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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"Or so they tell you," Wilson parroted back, slightly wary. "But you don't feel delusion? No blacking out or things not making sense? Any sign of hallucination?" House had given him an idea of what his hallucination had been like, which was some of the only firsthand experience he had with that sort of thing, so he figured he'd check for similar symptoms.

Hungry? But...

"You didn't eat the cafeteria food? I've heard it isn't that bad," he told her. He could understand being cautious about the food since cafeterias had a sort of stigma about them, but not eating three meals a day was awfully unhealthy.

He ducked his head under his desk for a moment to grab the bag that had his packed lunch in it. He opened it, only to see that there was a lot less food than there should have been. He stared at half of a sandwich for a good long while before sighing heavily and wincing his eyes shut.

Still, he had a patient, and he wouldn't let House somehow screw that up even when he wasn't in the room.

"I'm sorry," he said, still with that same amount of sincerity. "My friend has this habit of stealing my lunch. I was..." Well, he could always go out and get some fast food, as unhealthy as that was. He grabbed the remaining half of the sandwich and handed it to her.

Riza blinked, her jaw dropping just a little with honest surprise. He was offering this to her? All he had left? She supposed he had other options, far more than she had at the moment, but the gesture was . . . really, almost sweet.

She closed her mouth and shook her head, but when he persisted, she preferred not to be rude. She took it with a genuine "thank you," then tore it cleanly in half to return one side back to him.

"I'm sure the food here is fine," she said. "But I had just been told that my entire life up till now wasn't real. I'm sure you can imagine the distress involved, Doctor." She glanced at the quarter of a sandwich in her hands and took a bite, not wanting to seem ungrateful. It was better than she expected, and she was hungrier than she'd thought.

"I'm afraid waking up here is the first experience I have with something not making sense."

It was remarkable how often patients were surprised when their doctors were kind to them. Wilson had been under the impression that doctors were supposed to be caring, but patients didn't seem to think so. Then again, it wasn't like doctors to oaths to offer their lunch to patients if they were hungry. And a lot of people became doctors for financial reasons rather than as an act of compassion.

He didn't push the fact that she only took half of what he offered. Figuring there was no point in saving the rest of it for later, he began to eat as well. The setting was meant to be casual, so if they both ate, who cared? He was in charge of this little session, anyway.

"Of course," he responded, but only after he had chewed and swallowed. Speaking with food in your mouth was rude. "I can't imagine what that's like," he admitted with a crease of his brow.

Thinking over what she said last, he tapped his foot on the floor as he finished off his sandwich. "Do you think you might have some amnesia?"

She didn't finish off the sandwich as quickly as he did, but she had no problems in doing it. She was relaxing under his questioning, and that only encouraged her hunger. She knew of course that she couldn't convince him that she was, in fact, not delusional at all, but she still felt as though he were listening to her anyway.

Still, if she were going to make any use of her time with him, she'd have to stop being so malleable.

"I have no reason to believe I have amnesia, doctor." She smiled faintly. "I'm sure though that you can imagine it. Imagine that tomorrow you wake up to a different name that you don't recognize and that you've been told the life you've led up until now was just something your mind made up."

Not expecting an answer to this, she sat back, though her professional posture remained. "Why did you take this job, doctor?" She paused, then went on before he could tell her this wasn't about him. "If I'm going to recover from this, I need to know I can trust this institution and that this is not the conspiracy it seems like to me. Surely you looked into"--she glanced at his name placard--"Landel's reputation."

If she didn't feel like she had amnesia, then she probably didn't. Most people noticed if there were huge gaps in their memory, after all. And the situation that she presented to him actually tickled at something in the back of his mind, but only for a brief second before it was gone again.

It must have not been that important.

"Considering that, you're dealing with this surprisingly well." Maybe too well? Most people would be throwing a fit at this point, wouldn't they? But this Riza Hawkeye, as she considered herself, looked like she would never break.

It was a little unsettling.

When the conversation turned to him, Wilson didn't seem to mind. His job had never been something he had to be secretive about. "I actually am here on a temporary assignment," he explained. "I usually work at a place called Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I'm an oncologist--a cancer doctor." That last bit of information always got an interesting reaction. He wondered how she would respond to it.

