The Missing Patient of Elara’s Retreat

Elara’s Retreat, an elegant but secluded manor completed in 1875, was acquired in 1888 by the philanthropic Dr. Alistair Finch, who intended to use the manor’s annex as a private, high-end clinic for difficult, often sensitive medical cases. The house was swiftly abandoned by 1891, with Dr. Finch moving his practice to London under vague circumstances. The local archive holds almost no record of the clinic’s brief three years of operation. The central figure in this archival silence is the Rural physician himself, Dr. Finch, whose professional existence should be marked by meticulous visiting satchels, detailed patient logs, and numerous prescription marks. Instead, all of his patient logs are Missing, creating an Unsettled void that suggests a patient, or a series of patients, was entirely scrubbed from the record before the departure, leaving behind only the fragmented evidence of medical treatment.

The Missing Patient Logs

The Rural physician, Dr. Finch, was obliged to maintain comprehensive patient logs to track treatments and outcomes, and to use numbered prescription marks to cross-reference administered medicines. The few discarded prescription marks found in the abandoned satchel belong to expensive, highly specific sedative compounds, confirming the presence of patients with serious, chronic conditions. However, without the patient logs—which would link the prescription marks to a name and a diagnosis—the purpose of these treatments remains Missing. Furthermore, the final, crucial piece of evidence—the visiting satchels that would confirm the physician’s daily movements to and from other sites—are entirely Missing. The deliberate removal of all contextual records—logs and satchels—while leaving behind the ambiguous prescription marks, points to a concerted effort to Unsettled the record of the clinic’s final activities, perhaps involving a high-profile patient whose identity needed permanent concealment.

The Unsettled Satchel