Free Identity (Eyes Wide Open) by Ted Dekker Page A

quickly. He was midstride when he saw the red folder peeking from a wall tray next to the light switch.
    His folder.
    He covered the distance in three steps and pulled the chart out. Flipped it open. His finger traced the record as he scanned it.
    “Scott Connelly. Age seventeen. Paranoid delusional.” He closed the folder. “Same name on my wristband. This is me.”
    “What?”
    “You’ve got to be kidding.” Fisher was smart. Dangerously so.
    “What?”
    “Keep your voice down.”
    “What is it?” she asked for a third time, this time in a whisper.
    He held up the folder and spoke quickly, his own urgency rising. “He admitted me as a patient. That’s what he did after he knocked me out.”
    “But you’re not a patient. How can he just… do that?”
    “Fisher’s the admissions director. Think about it. He has access to the system. He controls the records. After the basement he must’ve taken my phone, my wallet—everything that proves I’m Austin Hartt. I had your phone on me too. He has both of them now.”
    “But why? Why would he do that?”
    The realization steamrolled him. “Whatever I saw him doing was dangerous enough that he couldn’t simply let me walk away. It had to have been illegal, probably some kind of experimental therapy that the hospital would never approve. Something that would cost him his job. That has to be it.”
    “Then we’ll just find a phone and call someone. The police,” Christy said. “It’s all a mistake. They’ll see. It’s all just a mistake.”
    “There won’t be any outgoing lines except in the offices.” He tapped the folder against his open palm quickly, thinking. “Besides, this isn’t a mistake. It’s a calculated move. We’re patients in a psych ward. No one’s going to believe anything we have to say.”
    “Of course they will. They have to.”
    “Why? He stripped me of my identity.” Another realization dawned on him in that moment. “And he took yours too.” He motioned to her wristband. “You said they think you’re name’s Alice, right?”
    “Right.”
    “And why do they think that?”
    “Because she’s the patient that went missing.”
    “Precisely. Look at it from their perspective. You show up inside a secure facility with no identification. No phone. Nothing. Think about it. Who breaks into a mental facility? No one. And who would be in charge of a patient population? Fisher—director of admissions. But Fisher suddenly finds himself in a tight spot because he’s been found out. By me. He’s got to cover his tracks.”
    A beat.
    Her face went slack. “He has to get rid of the real Alice. She knows too much.”
    “Exactly. She knows what he did to me. But he can’t just get rid of Alice because Alice is in the system. Instead, he turns you into her. She was just checked in. You are her. End of story. No missing patient.”
    “So he turned us both into mentally ill patients…” she said.
    Austin didn’t bother responding. It seemed plain enough.
    “If he’s willing to do that, what’s to stop him from doing something worse to us?” she said. “What’s to stop him from killing us?” Her voice escalated.
    “Calm down,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “They’ll hear us.”
    She pressed, this time in a harsh whisper. “What’s to stop him from killing us?”
    He hesitated. “Nothing.”
    “Wait. Alice. She’s the key, right? All we have to do is find her. She knows the truth. You said she’s in the basement, right?”
    “ Was. Fisher’s not stupid. By now, he’s cleaned up whatever evidence was down there and has put Alice somewhere else. Or worse.”
    There was a long silence.
    “So we’re trapped,” Christy said. “What now?”
    “We’ve got to get out of here. We get out of here and we go to the authorities. We tell them what’s happening here. Whatever I saw goes deep. Deep enough that Fisher’s willing to falsely admit two perfectly sane people into a psych ward to cover his