damned_institute | Dayshift 33: Doctor Office #5 (Dr. Washu)

It was no secret that Ashton was mildly terrified of his doctor.

Who wouldn't be, after last week's terrible sounds coming from someplace he couldn't see - screams coming from behind a wall, proof of some nameless soul being tortured in the background. And his terrible surgery had happened not long after his visit with her... Yeah, she was capable of really scary things.

After the nurse let Ashton in, he had to admit that the place looked a whole lot more boring than it had before - gray walls instead of walls spewing wires every which way. That was a good thing. More normal. Hopefully, she'd turned a new leaf and didn't torture patients anymore...

...except for that matter of the strange liquid the doctor was holding in the test tube.

He simply stood in the doorway for a second, horrified at whatever she was doing. Then he took another step in, and then another. "U-uh.. um, hello, doctor..." He was trying to be casual. "Whatcha.. got there?" He wished he hadn't asked that question. But he had.

To be honest, Washu barely noticed the question. She was so engrossed in her research that Ashton's voice might as well have been her own, and so the answer came out muttered yet clear. "Blood. But I don't think I took enough of a sample last time..."

There were so many tests to run, and 'Kyon' just hadn't provided enough! Clearly, she'd need to rectify this later on! And poor Ashton... somehow, his luck seemed to always be right when Washu was being her most mad scientist-y...

Ashton's throat went dry. Blood. He supposed that was a normal sort of thing for a doctor to have, of all people, but at the same time it reinforced the stereotype of her that he was already building up in his head.

He made a little whimpering noise. It was just his luck, he had to get the craziest doctor, and everything was terrible.

Making his way over to the seat, he put his head in his hands. "Oh. Uh.. take.. a better sample next time, then." He bit his lip for a moment, not knowing what else to say.

Finally, he looked at one of the walls, trying to change the subject from that. "Uh. It looks kind of different in here. Since last week. A lot's changed since then for me too, though.."

"Mm-hm... I think I will~!" Washu nodded definitively at that, putting the samples away in her desk before giggling and turning her attention to Ashton. In a way, it was almost creepy, just how happy she got while thinking about getting samples and so forth.

"To be stagnant is to die! Science must always move forward!" They had to get that little detail right out of the way! Washu was never content to remain stagnant; no, her theorems evolved like living things, becoming perfect as time went on! ...regardless... she steepled her fingers, getting a little more serious as she asked, "Want to talk about that? About what's changed, that is?"

Oh, yes, Ashton definitely thought it was creepy. He was always terrified for his life every time he was in here, but Dr. Washu didn't do anything to dispel that fear. Ever. If anything, she was giving it more of a basis, which wasn't terribly good for Ashton's poor constitution.

"Ah? Science? Oh, I completely agree.." Actually, he had no clue what she was talking about, so he figured it was best to just nod and smile. Science was pretty good, he guessed. Actually, she was reminding him of Precis right now, what with the crazy hair and the obsession with science and moving forward and stuff. Which made him a little more comfortable with her.

She was growing more serious, though, so Ashton finally felt all right with asking her the question that had been burned into his brain. "I, uh.. well." How to say this? "A day or two after I saw you last time, they took me upstairs after dinner, for.. for surgery," he said, horror shining in his eyes. As if to embellish that, he turned around, pulling the headband-bandage off his head and revealing a large, square shaved spot and an I-shaped scar.

Of course, science always came to the victory in the end! Washu was so used to smiling and nodding- she'd received it a lot back in her academy days- that she always filled it in herself, and went on from there. Why wait for other people? She'd plow ahead, and they could catch up when they could!

But then she stopped short and stared at the scar that was revealed. She slowly stood up and walked over to the patient, bending forward to scrutinize the damage. "...what happened? Did they tell you what kind of surgery? This was a doctor in this Institute, even?" She hadn't been informed of any surgery! This was her patient: if anyone was going to be doing radical surgery, it was going to be her!

Dr. Washu's reaction to the surgery hadn't quite been the one Ashton was expecting. Maybe he'd expected a 'it was for your own good' or a 'why yes, we're here to torture you, mwahaha' or even an 'oh, isn't that a nice scar' - but this? No way.

