The Disability Chat

Cricket

I didn't notice anyone new was in the room until he looked at something that wasn't his hand. A good morning appeared on the paper then, so I followed his gaze over my shoulder to the doctor people standing there cheerily. I had to wonder what the fluid bags actually did.

I was going to where now?

. . . Ah, aye. I thought I remembered that word.

Soon enough I was in another office type thing. With a fancy chair.

Dr. House:

I walked into my office with a rather skinny file in hand. Skinny files were unusual in teenagers, as they typically had seen several doctors in the course of their lives... though I'd been informed that working here I'd probably see some very bare bones files, since not everyone came from universes with operating medical institutions. This was one of those files.

I'd glanced through it again before walking in. Apparently he'd been left profoundly deaf after a gunshot had gone off too close to his head. ...Which...Sounded quite honestly, like it would entail reconstructive surgery at the least.

"Hello Cricket!" I greeted him as I walked in, extending a hand for a handshake. "I'm Dr. House... And, we'll probably be seeing a lot of one another for the next few weeks or months or... whatever." I smiled. Not creepily. Just a "pleasure to meet you" kind of smile.

Cricket

I quickly read the words off the page and then noticed his hand out there in the air. Funny. My first thought was that I was usually the one offering enthusiastic handshakes, but then I realised it'd been a long while since I'd offered one at all. I hadn't met too many new people in a long while except here, and frankly . . . here, I didn't quite feel all that enthusiastic or talkative. I gave a little nod to myself as if deciding it was okay and grasped his hand and shook it once, inspecting his smile behind my hair. It didn't seem anything but friendly. But then, everyone seemed so friendly here. It was odd. No place could have that many friendly people in it.

Dr. House:

"Lovely to meet you." I stated, sitting down on my stool and plopping the file on a countertop. "Have a seat." I invited him, indicating to the big chair in the room. "I know that you've probably gotten these like... fifteen times already, but I have to ask a few quality of life questions before we get into the nitty gritty of all of this... figuring out how to best fix the problem. Alright?" I asked.

The quality of life questions often kind of irritated me too. I mean, quite frankly, being profoundly deaf CERTAINLY effects your daily routine, and your ability to do things and... would easily cause problems and all of that... and clearly people would like it to be taken care of as much as possible.

Depending on damage though, it tended to be more a question of: 'how much can we fix reasonably to maximise the quality of the rest of your life?'. And of course... reasonable was another...ambiguous term. Because that changed for many people. Reasonable to one wasn't reasonable to another... and that often made things hard.

Cricket

Oh bother, more questions. Always questions. Why questions. At least he acknowledged that I'd seen too many questions, or I'd have questioned him about why he didn't question all the other doctors about the questions they'd already asked me. That information seemed to get around anyhow.

I stepped over and simply plopped back into the chair, giving a nod.

Dr. House:

"Alright. Here we go. Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to go ahead and skip over a few of the more obvious ones." I told him, getting out a pen. "So. To what lengths are you willing to go to help us help you? ...Basically, are you cool with undergoing surgery or going to a bunch of linguistic therapy classes or... all of that or none of that? If we need something that seems totally out of left field, are you alright with that?" I'd learned that often with a lot of the younger patients, being more casual can be a lot less... intimidating. If I needed my technical vocabulary... I could get it out. But, no need to force him to wiki everything I said. And I mean, I didn't want to scare the kid. We were here to help... not to terrify.

Cricket

I didn't mind this one as much as the other ones. That didn't mean I liked him, but he was better so far. Less questions, fine by me. I thought a moment before answering cautiously. " . . . All of it. I think." I simply wanted my hearing back.

Dr. House:

"Alrighty...." I put that down on the file. "...And now... this is a bit of a toughie in my opinion... if we can't sort out all of it...for any reason... There is- in short, a bunch of random things that can screw some of this stuff up - but yeah, if we can't sort out every single thing for you through surgery or something... what do you feel that you'd absolutely need in order to be able to live in at least a reasonable manner? ...Like... what all does being deaf prevent you from doing?" I asked next. I paused and thought about that question for a moment.

