporters even covered the story. However, the patient’s condition had shown no progress whatsoever after so many years of treatment, so how could he suddenly be cured? And his psychological evaluation came back… with a perfect score!

That was definitely not normal!

Following that, yet another strange incident happened yesterday: a patient with what was originally a mild case of delusional disorder suddenly worsened, becoming convinced that the world was fake and that all people were just figments of his imagination, leading to his eventual diagnosis of “severe delusional disorder” and his transfer to the “Severe Condition Area” for further treatment.

All of this couldn’t just be a coincidence. Dr. Zhang had mentioned it to others a few days earlier, but most thought he was joking; some even looked at him as if he were a patient himself. So, realizing that approach wasn’t working, he decided to find out for himself what was really happening in the hospital!

That was his reason for working overtime.

After several days of observation, he finally started to notice some patterns.

On the screen, there was an individual with a long, pointed face, slender eyes, and two scars at the corners of the mouth – definitely not the look of a good person.

This man was transferred from another hospital five days ago, with a diagnosis of “insomnia.” This condition normally wouldn’t require hospitalization, and even severe insomnia could have been treated at the local hospital. But since a transfer notice had been issued, he had no choice but to accept it.

But ever since this man was admitted into the hospital… strange things started happening.

“It’s this person… These incidents, they’re definitely related to this guy!”

Dr. Zhang said between clenched teeth, and he pulled out a USB drive from his pocket and plugged it into the computer.