Dr. Peter Venkman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ghostbusting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2009-12-16 02:17 am
ghostbusting) wrote in damned_institute2009-12-16 02:17 am
Day 46: Doctor's Office 5 (Dr. Venkman) [Second Shift]
Venkman jammed a pin into the last of the newspaper clippings, then stepped back to admire his handiwork. On the wall behind his new desk was a small array of Ghostbusters media coverage - news articles, magazine covers, and advertisements featuring his, Ray, and Egon's faces. Mostly his. And in the center of the array, he had hung his two framed degrees. Good. With that and the furniture in place, the formerly barren office looked a little more like the one he had enjoyed at the firehouse. Now all it needed was a little more clutter and a secretary he could tell to get back in the kitchen, and it would feel just like home.
Not that Venkman was desperate to be at home. Sure, he missed bustin' with Tex and Francine in the wild wests of Manhattan. For now, though, just a little reminder of more fun times was all he really needed. Too much of a reminder and he would just start to depress himself. What kind of a loser would he be if he let that happen? He had come to Doyleton and to Landel's to get a little distance, some breathing room. He had come to avoid getting depressed, so damn it, he was going to be the happiest little clam in this big, blue, mentally challenged sea if it killed him.
He strolled around the empty office, idly whistling a familiar little ditty written by a friend of his, one Ray Parker Jr. First patient of the day would be arriving sometime in the next little while. God, what was that going to be like, he wondered. On the one hand, maybe it wouldn't be too hard. After all, it could be said that he had a degree in abnormal psychology - just about every person on the planet had some really sick stuff going on at the core. Still, cynicism aside, he knew he didn't have much experience working with the real nutballs. The cuckoos, the loons, the wackos. These people. It was easy to make the Average Joe believe in lies and shams. It wasn't so easy, by comparison, to make Not-So-Average "I'm The Pope In A Beavermobile" Joe believe the truth. Regardless, he would do his best with these lost causes. For honor. For glory. For a damn good paycheck.
Not that Venkman was desperate to be at home. Sure, he missed bustin' with Tex and Francine in the wild wests of Manhattan. For now, though, just a little reminder of more fun times was all he really needed. Too much of a reminder and he would just start to depress himself. What kind of a loser would he be if he let that happen? He had come to Doyleton and to Landel's to get a little distance, some breathing room. He had come to avoid getting depressed, so damn it, he was going to be the happiest little clam in this big, blue, mentally challenged sea if it killed him.
He strolled around the empty office, idly whistling a familiar little ditty written by a friend of his, one Ray Parker Jr. First patient of the day would be arriving sometime in the next little while. God, what was that going to be like, he wondered. On the one hand, maybe it wouldn't be too hard. After all, it could be said that he had a degree in abnormal psychology - just about every person on the planet had some really sick stuff going on at the core. Still, cynicism aside, he knew he didn't have much experience working with the real nutballs. The cuckoos, the loons, the wackos. These people. It was easy to make the Average Joe believe in lies and shams. It wasn't so easy, by comparison, to make Not-So-Average "I'm The Pope In A Beavermobile" Joe believe the truth. Regardless, he would do his best with these lost causes. For honor. For glory. For a damn good paycheck.
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But when had this place ever made sense?
His nurse smiled broadly at him and opened the door. "Jimmy Doyle here to see you, Dr. Venkman," she said in an annoyingly sing-song sort of way. Awesome.
The detective shuffled in behind her, staring determinedly at the papery slippers that passed for shoes here. If "Dr. Venkman" wanted to think of him as a petulant teenager, he was welcome to.
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And then there was the kid. Weird, sulky little thing, looked like. What was with that little paintbrush-y tuft of hair sticking up near the top of his head? Was there some malevolent folicle spirit possessing the thing and holding on for dear life, or had the guy just never heard of a brush? He rolled his eyes a little bit, taking a little jump backwards into his chair and letting it spin around once before he stopped to face Jimmy.
