damned_institute | Day 40: Doctor's Office 6 (Dr. Wilson) [Fourth Shift]

Things could have gone better with Max, but they also could have gone much, much worse. Wilson was willing to take a somewhat awkward, tense session over a downright terrible one. As for his next two patients (the last two for this week), one was completely new to him while the other one would be a follow-up. He would have preferred the new patient have a shift to herself, but he had little say in how the scheduling worked in this place.

As for the returning patient, Wilson remembered Kyle well. The boy possibly had some sort of personality disorder, but unlike Allelujah-Hallelujah from earlier, he hadn't been aware of his other personality. Wilson had to wonder if the boy had made any effort to keep track of his moods and his memory to see if things didn't add up, but he supposed it wouldn't be long before he found out. The boy had been agreeable last time, so unless he was in a bad mood today (like Max), things should go smoothly. The new patient was a mystery, but Wilson did his best to keep an open mind.

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"The worst part has been not knowing how my friend is doing," she began carefully. She couldn't say Manny's name; she didn't know his real name. Meche was being very good and cautious about all this, trying to think of anything else she could give Dr. Wilson, and then all of a sudden she heard herself saying something surprisingly honest.

"Aside from that...sometimes I feel really--" She shook her head, alert to the still-unfamiliar sensation of her hair swishing against her cheeks. "I don't know. Really--uncertain, maybe that's the word. I used to think of myself as a good person, but after that incident, I'm not so sure anymore. I start to think, maybe he really did take that out of me." She looked down at her hands. "Pretty tough to point a gun at someone and still be the good guy, right? And then I catch myself wondering, well, what's going to happen the next time I get upset?"

The incident she was talking about wasn't her encounter with Domino, but Meche had nonetheless hit at the heart of what was bothering her.

"It's not too often," she added quickly, just in case she'd managed to convince him that she really was clinically insane. "I've met some nice patients in here, and talking helps a lot. Maybe you just always have that lingering doubt."

Wilson hadn't expected to get so much out of the patient, especially since they had touched on a lot of points already, but he made sure to hear her out. He noticed the way she backpedaled, as if worried she had said too much, but nothing she'd said struck Wilson as too strange.

"I think it's better that you have that doubt," he carefully replied. "If you weren't thinking about what you did and being bothered by it, that would be much stranger." It was slightly worrisome that she didn't feel like she had control of herself or her emotions, but that was one of the main things she was going to have to work on while here.

"Your boss probably made you feel like you didn't have a proper hold on your life, and you went to an extreme in order to fix that. Now you just need to figure out how to regain that control in a healthier way. You need to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said, feeling confident about his advice this time. He really wasn't half-bad at psychoanalyzing, considering how often he practiced it with House.

"The next time you get upset, you should be aware of it. See how you deal with it. If there's something wrong with your response, then try to figure out how to correct that. That's about all I can tell you," he finished.

It wasn't a magic fix, but probably nothing was, Meche reflected. The real problem might be being sure whether her response was wrong. Objectively speaking, hurting a child was a terrible thing, but what if you could save someone's life with just a few scratches on a kid's arm? Or what if they'd threatened you, like those two just before morning?

Had she been having trouble because they were tough moral calls? Because she'd been brainwashed? Or because she really wasn't anywhere near as saintly as she liked to pretend she was?

"You're right," she said. "I'll watch myself. He came to visit last weekend, actually, and I was okay then--I mean, I wasn't thrilled to see him, but I didn't get the urge to hurt him, even when he got insulting." She gave a little shrug. "That's progress, I guess."

"That's definite progress," Wilson agreed with a firm nod, not wanting Maria to downplay her accomplishments. It probably hadn't been the best idea to send the man who had set her off in the first place to come see her, though if she had been able to handle it then it said a lot about her recovery.

Personally, Wilson thought she might be well enough to leave this place soon, but hadn't the two of them just been discussing how he really had no say in that sort of thing?

Sending a glance down at his wristwatch, Wilson realized that they were nearing the end of their time, which meant Meche was off to dinner and he was headed home for a nice, long weekend. "Well, I think that's enough for today, Maria. Thank you for being so cooperative and I'm... sorry I couldn't be more helpful," he finished with a sigh.

Meche couldn't see the watch face, but she knew a nurse would be outside the office, waiting to take her back to her room. Probably better that she got out of there anyway, before she could do any more damage to her reputation as a sane, level-headed woman who was never going to have another episode of rage in her life.

"Not at all," she replied, getting to her feet. "It's nice just to have someone to vent to. You helped more than you think you did." He'd told her a little more about her "real life," for one thing, and some new things about how the Institute operated. And--well...it had felt good to talk to someone, even if she couldn't be completely on the level with him either.

As she reached the door, she turned back to give him another quick smile and a goodbye: "Thanks. Have a good weekend." I really hope you're one of the good guys, she added silently on her way out.

Day 40: Doctor's Office 6 (Dr. Wilson) [Fourth Shift]

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