Drag you Down...Part Three!
Part three for your pleasure...
Wilson frowned worriedly as House came to with a gasp. He tried, to no avail, to keep his friend from sitting up on the gurney. “House, just stay there - at least let us take a look at you-”
“I’m fine - get the hell off me” the Diagnostician snapped to the young intern who happened to be pinning his arms down in a restraining fashion. Wilson rolled his eyes exasperatedly, and moved over to help the stubborn man from the high bed. He also had the good grace to get rid of his two helpers before things turned nasty.
“In your hurry to leave, you forgot this” he said, handing House his cane. House at least had the decency to look embarrassed as he took it from his hands. “Are you going to at least tell me what’s going on?” he asked, regarding the other man’s silence with caution.
House looked everywhere but at Wilson as he mumbled some crap about a panic attack. He noted the familiar bathroom door, indicating that he hadn’t been out for long because they‘d only managed to get him out into the hallway. You were out long enough to get Wilson addled…
“House,” Wilson forced him to pause in his survey of the area. He snapped his head back and met the Oncologist’s worried eyes, waiting for a repeat of the inevitable question. “What’s going on?”
House measured up every possible answer before inwardly sighing. “I don’t know,” he replied quietly, “but I know someone who does.” He limped off towards the nearby elevator, albeit slightly unsteadily, and pressed the call button whilst leaning heavily on the wall for support. He felt as though he’d had an anvil dropped on his head. He waited for the roadrunner to show up.
True to form, it didn’t take long for Wilson to join him. “Who are you going to see?”
“An old friend,” House muttered, “he owes me an explanation, dead or not.”
“The homeless guy,” Wilson said disbelievingly, “You’re going to the basement, to speak to a dead man. You need to be checked over-”
“I’m fine. It was just a panic attack.” House insisted, glaring at a couple of nurses who were gawking at him from down the hall.
“Oh, cut the crap!” Wilson snorted angrily, making House flinch slightly. He couldn’t fool the younger man with that kind of brush off. “You haven’t had a panic attack in your life.”
House glanced up at the numbers above the elevator doors, willing it to arrive quicker. “What do you want me to tell you?” he asked, throwing Wilson completely with the question. That I think I’m losing my mind. That I think some homeless man cursed me?
“I want you,” Wilson began calmly, “to tell me what just happened back there.”
“I passed out-” House started, frowning as he caught Wilson shaking his head. Obviously not the answer he was looking for.
“Before that…what did you do to my patient?” he hissed, following House into the empty elevator as the doors opened.
“I didn’t - I only touched him, and then I tripped - had to get some air…” House stumbled over the words. You cant explain it because you don’t have a clue what you did to him - or what he did to you! he thought worriedly.
Wilson gave him a skeptical look. He was used to hearing his friend lie, but this was ridiculous. House hadn’t even decided what his story was. “What did you give him?” he asked again.
Realisation dawned on House. He thinks you actually did something to wake his stupid cancer patient up. “I didn’t give him anything” House whined pitifully. He felt like the child who’d been found peering over the surviving pieces of a broken vase and been dubbed the culprit by an angry parent, regardless of his innocence.
“I know you like messing with your own patients - but how am I going to explain to Mr Porter’s wife that he’s suddenly awake? I only told her last week that he would be gone soon. What did you give him? Drugs? I don‘t understand how you managed to get him up…No, I don‘t want to know…” he trailed of with a groan, putting his head in his hands.
“If you’re so worried, why aren’t you with him?” House asked, testily, wondering how he was possibly going to convince Wilson that he hadn’t done anything to his precious cancer patient.
“Brown’s with him,” Wilson replied, “I was more worried about you, running off without your cane and collapsing in my arms two minutes later in the men’s room.”
House winced at the thought. Yeah, I’m a little worried about that too…he thought, watching the numbers decrease steadily above the doors. 3, 2, 1, G, B…
The elevator completed its decent with a shudder. House pushed himself away from his position by the far wall, taking each step with suspicious caution as he tackled the small staircase down to the self-contained morgue. Wilson followed, failing to keep the mixture of annoyance, worry and exasperation from his face.
