Chapter Text
Zayn drank his coffee that morning while sitting at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, barely managing to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.
Trisha was there, because of course she wouldn’t pass the occasion of making him breakfast in his own kitchen to see him off for his first day of work and to direct her pitiful puppy eyes at him one more time.
She was busying herself with the breakfast, and sniffling at him every time they made eye contact, as if Zayn was about to leave for war.
“Ma, will you stop sniffling?” he said as gently as he could “I’m not going to war. I am just starting my new job”
Trisha sniffled more loudly. “At an asylum, Zayn. Really, I don’t think there’s even a difference between a place like that and a war zone”
Zayn rolled his eyes freely at that. “Psychiatric hospital, ma. Not asylum. Asylum hasn’t been a word for decades”
“Still” Trisha murmured “I don’t know why you would apply for a job in a place like that, sunshine, I really don’t”
“Because” he stated, standing up and reaching for her shoulders so he could start massaging them and try to comfort her a bit “It’s the only way I can do my job and use my license until I have the actual money to buy myself a real studio”
“If I knew you would end up as a psychiatrist in an asylum, I would have never let you choose psych as a major in college”
Zayn smiled and kissed his mother on her forehead. “Psychiatric hospital, ma. Asylums are not a thing” he amended again “Now I gotta go, don’t wanna be late. I’ll call you tonight”
Trisha hit him in the shoulder, hard. “You call me during your lunch break, and you’ll see me tonight, ‘cause you’re coming to my place after you get out of there so I can be sure you’re okay”
Zayn chuckled and kissed her on her forehead again, grabbing a croissant and putting it between his teeth while he wore his jacket. “I’m gonna be fine, ma, this is what I wanna do with my life” he said around the pastry in his mouth.
Trisha sighed. “How did you sleep last night?” she asked, with a stubborn tilt to her voice.
Zayn grabbed his backpack and removed the croissant from his teeth. “Peachy” he lied, and he knew his mother knew.
“How can you help those people there if you don’t even sleep properly?” she commented, crossing her arms on her chest.
“I am clinically not an insomniac, mum” he said sternly “My sleep schedule is still a bit fucked, yes, but I am fine. I wouldn’t have gotten my license if I wasn’t fine, would I?”
Trisha reluctantly nodded. “Okay, okay. I know you know what you’re doing. I’m just afraid this job will mess with your head and all the work you did will be for nothing. I just worry, sunshine”
“Don’t” Zayn said, forcing out a sincere smile and kissing her again on her forehead “I’ll see you tonight then. Make me chicken biryani?” he grinned.
Trisha scoffed and shoved at him. “Okay. Now go. I’m tired of looking at your beautiful face”
“Love you!” Zayn screamed from the corridor, and out he went.
*
Zayn parked his car in the parking lot of the hospital, and prayed all the divinities above that Trisha Malik never decided to look up Zayn’s workplace, because everything in the exteriors of St. Thomas Psychiatric Clinic screamed Asylum.
Zayn took a deep breath as he got out of the car with his backpack, trying to ignore the gloomy grey of the 30s building, the scrutinizing eyes he could see behind the white-framed windows, and the creepy air around the whole construction.
A tall man with grey hair trimmed in a military-looking cut was waiting for him on the stairs, under the entrance porch. “Doctor Malik” he smiled, reaching out a hand for Zayn “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person”
Zayn shook his hand. “Mr. Barlow, I presume? Nice to meet you”
Barlow nodded, and gestured for Zayn to come inside the hospital. Zayn was immediately hit with the brightness of the lights reverberating on the immaculate white walls, and his first thought was that lights so bright were not the best idea when dealing with mentally ill people. He didn’t say it though.
Barlow, who was the director of the private psychiatric clinic, didn’t waste any time in pleasantries and started showing Zayn around. The juvenile ward, the open units where the less critical patients spent their time, the eating disorders ward, and on the other side of the whole building, they reached the long-term crisis stabilization unit, which was in other words the ward where they kept the people with illnesses that would never heal. The condemned, the forever mad, the psychotic people that didn’t have a chance of ever getting out of that hospital. That particular ward was the reason Zayn had sent his CV to St. Thomas. It was Zayn’s specialization field, the treating of patients that would never heal, because he firmly believed they should never be given up on. If he could make their life a bit easier despite their illnesses, then Zayn would, because he’d been in a similar ward once, with no hope of getting better, and someone had helped him, and against all odds, he’d healed.
