[Dawson is shown engaging in self-mutilation]
Dawson was home alone 24/7, climbing the walls. Withdrawal, I guess. He didn't have patients to leech pain off anymore. So he started inflicting it... on himself. Spent a week just whittling away at himself. Cut here, a gouge there. I mean, the guy was a doctor. He knew how far he could go without it getting fatal. But it was never enough. None of it was enough. When he worked on himself, there was a crucial ingredient missing: fear. The amygdala - little almond-shaped nubbin in your brain. When you're afraid, it lights up like a midnight airstrike, sharpens the senses. The fear the patient feels when they're staring up at that ceiling light, the fear accompanying each sudden jab of agony - he'd come to appreciate that, too. It went with the pain. Complemented it, like red wine and steak. You can inflict pain on yourself, but not terror. For that... you need a volunteer.
[Dawson forces a homeless man into the hairnet device and murders him with a drill, feeling the sensations through his implant as a police car drives up]
Dawson was practically coming when they found him. He'd enjoyed one big old speedball of fear and pain and death.
Tell me they put him in jail.
In the hospital. He wound up in a vegetative state.
Good.
Still there, to this day. In a coma, deep as the ocean. But the thing of it is, they say he still has that look on his face. Blissed out. Still riding that high.
[Dawson is shown lying in a hospital bed, with a huge erection under the bedsheets]
You're fucking with me, right? [scoffs]
Okay, I added the boner. I couldn't resist. Fun story, huh?
Yep, fun story.
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