He held what little hair he had to cover the distracting bald spot to the side, letting her see where that terrible doctor had made those incisions and sewed them right back up with terrifying precision. "It was brain surgery, Dr. Washu!! They put something in my head!" His voice was threatening to break into a sob. The experience had been so traumatic, he'd actually been hoping to have one of those traumatic-experience-memory-loss sorts of things, but he remembered every tortuous second.

"They took me away at dinner - my roommate got it a few days before that and - and so I knew what was going on when they wheeled me away, and - they didn't give me anything to numb the pain, and..." His voice was getting ahead of him. He didn't even know what he was saying, but he knew he had to say it. "And now - and now I get terrible headaches every day and it's horrible," he finished.

By now, tears had started to fall down his face, as if this clearly insane doctor was his only confidante.

Brain surgery? Washu knew that some doctors- no talent hacks with hack-saws- touted the idea as something that would definitely work, but she wasn't nearly so certain about that. No, quite the opposite; she preferred a far more organic approach to her surgeries.

And contrary to all the mad science and such that Washu had been getting across before... she withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket, a crab-red one, and quietly murmured, "Here, dry your eyes. You're safe here, I won't do anything to hurt you." What was ironic was that she was telling the truth; she was a scientist, but she didn't like causing pain to anyone, and took pains to insure that didn't happen. Besides, who could contemplate it when Ashton was hurting so badly?

"...I know it's hard, but... are you certain they put something in?" Clearly, most of today's session was going to involve picking up some kind of mess or another...

And here was this doctor he'd been afraid of for a whole week - no, a week and a half - a week and a half!? - handing him a hanky and telling him he was safe. He took the piece of cloth and rubbed feverishly at his eyes for a moment, wondering whether or not he'd trust her. Of course he knew that he couldn't really. She was one of Landel's lackeys, and this was probably all a ploy to get him closer to her, but he couldn't really help it. He was hurting. And he couldn't talk about it to anyone he knew without them getting all up in arms and weird about it.

"Ahh- thankoo," he murmured, mucus clouding his speech. He sniffled loudly, doing his best to clear the fluid from his nasal passages before the question really registered in his mind.

Had they? "Umm." What had the doctor said at the time? His memory was fraught with pain and anger, making it hard to remember many of the details, but.. "I was - um, face down on the table, so I couldn't see, but he said he was putting a needle in my - in my brain! So of course he put something in, that's what needles are for. And that's - well, that's when I started hearing things."

Ashton swallowed, staring off in front of him. Funny how such a tall man could seem to shrink under the right circumstances. "And ever since then, things have been really different when it comes to me and other people, but - but - I'm not really sure how." He looked back up at her, green eyes wide and fearful.

"But they cut my hair! My hair!! You wouldn't have let them do that to me, would you?" Surely someone with such.. um.. magnificent hair would understand.

An injection into the brain? What kind of moron would stick a needle into the most valuable part of any person's body!? The sheer unscientific foolishness of that idea boggled Washu's mind, made her wonder if Ashton- er, Mr. Pritchett- was truthful or just being a really good actor. Huh. But it was hard to say, because he was crazy, but he was kinda sincere-looking as well. Weird.

The doctor gnawed at her lip, pondering how to get to the truth of the matter. Maybe she could run some tests? If Mr. Pritchett would allow it; after a traumatic experience like that, then it wouldn't be likely that he'd allow another scientist to get at his brain. "Don't worry about it. What kind of things did you start hearing? And..."

She finally took one of her usual dramatic stands. One foot perched strongly on the armrest of the sofa, one finger pointed straight at the bald patch, and Washu exclaimed, "No doctor under my orders would cut your hair like that! Such embarrassment should never be allowed to happen, and that's why I created the Washu Hair Retention Surgical Method! To think that you'd be put through the horrors of outdated medical practices...!"

"Oh, Dr. Washu," he marveled, eyes a little starry. In his prone, semi-broken state, he was rather willing to believe anything that this nicer doctor would tell him. Even though he was still scared of her a little, she seemed... sweeter, and less prone to strapping him to a table and doing painful things to him. "Well.. ah.. it's nice to know that you wouldn't have done that. But it's gone now, so I guess there isn't anything that can be done..." He sighed. Unless there was - in which case he was sure she'd correct him instantly.

