Day 31: Doctor's Office 2 (Dr. House) [4th Shift]

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

House had gotten past the samurai and now he was apparently getting some vengeful demon chick, who, he hoped, was about as risqué and devious as the girls on his old rock LP covers.

He didn't get his expectations up, though. (Or anything else for that matter.)

In the meantime, he'd sat around in his office and looked for his iPod, which seemed to have disappeared sometime between last week's boring session and today's boring session. He figured he could steal Wilson's iPhone if worst came to worst, but that didn't make him any less pissed off at the Institute's janitorial staff.

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[wishescankill.livejournal.com]

Anya was more than a little annoyed when a nurse told her she had "therapy" and escorted her to see a "doctor," especially since she still had no idea who she was supposed to be killing tonight. Well, maybe she'd could convince this guy that she was cured and ready to go home, since the nurses had completely ignored her this morning.

"Hello!" she said, pasting on her brightest fake grin. "I am completely cured. Please let me go home now."

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

House was in the middle of taking a couple of pills when the woman came in and made her shameless declaration. House did nothing but keep his eyes fixed on his patient as he swallowed, finally arching a brow in response.

"An old song... with original execution," he remarked as he looked away and pocketed his container. "But sorry; I'm the one here who gets to decide whether or not you'll be having more tacos."

[wishescankill.livejournal.com]

Anya kept the grin on, even though she didn't feel it at all.

"I find tacos distasteful and usually full of fatty grease and roaches," Anya said, echoing her earlier sentiment to Lust. "However, I was obviously being crazy, thinking I was some kind of... what... demon?" she continued, wrinkling her nose as though she was trying to remember something incredibly stupid.

She took a deep breath and started again. "My name is Cecily Underwood, I'm 21 years old, I'm not a demon of any sort, and I am cured and should be released now."

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

"Well," House said slowly, leaning forward on one elbow on the desk, "I'm with you on the tacos."

He reached over into his inbox and pulled out a patient file, opening it and paging through it.

"So, Cecily," he said, glancing over the information. "If you're so hunky-dory, why don't you tell me what got you in here in the first place?"

[wishescankill.livejournal.com]

Anya had used up every bit of knowledge she had when she told him her "name" and age. She'd have to wing it. Which wasn't really her speciality.

"Well duh!" she exclaimed. "I thought I was a demon! That's pretty crazy, right?" She laughed, awkwardly, trying to cover up the fact that she had no clue what she was talking about.

She stood up. "But I'm better so I'll be going now. They'll return my regular clothing and completely not-magical possessions - which never were magical - on the way out, right?"

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

House watched the woman as she belted out her fairly obviously untrue words. Once she was done, he took a deep breath, tossing the file onto the desk and grabbing the nearby slinky instead.

"Yeah, you're about as sane as that dude in The Shining," he said, tossing the slinky from one hand to the other. He paused, thinking for three long seconds before he looked back to the patient.

"Still, why don't you tell me about yourself."

It wasn't a question and House wasn't asking for information out of altruism. Something was nagging at the back of his brain--the same kind of something that lied in wait during cases back at Princeton Plaisboro and the same kind of something that registered as a puzzle on his intellectual radar.

Everyone in this place--everyone--seemed to suffer from delusional misindentification syndrome, which made sense, considering that monothematic delusions were the hospital's specialty; this had been announced to him from the start, when Cuddy had first declared their ridiculous trial separation period. (Like she wouldn't come running back to him. She was too understaffed. And lonely.) And yeah, the delusions were amusing even if the overall diagnoses were the same-old over and over, but maybe that was the real weird part...

They must have all had similar neurological defects in the fusiform gyrus, probably relating to the face and space perception--a mass of cases of prosopagnosia? That'd account for the misidentification syndrome, but not the ridiculous 'other world' delusions...

[wishescankill.livejournal.com]

"Oh, like you care," Anya whined, wrinkling her nose at the so-called 'doctor.' "I think we'd both rather be at home bingeing on junk food."

The vengeance demon rolled her eyes. "You're clearly some sort of freak, what with your little... fetish for bouncing pieces of metal." She shot a meaningful look at his hands, which were playing with a slinky. "And you're clearly not about to let me go, even if you can, which, given the possibility that this is a hell dimension, isn't likely. But we'd both feel cheated if I didn't try all options available to me to bribe, threaten, or cajole you."

"So," she continued, clearly bored with the whole situation. "Help me get out of here, and I will have sex with you," she offered, looking at the ceiling.

[damned-doctors.livejournal.com]

House froze, slowly raising his eyes to stare at the woman in front of him. His expression was stony, unreadable, until his lips slowly broke into a wide smirk.

"You... are interesting," he said, motioning his hand at her as he placed the slinky back on his desktop. "And trust me, if I took you up on that offer, I could show you some real cool stuff I learned from my boss."

He paused, mock-wincing a little as he cocked his head to the side.

"But, seeing as I'm sane and you're, y'know, crazy," he leaned back in his chair, "I think I'll pass."

Still, behind all of his banter, House couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something in this whole damn place, that his otherwise stellar intellect had overlooked a critical piece of the puzzle. He double-checked his past thought processes, the other days he'd spent here since leaving Princeton Plainsboro, the other patients he'd seen...

[wishescankill.livejournal.com]

"Well, alright, I didn't have a lot of hope for that," Anya admitted. "Especially with my hair looking... the way it is."

She glared at the man. "If you can even get it up. I mean, cripples sometimes can't, depending on what's wrong with them. But they have pills for that now, don't they? Viagra? I don't really know, my last boyfriend didn't need anything like that. He was a real viking in the sack," she reminisced. There was a faint tone of nostalgia in her voice, and a slightly less-than-faint tone of annoyance.

"And like you could show me anything I haven't seen before!" she said loudly, moving away from Xander. Let's not talk about the guy who left me at the altar in a 'therapy session.'

"Just 'cause you're older than me - who is twenty-one and therefore only recently tasted my first legal alcohol - doesn't mean that you've had more adventurous sex. I've been having sex for..." She had to count quickly in her head. When did most girls lose their virginity these days? Buffy had lost hers at sixteen... "for five years, mister!" She paused. "Wow, that sounds really unimpressive," she noted, almost to herself.