damned_institute | Day 20: Dr. Wilson's Office [Doctor's Office 6]

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Day 20: Dr. Wilson's Office [Doctor's Office 6]

It was silly, but Wilson was nervous.

Mental health was by no means his specialty. It was true that he more or less had to act as a counselor for his patients. Most of them had terminal cancer. The dates were never any good. Two years, one year, six months, three months. He could speak to people about dying well enough, but this was different.

Hopefully he would get the hang of it. He took solace in the fact that he had a bit more experience than some of the other doctors. Such as, oh, House? He wasn't sure what the chief of staff had been thinking when he hired him. It made him wonder if the administrators were as insane as the patients.

Even though therapy didn't start first thing in the morning, Wilson had made sure to be there extra early anyway. (He had to make up for House, who would undoubtedly be late.) His office was also cleaner than it would normally be - first impressions were important, after all, and that was probably even more true with mental patients. He heard the intercom, which meant his first patient would be heading in soon. He straightened in his chair, though his nervousness caused him to grab a random doodad off of his desk and start fiddling with it.

[ ooc: For ~~Adelheid~~, ~~Cliff~~, ~~Dias~~, ~~Eric~~, ~~Hikaru~~, ~~Riza~~, ~~Scar~~, and ~~Seimei~~. ]

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Wilson let out a small grumble and leaned back in his seat. Why didn't any of the patients want to eat? Then again, the one female patient he'd seen thus far had said she simply hadn't had the time. Perhaps it was the same with Dias?

"I already gave my lunch away to an earlier patient," he said apologetically. "Why didn't you eat? The food isn't supposed to be too atrocious." Even though he'd at least coaxed the patient into speaking, he didn't have high hopes for this session. Despite that, he had to try. If only the patients could loosen up a little, it would be much easier to speak to them...

"I lost my appetite," Dias replied, obviously not the least bit interested in loosening up no matter how hard it made Dr. Wilson's job. He was...nevertheless faintly taken aback by the implication that the doctor would have given him his own lunch if he hadn't already given it to someone else. They were trapped in a perpetual hellhole and being lied to and assaulted in the night and one of the doctors actually gave a damn whether or not they were fed?

Definitely not the doctor from the night before, then, although his voice hadn't sounded similar in any case.

After another uncomfortable silence, Dias actually broke it of his own accord. "What was I brought here for, anyway?"

Wilson ran a hand through his hair, mainly to smooth it out and fix it. "Losing your appetite is never good." It might have been something better not spoken, but it was the truth. "What happened?" He got the feeling it had either been something a nurse or another patient and said or done. If it was something that should be reported, he wanted to know.

The second question awarded Dias with a tilt of Wilson's head. "Well, I assume you know the basic reason. You mean more specifically?"

"It's not important," Dias said flatly in regards to the first question, ignoring the fact that it wasn't entirely true. It had been important to him, but he doubted it would mean much to anyone else. And he knew exactly what he would be told if he tried to explain it to the doctor, or anyone else - he had unresolved issues with the death of his family, particularly Cecille's, and trying to take up his old and now defunct role as an older brother to anyone else would just result in more pain when it was inevitably demonstrated that he was not, in fact, an older brother to anyone still living. He needed to resolve his issues and move on with his life or he'd simply wallow in his grief for the rest of his life.

Not only did Dias know all this himself, but other people had already told him so. Several times, in some instances. He didn't need to hear it again and it wouldn't make any difference if he did, and the less he dwelled on it the better.

"Yes, specifically." Dias' crimson stare was intense enough that Wilson might want to check that he wasn't pinned to the wall. "The doctors have told me that my name is David Shaw, when I know it isn't. They tell me I'm crazy when I know I'm not, and I have the scars to prove it. They say I have family in the world outside - " Family who didn't like Dias much, if he was any judge, since they'd sent him a dress to wear the other day... " - when I saw my family die in the world they say doesn't exist, as if that were something I'd want to be true. This place attacks us during the night, and I have the wound to prove that, and you act like you give a damn about our well-being during the day and call us the crazy ones. According to your fellow doctors, I'm incurably insane and I'm going to be held here whether I like it or not. So what, exactly, could one of you possibly want to talk to me about? 'Sanity is nice, you should try it sometime'? If I am insane, you couldn't talk me well, and you certainly won't believe anything I say to you, so why talk to me at all?"

Dias was not having a good day. He saw no reason not to evenly distribute the aggravation.

It was important. That much was obvious. Wilson could read that without even trying, but he knew better than to push it. If it was something Dias intended to keep to himself, there wasn't much Wilson could do about it except hope that he opened up some other time.

