"We came as quickly as we could, Doctor, is Alex going to be okay?" My mother asked as she and my father walked briskly, almost running down the corridor alongside an elderly man in a white lab coat.
"Slow down, just slow down a moment, Mrs. Simpleton, Mr. Simpleton; Alex is just fine, well, physically, anyway." The Doctor replied with a sort of confused smile on his face.
"Whoa, Doc, what do you mean… physically?" My father asked, a concerned expression crossing his face as he reached out and held his hand up to the doctor as if halting him in his tracks.
"Well, when he came, by way of ambulance, his apparent symptoms were that of someone who'd just been crushed under a mountain of rocks. But upon examination, we found absolutely nothing physically wrong with him at all. His skeletal structure is perfect, muscular tissue was extremely tensed and spasming, but otherwise perfectly fine. We even tried a placebo pain killer, which is to say…" The doctor was cut off by my mother who carried an irritated tone in her voice.
"…a fake shot, okay, moving on, what's wrong with my son?"
"Well, Mrs. Simpleton, frankly, your son seems to have deluded himself into believing that he was injured, and extremely badly too. Some of my case studies from med school exhibited what we call psychotropic physiological stress disorder, which, in layman's terms means that, the patient's belief that he's in pain is so great that his body actually buys the deception and the portion of the brain which allows us to feel pain kicks into a mode of overdrive that becomes difficult to shut off. Pain killers don't work; pressure points don't work; only a psychotropic drug will overcome the quote, unquote: pain."
"So… Alex believed himself into the ER by way of ambulance?" My father asked, his voice ridden with disbelief and a sense of absurdity, to which my mother replied with a glare of her own disbelief at his tone.
"Sure seems that way. We tried small doses of pain killers to no effect, we tried the placebo pain killer, and then we tried a simple sedative. Nothing except the sedative worked." The doctor replied with a sigh. "My honest, professional opinion is that you make a follow up with a psychiatric evaluator, who will be able to better diagnose the cause, and then come up with a treatment plan." That was the last day of my young life, as far as I can recall. My mother being a state representative, and my father being a well known car salesman in the area, my life ended that day. After all, highly public people like them can't very well have a "troubled child" like me around and maintain their prestigious careers, right? Well, right or wrong, that's how they saw it.
From that day forward, for two years and some change, I had to have a hospice change my clothes and turn my drug ridden, comatose body over in bed so I wouldn't get bed sores. They kept me so heavily medicated that it hurt to even think. What brought it on? Heh, would you believe that it was an anime? A simple little cartoon that I believed in so much, that it damn near killed me. I'd spent more than five hundred THOUSAND dollars on collectables, custom replicas, and other paraphernalia. I'd watched every episode, twice, and some of them three times. I owned every manga, I had every action figure, every doll, I was arguably the biggest fan of the show in history. But I hated Sailor Moon for what that show did to me. I blamed it for everything that went wrong in my life after that day. If I'd known then what I know now though… well, that road less traveled.
Anyway, after I was cleared, I tested out of high school and entered college early. By my eighteenth birthday, I had already graduated from three correspondence courses with a 4.0 grade point average in each and a master's degree to hang on my wall for each. I began working for myself, inventing new technologies for everyday use by everyday people, things like a completely programmable oven and range that would allow the user to program specific temperatures at specific times for specific durations. Sounds overly complicated doesn't it? For most it is, but for the handicapped and disabled? It's another step towards independence. 'The Simple Stove' was an instant success and made me a small fortune which I then turned around and applied towards further inventions. I had started work on actual space aged laser weaponry at one point… but after a test fire burned a hole through my house, the backyard fence, and the neighbor's dog… well, that project was scrapped.
So, I went back to my roots and set to work on what would be my greatest invention of all time: A car engine that ran solely on organic and inexpensive fluids. Rubbing Alcohol was used for the fuel, processed vegetable oil was used for lubrication, and liquid nitrogen was used for the liquid cooling systems. The project was lofty, I know that from the off, but it was the kind of achievement that made a man go down in history. Not that I really cared much for fortune or fame, every time my name was mentioned in the newspaper it was dragged through all seven circles of libel hell, I guess I just wanted to prove to my parents that I wasn't a broken child.
Ever since my episode, they'd never looked at me as a son. My mother didn't speak to me at all and refused to even say my name. When she spoke to my father about me, I was referred to as 'the boy' or 'THAT boy' if she was angry. My father was better about it, but not by much. He spoke to me and called me by name, but refused to show any signs of affection, treating me more like a room mate and eventually a friend, but never again was I 'his son'. It hurt, a lot. And admittedly, I just wanted it to all go away more times than I could count. Still, they never pushed me out of the home, and I stuck around, hoping that I'd eventually earn their love back, but when my 'Simple Stove' and its success didn't do the trick… I began losing hope. This car was my last chance for redemption in my eyes; so naturally, I poured my heart and soul into it.
I never saw the ensuing accident coming, much less the results of said accident…