Intake

The phone call came on a Tuesday. Three weeks since that patient care advocate first asked about my "reintegration into society"—a conversation I'd tried to laugh off and then forget. But bureaucratic mistakes spread like a contagion.

"Mrs. Allen? This is Riverside Behavioral Health. We need you to come in and complete some paperwork to remove you from our system. Shouldn't take more than thirty minutes."

I should have hung up. Should have trusted that cold twist in my stomach—the same feeling I get when footsteps match mine on a dark, empty street. But I was tired of explaining to every pharmacy and every doctor's office that I wasn't that Catherine Allen. The one with the stays. The one with the state registry flags.

So, I drove an hour and forty minutes to Riverside, a facility tucked between a defunct strip mall and an overpass, its beige exterior soon to be forgotten the moment you looked away.

The waiting room smelled like industrial disinfectant cut with something floral—a cheap air freshener working overtime in the corner. I saw seven people sitting in mismatched chairs, all filling out forms on clipboards. Nobody looked up when I entered. Weird.

"Catherine Allen?" The receptionist's smile stretched too wide, held too long. Her name tag: SHARON in ‘cheerful’ Comic Sans.

"We've been expecting you."

"I called earlier. About removing—"

"Of course! Just some quick paperwork to clear everything up." She handed me a clipboard thick with forms. "Have a seat wherever you're comfortable."

The pen was attached by a string so short that I had to hold my hand sideways and remove the papers in order to write. Page one seemed standard: name, address, date of birth. Page two: emergency contacts, insurance information. Normal enough that I kept going, even as that cold feeling spread from my stomach to my chest.

Page five asked about childhood illnesses. Page seven wanted a list of every medication I'd ever taken. By page ten, they wanted me to draw the floor plan of my childhood home.

"Excuse me," I said, approaching the desk. "This seems excessive for removing me from your system."

Sharon's smile never flickered. "I know it seems like a lot, but we need to be thorough. State requirements." She leaned forward, conspiratorial. "Between you and me, just fill it out quickly. The details don't have to be perfect."

I returned to my seat. The man beside me was on what looked like page thirty, drawing symbols I didn't recognize. His hand shook slightly.

When he noticed me looking, he whispered, "Just fill them out. It's faster that way." Something in his voice—not advice but warning. Or plea.

Page twelve asked me to list my fears in order of intensity. Page fifteen wanted detailed descriptions of recurring dreams. Page eighteen asked about my marriage—right now?" "How often do you think about being single?" "If you could forget your wedding day, would you?"

My handwriting was getting sloppy. The fluorescent lights hummed at a frequency that made my teeth ache.

"Sharon?" I stood up. "I need to use the restroom."

"Of course! You'll need a key." She pulled out a drawer, frowning. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Maintenance has it right now. They should be done soon."

I sat back down. The woman across from me had been writing the same word over and over and over on her form. I couldn't make it out from where I sat, but the repetition was hypnotic. She'd been here when I arrived—so had the teenager in the corner, though his stack of papers had somehow grown thicker.

Page twenty asked me to describe the voice I hear when I read silently.

Page twenty-three wanted me to list every person I'd ever kissed. Page twenty-seven asked: "If you could forget one day of your life, which would you choose and why?"

My phone had no signal. Of course. The payphone on the wall had a sign: "Internal Calls Only." The clock above Sharon's desk showed 4:47 PM.

"I need to leave," I announced, standing abruptly. The clipboard clattered to the floor. Sharon's expression shifted to concern. "But you haven't finished your intake."

"I'm not doing an intake. I'm here to be removed from your system."

"Yes, that's what this is for. Please, Miss Allen—Catherine—you're almost done."

"No." I grabbed my purse. "I'm leaving."

"I'm afraid that's not possible." Her smile returned, patient and practiced. "You've already started the process. Walking out now would be... irregular. It might raise concerns about your stability."

"My stability?"

"Please understand, we've had three Catherine Allen's call this week. Birth date October 18th, 1991. Social security numbers off by just a digit or two. One of them warned us that another might come in, claiming not to be a patient." She tilted her head. "You can see how that looks."

"I'm married," I said desperately. "My husband knows I'm here. He's expecting me home for dinner."

Sharon's expression softened with something like pity. "Several of the Catherine Allen's mentioned a husband. Different last names though—Miller, Patterson, Sims. It must be so confusing for you, trying to keep track of which life is real."

The room felt smaller. The other patients—were they patients?—had stopped writing. All watching me now.

"I'm not—this is ridiculous." I moved toward the door.

"It locks at five," the man beside me said quietly. "For safety."

4:52 PM now. How was time moving so fast?

Sharon came around the desk, her heels clicking with metronomic precision. "Catherine, I need you to calm down. This resistance, this paranoia—it's exactly what the other Catherine Allen's described. They said you might come here, confused, claiming to be someone else."

"I am someone else!"

"That's what they all say." Her voice was syrup-sweet poison. "But look—your name is already in our system. Your intake date is today. You scheduled this appointment yourself, remember? It's right here."

She showed me a screen. There was my name, my birthday, and an appointment I never made—patient ID number already assigned.

"Just finish the forms," the woman across from me said. She'd stopped her repetitive writing. "Once you finish, they can process you out. But if you don't complete them, you stay in the system. An incomplete intake. That's worse."

Page thirty-one asked me to write a letter to myself at age seven. Page thirty-five wanted me to describe the taste of my mother's disappointment.

My hand kept moving. The answers came from somewhere—not lies exactly, but truths I'd never articulated. Each word felt like giving something away, something I couldn't get back. The man beside me was crying silently as he wrote, tears dropping onto his forms, smearing the ink.

5:00 PM. The lock clicked.

"Wonderful," Sharon said, looking at my growing stack. "You're making such good progress. Just a few more sections."

But there would always be a few more sections. I understood that now. Each form I completed generated new questions, new pathways into my psyche. The teenager in the corner proved it—his stack had grown into multiple clipboards, forms sliding onto the floor. How long had he been here? Days? Weeks?

"What happens to these?" I asked Sharon. "The forms. What do you do with them?"

"We build your file, of course." Her smile was proud. "Every Catherine Allen needs a complete history. How else would doctors know how to treat you?"

"But I'm not a patient."

"Not yet." She patted my shoulder. "But you're creating such a thorough record. Any facility would be lucky to have such detailed documentation."

Page forty-three asked me to draw my own face from memory.

Page forty-seven wanted me to write down the last words I'd say to everyone I loved.

The woman across from me had started a new form. At the top, in shaking letters, she'd written: "My name is Catherine Allen and I was born on October 18th, 1991."

We all were. Every person in this waiting room. Different faces, different bodies, but the same name, the same birthday, slowly building our files, creating the documentation that would make us real patients. Real cases. Real Catherine Allen's who needed treatment, who couldn't be trusted, who would resist and claim to be someone else.

The forms were infinite. The questions were becoming impossible. "Draw the sound of your first heartbreak." "Describe the color of tomorrow." "Write your name until it stops feeling like yours."

That last one was easy. My name hadn't felt like mine for pages now.

Sharon watched over my shoulder as I wrote, her breathing too loud, too close. "Beautiful work, Catherine. You're exactly where you're supposed to be."

I looked at the clock. 5:47 PM.

Or maybe 6:47 PM.

Or maybe time had stopped meaning anything at all, measured now only in pages, in forms, in the slow dissolution of everything I thought I knew about myself, documented in my own handwriting, building a file for a patient named Catherine Allen who would need so much help, so much care, so much time to heal from everything she'd confessed in her intake.

The fluorescent lights hummed their sick song.

I kept writing.