Riza frowned slightly. What was a cancer doctor doing on temporary assignment at a mental institution? "It would seem they aren't being honest with any of us," she said, almost to herself. Was he lying to her? Or was he truly on the same side of this mystery as the patients? "I don't mean to diminish what you are trying to do here, doctor, but surely your patients at this . . . Teaching Hospital need you more than we do."

She leaned forward as she went on, though with interest, not menace. "As a cancer doctor, then, what is your plan? How will you convince me that this is more real than everything I know?"

Wilson wasn't sure what her first statement was getting at, but she didn't seem to be saying it to him in the first place. Either way, she had a good point about his cancer patients needing him. "I referred them to other oncologists for the moment. And I keep detailed files, so they should be in good hands." Despite that, he was still worried. He had wanted to check in with Cuddy on how things were going, but he hadn't had the time.

"I'm not sure," he said with a small shake of his head. "All I can do is try, though I am used to talking to people who are unstable in some way. Not many people with terminal illnesses are... stable," he said grimly.

"I'm sure they're not," she answered softly, studying his face again, his mannerisms, trying to detect anything "off" about him. But there seemed to be nothing . . . save for the fact that he'd apparently chosen to specialize in treating the dying.

"I'm usually considered to be more stable than most," she said. "You could say this is ironic. But I'm still not clear about why this institution would resort to a cancer doctor. Were you called here? Did you choose to come here?" She lifted her brows gently. "Do I have cancer?"

"You seem stable," Wilson admitted. There was nothing off about her (and Wilson would have been amused had he known she was currently think the same thing about him). She was arguably the most stable patient he'd seen thus far and he had to wonder how she had ended up at Landel's.

"I was assigned by the chief of staff at Princeton," he explained, quite sure he had been over that point already. "It's temporary. I'm not sure why she did it, but she might have meant it to be a sort of... learning experience." Maybe Cuddy had just needed him and House out of her hair for a bit. At her final question, Wilson's eyes widened and he shook his head. "No, no! Nothing like that," he quickly responded.

She nodded lightly, brow furrowed thoughtfully. She supposed that were a relief, though if she were told she did have such a condition--even by this doctor--she would have had to doubt it. By that same logic, however, she could not entirely trust that she didn't have it.

Again, he had given her much the same answer as he had before about why he was here--that is to say, he spoke only about his own . . . Princeton and nothing of Landel's. Should it not routinely raise eyebrows that a mental institution allowed doctors who knew nothing of mental illnesses to treat its patients?

She wasn't getting very far. Though she'd been here only a few hours, she still hoped to be an aid rather than a burden to the Amestrians who had been here longer.

"I hope this turns out to be a learning experience for us both, doctor," she said, her smile prim but patient.

"I like to think of it that way," Wilson returned. While patients could be annoying sometimes (though not to the extent that House seemed to think so), they were also very interesting. He'd learned a plethora of things from his patients.

Even if this... Riza Hawkeye was apparently insane, he wasn't seeing it. It was possible he'd learn from her.

Though now there was a pause in the conversation and he wasn't sure where to go with it. "Did you have any other questions? Or something else you wanted to talk about?" He was there to listen, after all.

Did she have any other questions.

Were she the type, she would have laughed. But for now, she remained quiet as she considered what was safe to ask at this point. Asking what she wanted to know--mainly, what the colonel and the brigadier general had hinted at--would only make her look more delusional. And so far, she was rather enjoying being taken seriously. There was no reason to expect that, and she wanted to maintain it as long as possible.

She was, in fact, puzzled by a few of the things on his desk. The whole office was really . . . of a style she wasn't familiar with, and she couldn't put her finger on why.

"Humor me, doctor," she said, returning her attention to him, though it had barely wandered. "What is the date? The full date."

That was a simple enough question to ask. It wasn't snowing outside, after all, which meant that it was...

"I believe the date is June 15th, 2006. I might be off by a day or two." He usually had a calendar on his desk, but he'd been too lazy to get it out and arrange it just so.

He figured the answer would be sufficient enough for her - and if not, he could easily confirm it.

June 15th, 2006.

Riza tried not to be too immediately surprised, but it wasn't easy, even with her usual level of restraint. That he used the name of a month she recognized suggested that the year was of the same linear scale as in Amestris. And that, though this "other-world" business made the conclusion somewhat murky, meant this was almost 100 years into the future.

