damned_institute | Day 61: Doctor's Office 6 [Second Shift]

Entry tags:

venom,
wilson

Day 61: Doctor's Office 6 [Second Shift]

Everything seemed to be in order as Wilson walked into the front doors of Landel's Institute this Thursday morning. He could still barely believe that the entire doctor staff had been allowed such a long break, but apparently that inspection had required that some changes be made around this place. Honestly, Wilson didn't notice much that was different, except that the Head Doctor was apparently having some renovations done on his office.

He couldn't quite kick the feeling that he was forgetting something vital, but in the end he was just relieved that he'd finally gotten a hold of Cuddy over the break. For some reason she still felt that he should be spending his time here. House hadn't connected well with the patients here (which Wilson thought should have been obvious from the start), but Wilson had actually made progress with a few people. Max Vyer, for instance.

Wilson still felt that he would be better equipped dealing with cancer patients, but the pay here was good and all things considered, he didn't have to work that much. If anything, he could see this as a few months in which he could rest up.

Now that he was finally being let back into his office, though, he was determined to keep up what was apparently being viewed as good work. He sat down with the file of his first patient, Vincent Lant. He was supposed to have seen this patient the last time he was here, only to find out that he'd been suddenly discharged. That had apparently been a premature decision, since he'd been re-admitted.

Just a quick glance over the file informed him of the patient's troubled childhood along with his anger and jealousy issues as an adult. He doubted this would be an easy case, but he was just going to have to improvise and do his best.

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By the time his nurse was back to dragging him through the hallways, the assassin had too much of a headache to ask what she was doing. There was only one coherent sentence that survived past the pounding in the middle of his eyes and it continued long into their walk, his journal clutched in his hands.

I am never going to understand the people here.

He'd barely noticed it when the woman besides him stopped moving, but he came to a pause himself once she did. He knew this hallway. This had been the area Alkaid (Alkaid...) had taken him the night they met. She'd been under the impression that this was some sort of doctor's office, but once they'd actually inspected it, it was obvious this was a--

"A therapist?" The words rolled off his tongue with all the grace and joy of a hairball. His nurse chose to simply stare at the black hole of pessimism besides her with a frown.

"You're here to get better, Mr. Lant. If therapy is called for, we provide it." Her hands came to cross over her clipboard and chest in the middle of her sentence, mimicking the same gesture her charge had done with his journal.

"Hmph." It was his usual reaction, and it was obvious the woman could see it coming from a mile away. She rolled her eyes in response, then continued to stare at him. Why was she staring at him? "...What is it you want?"

"Aren't you going to pull your hair back?"

"No." That cold remark was all that question deserved and it received another sharp stare before the woman finally opened the door. He couldn't tell if it was curiosity or plain ennui that made him step into the office.

Unfortunately, stepping into the office was about the only action he took. He remained by the door as his nurse introduced the two and took her leave, watching the man sitting at the desk with a wary expression under the veil of hair between them. There was no doubt this man would try to worm his way into business that wasn't his own, but, in the very least, he doubted there was a place in this office to hide a seven-foot tall scalpel.

He hoped.

The nurse brought Vincent in promptly, which was a good thing. Wilson felt like he barely had enough time with his patients as it was, so he wanted to capitalize on the short windows that he was given.

The file hadn't mentioned anything about the patient covering his face with his hair, but Wilson had to assume that it was related to the man's mental state. The nurse looked annoyed about it, but Wilson just nodded to dismiss her.

Trying to get into a staring contest with someone when he couldn't see his eyes would be pointless, and so Wilson focused on breaking the ice.

"Hello, Vincent. Like she said, I'm Dr. Wilson. If you could just take a seat, we can get started. And let me know if you'd prefer that I call you..." He paused and hazarded a glance down at his file. "Venom." What was the story behind that? That was just one of many questions that he could ask.

Despite the offer to sit, Venom only continued to stare. They actually expected him to go through with this? The leader of the Assassin's Gu--

Kch. His right hand went to rub at his forehead and he did, indeed take a seat. After two weeks torment, he found himself unable to even maintain a modicum of anger at this disrespect. It wasn't surprising anymore. It wasn't even upsetting anymore. It was just there, a permanent part of being within these walls.

It should bother him more that he wasn't upset. He couldn't even manage that.

Instead, he crossed his left leg over his right and put both hands and journal into his lap. "What do you want?" It was neither kind, nor completely malicious. Just monotone.

While Vincent wasn't being very responsive so far, he'd still taken a seat and he'd still engaged with him in some way, so Wilson could already count this as being an improvement over some other sessions. He could tell already that Vincent was very reserved; his lack of tone and the way that he was hiding his eyes made that clear.

Which meant that he needed to approach this carefully. Thankfully, Wilson was good at seeming harmless and caring at the same time. House had always called him some sort of freak because of it, but he thought it made sense for a doctor to have a gentle hand.

"Just to talk," he replied. "And honestly, I did have one thing I wanted to clear up first thing. I was originally supposed to see you last Thursday, but was told at the last minute that you'd been released. And now, here you are. Would you mind if I asked what happened there?"

Last Thursday... Yes, he remembered that. That had been when the soldiers first began exercising their power over the institute--and the day he'd been "cured."

For a mere 12 hours, anyway. If he were in an a better mood, he may have found it laughable.

"I don't remember," he responded, voice just as empty as before. He began tapping his fingers lightly against the journal resting on his knee while the rest of his attention appeared to be on his surrounding walls. They weren't particularly interesting to look at, but that seemed on par for most offices--his own included. "I evidently fell asleep in the morning. When I awoke the same night, I was told I'd been gone for half of the day.