"So, Jimmy the Improbably Named," he said, looking the Japanese kid up and down before opening the file and skimming over it one more time. He'd glanced at all his files briefly earlier, just enough to get the gist of things, but he hadn't really bothered to commit much to memory. "Big fan of mysteries, are you?" he asked to start things off, already sounding a little bored.
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"Yeah, I like mysteries. There's another guy named Doyle who writes them, you might remember." He stuck his hands in his pockets, still standing just inside the doorway. Even if this guy wasn't a total prick, he wasn't going to give them too much. "Anyway, what's the plan? You going to probe the innermost depths of my obviously troubled psyche or are you just going to sit there looking pretty? We're not exactly on my dime here. I imagine my parents are paying pretty handsomely for a residential facility of this, uh, magnitude."
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He lowered his arms and tilted his head toward Jimmy. "Relax. We'll get to your issues. You're in such a hurry to get out of this dump, then c'mon and sit down already," he said, gesturing for the kid to come to one of the chairs across from the desk. He would shoo Jimmy away from the couch if he tried to go for it. That was reserved for some of his more special patients. Namely the ones with breasts.
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Anyway, maybe it was time to start showing off a little. Shinichi did enjoy that quite a bit.
"Hmm. Well, let's see. Given the state of this room, the bottle would either be tucked away in a drawer somewhere or hidden in something that seemed otherwise innocuous--a statue, perhaps, but maybe that's a little too classy for you. Something you have easy access to, but we can't get at. At any rate, it'll probably be hard stuff, but it won't be cheap. If you're going to get plastered, it'll be good." He grinned. "Am I close, Dr. Venkman?"
He should have mentioned what kind of liquor he thought it was--gin or bourbon, probably--but he still didn't exactly like saying their names out loud. Too many bad memories.
With a shrug, the teenaged detective sat in the chair Venkman was pointing to. "Okay, I'm sitting. What've you got for me, Doctor? Narcissistic personality disorder, maybe?"
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"Whoa-hooo, slow down there, Tiger," said Venkman, raising an eyebrow and giving Jimmy a slightly patronizing smile. "You barely said a thing to me about yourself other than that your parents are rich and snobby enough to send you here, and that you like a good mystery." Just to emphasize that point, Venkman opened one of his desk drawers and withdrew the little bottle of good whiskey he kept there, plunking it down in front of him. "Now, this may come as a shock, so brace yourself, but the magic patient file—" He waved Jimmy's file up and down in front of him over the desk "—doesn't tell me everything I need to know. If it did, you'd already be popping pills like candy and dancing down the rainbow road home while singing 'I Get A Kick Out of You.'" It didn't matter that Venkman was definitely already forming a few ideas about Jimmy in his mind; Narcissistic wasn't a bad idea, and neither was Dissociative Fugue, given the stuff he remembered from the kid's file. What mattered was that he wasn't about to get muscled out of doing his job by a kid half his age and weight. No, they gotta be at least 21 to pull this kind of crap.
Pulling the file back over, he opened it up again, skimming down to the part about the kinds of delusions Jimmy had been having since the trigger incident. "So, let's try this again without jumpin' the starting gun, all right?" said Venkman, keeping up his smarmy little smile. "First, why don't you tell me about what you remember from just before your parents signed the check to send you here?"
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He remembered a lot.
But what did Jimmy remember?
"School, mostly. I'm living alone at the moment; my dad's filming in New Zealand right now and of course Mom went with him." That little tidbit he recalled from not-Ran's visit the other day. He...still didn't really want to think about it.
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"That's right, your dad makes the big movies, doesn't he?" said Venkman, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers idly. "Anything I've seen?"
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The detective tried to think of ways to get around the question without it being too obvious that he was doing exactly that, but he coudln't think of anything that would help. He was kind of screwed, wasn't he?
Time to come clean.
