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Sometimes on NZT Brian remembers things that he doesn’t want to remember. And he remembers that at the time, he made a point to forget.
Namely, the night after his third expelling, his mom and dad got into an argument. Not a huge one, his parents never got into huge arguments. They made a point pretty often that what they were having were “important conversations”, but to kid Brian it just seemed like an argument but quieter.
He couldn’t understand what they were saying through their door at the time, but the wondrous world of NZT was not to be underestimated.
A lower voice, his dad, said “I don’t see any reason to do it. Getting a diagnosis isn’t going to help him, it won’t stop him from getting in trouble. They won’t take that as an excuse.”
His mother was whispering, as if she knew Brian was sitting with his ear to the door, “Well maybe if he’s medicated he’ll be able to concentrate, and he won’t be bored enough to cause trouble in the first place?”
“No.” His dad shifted, standing up from where he was on the bed and walking across the room to their dresser, moving things around. “No, that won’t help him. He’ll get quiet and he won’t be himself anymore, and you know Brian will tell us he’s doing alright with it when he’s not. He does that. He doesn’t want anyone to worry about him.”
“I’m sure if we handle the dosage correctly, he—”
“No. It’s not happening. End of story.”
At the time, he’d tried to forget because he hated it when his parents argued. Hated it when it was over him even more. Sure, he didn’t know why he acted the way he did, but he got the gist from people around him. He was creative, he had potential, but at some point he’d made the choice to be a bother, to be lazy, to be disruptive and loud and everything teachers sent home on his report card. He didn’t know when he’d chosen that, but he must have.
Now Brian really got it. Now he could literally perfectly recall everything, the signs that something about him was different, not by choice, not because of NZT.
Acting out, not because he actually wanted to hurt or bother anyone, but because he couldn’t manage to think long enough before his body was already doing the thing. Because he was angry, because he was sad, because he was scared, because he was distracted.
Now he got why he’d extensively self-medicated in college and afterward. Smoking, coffee, getting drunk at parties, they were all in an attempt to either forget how he was or to get himself under control.
NZT was the only thing that had worked.
It probably wasn’t the only solution, his hyper-speed brain that didn’t really slow down on the drug but just got better at being fast told him. He’d just fallen into this one.
And it wasn’t like the FBI was going to let him try to go to a doctor and get some meds. Not Sands, either. He’d have to stick with what he was told, and wait for the inevitable fallout. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew himself. It was coming.