He briefly thought the long-term crisis stabilization ward looked like a prison wing. “And that is our LTCS ward” Barlow said unsurprisingly “Your office is right here, in the junction between LCTS and Eating Disorders”
Wonderful. “Thank you very much for the tour, Mr. Barlow”
Barlow smiled and opened the door to Zayn’s office with a key, which he then gave to Zayn. “No worries, doctor Malik. I perfectly understand this structure can be a bit complicated, because the building was born in the 30s and sadly when I bought it and we decided to renew it, we were told the foundations were too old, so we had to keep the original shape if we didn’t want the whole thing to collapse”
Cool. So the building has to keep looking like an asylum forever. “I understand. I luckily have a very good sense of direction”
Barlow chuckled. “Very good, very good. Then I’ll leave you to your new office, and once you’re all settled, you can start your shift with the juvenile ward patients”
Zayn frowned. He was a psychiatrist for the whole clinic, which admittedly was not very big, but still, he didn’t understand why Barlow wanted him to start with the kids. “I was actually thinking I’d start with the LTCS wards, if you don’t mind” he carefully said “They are the most difficult cases after all, so I usually like to deal with them when my mind is fresh”
Barlow smiled in an exaggerated way that looked completely and totally fake. “As you wish, doctor Malik. You are the new psychiatrist after all, you can choose how to do your job. You will find all the patients’ folders on your desk, and an electronic copy of them in your office’s computer. We only have three patients in LTCS at the moment, but I should warn you. They are a lot to handle” he said, nodding gravely.
Zayn went inside his office and dropped his backpack on his desk, smiling at Barlow who stayed on the threshold. “Don’t worry, Mr. Barlow. I do know how to do my job indeed” he said.
Barlow smiled and retreated. “I will see you for lunch break, then, doctor Malik” he stated, and left Zayn alone with the relatively tall pile of patient folders.
He extricated the three LTCS patients from the rest, and sat down at his desk to have a look at them first thing.
The psychiatrist who had worked in the structure before Zayn, a certain Ben Winston the folders said, had come to a conclusion about all three patients, and the diagnosis was neatly written at the end of each folder. The name of the psychiatrist jutted something in Zayn’s memory, but he couldn’t place it; he shrugged a little to himself and went over the files, but he promised to himself that he was going to start fresh with the patients, so that he could give his own diagnosis. He knew how dangerous it was to only rely on some other doctor’s work, because you never knew how good that doctor was, if the diagnosis had been sloppy for some reason, if they had simply been wrong. And Zayn couldn’t afford that, because he knew how someone could unnecessarily suffer because of a wrong diagnosis.
Ben Winston had stated, on the last page of the three folders:
Niall James Horan, 29. Diagnosis: schizophrenia, kept under control with the medication reported in the folder.
Liam James Payne, 29. Diagnosis: bipolar disorder with extremely violent outbursts, kept under control with the medication reported in the folder.
Harry Edward Styles, 28. Diagnosis: pathological liar. Heavy medication needed.
*
Zayn heaved a sigh and decided not to wear his white coat, because he knew it made him look different and unapproachable to the patients, and he didn’t want that, especially not with him.
He had decided Harry Styles was going to be his first patient, because he’d never worked with a pathological liar, not in his whole internship, or training, not even during the mandatory year he’d had to spend shadowing a licensed psychiatrist.
So he made his way to Harry’s room, finding out the door was made of steel, with a small peeping hole which was now closed as well. Pathological liars aren’t usually violent, his folder doesn’t indicate that he is, why did they even put him in a steel room in the LTCS ward?
He knocked and opened the door.
Harry Styles was on him in an instant, not hurting him, but grabbing his hands and staring at Zayn with huge green eyes. “Who are you?” he asked.
Zayn gently removed Harry from himself and smiled. “I’m your new doctor, Harry. My name’s Zayn”
“You have to help me, Zayn” Harry said, shaking “They’re keeping me here, they’re confusing me with meds, but I’m not crazy, I’m not a liar. I found out something they didn’t want me to, and then they locked me up here. I used to work here. All three of us did. I was a psychiatrist”