It didn't take long for them to realize there was something in your head. Not just that small brain of yours but something controlling it. It took less than a day or so to know something was genuinely wrong with you. Neither of them had seen how you acted without a script- even the nights you would spend with Dirk you would do your best to clamp down and behave the "right way" Instead what they saw was an angry, erratic man, who yelped in pain when he had the "wrong" thoughts. They didn't see the TV personality you tried to paint yourself as but a sweaty, disheveled man in pain. You'd start a sentence only to yelp and immediately stop, and when pried, you'd explain that happens a lot when you go off script. There were some thoughts you weren't allowed to have. Dave said he'd seen it before, or that's what you remember hearing, and after he said that he started to treat you different. Instead of seeing you as a threat to his family, you were someone he needed to help. Even if it were just temporary.
You lived for three days knowing there was something in your head for the first time in your life, and the weirdest part was that when you really thought about it, you could actually feel it. It turned out a sharp electric shock to the spine any time you had a thought that "wasn't allowed" isn't normal, that's actually like, super not normal! Who knew. It took three days to convince someone named John Harley to help you out, as he apparently had a history with these sort of things.
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"JUST GET IT OUT OF ME." The words came out slurred and shrill, unfocused with the amount of alcohol in your system. You sat on your knees, your head in Dirks lap as he pet your hair, eyebrows worried together in concern. Your entire outfit was covered in dirt from sitting outside a trailer- never in your life did you think you'd ever get this dirty, let alone such a dirty surgery. It made your skin crawl. Repeatedly, they'd talk about you in hush panicked tones, about how John was able to push through it but how scared they were of making mistakes with you. They argued back and forth who should hold the scalpel. "DAMN IT WHAT IN GODS NAME IS TAKING SO LONG?! YOU'RE TORTURING ME!!!!"
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The alcohol only helped so much, it was after the second incision you passed out. From the pain and the anxiety, it felt like it had practically short circuited your brain. You could still feel every little movement back there, the shift of your skin, the fingers prying into the wound. Before you went out cold you started panting, crying out in pain, barely lucid. Dirk pet his thumb over the bridge of your nose, Dirk kept his hands in your hair. Dirk felt so far away from his body that he was almost convinced it was all just a dream.
Johns hands worked fast, but he definitely wasn't delicate, he hadn't had to be when he did his own. While he loved to spare the guy of the same pain, it's a bit hard to do untrained surgery without prior experience. He wasn't a trained surgeon, he was a shaky schizophrenic with a nicotine dependency. He's certain he'd never felt as small and helpless as he did covered in his nephews blood, what the fuck was he doing if it wasn't preparing to help this kid out? Did he really think that he was just going to go down the same route Jade did all willy nilly? The thought that Jake might run away like he did felt like a delusional fantasy, a projection of a life he still wasn't entirely sure he was happy with, he never once thought it might become an actual reality. He chewed on his lip in efforts to keep himself focused.
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The recovery wasn't pretty. Nothing about this was pretty, and all of it was one blow to your ego after another. Over night you felt like you had gone from a beautiful princess in her tower to a peasant living in squalor. They left you to stay in John's trailer as you recovered, leaving you to your health as they all speculated on what to do with you and what CrockerCorp might send their way if they were ever found to be housing you. Your thoughts never really felt clear, left to try and sort together everything in bed, it sort of felt like you were going insane. Like they had removed a chunk of your brain, a familiar part of yourself, a second limb you relied on, and now you were free falling, unable to figure out how to let yourself have your own thoughts without redirections or corrections. Dirk had to be the one to remind you to shower and eat, you were hardly able to do it yourself either.
Not because your body didn't let you but because it felt like you didn't know how- you didn't know how to manage anything you were supposed to do. Even before, most people at CC would do it for you, but without that, and without the chip helping you remember when to, you felt like you had your puppet threads snipped. Left to rot on a bed. Eventually, they had a gift for you, a small hand held device you could access the internet on. They, of course, would be keeping an eye on everything you said, posted, in case you were to contact CC out of habit. But that didn't end up bothering you much, if anything, it was a welcome familiarity. You had a hard time recognizing when they were or were not being nice to you, but that was a form of love you could recognize.
You wonder if there's been any new Kirby announcements.
