New York Presbyterian Hospital (Aaron)

"The hell it is", he muttered under his breath. With a sudden burst of emotion and energy, he sat up straight and looked around, just to make sure nobody was around. For a moment, he thought back about the last time someone had tried to blow up his head from the inside or tried to brainwash some nurse into poisoning his food. Surely that demented former therapist of his would gleefully go to great lengths to get back at him for having spurned her, sleazy shrew that she was. In his precarious current state, Aaron reasoned, it would be all too easy for her to have her way with him, maybe even something worse.

"Damn, I've become weak", he hissed through his teeth. He hated it every bit as much as he always had. But had he any choice? It wasn't like they would simply sign a forged release paper, open the door, let him rampage through town, hoping for the best. He had made it a habit of fighting his weakness. Defeat had a familiar taste to it, though it aggravated him mightily and agitated him so much, he'd rather lose a million times over than to simply surrender, like probably everybody else expected him to do.

"I'll be damned if you ever see me give up. Any of you. Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me." Aaron realized he was very upset, and he knew what was coming. He braced himself for 'the itch'. And then his attention turned to those damn bandages.

Oh, the bandages. He didn't know what was worse: that he could never quite scratch through them or that he might eventually succeed in doing so. And always the smell, that smell like sulfide -or was it brimstone?-. No. Only in Hell do they have real brimstone, the one that really sears your lungs. But when you sear your lungs, you have to be careful, because the customer might not eat them, and you know how the customer is always right, even when the flabby, sweaty bastard is plainly wrong, he's just too much of an idiot to notice. But an angry client will talk to one of those Colombian drug lords and overdose your ass with black powder. Powder goes well on your face, if you face the book and look him in the eye and say that you're cooler, with cooler colors that rip the flesh from a squirrel's body. A body so limp it looks like booty or boot camp. Was that important, to root for the boot of a camp of tramps?

Aaron went on and on for ten straight minutes. His hand was still sore. But he noticed something had been missing all along -noise. In particular, a certain girl's noise.

He prickled up his ears. Would that girl still be howling stupidly or did they finally manage to knock some sense into her? Maybe just out of sheer morbid curiosity, or perhaps to at least be able to determine whether we was going to have to put up with her piercing shrieks some more, he wondered what might have become of her. He rose up from the bed, looked around once more to make sure no one -or no weird device- was monitoring his every move and reached for the doorknob, touched it, then changed his mind and headed straight for the bathroom.

He stared in disbelief as his jaw dropped. He started to take several, staggering steps back and away from the apparition. His chest was heavy, and he started to hiperventilate. With a forceful grimace he shut his eyes.
"Not there, not there, that's just not there."
He was shivering. He could not stop the scratching. He couldn't even pay much attention to his tic. Right now, he wished with all his heart and soul this was just a really vivid, bad dream he was having. But as he tripped while backing up, he fell on his back and felt a sharp wave of pain wash over him. Surely you can't feel pain in your sleep, can you?, he thought.
Still not wanting to open his eyes, he addressed the creature in a trembling, near-hysterical voice: "Wh-what do y-you want from me? What the hell happened to your face? Wha-what are you?". He couldn't really find the words, that's how scared he was. Could any words really save him from whatever horror this creature was?
"Tell them to stop. You're not a cop. It's over the top. Top of my head, but I'm not dead. I don't suppose you want the bomb inside my head to kill us both, do you? So please, don't burst my head open. Please, PLEASE!!!"

Regardless of the bright scenery, regardless of the all-encompassing shades of green that seemed intent on wrapping themselves around his mind like a visual mantra, Aaron still harboured an uneasy feeling, further reinforced -though not caused by- his aching hand. He just knew he had no defense against such sophisticated, untimely, and twisted assaults on him. He felt the need to tell somebody, but it could not be just anyone. This person would be hard to find, as it was necessary that they could find his story believable. Plus he needed that person to be willing and able to help him out. Was there really someone -besides himself- who could give him THAT much? And if so, at how high a price?

Oh, but first things first. Something had to be done about that hand. And it had better be quick. Now, that sounded like an easier task to focus on.

Aaron started to search the room for some clean bandages that they might have left for him to apply. It doesn't take a genius to clean the wound and wrap it in cloth or something, he thought, and further reasoned that, since it was such a persistent tic, the nurses should have figured out by now that he might as well take care of himself on that score at least. "Now, where is that damn gauze!? And where the hell is the alcohol?"

He tried to mask his disquiet with his usual display of tired irritation: "Honestly, child. Does it look like I have a choice? Let's just...let's just get it over with, ok?"

Did she deserve such treatment? No...well, maybe just a little. After all, she neither gives him a way out nor encourages him to find one himself. She's part of the soft power that keeps me in this gilded cage, he thought bitterly.

Hopefully that did the trick and got the nurse at least somewhat annoyed. The least he needed right now was to look pitiable. On the other hand, wasn't his admission of 'choicelessness' (for lack of a better term) anything if not pitiable? He hoped she wouldn't pick up on that. He hoped he sounded grumpy enough, angry enough, like a snarling dog. He damn felt like one, anyway, and for a number of reasons.

"Well, seeing as I am in a hospital, I believe the good doctor is more entitled than Yours Truly to answer that question. I keep wondering when his opinion will finally match mine...
Now, I would engage in further complaining, but it would be a waste of my time. Instead, how about you be a darling and take me out for a walk, hmm?"

He gave her a defeated, despondent grimace, and after a sigh, said in a half-whisper:
"No choice for the toothless lion with sharply dull fangs and gigantic tiny teeth, is there? Same thing that happens to all of those plidgery bobblescaughfers who mengaddle trumbully".
He squinted at her, as if trying to make out facial gestures.