“What, exactly, are you hoping to find?” he asked, sensing House’s air of determination as he scanned the name cards for one ’John Doe’.
House ignored the question as he found the right drawer. He stared at it, swallowing nervously as he started to have second thoughts about wanting to see the guy again. “I hear you can see them a lot better if you slide the drawer open.” Wilson deadpanned, stepping forward to pull it open, but finding himself rewarded with a cane-jab to the chest.
“Hold this.” House ordered, keeping the cane up for Wilson to take. “You wouldn’t be able to pull this baby out, not with your back” he defended lightly, pushing his fear back to allow the false bravado to take over. How can you be scared of a dead guy? Didn’t you say the same thing about him when he was alive…
House slid the drawer open in one speedy motion, working on the basis that it was like pulling off a band aid. Do it quick, get it over with, get on with your life.
It didn’t stop him from sucking in a shocked breath as the Vagrant’s torso rigidly sat up straight without the inside of the cubicle to hold it down. Rigor mortis. Rigor mortis. Rigor mortis House’s mind was screaming at him, accompanying his racing heart. Luckily, he heard Wilson curse at the sight too, making him feel less like a jumpy idiot.
“Help me get him back down” he growled, using the new platform to lean his hands on for support. Wilson hooked the cane onto the handle of a nearby drawer, then stepped over to the other side of the body awaiting further instruction. “Heads or tails?” House called, raising a questioning eyebrow.
“You actually have a preference?” Wilson asked disbelievingly.
“No, but I thought you might, what with over half of your patients ending up here.” House replied, “Luckily, I don’t get down to visit these parts of the hospital…much.”
“Are you trying to insult me, or impress me?” Wilson muttered under his breath, moving to the Vagrant’s legs. He held them down as House started to gingerly push the nameless man’s shoulder back down on the cold, flat surface.
He paused for a moment to examine the subject’s back; the spine was a mess. It had all the characteristics of one that had been broken so many times, it had healed in all the wrong places. In fact, it didn’t looked like it had finished healing at all. The way it jutted out unhealthily from the subject’s back was particularly gruesome and gave House a twinge in his own back he could only put down as a sympathy pain!
He snapped himself out of his musings and forced the stiff body back into a prone position, doing his best to ignore the fact that the sheet had slipped down and the tramp’s face was far too close to his own for comfort. His last memory of that face was followed by bright light, intense pain and a lot of strange, unanswered questions. Not something he wanted to relive in a hurry.
Wilson cleared his throat, wanting to know what the next step would be. Hanging out in the hospital’s morgue wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed, and judging by the paleness of his friend, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for House either.
“Just want to sneak a peek,” House said, “It’s my new morbid fascination with death…”
“You couldn’t have chosen a hobby less…disgusting?” Wilson asked lightly, taking House’s deflection with a pinch of salt. He knew there was something going on, and he also knew House wouldn’t be down here if he wasn’t looking for something. The answer seemed to jump out at both of them when House pulled the sheet back a little further, revealing the vagabond’s battered torso.
“Shit…” The exclamation left his mouth without a coherent thought to accompany it. House couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone in such bad shape, even in a morgue!
The first thing to cross his mind was that this ‘old man’ wasn’t old at all. In fact, judging by the condition he was in, he couldn’t be a day over fifty - and in House’s books, that was young. Too young. Too old to rock and roll, but far too young to be homeless, have Alzheimer’s and metastasized liver cancer, then die.
The series of scars and severely mangled bones that jutted out at sickening angles were enough to ensure House’s curiosity felt generously rewarded. He wondered how to interpret these findings. He glanced up at Wilson, he also looked puzzled. “I, uh…they didn’t mention this in the charts…” he said, pulling his eyes away from a particularly crooked looking collarbone to look House in the eye.
“Why would they,” House replied, “he’s just some homeless bum, right? They probably assumed he got beaten for breakfast…literally” he saw Wilson’s jaw tense at this flippant remark. Oh crap, reminder to self: no matter how much he denies it, Wilson has a thing about homeless people he mused, thinking back to the little ‘act’ that Wilson had put on for his amusement earlier, flippantly telling House that the Vagrant would be dead within a week.