Maybe she was delusional. It would certainly make more sense.

"I did not expect that answer, doctor," she said, finally. There was little use in hiding that.

Wilson wasn't certain how to respond to that comment. He wasn't lying, after all. Did he apologize? For telling the truth?

He shifted in his seat. "I'm... not sure what to tell you," he admitted as he straightened his tie.

"What did you think the date was?"

His physical reaction to her apparent displeasure with the date was almost charming. Again, it made her want to tell him more than she should. It was possible that all of the doctors were like this, in order to keep a closer eye on the true status of the patients, but it was doubtful.

She dropped her gaze, once again studying the objects on his desk. "I suppose I thought it was a little earlier." Her eyes lingered on the telephone, though she only guessed its function by the familiar general shape of the hand-set. She looked up again, adding, "Though I assure you . . . it is not 'lost time.'"

Wilson saw where her eyes were focused. She wasn't even familiar with that sort of telephone. "You can take a closer look if you want," he offered. She couldn't hurt anything with a telephone - and he doubted she would, anyway. Even if she was coming to trust him, it was going the opposite way as well.

"What do you mean by lost time?" he asked. He considered pulling out his cell phone and showing that to her, but it might be a bit too much of a shock.

She sat forward in her seat when he gave his permission, though she wasn't entirely pleased with herself that he had guessed her interest in it. She turned it, studying the face of it. Buttons, not a dial.

"I just meant that . . . You asked if I had experienced black-outs, or lost time. I wanted to reassure you that the answer is still No." She tapped a short fingernail against the telephone chassis. The plastic sounded different.

She wondered briefly if firearms were any different here, at this time, but she decided the design couldn't be so different that she wouldn't know how to use it.

Frowning, she sat back again. What must be think of her now? The telephone looked worn, so it wasn't a very new design. How did he suppose she had avoided it?

Well, it didn't hurt to ask. "I know you can't go into details, doctor, but how do I seem to you? Why am I here?"

She wasn't faking. The way she examined the phone was truly as if she had never seen one before. It was like all those what-if questions on exams: if someone came from another planet and you had to explain something to them, how would you do it?

Wilson frowned. She wasn't an alien.

Considering she had just asked for that opinion, it was almost tempting to say that. Wilson was sure that House would have, had he been in his place.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "There aren't many places I know of where you wouldn't know what a telephone was." Perhaps in one of the particularly horrible third-world countries, but she didn't look like she came from one of those.

"It doesn't make much sense, does it," he said, more to himself than to her.

His self-directed remark gave her some hope, though she wasn't sure why. What good would it do for him to believe every word of her plight and the plight of all the patients here? She still didn't fully understand the situation she was in--who could?--but she was fairly certain any steps he made in her direction could be swiftly undone by those who disapproved. And though he seemed genuinely to care, she doubted he would make a stand in the patients' favor.

But it couldn't hurt to be honest, she kept telling herself. At least--it couldn't hurt at this point.

"It's not that I don't know what a telephone is," she corrected. "I'm well acquainted with their operation. However . . . it would seem I'm more familiar with an earlier version."

"Hmm. All right." That meant she didn't think she was from too far into the past. "What did it look like? How did it worked?" If he got a detailed enough description, he might be able to figure out the general time period.

It would have just been easier to ask her what year she believed she came from, but Wilson hadn't thought of that.

He had jumped too quickly into those questions for him to be taking this particular situation seriously. She was certain he took her seriously, but certainly he didn't believe the real reason she wasn't up-to-date with the telephones.

But she knew she couldn't get very far with lying, and losing his trust would be far too costly in the end.

"Well," she began, somewhat defeated, "they were larger. More detailed, with more metal." She eyed the phone on his desk again. "The cords were straight and the numbers were on a dial."

She'd have gone on to say she supposed they worked in the same manner, but the intercom interrupted her, and she paused to listen. When it was finished, she stood in anticipation of her nurse, then extended her hand towards Dr Wilson (in a non-threatening manner).

"Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your efforts."

That made sense. There weren't many sorts of telephones, after all. Either way, she seemed rather impatient with speaking to him, anyway, and the intercom sounding meant that they were going to be cut off no matter what.

"You're welcome," he replied, shaking her hand firmly before withdrawing. She had definitely been one of his more pleasant patients, which he was thankful for.

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

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