Entry the First: I have begun to keep this journal at the insistence of my physician, Dr. Edgar Cross, who assures me that the act of writing may serve as a form of therapy—a way of externalizing that which I cannot articulate aloud. I am skeptical but obedient. I am often obedient to Dr. Cross. This is, perhaps, the first thing I should examine.

I am twenty-six years old. I am a widow. My husband, Lord Edward Wells, died in India in 1891 while serving in the colonial administration. He was thirty-four. I am twenty-six. The grief, I was told, would pass. It has not. What remains is something the doctors call nervous exhaustion and what I suspect is something worse: a hollowness, a cavity where my life used to be, filling itself with nothing.

Dr. Cross proposed to treat me with a method he describes as electro-acupuncture, though the term sounds more scientific than the practice warrants. He inserts fine silver needles into specific points on my body and applies a small electrical current. He says this stimulates the nervous system and restores balance.

I do not feel balanced. But I do sleep. For the first time in three years, I sleep through the night.

--

Entry the Fourth: Dr. Cross is... unusual. Not in the way that doctors in London typically are unusual—most of them are charming men in powdered wigs who speak condescendingly to their female patients and prescribe opium for everything from melancholy to indigestion. Dr. Cross is unusual in a way that I cannot quite describe.

His clinic is located in a quiet townhouse in Bloomsbury, decorated with objects that appear to be of Eastern origin: Chinese porcelain, Japanese woodcuts, a folding screen painted with cranes in flight. But the objects are arranged in a manner that suggests someone who does not truly understand them—a wealthy man collecting curiosities rather than a connoisseur arranging his possessions.

His manner is calm. Too calm, perhaps. He never raises his voice. He never shows emotion. When I describe my symptoms—insomnia, palpitations, episodes of dissociation—he listens with an intensity that is both comforting and unsettling.

He touched my wrist today and held it for longer than necessary. Not in a sexual manner. Something else. Something like... recognition. As if he could feel the pulse of something deeper than my nervous system.

--

Entry the Eighth: There are others. Patients of Dr. Cross. I have seen them leaving the townhouse—men and women, young and old, all of them bearing the same look of calm that I have noticed in Dr. Cross himself. They walk with a certain lightness, as if a weight has been lifted from their shoulders.

I asked Dr. Cross about them today. He smiled—a small, enigmatic smile—and said: we are a small community. Each city has approximately thirteen of us.

Thirteen. The number seemed significant. I asked him what it meant. He said: do you believe in patterns, Miss Wells?

I did not answer.

--

Entry the Eleventh: I have been lying to Dr. Cross. I told him I was attending his treatments faithfully. But three weeks ago, I stopped going. Not because the treatments stopped working—they have not. I still sleep well. I still feel calm. But because I began to feel something else: a growing unease, a sense that I am participating in something I do not fully understand.

Dr. Cross noticed. Of course he did. He said: the treatments are most effective when consistent. To stop now would be to... unravel what we have begun.

I understood the threat in his words. Not an explicit one. But a quiet, implacable one. He does not want me to stop.

I returned to the clinic yesterday. I told him I had been ill. He did not look surprised. He said: the body knows when it is ready to be healed. Do not rush it.

--

Entry the Twelfth: I have read his files.

Last night, while Dr. Cross was out—dining, he said, with a colleague—I entered his study and opened the desk drawer and found them: thirteen patient files, each one containing a name, an address, a diagnosis, and a treatment plan. I read them all. Every word.

The names are familiar. Several of them I have seen in person—patients leaving the townhouse, walking with that same calm lightness. The diagnoses are varied: insomnia, hysteria, nervous exhaustion, melancholia, neurasthenia. Common ailments for women of my class, the sort of things that doctors prescribe rest and opium for.

But it is the final entry in each file that disturbs me. Each one contains the same notation, written in a language I do not recognize—a dense, angular script that is neither Latin nor Cyrillic. I showed the page to a friend of mine who studies Slavic languages, and she told me it is not Slavic at all. It is something older. Something that may be connected to the Eastern traditions from which Dr. Cross claims his methods originate.

The thirteenth file is blank. Not empty—blank. The cover contains a name and address, but the pages inside are untouched. No diagnosis. No treatment plan. Only the notation in the unknown language.

My friend said: The thirteenth does not return.

--

Supplementary Entry: I asked Dr. Cross about the thirteenth file today. He went very still. Not angry—never angry. But still, as if I had touched something that was meant to remain undisturbed.

He said: There is no thirteenth patient, Miss Wells.

But I saw the file. I saw—

He paused. I have never seen him pause like that. It was as if he were choosing his words very carefully, like a man walking across thin ice.

You saw a file that does not correspond to a patient, he said. It is a placeholder. A reminder.

Of what?

That the work is never finished. That every cure creates a new wound. That we are not healing people, Miss Wells—we are transferring their suffering from one body to another.

I did not understand him. I understood enough.

--

Final Entry: Dr. Cross has left London. He left without warning, without notice. The townhouse is locked. The neighbors say he departed in the night, with nothing but a single suitcase and a crate of books.

I am cured. By any objective measure, I am cured. The insomnia is gone. The palpitations have ceased. The hollowness in my chest has been replaced by something that resembles peace.

But I know what he told me. I know what he does. He does not heal. He transfers. He takes your suffering and moves it into another body, another mind, another life. And when the vessel is full—when the thirteenth place is filled—he moves on.

I am free. But I am not free. Because somewhere, in some house in some city, there is a thirteenth patient carrying my suffering. Carrying the suffering of every person Dr. Cross has ever treated.

I do not know if this is madness. I do not know if any of this is real. Perhaps Dr. Cross is simply a talented man who understands the placebo effect and the power of suggestion. Perhaps the needles and the electricity do nothing at all.

But I know what I felt. I know what he said.

He is not a doctor. He is a mirror. And when you look into him, you see not yourself, but what you could become if you stopped pretending.

The journal ends here. I will not write again. The hollowness is filling up again, but this time I know what fills it: not grief, not loneliness, but the weight of knowing something that cannot be unknown.

I have seen the mirror. And the mirror has seen me.

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© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport)
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