Paradise City

Quintessence

People on the street have always given Stefano strange, sometimes sympathetic glances. Not thanks to the man's popularity - in fact, he wasn't as praised as he wished he'd be - it's his peculiar appearance and since a couple days, the obvious sign of previous surgeries. What happened to him, they must wonder. How does he feel? Is he nervous being in public looking like this?
Stefano wasn't actually uneasy. That little anxiety he had built up inside had its roots in the upcoming therapy session where he was forced to tell his life and issues to a complete stranger. Admittedly, everyone would feel that way starting psychotherapy. Letting someone look into your life, your mind, into the deepest corners of it sounds scary enough, spending money for it even worse. Stefano burdened himself with trivial thoughts, covering the annoyance building up inside his chest whenever he noticed someone staring at him. He knew it'd happen. And he had thoroughly enjoyed it before the war.
This day was rainy and cold, alike many other in Krimson City. Sunshine, blue skies behind fluffy clouds and actual warmth was rare; you get used to it eventually, but wouldn't stop to miss the sun. Perhaps, so Stefano thought, a vacation was in order. To get his mind off of things. To escape, if just for a little while. Maybe someday, he decides, he will leave the town for a brighter future, searching for a place he could fit in, where the people would appreciate him, his creations, his art.

The way to the Hospital hadn't felt as long as Stefano thought it would, but he was lost in thoughts; did not notice how much time passed. His pulse rises as Stefano walks onto the Hospital's property, scanning the surroundings and building itself. The Beacon Mental Hospital was shrouded in mystery, odd stories from Krimson's citizens made their rounds in the last twenty years. Tales about patients dying after controversial medical therapy, testing new drugs and anaesthetic on humans before animals. But if a hospital manages to gain money and treat their patients, how bad could it possibly be? Humans like to gossip, and hospitals, psychiatric wards and mentally ill people have always been used as a playground for the humanity's wild imagination.

Stefano crosses the courtyard up until the set of stairs leading into the building, in his pocket he held tight onto the card he received from his doctor assigning him to a psychiatrist. It has to be Ruben Victoriano, he'd said. Krimson City doesn't have a better psychiatrist than him. Of course Stefano believes those words for now, wouldn't have bothered to find himself another doctor in the first place.

The lady at the reception desk was too busy with her manicure to notice Stefano walking past searching for Victoriano's office. The room-number was written on the card Stefano held in his hand. While searching for it in what was labelled East Wing, Stefano noticed not a single nurse or staff passing by him - of course, the offices aren't close to the wards, but it did strike him as odd. This building was too dark. Too quiet. It began to frighten him to stumble through unknown corridors with limited vision and not more information but a name and a number.
"20...9. 209," he mumbles to himself, relieved so, with a little sigh leaving his lips. Stefano knocks on the door, straightened his back and quickly adjusts his tie.
"Come in."
Hand moves to turn the doorknob. Stefano enters a small room with a single window at the opposite side, light shut out using thick brown curtains. A bookshelf stood right from the door he came in, cluttered with old medical books. At a quick glance he reads "Neurosurgery" and "Gray's Anatomy" on the backs before gaze wanders to Doctor Victoriano sitting at his desk - Stefano disguised his distress with a polite smile. This man looked terrifying, covered in bandages from his head to the fingers of each hand. Only now did Stefano recognise the smell of this room as the same in his apartment: Disinfectant, blood.

"Mr. Valentini?" Doctor Victoriano rose from his seat, extending his hand to greet Stefano standing at the open door, the man himself unable to move or react.
"Ah, yes. My apologies," so subtle his hand quivers as Stefano reaches for the doctor's covered one, but he wasn't raised to be rude. He closed the door and stepped inside.
In his head there's a voice screaming at him to leave. To close the door after him and walk away from this office, this man --- Stefano did not listen, as hard as it was for him not to. At this point, Ruben Victoriano must have noticed Stefano's fear, his aversion towards him that stemmed from the man's appearance.
“Pleased to meet you,“ the doctor spoke, voice calm and... soft. No involvement, no emotions, but he didn't seem disinterested. Stefano didn't have any experience to say the way Doctor Victoriano spoke or looked at him was peculiar. Perhaps it's the standard for psychiatrists. That nagging feeling of unease wouldn't leave even as Stefano sat down on the comfortable armchair, crossed his legs and looked at the doctor patiently. He'd not forgotten to answer the doctor, yet to say that Stefano was pleased to meet him would have been a foolish statement, a lie on top of it.