The Madman's Diagnosis: spec-fic of some variety

The madman lay on his cot, his wrists and ankles bound with leather straps to the restraints on his bed. His head was cocked at an awkward angle, his eyes fixed on the narrow window set high up on the wall. Through the thick, reinforced Plexiglas, diluted sunlight lit the room with something resembling natural light. He had twisted his head just enough so that the sun brushed his cheek. He smiled. Watching from the security window in the door, the charge nurse shuddered. She was fine with regular madmen. She understood them. But he was rational enough, except for his peculiar belief that the end of the world was coming. He wasn't a bum dressed in ragged clothes with a sandwich board proclaiming the end is nigh. He had been a professional, a doctor...until he started telling his patients with cancer that they had nothing to worry about, because the world would end long before their tumors spread to anything vital.


Inspiration: Two things: Hooray! Black Lung and the Death Jungle by SNOG, and a nonfiction book I'm currently reading that mentions the experiments performed early in the century when sane men checked themselves into mental institutions and then acted perfectly normal, to see how long it would take them to be released.
Story Potential: Medium. It's an interesting beginning, but I'm not sure where it would go, or if where it would go would be interesting.
Finished Length: Short story.
Notes: On the other hand, I frickin' love the title.