The lights were beginning to flicker on and off, now, as the two sat there on the floor of the elevator. House had gotten comfortable but stretching his legs out in front of him, his cane sitting next to his legs, and he looked forward with such a concentrated stare that it began to give the other a headache. He reached into his pocket and took out a clear, orange bottle with which he was far too familiar. He shook it, and listened, deducing that he had about two left. Hesitantly but with such a thrust that it must have been forced, he swallowed the pill, and smirked to himself. "So," He said loudly, causing the young girl to jump slightly. "You still haven't answered my question. How do you know I had an infarction?" He asked her, and looked over. She was still hunched over and tracing on the floor, her tongue hanging out in concentration, and she seemed a little upset that he had interrupted her.
"It's easy," She said simply, and she sighed somewhat, now tracing what looked like a person. "An infarction is just a blood clot. Blood clots prevent the blood, the blood to get through to an area, obviously. You have muscle death because of the blood c-clot," She continued, and House just watched, almost fascinated. Almost. "Not a broken bone—no cast. Plus, no one buys a cast for a cane. Cane for a cast." She blinked a few times, and let out a small sigh.
"Could have been a pain in my foot. Plantar—."
"No. No foot pain," Jinny responded, and she continued to frown down at her person. Nothing could break her gaze with what she was tracing. "Too much pressure on your foot w-when you w-walk. Pain hits you when you step on your foot fully, meaning the pressure…goes up your leg," She said simply, and she shrugged. "Easy," She concluded, and she went back to tracing shapes, the tip of her index finger now a good shade of gray from all the dirt she was collecting, though she didn't seem to care that much. "My foster dad is a retired surgeon. Was," She corrected herself, and she pushed back some of her greasy hair, nodding and nodding, and she didn't seem to stop. "He has medical journals—I read them, I remember stuff," She continued, and she sighed. She went to move to lie on her stomach, wincing as she did, but for no particular reason. She just continued to trace.
House blinked a couple of times, and couldn't help but wonder why she knew all of this. And then he began to piece together what was all about her. "Look at me," He said to her, and she didn't move. He decided to try again. "Jinny, over here, look at me," He said, in the most non-threatening way, but she just ignored him. He saw her glance over once, and he sighed. "The lack of eye contact, the ability to retain information like that, the fact that you're in the foster system…" He smirked to himself. "You're a High-Functioning Autistic kid, aren't you?" He asked, and he saw the smile on her face as she nodded a few times. "See? That wasn't that impressive," He growled, the smile disappearing.
"Yes," Jinny replied, and she lifted her leg up and down behind her, her heel sometimes touching her thigh as she did. "I did not go to medical school for fifteen years," She replied matter-of-factly, and she continued to move her leg beat by beat, never really interrupting the beat. "Four plus four plus two fours equals sixteen years…" She mumbled mostly to herself, trying to calculate about how many years he'd actually been in medical school. "It doesn't take autism to retain information like that. W-would that make all doctors autistic?" She asked, but it seemed to be a rhetorical question, since she didn't even glance in his direction. Her speech was strained, like she was trying so hard to speak correctly, and she looked pretty proud of herself. She erased what she'd just drawn on the floor, sat up, and began to try and tug off her bracelet. She waited for House to stop her, but he didn't, which left her with a braceletless wrist. She stopped when the lights flickered off for a while, but then back on again, the buzzing of the fluorescents filling the silence in the room once more.
House found himself wanting to know more. Not a lot of autistic children were full of this much speech, and he knew he'd found a medical gem. Not to mention she had a high level of intelligence that wasn't uncommon, just not commonly spread. He frowned at her still, chuckling when she made a very good point about retaining information. He watched her struggle with her bracelet as long as he could, and he finally did sigh loudly. "You know, you'll be needing that when this thing gets fixed, so don't…" He didn't see the point in continuing, she understood. He glanced down at the bracelet, then, wanting to know more. "What put you in the hospital?" He asked her.
Without hesitation, she came back with her own question. "Why do you wanna know?"
House wasn't surprised. "I guess I'm just curious."
"I was curious too. I f-figured it out. You're not dumb," Jinny said simply, undoing and redoing her bracelet once she had figured out to. She felt his eyes on her still, and she wished he would stop, but she didn't blame him. She was sometimes a curious thing.
