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Saturday, January 23, 2021, 9AM, Eastern Standard Time

“Again, what is your name?” the staff doctor at St. Elizabeth’s asked the patient, who was lying in his bed.

The man simply beamed at him.

The doctor sighed.

“Do you remember how you got here?”

The man smiled and stared at him.

“He seems happy here,” the doctor said. “That’s not a good sign for his sanity. Hell, I’m not happy here.”

He turned to the nurse. “What’s his chart look like?” The nurse looked at the tablet in her hand.

“Scooped off the Mall on Wednesday. Disoriented. Some evidence of blunt-force trauma to the head. Some evidence of epilepsy, though that could be from the bonk to the head. Seizures. Possibly schizophrenic.”

Here the patient nodded his head vigorously. The doctor turned to him. “You’re schizophrenic?”

The patient smiled at him, but said nothing.

The doctor turned to the nurse. “Any violent tendencies?”

“None that we have observed.”

“What’s your name? Your NAME?” the doctor asked again. The patient simply nodded.

“Okay,” the doctor said. “Thirty days. John Doe. No identification at all on him?”

“If there ever was,” the nurse said, “I think someone got to it before we could.”

“Okay,” the doctor said. “Let’s check all the hospitals nearby, see if they’re missing anyone. Distinguishing marks…well, there’s that beard. He looks about what? 5’10”? 150 pounds?”

The nurse shrugged in a manner that might be interpreted as assent. The doctor turned back to the patient.

“If you remember your name, let us know,” he said. “Otherwise, enjoy St. E’s.”

The patient simply continued beaming at him.