The alien hypnotizes medical staff to leave the psychiatric hospital

The alien narrator’s escape from the psychiatric hospital depends on turning his extraordinary abilities toward an ordinary institutional obstacle: he must persuade its staff that he is well enough to leave. The episode also exposes the danger of medical examination to his mission. With the gifts in his left hand still active, a brain scan could reveal what he needs to conceal, so he invents a human history instead.

Escape Through Hypnosis

After lunch, the alien narrator visits the nurse who had watched him speak with Isobel Martin, author of the unfinished novel. He lowers his voice to a carefully chosen frequency and slows his words to a measured pace, using hypnosis to secure the nurse’s agreement to take him to the doctor. He considers the technique easy because humans are so ready to believe.

In his appeal, he presents himself as sane and eager to return home to his wife and child. He invokes his work at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, complains about the hospital food, and describes his earlier public behavior as an embarrassing but temporary episode. The nurse accepts his account and leads him onward.

Avoiding the Brain Scan

The doctor wants medical tests, including a brain scan, because damage to the cerebral cortex might explain amnesia. The alien narrator recognizes that this is the one procedure he cannot allow while his gifts remain active. Rather than reveal the reason, he convinces the doctor that he has not lost his memory: he fabricates memories and an entire human life to support that claim.

He explains his supposed condition through work pressure and answers the doctor’s questions by locating responses within the humans themselves, as if their answers were already contained inside them. Asked about symptoms such as panic, low moods, nervous jolts, sudden behavioral changes, and feelings of unreality, he accepts unreality as something he had experienced but insists he now feels fine and real.

Diagnosis and Release

After half an hour, the doctor concludes that the patient has not lost his memory. He describes the episode as a mental collapse caused by sleep deprivation, work pressures, and a diet consisting largely of strong black coffee—a detail Isobel Martin, author of the unfinished novel, had already supplied. The diagnosis converts the alien narrator’s alarming behavior into a familiar human explanation while allowing him to avoid the scan.

The doctor recognizes him as the author of a mathematics book, a humorous memoir about Andrew Martin’s time teaching at Princeton University called American Pi. He prescribes Diazepam and advises him to take things one day at a time. Then, using a device the alien narrator regards as primitive telecommunications technology, he calls Isobel Martin, author of the unfinished novel, and tells her to collect him. The episode ends not with an examination of the truth but with a route out of the hospital secured by fabricated memories, medical reassurance, and the doctor’s call.