Don't look down
Don't look around
Don't look back

I looked everywhere

Down below I saw hell
Around me I saw misery
But behind me I saw my past

Guess which scared me the most?

Remy tapped her fingers against the arm of the waiting room chair she was sitting in. The last place she really felt like being was exactly where she was, but it wasn't something that she could blow off. If she were to skip a single Monday, Adrianne would freak out and call her or end up at her house or something like that. So, instead, Remy stared at the wall, counting the number of flowers in the old crappy wallpaper. By the time she'd reached 281, she heard her name being called from a redheaded woman poking her head out of an office down the hall. With a deep breath for courage, Remy stood up and walked into the office, shutting the door behind her.

Once she was in the room, she sat down at her usual spot- a sofa, but not like the Freudian ones where you were supposed to lie down, like a real sofa with cushions and pillows. Across from her on a matching sofa was the redheaded woman who had called her name. She was about Remy's age and had brown eyes that always sparkled with the shine of knowing something special. She sat with her legs crossed and a pad of paper on her lap with intelligible scribbles on it.

"Adrianne," Remy greeted her therapist. The woman gave her a tight smile in return. "I kinda did something bad." Remy felt childish saying that, but she didn't exactly have the words to explain it otherwise. She knew she had to get right to the point, Adrianne wasn't one for small talk, but she didn't want to talk about what had happened much.

"Oh, really, is that what it's called these days?" Adrianne questioned blandly. Remy cringed. She hadn't expected Adrianne to know already.

"How did you find out?" Remy asked, the realization that someone must have called Adrianne hitting her.

"The hospital called," Adrianne answered simply. Remy's jaw clenched.

"Who was it? I haven't told anyone at the hospital that I even have a therapist, not to mention her name and number," Remy interrogated further. She was furious; she hated people getting into her personal life, and someone at work knowing about her therapist was the epitome of getting into her personal life.

"I can't-" Adrianne started.

"Tell me," Remy interrupted her.

"I really-" Adrianne tried again to dissuade her patient's assault.

"Tell me. If it was House, I swear to God-"

"It wasn't House. It was Cuddy," Adrianne gave in. Remy cursed under her breath, knowing full well that the redhead could hear her every word. "I told her to call me if there was ever anything like this." Adrianne remained calm despite Remy's evident rising temper. It was almost unnerving, but it was expected. Remy knew the ginger woman had a history of anger, and she'd kept it remarkably under control.

"Like this," Remy deadpanned. The two of them still had not even addressed the event that was causing this feud.

"If you ever tried to hurt yourself, I wanted to know," Adrianne explicated.

"I wasn't trying to hurt myself, I was trying to have a good time," Remy corrected. She remembered how she'd been feeling on Friday night- alone, depressed, and searching for something to fill that hole. She wasn't in search of pain. She knew House and her teammates all had their theories about what made Remy Hadley tick, but say what they will, she was not a masochist.

"Yeah, a good time. Taking that much Ecstasy, that's a good way to hurt yourself," Adrianne said, her voice still remaining calm despite her clear emphasis via sarcasm on her first sentence.

"God," Remy groaned. "Everything has to be so hard with you."

"Yes, because I'm your freaking therapist," Adrianne asserted. Remy remembered how Adrianne had picked up using the word freaking in college, shortly after the two of them had met. They had a couple classes together when Adrianne was throwing around the idea of becoming a medical doctor instead of getting a doctorate in psychiatry.

"Next time I'm almost dying I'll make sure to go to another hospital," Remy muttered.

She wasn't prepared for her therapist's reaction. The redhead uncrossed her legs and leaned forward so her face was closer to Remy's in the small office. "You know what? You can find another hospital. But I'll find you. And guess what? I'll call them and tell them to let me know. And no matter how far you try to run away from this, I will always be there, because I care," Adrianne said, her voice hard and the sparkle in her eyes blooming into fireworks.

Remy matched her stare with one of her own, knowing she was no match for this woman. If anyone could stare down Remy, it was Adrianne. Adrianne was half a Scotsman, as she used to like to say, and she'd gotten every bit of stubborn that came along with that. Remy went to her as a therapist because of that. That and the fact that she gave Remy a great discount and already knew about her past. There was no awkward introduction of, "Hi, I'm a self-destructive bitch that will bat for either team with mommy issues."

"Why do you have to care so much?" Remy asked rhetorically. "You remind me of someone I work with."

"What's their name?" Adrianne inquired. And there, she was calm again. Remy knew better than to assume that meant the fiery woman had backed down, though. It just meant she'd made her point.

