"Ok. Would you want me to bring you any of the things from the room, if you want to stay here?"

She brings her feet up onto the chair and hugs her knees and stares off into space.

"Ok. Nod if you want me to stay?"

Shrug.

"Ok. You can go to another room when I'm not here if you want, and you can call for us if you want or need." And she leaves again.

Fine, it's fine, this is fine - she hugs her knees a little tighter to her chest and takes a couple deep breaths. (She's still feeling a little shaky, even having eaten, and that's not a good sign at all, but - well, what is there to do about it, really; it'll pass, one way or another.)

She looks around the room, after a little while, without moving from the chair.

Table, chairs, decorations, windows

All right.

Being left alone like this makes her skin crawl, a little. It'd be better back in the day room. (Living room? Not likely, but it occurs to her that rooms done up like that on TV are called living rooms, even if it's just about unthinkable that she could encounter one in practice, any more than she'd encounter a talking purple dinosaur.) And Heria does keep saying she can go places... Thinking about actually doing it makes her a little nauseous. She takes a different tack: If she does, what will happen? It feels like that should make Heria change her mind, realize that it's not something Denice should be doing at all, but there's a real chance that it's something she wants Denice doing, even if she isn't demanding it yet, and as soon as she shows any willingness, the rewards and punishments will come out. Except... the thing with the bathroom, earlier. That happened. Unfortunately. (She curls up tighter.) Sometimes she can convince staff that something was a one-off fluke; it takes a lot of doing, though, and bathroom stuff is a tough, and disgusting, battleground to fight on - probably better to just concede this one, and draw the line at the next step, whatever that is.

Which doesn't make the idea of actually doing it much more pleasant. She stays put, for a while.

She hugs Laeres.

They consult.

It's unfortunately likely that making choices could be fraught for Denice. Expecting to be punished for trying to make them, or for choosing the wrong one, or if the 'Asylum' did what they did with the food with anything else.

(Did they?)

The protocol for figuring out what foods to use as rewards calls for trying other rewards too - small toys, praise, and so on - but those haven't been used with her recently; aside from her first two assessments, she's never shown interest in them.

Well, so. (So being offered a choice might feel like another way they try to find what she likes so they can use it to manipulate.) And she's - obviously capable of conscious resistance, so the 'not showing interest' could be purposely done. And possibly match to what is currently happening.

She isn't sure of ways to help enough, here. Simply ordering her around is itself not an acceptable option, nor is not giving her options, especially when they know so little.

She can keep trying what she's doing with designating a consciously selected default choice, when she can see how (what might Denice be more reluctant to say, what is harder to reverse...). 

They can keep thinking, and working on it.

And how is Denice doing meanwhile?

Still sitting in the dining room - or, no, there she goes. She hesitates, again, approaching the door, and peers out carefully into the hallway before heading back to the living room, where she curls up on the couch in the same spot she was in originally.

Nothing in the hallway will attempt to bother her.

Is she doing anything in the living room aside from sitting?

Unless someone's come along and turned the television off, that's still going; if it is, she'll watch it. If not, she just stares off into space again.

It turned off when she left the room and starts up again now that she's returned.

She'll wait a bit so as not to disturb her right away, then come in again.

"Hey."

She's less startled about the TV turning on by itself than the bathroom door opening, but at little more discomfited.

She still doesn't respond immediately when addressed, but she does respond, giving Heria her attention.

"I thought I could try to tell you a bit better what's going on. Is that something you think you could listen to right now?"

She stiffens a little, but nods.

Then she will try to do that.

They're not, at the moment, completely sure how she got here from the 'Asylum'; they're trying to figure this out. The Asylum, they think, was a very horrible place, which did completely not ok things like not give her enough food and try to control her for their convenience and to be someone like how they wanted instead of like how she wanted. She doesn't have to believe Heria when Heria says this, but they think those are horrible things to do.

They want her to be as ok as they can help her be while she's here, while they try to figure out how she got here. Whatever they figure out, they won't sent her back to the Asylum or to anyone else who would hurt her, and if someone like that tries to come take her they will do their best to stop them. They still don't know a lot of what she needs, which they're sorry about. Hopefully they can work on it.

She seems bewildered at this, more than anything, but nods, tentatively, when Heria is done.

That is better than could really be expected.

'OK. So, do you think you're doing ok right now, or is there maybe anything I could do to help make this more ok for you? Shake your head if you think you're ok enough or don't want me trying things right now."

She considers it for a moment, draws her knees up to her chest, and shrugs.