Day 48: Doctor's Office 2 (Dr. Stein) [Fourth Shift]

[drheadscrew]

Stein sighed, looking down at the mess on his desk. Flecks of tobacco and torn bits of paper littered the top of it, some of it getting between the keys of his computer. The filter was still squeezed between his fingertips

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[drheadscrew]

The smile on Stein's face subtly changed as it became a little more genuine - though perhaps the nurse saw it as unhelpful insubordination, Tyler's talk-back was only amusing to the doctor. Well, for now it was.

"Please, have a seat," he told the boy, not seeming to notice his quite obvious panic. He indicated the single, metal chair - with stitched-up cushion - that sat by its lonesome in the front half of the office. A welcoming place to sit, it was not, but there weren't any others - the only other chair was the wheeled one Stein was sitting on.

As he waited for the boy to get seated, if not comfortable, he reached up to the screw in his head and gave it a few twists. The clicking, ratcheting clank of it filled the silence, a sound not unlike the turning of a socket wrench.

If it was a theater prop, it was a very elaborate one.

[drheadscrew]

Interesting. It was hard to tell if young Tyler was fascinated or horrified. Possibly both. Well, at least he wasn't screaming and trying to claw his way out of the office door like Florian had.

"Only if your wish is an interesting clicking noise and a bit more focus," he said with a chuckle. Then his eyes flashed up to the boy's with a gleam of warning. "I'd kindly request that you don't touch it though."

It seemed the boy didn't want to sit yet, but Stein wasn't going to make an issue of it. If he wanted to stand the whole time, so be it.

"As your nurse mentioned, I'm Dr. Franken Stein, but just Dr. Stein or Stein will be fine," he said pleasantly. "And what would you prefer I call you? Tyler? Peter?"

[cmdr_exposition]

Daniel Hayes had just come as close as he yet had to forgetting his resolve to wait and watch in favor of assaulting his nurse. One lunchtime had simply not been enough to bring Zelnick up to speed, so he'd intended to stick by his captain as long as possible. Unfortunately, that hadn't been long.

This talk about "therapy" had him deeply suspicious, as well, after all he'd heard. But once again, no matter how much he might hate the idea, there was nothing to be done for it but to stay quietly alert.

What he saw when the door opened, though, seriously strained his resolve. There was some kind of bolt stuck clear through this person's head, like nothing he could have expected to see in the daytime! And, when combined with just how sick he was of acting like nothing was wrong, this was just too much.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded.

[drheadscrew]

Luckily, Stein was good at dealing with unruly patients - or test subjects, or students, whatever the case might be - so his cheerful expression didn't waver in the slightest at the man's entrance.

"What's what?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. "This is therapy, and I'm you're therapist today. You can call me Dr. Stein."

As opposed to Professor Stein or Franken Stein or just plain Stein. Not that the titles mattered much to him - it was easier not to give them a choice. This session was about the patients, after all, not him.

"And what would you like me to call you?"

[cmdr_exposition]

"No," said Hayes, his voice only slightly shaky-- this person should be dead, not smiling. With luck, the human body could survive a lot of grotesque injuries, but he was pretty sure that hardware through the head wasn't usually one of them.

There wasn't even any blood.

"No. No. Enough. You're not going to pretend that this isn't happening. What the hell is wrong with your head?" His voice rose a little in pitch over the course of that last sentence, but he hardly noticed that through his focus on there being a-- now that he looked harder-- giant screw through the "therapist's" head.

[drheadscrew]

Dead? Now that was just silly; the screw in his head had been installed with surgical precision. By himself, of course. And it had been done long ago, like the stitches across his face and the rest of his body, so there was no reason it should still be bleeding.

"Oh, you mean this?" he asked, his smile widening to a grin. It was much less comforting. He reached up and tapped the over-sized screw head. "It's definitely there."

He chuckled in a manner that could only be described as "unstable" before he calmed down again, grin settling into an amused smile.

"Ah, but we're here to look at what's wrong with your head, not mine, Mr. Abrams." A motion of his hand indicated the empty chair set before the doctor. "Why don't you have a seat."