House chuckled. "Fair enough," He said, and he began to mentally deduce why she may be in here. "Your bracelet says you're in the east wing of the psychiatric unit, which is the long-term wing, so you're not a first-timer, because you're not insane," He said to her, sighing. "You're in foster care, which means your parents messed you up big time when you were younger," He continued, and he thought about it for a moment, sighing softly. "Your obvious choice of suicide is to cut yourself, but none of those scars are fresh at all. I'd say it's been about two years since you last cut your wrists, anyway, who knows how many you have on you," He said with a frown.
"You have three questions," Jinny said to him with a small shrug.
House nodded slowly, thinking hard about these questions. "And one can't be 'Why are you in the hospital?', can it?" He asked, and she shook her head over and over again, leading him to nod. He leaned against the elevator door, bouncing his cane on the dusty ground, and he ruffled up his hair somewhat as he considered three questions. They'd obviously be questions he could deduce from, and not just random questions that could go anywhere. No, those were questions Chase asked. He looked down at her, finally coming up with a question. "What happened with your parents?" He finally asked, looking nothing but curious as he looked down at her.
Jinny thought about this question for a moment. "Mom died. D-dad's in jail," She said simply, and when he pressed for no, she shook her head. "No, no, you asked what happened. That's what happened," She said, all the while still shaking her head back and forth. She could almost hear him thinking, and it made her smirk to know that he was having such a difficult time with all of this, while it took her all of three minutes to figure him out. His AMA page didn't hurt, though.
House racked his brain for another question. For the purposes of this thought process, he was going to say that her father was in jail for the same reason her mother was dead. He sighed, and he looked around the room to think, wishing he had his large ball to toss around. And then it hit him. He was missing General Hospital. "What's another one of your diagnoses—besides autism? A psychiatric diagnosis," He said to her quickly, not wanting to make that mistake. Not now while she was still ahead.
Jinny thought about this answer for a while. On one hand, she wanted to tell him the vaguest disorder—unipolar disorder—but then on the other hand, she wanted to give him some kind of clue. She let out a very frustrated sigh, and she laid down on her stomach once more, twirling her bracelet in the air above her as she thought about her answer. "Generalized Anxiety Disorder," She responded with a small chuckle. It was not the most vague, but it may as well have been, and this was what made the smirk appear on her thick lips.
House rolled his eyes. "Isn't that a staple for you people?" He asked rudely, leaving her to giggle. He shook his head. "Fine, fine, that was your answer…" He said to her. All of this was obvious. She obviously had panic attacks, though. Could she have blacked out, and attacked someone out of fear? Murder obviously ran through her veins. That would be the most interesting answer, he thought to himself, and he chuckled. She seemed the wound-up type who would easily snap, and would definitely have the means to do so. "Alright, I have my last question. Have you ever--."
"No," Jinny replied firmly. "You already asked three questions." When House went to protest, which she knew he would, she interrupted him. "My parents, my diagnosis, and the fact that it can't be…you can't ask why I'm here," She said quickly and very proudly, considering she had just made him lose. "My game, my rules. You're playing my game, y-you're following my rules," She said to him simply, and would not believe anything else he said. She looked to the corner of her eye and saw him smirking, despite his protesting. She knew he would like her. "But you wanna know why I'm here, still?" She asked him, and she didn't have to look over to see him nod. She began to write something on the ground, her body rocking back and forth slightly as she did, and she sighed slightly. "Making threats is wrong, but I made a th-threat. At my school. Told someone I would kick their ass," She said with a chuckle, and she shook her head. "So they took me here, for the fifth time. Not west-wing psych either. I've been here a month."
"They didn't arrest you?" House asked, and saw her smile broadly.
"Y-you should know as well as I that us handicaps are a-almost immune from the law," Jinny said with a laugh, and House even joined in. As their laughter began to wind down, the lights flickered off for a while, and never really did come back at all.
After a moment, Jinny's breaths were deep but not quick, so House could only conclude she was preventing another panic attack by taking control. "Ooh, suck it up, it's just the dark," He said to her with a roll of his eyes, and then he closed his eyes. "Close your eyes. You'll damage them if you try and see in the darkness like this," House advised, and heard a very stuffy sigh from across the elevator.
"I know."