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.