He didn't have high hopes for that, however.

The intense stare he received didn't bother him. He'd been under the scrutiny of much worse in the past. Extreme situations were his specialty. Doctors were masters of keeping their calm. If Dias wanted to ramble - to vent his frustration - that was more than Wilson could have expected when he first saw the patient walk in. It was therapeutic to simply complain without any restraint. If he had to be the man's punching bag, so be it. He sat, still and calm, and waited.

The most interesting thing was that he had heard about attacks in the night before. Was it a rumor that was spreading among all the patients, each one building on the other's delusions? "I never said you were crazy," he pointed out as he shifted in his seat. "Someone thought you were, though," he conceded. "And it's more a matter of what you want to talk about." And he'd done a surprisingly large amount of that already. "Believe it or not, I care about my patients. That's sort of what doctors are expected to do." Unless they were House, but... That was a whole other story.

"If you're hurt, I wouldn't mind taking a look at it. I'm more experienced with that, anyway."

Dias gave the man a flat look that communicated, far more eloquently than words, that he had very little interest in talking about anything with doctors in general and Dr. Wilson in particular. The line about the doctors caring for their patients was enough all by itself to convince Dias that the man had to be insincere, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Either that, or so woefully underinformed that he was useless anyway.

Nevertheless, he wanted to hear the doctor explain away a stab wound from a red-hot object, because there was very little ambiguity in the wound to allow explaining away. So, with a glower in Dr. Wilson's direction that more or less suggested that Dias was doing this entirely for his benefit and he should be properly grateful, the mercenary got to his feet and - using his right hand exclusively - tugged his shirt up to his collarbone in one smooth movement.

There was certainly a lot that needed explaining beneath Dias' shirt, unless he struck Wilson as the masochistic type of mental patient. The patch of gauze on his left side covered the wound itself, but that was almost an afterthought in the face of the scars. There were dozens of them, all of them looking to have been from serious wounds at one point or another, but the one that took center stage was the one right in the middle of Dias' abdomen. The size of it was such that surviving receiving it had to have been impressive.

There were more on his back, but those could wait.

Masochism was the first thought. Though could he really be blamed for that? He'd seen teenagers with their arms covered with scars, but who said people couldn't cut at their torso and chest as well?

Some of them didn't exactly lend themselves to self-infliction, however.

The scars weren't Wilson's main concern, however. He was far more interested in the fresh wound. It was bandaged, but he wanted to see what was underneath. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure if Dias would be as open to the idea as Adel had been.

He stood from his seat despite that, slowly head around. He glanced up at the larger man, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. (It wasn't that hard, but people seemed to cower in the presence of doctors no matter how nice they looked.)

There was a silent question there. He was a medical doctor - he wasn't exactly an expert at speaking with mental patients. If he could focus on the physical instead, all the better. He wanted to see, to examine, to help.

"Go on," Dias said simply, expression betraying nothing(except, possibly, a dislike for doctors). He couldn't hold up his shirt and get the gauze off with only one hand, and he had no desire to move the left hand any more than was necessary. The most he did to assist Wilson was to pull his left arm out of the way, with a slight wince.

That was all he needed to hear. Nodding, Wilson drew closer and carefully unwrapped the gauze. The nurses here were by no means bad at their job. He was sure the wound had been properly cleaned, but as a doctor, he always wanted to examine a wound when he saw one.

The burn was the most obvious part. He frowned and bent his knees so he could get a better look.

"Stabbed with something hot--scalding." He lifted his head to make eye contact with Dias. "What was it?" Who could have gotten a hold of something that could have done this?

"The nurses were a bit stingy with the burn ointment," he mumbled, moving away and heading back around his desk in search of his medical kit.

"A red-hot poker," Dias said, watching Wilson closely. "I suppose you think I happened to find one lying around and fell onto it to do this to myself?"

Wilson scoffed and glanced up from where he was searching for the kit. "That would be ridiculous." He dragged it out from under a set of drawers and then hefted it up onto his desk. He unlatched it and opened it, pulling out a roll of bandages, a syringe of adrenaline, and Neosporin before he found a tube of burn ointment.

He unscrewed the top and then returned to where Dias was standing. "Hold still," he said quietly, more focused on treating the wound than how he had gotten it in the first place.

"The nurses couldn't think of a convenient lie, either," Dias muttered. "They just acted like they couldn't tell anything was wrong with me so they wouldn't have to come up with an explanation for how it happened..." He held still after a suspicious examination of the ointment Wilson was holding, choosing instead to look over his head at the medical kit he'd pulled out.

