Frank's POV

As soon as I leave the hospital room I search for Bob. We've known each other professionally for a few years now and I know he'll tell me if anything's up. I find him three rooms along helping a couple of auxiliary nurses change a woman's bedsheets.
"Be with you in five," he calls over his shoulder, flapping a clean sheet over the mattress and giving it four neat hospital corners.
"That's cool," I say and wait for him to finish.
He leaves the auxiliary nurses to finish up and checks his watch. "I'm about to clock off, you got time for coffee?" he asks me.
"Yeah, I'm not busy until six. There's a Starbucks round the corner."
"Sounds great. Let me get my jacket and we'll go."

We order coffee and buy a chocolate muffin each then go and sit down in a corner table. I drape my jacket over the back of my chair and pull my dictaphone out of my pocket.
"What do you think is happening to Gerard?" I ask him, peeling the paper off my muffin.
He sighs. "My personal opinion?"
"Yeah. Strictly off the record, obviously."
"I think Green is doing something to him," he says.
I feel relieved that somebody thinks the same thing and I let it show on my face. "Me too," I say. "Tell me your theory."

Bob bites into his muffin and chews slowly, formulating his thoughts. "When he came in he was confused, a bit quiet but not scared of anybody who wasn't holding a syringe. His brother told me he's had a lifelong fear of needles but that appears to be a normal irrational fear on the same level as arachnophobia so it didn't bother me. However, he very quickly became scared of people touching him - we had a job to get him undressed to give him a shower after a couple of days."
He pauses as the waitress brought over their coffee.
"There was also an incident a few days ago," he tells me, blue eyes fixing me to my chair. "I walked in to find Doctor Green bending over him, in his personal space, whispering to him. Then Gerard said something interesting."
"What did he say?" I ask.
"He said, 'no, please, stop it. I won't tell anybody, I promise.' I rattled my trolley and walked in with his medicine then and the doctor stepped away quickly but Gerard looked so relieved."

"Hmm," I muse into my coffee. "That is interesting and not normal, even for a mental patient."
"That's what I thought."
I make a note of it and then tell my side of the story to Bob. I push the dictaphone across to him with a pair of headphones plugged in and let him listen to it.
"I am certain that he was telling the absolute truth," I say.
"You say he was under hypnosis when he told you this?"
"Yes, it was the only way I could get him to talk freely. He won't even remember it."

"It appears we have a situation on our hands," Bob says.
"Yeah," I sigh, leaning back. "And as one of his doctors it's now my responsibility to find out what all the shit is."
"I would talk to Mikey Way," Bob says. "I think he knows something about what this might be."
"He's blaming himself for all of this, you know."
"Who, Mikey?"
"Yeah. He started hyperventilating after Gerard told us that." I gesture at the dictaphone. "I had to put him in a trance to get him to calm down."

Bob laughs. "I remember you when you used to work those posh hotels and flash hypnotise the guests like that at their big do's, that was funny."
I smile at the memory. "Yeah. Wasn't making enough money though."
"So, we've both got some digging to do," Bob says. "I'm also going to accidentally acquire the spare key to his room because Green locks it during their sessions."
"You might also want to set up a CCTV camera in his room and switch it on during their sessions."
"We're not allowed to do that-"
"Except Green has already put a mark on his record as being a potentially dangerous patient so you are allowed CCTV on when there are other people in the room."
Bob smiles slyly and I shrug. "I used to work in a dangerous profession, I had to know the law and stick to it so my lawyer wouldn't kill me."
"Wait, people used to sue you for hypnotising them?"
"Happened once or twice, yeah. Turns out I was in the right though but I kept the habit of reading into the law."
"Good for us," Bob points out, raising his coffee cup.

Notes