The observation protocol, in plain language

The procedure fitted on one side of a laminated card, and a copy of that card was screwed to the wall of every observation room in the building. That is worth holding on to, because a procedure this short is a procedure whose violations are legible to anybody who can count.

The night

1. The subject arrives before nine in the evening and is interviewed on tape at intake. The interview establishes consent, the stopping rule and the period. It is short and it is always recorded.
2. The subject is admitted to the ward and takes a numbered bed. The ward has twelve.
3. The overhead fixture is fitted with a gel of the specified catalogue number and switched on. It stays on for the whole period. It is the only light in the room.
4. An observer sits in Observation Three for the whole period and completes a chart at fifteen-minute intervals.
5. At the end of the licensed period the fixture is switched off and the subject is woken.
6. The subject is interviewed a second time, on tape, in the morning.

Nothing is administered at any point. There is no drug, no injection, no procedure and no restraint anywhere in this programme, and the paperwork is consistent about that from 1979 to the last sheet filed.

The stopping rule

The subject can end the session at any hour by saying so out loud. There is an observer present for the entire period specifically so that a spoken sentence is enough. This is stated in the intake interview every time, in almost the same words, on every tape that survives.

No subject ever used it. That is in the summary tables for all eight years, in a column headed "sessions terminated at subject request", and the column is a run of zeros.

The chart

The observer's chart is a grid: fifteen-minute rows down the left, and columns for respiration, movement, vocalisation and code. The codes are printed on a reference card:

    1  settled                     5  vocalisation, unintelligible
    2  restless                    6  vocalisation, intelligible
    3  woken, settled again        7  woken, did not settle
    4  woken, terminated           8  observer absent from room

There are eight printed codes. Charts from 1986 use nine. Code 9 was added by hand, in the same pen, on every reference card in the building, and the printed key never caught up with it. What code 9 meant is written on the reverse of one card, which is in the game, and is the single most useful thing in the observation room.

Where the deviations show

Because the procedure is this simple, three numbers tell you everything:

• The licensed period is eight hours. Any chart with more than thirty-two rows is a chart of a session that should not have run that long.
• The fixture is on for the whole period. Any chart with a fixture-off time that is not the end of the period is a chart of something else.
• One observer, present throughout. Code 8 exists to record the observer leaving. A fourteen-hour sheet with no code 8 on it is a claim that one person sat in a chair for fourteen hours without leaving the room.

The sheet for the night of 12 November 1986 is ruled for fourteen hours. It has no code 8 on it. It has code 9 for the last nine hours straight.

Every character, organisation, document and event described here is invented for this game.