"...And while hearing is a really good answer... it's also kind of... vague. I need at least a bit of a specific answer in case we need an alternative plan for any reason." I explained, tacking that on in case he tried to give me some kind of helpful non-answer.

Cricket

I propped my chin on my fist and set the paper on my knees again, thinking we'd be here a while. Specifics, aye? I was tired of tiptoeing around these things. ". . . Everything?" I shook my head to get my thoughts straight. I wasn't quite sure what specifics to even bring up. " . . . I used t' use my ears more than my eyes . . . everything."

Dr. House:

...Well then. "So... basically, you have no background in anything visual... communication, navigating... Everything got it's emphasis from the Audio for you. ...Alright. ...I'm probably going to go ahead and get you signed up with a speech therapist, to start you on the written word... so that... even if everything goes according to plan, we don't have to worry about 'what if it didn't'. One more thing, and then we'll go on to the part where I get out a bunch of weird scopes and look into the various holes on your face. ...Does your universe accommodate disability well? Like, culturally or... however you want to interpret that, basically." I asked.

This seemed to have hit him pretty hard, judging on how he was sitting now and the way he was speaking, even if he couldn't hear it for himself. It was unfortunate that this kind of thing had to happen to him. Poor guy.

Cricket

I think that meant I was going to learn how to read. Oi my my. That was a small bit frightening, almost, for reasons I couldn't quite place. Wouldn't that be a bit like school?

Pft, who needs school? I have a slightly-more-than-tad-bit crumpled piece of uncannily magical paper which told me everything I needed to know. I didn't say anything, though. I'd said 'anything', hadn't I?

". . . Ah . . . it doesn't accommodate me well . . . and generally, if you can't 'ear, you're a small bit . . . dead."

Dr. House:

"...Well. Now we have a challenge, don't we. " I said, more to myself than him, while taking note of all of this in his skinny file.

After I finished writing I pulled out one of the smaller scopes. It was basically a higher power of what he'd probably seen earlier in his stay already. I had a description of what was there...or rather... not there, already, but I wanted to see it for myself. " Alright... I'm going to be looking in your ears and possibly your nose... because actually, all that stuff is connected, believe it or not." I informed him, standing up from my chair.

Cricket

Waitpardon? Noses and ears are connected? Alright, that was simply odd. Learn something new every day. The thought of someone looking up my nose to see my ears was equally odd. In fact, the thought of someone looking up my nose at all was very odd, especially out of context. 'I'm going to look up your nose with a scope thing now and see if you can hear or not.' Alright then.

Doctors are odd people.

I simply nodded and braced myself for the oddity. It was nice that he wouldn't have to shine a light in my eyes like the last one.

Dr. House:

I went ahead and looked in his ear. ...And I could make out that his eardrum had been blown out completely...among other concerning things. I walked around to the other side of his head, and looked in there too, finding similarly severe damage. ...Fantastic. "... How far away were you from this gun exactly...?" I asked, walking back over to the file and writing all that down. ...Talk about a mess.

Cricket

"Ah . . ." I thought that perhaps simply saying 'pretty bloody close' was a bit vague, so I showed him. I pointed with two fingers like a gun, shoved that parallel against my ear, and flicked my wrist. Pretty bloody close.

Dr. House:

"...Someone didn't like you then, I'm guessing..." I guessed conversationally, as I tipped my head back to glance up his nose. Actually, what I could see there all seemed alright... Which meant that at least we didn't have to worry about anything past the Eustacian Tube.

