"I never wanted to be pathetic. When I had my accident, well I was all coked up, but I don't think that really had anything to do with it, I was watching one of those animal cruelty commercials. You ever watch those? Those poor cats, they keep those dogs in small, filthy cages, puppy mills, I saw them hit this poor cow with a skid steer, I think it was a skid steer. A forklift? Maybe it was a forklift," Drug Abusing Paranoid can't stand silence and House craves it.
He constantly picks at his teeth. Some kind of boring compulsion. House never liked psychoses. They were so easy to diagnose. Even his hallucinations are ultimately boring. He was so sure that they had something to do with head trauma, the Vicodin and alcohol, something he had a silver bullet for.
"Hey! Pill time! You want me to get yours? They keep saying no, but they'll say yes eventually," you'd think it was Christmas, House is spared further disjointed rambling about George W. Bush and puppy mills as Drug Abusing Paranoid practically sprints toward the Nurse's Station.
House hates the Thorazine, it doesn't really work and his leg hurts. They cut back his Tylenol 3 (no Vicodin) allowance to 25 milligrams a day , in order to accommodate it. He's noticed that Amber doesn't come around as much, the pain distracts him. Mayfield distracts him. He finds himself wanting to hear about 'that night' from Drug Abusing Paranoid. He doesn't care, but his curiosity has been peaked. He's reminded of the Schizophrenic Mother that wasn't. It was like trying to learn a new language. It brought him joy. He didn't realize it at the time, if he had, he might have laughed at John Henry Giles. Who needs a wife? Who needs friends when you can lose yourself in a puzzle like that? When people don't know what might be real and what might not be, it makes every lie that much more layered. Every statement is a shoddy wooden construct, lashed together with chicken wire. House can't help but cut a wire here, cut a wire there, and stand back to watch it fall apart. He's one of those people now.
While House sits there and feels scratchy, sweaty, and most of all in horrible pain from the effects of his opiate withdrawal, Drug Abusing Paranoid bounces back toward him, happily doped up Valium, Tegretol, and Zyprexa. He holds House's pills triumphantly.
"I told that bitch, I told her we were bros and your leg was broken. You can't just get up and walk around," bros, Wilson, pain.
Why wasn't he tearing this kid apart? He had one overweight lifer on the floor in tears on his second day at Mayfield. He told him that the people outside of his apartment, the ones that watched him, had gotten tired of him, bored. They mostly made fun of him now, sent in their surveillance tapes to America's Most Boring Delusional Cutters. He craves silence. With Drug Abusing Paranoid, nothing registers, but at least he can play half a game of chess before losing interest and going over to ask the nurses if America's Got Talent is on at ten in the morning on a Sunday.
Eventually the bored Psychiatrist is going to zero in on his childhood. Most shrinks can't help themselves. He's told exactly one person the truth, and she was a pregnant teenage Jesus freak obsessed with rooms. He knows who he is. He knows what his problem is, at least he thinks he does. He misses not being certain.
This is his version of Hell, if there was such a thing. Locked in a place that doesn't have subscriptions to medical journals, having to share the TV, forever damned, forced to voluntarily read Harry Potter books.
He can't get away from hospitals. Everything seems familiar; the antiseptic smell, the nurse's pink scrubs, the harsh florescent light, but the pace is more languid. People don't get better. He sees a syringe and every part of it is still real to him. He can guess how much fluid is displaced, while sitting across the room, when someone pushes the plunger down on a syringe. He can look at someone's pills and immediately know how many milligrams the crazy is on. He had these horrible moments, before he came, when he thought it was all leaving him. It might have been better if it had, he's lost his mind without really losing it.