"Well, I don't really work with her. Not much, anyway. But her name's Cameron. I think her first name is Allison," Remy answered, not really sure where this new line of questioning was going. Maybe no where but away from their previous one, or maybe toward Kansas. Therapists could make any two topics connect in a matter of seconds it seemed. "She thinks every case is her personal responsibility to give a shit," Remy grumbled, elaborating on her colleague. She knew she wasn't being fair to Cameron in her description, but she wasn't exactly in the best of moods.

"Hm," Adrianne grunted in approval. "Sounds like my type of woman."

"Yeah, you two would get along great, caring the world to death," Remy said with false cheer. Adrianne gave her admonishing look, but she pretended not to notice.

"You know what, Remy? You know what's interesting about you? You pretend to look down on people who care- do you know why that is?" Adrianne said, tapping a pen against her chin.

Remy rolled her eyes. So this is where she'd been heading. "No, why don't you enlighten me?"

"You admire people who care, but you're too afraid to do it yourself. You're too afraid that if you openly care about people, they'll get attached to you. And if they get attached to you, they'll start relying on you. And once they start relying on you, you might disappoint them, and you're afraid of letting people down, just like your mom let-"

"Great. You've got me all figured out. And I get that, with you as my therapist and all, but I thought that maybe you'd care as a…" Remy trailed off. She bit her lip, silently hitting herself in her mind for what she'd been about to say. But it was no use- Adrianne already knew.

"Friend?" Adrianne filled in. "You can't even say that word out loud."

"Shut up, of course I can. Friend," Remy said in defiance.

"No, I mean for real. In a real context. You can't even call someone your friend, can you?"

Remy sighed. She knew that Adrianne had a real point, she always did, but she wasn't in the mood for it. So she switched topics. She started talking instead about her latest trials and tribulations with her coworkers, which turned into a conversation about Friday night and what had happened. Remy was dreading the conversation, but felt somewhat relieved to tell the tale, surprisingly.

It wasn't a complicated one. She'd been hanging out at her apartment all night on Friday, resisting the urge to go out to the local bar like she might have done on a usual night. At first she'd felt proud of herself for getting through the night without any of her usual vices- alcohol, drugs, and bringing strangers home. Around midnight she was just going to bed when she realized how stupid it was that she was patting herself on the back for having a night in doing nothing. She had nothing better to do than live the self-destructive life she had been leading, and that was the worst part of it all. She had no friends to call up to hang out with, no worthwhile hobbies to complete, and no real motivation to stay at home. She felt despicable, and so very lonely. And as a result, she'd broken into her bottle of Ecstasy that she kept on the second shelf of her medicine cabinet in a bottle that used to house Ibuprofen.

She hadn't counted how many pills she'd swallowed, but it was enough to send her into a giggling hazy mess, and enough that she ended up almost getting run over in the middle of the street outside her apartment. She had no idea how she'd gotten there or why the driver of the car that almost hit her was kind enough to call an ambulance when he noticed her heart rate. The ambulance ride and the subsequent first night of her stay at the hospital were pretty much a blur. She did remember seeing the blonde head of the ER when she was being wheeled in on a gurney. It was entirely possible that Cameron took her case, in fact, probably considering that Remy worked at the hospital. If Cameron saw her rushed in on an ambulance, knowing Cameron, she would probably have taken her case because of her tendency to care.

By the end of her story, her session was done and Adrianne was telling her she'd see her next Monday like usual. Remy thought about Cameron on her drive home. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Cameron had been the doctor to treat her.

Remy had taken Monday off as a personal recovery day since she'd had a rough weekend, something that was approved by Cuddy, but she had to go into work the next day. There was something that she was dreading even more than telling Adrianne what had happened. Now she would have to face the team and their derogatory comments about her lifestyle. When she'd called Cuddy about taking the day off, Cuddy had been bad enough to deal with. She'd told Remy that she was essentially on probation and that if she didn't clean up her act she'd be forced to fire her.

Remy went to sleep early that night, feeling as though she'd need to be extra rested in order to deal with the unpleasant events of the next day.

A/N: Please don't kill me for trying something un-fluffy. Believe it or not, angst is something that comes a lot more easily to me than fluffy emotions. This idea had been floating around my head since long before I finished "Playing the Game", and I really want to do well with it. So please let me know what you think! Feedback makes me better, so don't be afraid to be honest.

Oh, and the short poem at the beginning is something I wrote a couple years ago. Just as a side note.