"Alright, so the next bit of this doesn't involve any scopes for a minute... " I said, as I went back to the counter top and wrote some things down in his file. I went into my drawer and pulled out one of my several tuning forks, since there were a few tests I needed to run JUST to be sure that he had the same amount of damage in each ear, and to get a rough approximation on to what extent he couldn't hear. Because, if there was any way that we could forgo surgery and fix him up with a set of hearing aids... That would probably work out really nicely for everyone, and wouldn't involve any invasive knock outs or... sudden hair removal or any of that unpleasant stuff. "And I realise that the entire investigation into this is probably moot anyway, but I want to see something to see if we can perhaps get you out of the surgery hot spot. Ok?"

Cricket

I forgot to look at the paper as soon as I saw the tuning fork and bit my tongue to keep from whistling something. "Why-- what is that for?" I knew that thing. It wasn't a good thing. It was practically up there on the list with exacto knives.

Dr. House:

...And I seem to have freaked him out by the presence of tuning forks. I personally found it really inconvenient when people had really esoteric phobias like this... because it normally took some convincing and whatnot... and really... pretty much anything that went on in this office was completely harmless.

"Why don't we start with you telling me what you think it's for...and I'll tell you how far off you are. I promise you, nothing I'm going to do today is going to be in any way painful. Ok?" I replied. Hopefully that would help... Explaining the issue sometimes worked better than me trying to explain why it was harmless... and actually, I could probably send Dr.Mencha anything I found out about him for whenever her sessions with him were. I also had to wonder what exactly had occurred that had caused tuning forks to freak him out...so I will admit that the question was a bit curiosity driven as well.

Cricket

If it were physically possible for me to keep one eye on him and the thing and one eye on the paper to read it, I would do that. But unfortunately, that would only hurt and make my expression look completely ridiculous. So I had to flit my gaze up and down to get both pictures. ". . . Ah . . . see . . ." This was probably something I shouldn't have been afraid of, like the blood test. The only difference was that this was a tool I'd seen used before, and it hadn't been a harmless poke in the arm, to say the least. " . . . Assuming now it . . . 'as some other purpose than t' gouge eyes out?"

Dr. House:

... ...Wait. They did WHAT with tuning forks where ever he lived? I looked between him and the tuning fork for a few moments, processing that. I may have made a face of disbelief. "...They use them for...what?" It was one of those questions that I didn't need reanswered, just... Wow. Alright. "...Uhm...It will probably be very comforting for you to hear--read-- that I have absolutely no intention of doing anything like that. I'm just going to hit it against a counter top so that it vibrates and touch it to a few places on your head to see if you can pick up on the vibrations of the air. It also actually makes a noise... which you can use to tune instruments... but I'm guessing that you aren't actually going to be able to hear the sound at all." I explained. I watched him as I spoke, hoping that this was going to be acceptable to him. Knowing now his...personal issue with it, I could understand why he would still decide against allowing me to go through with the test.

Cricket

Everywhere I went, people would give me that look of disbelief every time I tried to explain myself. How many more doctors were there? I may as well find each of them and introduce myself by saying 'Torture. Questions?'.

And the way he explained it . . . didn't sound too bad. They hadn't lied about any of this stuff before. " . . . A'right," I finally decided.

Dr. House:

I was quite relieved when he decided that this wasn't psychologically scarring enough to keep me from doing it. "Alright. First... you're going to feel a bit of coldness against your forehead, and when that happens, I would like you to tell me if you can hear anything better on one side of your head than the other. If you just can't hear anything at all... tell me that too." I explained. "I'm ready whenever you are." I added. Wasn't going to do anything to surprise him, knowing the situation he was in with the tuning fork at present.

Cricket

It seemed easy enough. I already knew all the answers to the hearing test, anyhow: no. I simply nodded after a moment of hesitation.

Dr. House:

I struck the tuning fork against the side of the counter top before bringing it to Cricket's forehead, and setting it there for a minute. Admittedly, I already kind of knew the answer to the first round of this test. It was just something of... thoroughness, I guess. To make SURE of what we were doing before we actually did anything. "Anything...?" I asked, with a bit of a brow raised.

Cricket

And . . . there was nothing. There was the feel of it, certainly, but . . . nothing. " . . . no . . ."