Bulimic Obsessive Compulsive is fun, because House can throw a piece of trash on the floor and she has to pick it up. He likes to fold a piece of paper a hundred times and makes confetti to throw on the floor. She knows, she glares at him, but she still has to clean it all up. It really is a minor amusement, not really interesting at all. She comes over and sits down with him and Drug Abusing Paranoid. In his head, Drug Abusing Paranoid is quite the Lothario. He's noticed something interesting, almost like an animal mating ritual. They look at each other through hooded eyes, their body language is visibly agitated. Nobody says hello. He misses having a staff and Wilson to deal with these random personal interactions.
"You like videogames? My mom sent me a PSP," that gets his attention.
"You're thirty. You're mom still sends you toys to help you make friends?"
"Fuck you! I'm twenty eight!"
At Mayfield, hostility is usually met with more hostility. That might be why he tolerates Drug Abusing Paranoid, nothing registers. An older orderly is already cursing to himself and beginning to trudge closer to them. They were interrupting him, he was about ready to go out for his twelfth smoke break of the day. House can smell it, the tobacco smells wonderful, even mixed with the scent of Degree and Aqua Velva.
"Guys, guys, don't fight. PSP! What games?" Drug Abusing Paranoid loves anything new.
"We can take turns playing Vice City Stories, I'm already up to the part where the coked up guys attack you with those suicide bombs," she pulls it out of her pocket and they huddle around it like pioneers trapped in a blizzard.
"Greg gets to play first," House is convinced that Bulimic Obsessive Compulsive would have turned out fine if she'd had friends in high school.
He likes to play video games because he can let his mind wander. He can focus on more than one thing. The pain retreats to a dull ache, and he's only partially focused on how pathetic this situation is, how pathetic he is.
"I need ice tea," they've never had ice tea and Bulimic Obsessive Compulsive will not shut up about it.
"When Wilson comes to visit me, if I tell him to get you a large regular ice tea with two lemons on the side, from Chick Filet, will you shut up about it now?"
Wilson visits. He doesn't want him to visit, but Wilson comes every week. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like how it seems as though it isn't really them. When he was in rehab, it didn't seem like that. Of course, he wasn't really clean when he was in rehab and that probably had something to do with it. It definitely did.
"I can't promise that," at least she's honest.
"You're friend will bring me ice tea? He's pretty hot. I love his brown eyes."
Bulimic Obsessive Compulsive is quite the little slut. Although, she'd probably be the perfect woman for Wilson. Not even he could fix that hot mess. They'd be together forever.
"He tends to go for sane chicks, you know, he also prefers ladies who stay fit by working out and through proper diet, he steers clear of the ones who puke up their meals. It might be a muscle tone thing, or a yellow teeth thing, I'm not sure," the first part is definitely a lie.
Bulimic Obsessive Compulsive snatches the PSP back, but she doesn't storm off. Something is off. He can't tell if what he said was witty or just cruel. He was aiming for both. He likes Bulimic Obsessive Compulsive because when he says something like that to her, he can never gauge her reaction beforehand. It is almost like playing Russian roulette.
"Yeah. You're so much better than I am," she's sulky today.
"Don't listen to him Melissa. I'd fuck you, I'd tear that shit up," Drug Abusing Paranoid can always be called upon to lighten the mood in an incredibly creepy way.
House laughs. It feels unnatural to him.
"How sweet," he's come to hate Amber's voice, her hair, even her lipstick.
She just appears. He can't diagnose a trigger. He can't find a pattern. His eyes widen slightly, ignored, as his table mates continue their socially retarded flirting.
"They're not going to be able to get rid of me. If you don't figure this out, they're going send you to a place where the people are even more annoying," she sounds triumphant, is he triumphant?
He understands the significance. Wilson dead girlfriend is haunting him, he understands the significance of that. It isn't really her. She's all of his fears, everything he knows, everyone he knows.
"Dr. Williams probably doesn't even want you to get better. He's probably looking forward to your sessions. It's mommy-daddy-best friend issues heaven in there."
"Williams isn't that ambitious."
One of the only good things about being stuck in the nut house is that talking to your imaginary best friend barely registers with anyone.