"If you're looking for details, you're better off asking someone else. I'm afraid I don't have them."

That wasn't the sort of answer that Wilson had been expecting, and it was honestly a little frustrating to hear. It wasn't that he didn't believe Vincent. That was probably exactly how he remembered it, but Wilson had been wondering if there had been some sort of psychotic break that had caused him to be readmitted so quickly.

It seemed like that was something he was going to have to try and find out from the higher-ups, but he already realized how difficult that was going to be. He'd never had much experience with it in the past, which was why he was baffled that anything even got done here. They said he was doing good work, whereas he felt like he was always just running in place.

That wasn't something he should be focusing on now, though. "That's fine," he said with a shake of his head. "If that's all you know, then that's all you know, right?"

Which meant it was time to switch gears. "Anyway, Vincent. This session is mainly for us to talk about anything you have weighing on your mind. You're free to bring up whatever subject you want, but if you don't have anything in particular that you want to talk about, then I have a few questions we could go through." The man's file gave him a lot to work with, after all.

If Venom was more paranoid (not to suggest that he wasn't paranoid, only that there was room for it to be worse), he would have begun wondering how long this kind facade was going to last. How long this doctor would continue to be civil until they assumed that the Guild Head was weakening and they'd manipulate him like they did Master Zato. Perhaps this man would turn into some demon and they'd just have it kill him outright.

Fortunately, the question regarding this doctor's nature had already been answered for him the first week he'd been here. Iris had said it herself: the doctors, the nurses... They were just more victims of Next-Wave. In terms of information they were all useless and, to be perfectly honest, the assassin was far too tired to play 20 Questions with a brainwashed man none the less fear him. It would just be another waste of his time.

So, even when given the opportunity, Venom did not immediately harass the man for answers. He did not question what he was doing here, his connections to Martin Landel, or if he knew what was happening around him. Unfortunately, those were about the only questions weighing on his mind, rendering the entire offer useless.

No. That wasn't entirely true, was it?

His fingers kept tapping against his journal. He shouldn't be asking this, not even to someone who could logically be deemed as harmless. It was no one's business but his own. Even still, the need to do so burned in his limbs. There had to be an answer. There had to be more than just a ghost that occasionally showed its face on Sundays. If this man supposedly knew enough about him to be his "doctor", then...

"Where is he?"

The silence that stretched out was hardly comfortable, but Wilson was also a patient man when he had to be. And as Gregory House's only friend, that was most of the time. For that reason he just leaned back in his seat and threaded his fingers together. Vincent wasn't ignoring him; he was just thinking, and Wilson realized that sometimes that took a while.

When the man finally did speak up, it was only to utter a very short question, though Wilson knew almost immediately what it had to be referring to.

"Eduardo? As far as I know, Vincent, he's gone back to work. I know he's come to visit you a few times. How did that go, by the way?" The file only mentioned that the man had been here once, and with his fiancee in tow. Wilson didn't have any details about what had been said during those visits, though he couldn't imagine they had gone well.

The moment the doctor was asking him questions, the assassin begun shaking his head, as if literally throwing it off of him. That wasn't what he asked. That was not an acceptable answer. "Where is this work?"

It wasn't in Doyleton. He knew that much. Unfortunately, this entire facility seemed to run under the impression that the less everyone knew of their surroundings, the better. It was an idiotic one, even more so when pretending to be a mental institution, but there had to be something he could find out. If not for Master Zato, then for the sake of puzzling out where this prison was located.

There was a strained edge to his voice as he spoke again, his hair hiding the frustration in his eyes. "Where are we?"

So that was what this was about. Wilson realized that a lot of the patients here were disoriented, to the point that they didn't know basic facts like this. Granted, they'd been instructed to not give the patients too much information, but Wilson didn't really understand why. If it set them at ease, then wasn't that a good thing?

It was worrying that Vincent had apparently forgotten something as basic as where the man he'd spent most of his life idolizing lived, but...

"We're in New Jersey, last time I checked," he replied, quirking a smile. "As for your boss, I'm afraid I'm not allowed to know those kinds of details. Did he give you any idea of how far he'd traveled when he came to see you?" That was probably the easiest way to find out, since trying to ask someone who ran this place anything usually led to a dead end.

New Jersey... It wasn't something he'd heard of, at least not recently. He knew others had claimed the area they were located in was somewhere in A. Countr-- America, and if New Jersey was a part of that, then it at least narrowed down where they were.

Unfortunately, it did nothing to help him personally. That area wasn't something that existed in his time. He'd just have to ask someone else.

In regards to what Master Zato had said? Not much, to be perfectly honest. Just like most others here, getting a straight answer out of his two visitors had been an uphill battle. All they had said was where they were currently staying (Doyleton), and that they had plans to leave in the morning. He knew that suggested a long trip, but there was nothing more than that. No name, no direction, not even a specific distance...

He just shook his head, his palm coming to rest against his eye.

Nothing, then. Wilson sighed, though he realized that the visitors had probably been instructed to say little about locations by those nurses. He still didn't get why, since it wasn't like the patients were going to be able to break out of here and run off somewhere, but he was as blocked as the patients in this case.

"I wish I knew more," he said sincerely, grabbing for his pen and twirling it around between his fingers. He should have been taking notes, but thus far there was nothing that had really struck him.

"Once you're released from this place, though, I'm sure they'll tell you how to get to him." Unless the man had put some sort of restraining order on Vincent, which was quite possible seeing how the man had made death threats. Wilson frowned at the thought, since he realized that if Vincent wasn't able to reconnect with Mr. Corbett he might even have more of a breakdown.

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Day 61: Doctor's Office 6 [Second Shift]

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