Of course, she was still a little terrifying, but.. at least it lifted his heart a little.

Ashton dabbed again at his eyes, trying to make them stop welling up in tears. He had an important conversation next shift, anyway, and he needed to dry up fast. "As for what I heard... I know you think I'm crazy and all, and I thought I was crazy too at the time, but when they put the needles in - the doctor said what he was doing as he was doing it - I heard... um, my dragons talking in my head." He blushed a little bit. "I mean, I don't hear them any more, of course. It was just that time, and - it might have been my own imagination, but it seemed really, really real," he sighed. "Really and truly."

He swallowed, then sighed, admitting everything. "Since then, it's like - have you heard of the sixth sense? It's almost kinda like that. Except with really terrible headaches." He didn't elaborate.

Now she probably thought he was even crazier, but she was a doctor, after all. She needed to know all of this.

Ah yes, Ashton could marvel more! Washu's stands for science were truly things of wonder, and despite it being from a somewhat-broken patient, she would take a positive wherever she could. As for something that could be done... she chuckled and tut'd him. "At the very least, I can make a batch of Washu Guaranteed Hair Regrower for you! To be forced to live with such an unsightly reminder of bad medicine isn't something that I'll allow!"

After Ashton confessed what he heard, the doctor quietly smiled and patted him on the shoulder. It was a cruel trick, what they probably did, and not something any patient who had enough problems needed. "I can't say it for certain, but hearing that, I think it might have been a hallucinogenic compound injected straight into the parts of the brain that handle memories. But there's only one way to be sure, which means..."

She took a deep breath. This was the part that Ashton was probably not going to like. "...I'd like to run a pair of tests on you. One's a brainwave scan, the other's a blood analysis. If I do both of those, maybe I can find a way to get those headaches to stop."

"Guaranteed Hair Regrower? Really?! Oh, my hero," Ashton said with a little more excitement than he really should have had, considering it was probably just going to remove more of his hair. He was really just that unlucky.

So she believed him? And didn't just pass it off as more delusions? Her explanation wasn't really that jargony at all, but Ashton's mind was such that it kind of filtered out too much technical speak. All he really heard was that bit about the tests at the end. "Is - .. is it okay? A blood analysis... that means you're going to have to take some blood, isn't it." He sighed quite softly.

Did he have a choice? Probably not. And it was going to hurt, but he'd had worse. Much worse. Might just be better to go along with it.

"Okay," he said shyly. "I guess that's okay. If it'll help my headaches, I'll do whatever." And that was the truth. He'd even stepped onto that tile to get rid of them, and .. well, actually, that might have done the trick. He could only hope that they hadn't transferred over to Dias permanently.

Even as he was agreeing, though, he couldn't help but remember the horrible scream he'd heard in here the other day.

Hah hah! Once more Washu's wonders of science were given their proper praise, and she couldn't help but beam at the excitement. Besides, her Hair Regrower was absolutely guaranteed to work! She'd just need to make a batch, and all will be well. "Next time that we have a session, I'll bring some with me," she promised, "so try to tough it out until then, all right?"

"I will have to take some samples, but behold!" She dived behind her desk and triumphantly retrieved her Washu No-Pain Sample Taker. Two syringes put together, one empty and one filled with a clear liquid, with a relatively small needle at the end. "Go ahead and roll up your sleeves, kiddo; this won't hurt a bit."

"Yes. I'll try," Ashton said with a little relief to the first bit. Honestly, the thought of getting his hair back made him so happy. There had to be a catch somewhere, like it'd grow back green, or - or something like that. Not that he had a problem with green hair. It might match his eyes or something. But he would much rather it be nice and brown.

He stared for a moment at the syringe.. thing, wondering if it was really okay- but he knew that not everything in these alternate worlds was like it was on Expel. So, he turned over bare arms, and clenched his fists, and the green veins popped out a little bit. He'd had blood drawn before at the doctor's, so he knew what to expect.

"O.. okay. Not a bit?" He needed reassurance.

Dayshift 33: Doctor Office #5 (Dr. Washu)

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