"So… how long has he been like this?"
The airtight office was filled with the smell of disinfectant. Lorenzo sat upright, and behind the desk in front of him was an old woman.
This is the temporary base of the Black Mountain Hospital. They directly requisitioned some vacant houses in the old Dunling area and turned it into a hospital. Although it is called a hospital, there are not many patients here. After all, most of the patients in the Black Mountain Hospital have some problems, and they are all in the base in the suburbs.
Lorenzo is now in a base that has little to do with demons, and the mental research conducted here is relatively ordinary, so it is actually no different from an ordinary hospital.
"So he's been like this ever since you met him?"
She was looking through the diagnostic records, writing and drawing on them, and asking Lorenzo questions.
"Well... He was not like this when I first met him. He knew clearly that Poirot's voice was just his hallucination and that he was insane due to the shipwreck."
Lorenzo turned his head and saw a large window on the other wall of the office. Behind the window was a clean white ward. Hercule was lying on the bed, not sure if he was asleep or in a daze, motionless, like a corpse.
"So he had been showing symptoms since then, but they were not triggered until your last action."
After the woman understood, she continued.
"I say, has he been like this lately?"
Lorenzo looked at Hercule with some worry. It could be said that it was because of him that Hercule became like this. As one of his few friends, Lorenzo would come to see him whenever he had nothing to do in recent days. It was also at Lorenzo's request that Hercule was transferred here to receive the most formal treatment.
"You mean like a corpse? Almost. Ever since we separated the chinchilla from him, the voice in his head disappeared, and he got pretty bored by himself, so he just lay there doing nothing."
The woman said as she remembered something and continued.
"But don't worry, he's very good at entertaining himself. The last time I talked to him, he told me that he was reminiscing about the past, and he has already recalled his memories when he was six years old. He is very happy to be locked up here."
"Very happy?"
Lorenzo began to think that Hercule was really mad.
"Yes, he said that he rarely had time to reflect on himself like this, looking back at his past self. He had spent so many years in a hurry, and now looking back, he felt like he was looking at another person's memory, strange, frightened... He couldn't recognize himself in his memory."
The woman raised her eyebrows. She wasn't quite sure how to describe this. In her long career, this was the first time she had come across such an interesting case as Hercule's.
“That sounds terrible,” Lorenzo said.
"Indeed, but it's normal. Everyone is like this. With the baptism of time, they become unrecognizable. If you don't believe me, you can look back at the past, Mr. Holmes. Think carefully about your past, and you will find that you have become another stranger."
Facing the woman's words, Lorenzo fell silent. She was right. Sometimes Lorenzo would be shocked by this. The child who once wandered on the banks of the Tiber River would now become such a terrible monster... This kind of thing would be hard for anyone to believe.