He raised his hands in the universally-accepted "I surrender" sort of way and gave Venkman what he hoped was a disarming smile. "Okay, you got me. I don't know. Though I'm sure you'll be prescribing me antipsychotics or whatever for admitting it, I'm not Jimmy Doyle. My name is Shinichi Kudou." Western name order seemed to be the way to go here. "All I know about 'Jimmy' is what I found out from my best friend--who I know as Ran Mouri--when she visited me on Sunday." He sighed. "Ridicule away, my good doctor."
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"Why ridicule?" he asked, waving a hand in the air casually. "I mean, you're obviously a smart kid. You notice little things, you know how to lie to people's faces and smile without batting an eye, and you pack a pretty good whollop of sarcasm. I can respect that." That was all true. If Venkman didn't know any better, he'd say this kid was an Asian version of a young him. If he weren't set on the whole detective thing, he would've made a decent con man. He wasn't here to lavish Jimmy with praises, however.
He leaned forward over the desk, propping up his chin in the hand he had put out. "So what reason would I have to disbelieve such a smart kid? You obviously know what you're talking about. And with that big brain old o' yours, you figured that the only thing that makes sense about your life is that you're a super detective stuck in the body of a seven-year-old by way of magic potion." He tilted his head a bit. "No, you're totally on the ball there, kiddo."
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And suddenly things went from "kind of awkward" to "well, I'm fucked."
Because Shinichi was pretty fucked.
They knew. They new about Conan, they knew about the drug. They probably knew about the Black Organization, too. Logically, it made sense. Shinichi had been Conan when he'd been inexplicably plucked from his bed and deposited at Landel's Institute. They'd obviously done something to reverse the effects of the apotoxin. Plus, there were several parallels to his own life and "Jimmy's." They'd done their research, and then some. He wouldn't have been surprised if they knew what kind of shampoo he used or his favorite kind of soccer ball.
Except he was surprised, enough so that his poker face cracked and he paled visibly. While his logical brain was going on and on about how, well, logical this all was, his much more primal senses were screaming for him to get the hell out of there.
But he couldn't. Venkman presented a challenge, and he couldn't just walk away.
"Yeah, well, when you say it like that..." he grumbled, trying desperately to save what shred of his dignity he had left.
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He opened his top drawer slightly, eye on his prescription pad.
"When you say it any way, Jimmy," he said, emphasizing the kid's name and sounding a little more serious now. "Plenty of people have had to deal with what you did, and they didn't go out of their minds or start going around playing detective boy. That's what we normal folk like to call, oh, I don't know, 'crazy.'"
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"You think I don't know that? I'd like to get out of here, Dr. Venkman. I really would. But I can't remember anything except 'playing detective boy.' Crazy or not, it's all I have. I can't even remember the real name of the girl who came to visit me on Sunday--someone who has been my closest friend since I was practically in diapers. You've got to cut me some slack here."
Okay, so it wasn't great, but Shinichi's mother had been a famous actress for several years. He liked to think that some of her talents were genetic. It wouldn't be winning him any Academy Awards any time soon, but the sentiment behind it had been genuine enough. Hopefully Venkman would believe him.
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"You give me the right picture, I give you the right meds and the right treatment," he finished. "Win, win. You get out in the time you're supposed to, I get a nice cushy bonus. Got it?"
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"Far be it from me from me to deny a man his Christmas bonus," he drawled sarcastically, "but aren't there other treatments to consider besides drugs? Ones that won't completely mess with my brain's chemistry and put me in a medically-induced fog?"
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He opened Jimmy's file again, writing down some notes. "But. I'm not a completely heartless bastard all the time. Just most of the time," he said, finishing his writing with a definitive dot on the end of his note. "You seem like a smart kid, so I'll throw you a bone. No drugs to start. We'll let the nurses do their thing. See if you can adjust and start remembering things on your own. But if things don't improve much by next time—" Venkman pulled his prescription pad out of his drawer, waving it a bit for Jimmy to see. "Well, doctor's orders."