It looked - advanced. There weren't any herbs that Dias could see, but it looked like something beyond his comprehension. Maybe he could take a closer look at it...

Wilson would rather Dias didn't talk while he was reapplying the burn ointment, seeing that he'd rather not press too hard on the wound. Then again, with all the scars he had, a little bit of soreness most likely didn't bother him very much.

"I think the nurses are here from eight to six," Wilson remarked. "I'm not sure, though. I... don't really pay attention to them," he admitted. If he started being friendly with any, House would call him on it and it would just be a huge mess. Better to just stay away from them for the moment. They were generally far too busy to chat, anyway.

"If this happened at night, there wouldn't be any way they could know how you got it." Once he had finished, Wilson moved away, putting his burn ointment back where he'd found it and grabbing the bandages. May as well give him fresh ones.

"Then who is in the building with us at night?" Dias demanded, looking down at Wilson. "I assume you go home. Is there anyone here besides the patients who knows what happens to us?"

"I do go home," Wilson confirmed as he walked back over to Dias. Unrolling the bandages, he slowly started to wrap the wound. After so many years of practice, he knew exactly how tight to make it. It wouldn't be to the point that Dias felt uncomfortable or couldn't bleed, but it would still offer the support and pressure required.

"And I don't know if there is any night staff," he admitted. "I'd imagine there would have to be janitors or something like that..." It had never been something he'd had to think about before.

"You don't even know," Dias murmured. "So the doctors here only care about their patients while they're on the clock - what happens to us after they go home isn't something anyone concerns themselves with much."

Wilson was slightly offended. The moment he finished bandaging, he pulled away with a sigh. "I just hadn't thought of it. Why would I have any reason to think you didn't all go to sleep until morning?" This was his first session with patients, after all. There was no way he could have known. And yet somehow he still felt responsible to the fact that half of them were wounded.

Dias let his shirt fall once Wilson pulled away, sitting down again carefully. "Perhaps because the patients say it isn't happening?" He eyed Wilson. "I know many of us talk about strange things that sound like they couldn't be true, but I've seen strange things that are true enough to think that doesn't necessarily make us crazy. I've met a number of patients here, and considering that we're in an asylum a disturbing number of us are being told we're insane when we're not."

Why would the patients want to keep things from him?

It didn't take long for Wilson to answer that question for himself. (He shoved that trademark line of House's out of his mind.) If they were already being accused of being insane, if they started to talk about strange happenings in the night, it wouldn't exactly be helping their case.

"Even if you know you aren't crazy, how do you know that the other patients aren't?" he asked with a tilt of his head. He wasn't trying to put Dias on the spot; he just felt it was a valid point. "They might seem sane, but for all you know they're speaking nonsense."

(OOC: Actually, what Dias meant is that the patients are saying their sleeping peacefully through the night isn't happening, but oh well. XD )

"I've met insane people," Dias said flatly. "Even a few here. So I can tell the difference when I talk to someone who has a grip on reality, even if what they're saying doesn't make sense." He raised an eyebrow at Wilson. "Can't you? You're the doctor."

"I'd like to think I can," Wilson responded, almost sharply. He had an abundance of patience, but Dias was pushing a few buttons. He was a good doctor and didn't enjoy having that questioned.

"But mental illness isn't my specialty." He was sure he'd be further chided for that, but that complaint was better directed at the administrators.

"Really?" Dias raised an eyebrow. "Have you wondered about that at all? Why would a doctor who doesn't even specialize in mental illness be brought in to care for the mentally ill? Possibly because knowledge of mental illness wasn't nearly as much of a critical factor as they'd like to have you think...?"

"I've considered it. But it was either do what the chief of staff at my hospital said or quit my practice." Wilson hadn't thought he'd have to go into that much explanation with so many patients.

"I don't think they think I'm going to cure you," he admitted. "I think they just want you to have someone to talk to who isn't a nurse busy taking you somewhere or another patient with the same complaints as yours. Sometimes an outside look on things is important."

"We don't want someone to talk to," Dias said sharply. "All we want is to know why we're here, really. Why these things that don't make any sense keep happening. Mostly we want to go home." Something in Dias seemed to deflate at that, and he leaned back in his chair.

"Unfortunately, the people in charge don't seem to care about what you want," Wilson said with a small sigh, similarly deflated.

Go home. Something about that struck at something in him - for a moment it was a particularly strong feeling - but he couldn't pin it down and figure out what it was. It didn't take a long time to fade and he was instead left feeling unsettled and tired.

Day 20: Dr. Wilson's Office [Doctor's Office 6]

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