“These are old,” House stated, attempting to draw Wilson from thoughts of his own personal homeless demons by pointing to a jagged, sunken scar along the dead man’s abdomen, “really old.”
“Yeah…” Wilson agreed, sliding the sheet up to the man’s thighs to reveal more deep scars, bent bones and poorly manipulated joints. “How the hell did he walk from downtown?” he asked before being interrupted by an insistent beeping from his pager. “I’ve got to take this…” he said with a frown, stalking off determinedly to find a phone.
House barely registered the words as he mulled over the previous question. How the hell did he get here from downtown? From what House could tell from the meagre physical examination, the man had severely shattered at least one of his knee caps, the other looked no better. If he hadn’t witnessed it himself, he wouldn’t have believed that this guy could crawl, let alone walk.
He lightly traced his fingers up the inside of the vagrant’s calf muscle, noting the indents and apparent muscle waste, that should have crippled the man completely, especially coupled with the arthritic ankle bones. This unnamed bum had scars that put his own to shame. He stepped back, feeling a bout of nausea cloak him as he let his mind wander back to everything that had happened since this vagrant had appeared on the scene. He steadied himself on the side of the drawer, swallowing thickly.
Calm down, you idiot. Nothing’s happened, you’re just worrying over nothing. It’s this damned case, and three days of insomnia. This is your mind’s way of telling you to take a break! He blew out a shaky breath as he heard Wilson walking back down the steps. He managed to get it together as his friend returned to his position on the opposite side of the body.
“Okay, we came, we indulged - time to go!” House said light-heartedly, just about hiding the hitch in his voice. “You can push him back…” he trailed off as he looked up at Wilson. The Oncologist was back, in body, but his mind was clearly still on the phone. He was even paler than the guy on the slab, and that was hard considering the other guy had been dead for over twelve hours…
House frowned, “What?” he asked, taking in Wilson’s slacked jaw look. It was a look he received often, usually from his fellows, more specifically from Chase. Never from Wilson…
The younger man snapped out of it, as though he’d just realised he had company. “My…err, that was Brown - the patient is…has…showing no signs” he shook his head, House seriously reconsidered his opinion that Wilson was well articulated. “He doesn’t have cancer.” he finally announced, his voice falling to a whisper by the word ‘have’.
“Very funny.” House replied, getting a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach when Wilson failed to get to a punch line, or crack a smile.
“He’s gone into complete remission.”
“Brown’s an idiot, he probably hasn’t even tested-”
“They’ve done an MRI” Wilson interrupted, “and they’re not leaving Radiology ‘till they’ve found it.”
“So…he’ll find it, because it’s there - you found it to begin with, right?” House didn’t like what he was hearing. Maybe Wilson had misdiagnosed the patient…unlikely. How many tests did one patient have to go through to determine that they were going to die from a tumour? He assumed at some point, they’d double check…
“House…the tumour was inoperable. It was killing him. It was big enough to see with an ultrasound….and that’s the first thing they used.” Wilson said hurriedly, giving him another pleading look. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him…” And yet, you managed cure him…
TBC…
Wilson frowned worriedly as House came to with a gasp. He tried, to no avail, to keep his friend from sitting up on the gurney. “House, just stay there - at least let us take a look at you-”
“I’m fine - get the hell off me” the Diagnostician snapped to the young intern who happened to be pinning his arms down in a restraining fashion. Wilson rolled his eyes exasperatedly, and moved over to help the stubborn man from the high bed. He also had the good grace to get rid of his two helpers before things turned nasty.
“In your hurry to leave, you forgot this” he said, handing House his cane. House at least had the decency to look embarrassed as he took it from his hands. “Are you going to at least tell me what’s going on?” he asked, regarding the other man’s silence with caution.
House looked everywhere but at Wilson as he mumbled some crap about a panic attack. He noted the familiar bathroom door, indicating that he hadn’t been out for long because they‘d only managed to get him out into the hallway. You were out long enough to get Wilson addled…
“House,” Wilson forced him to pause in his survey of the area. He snapped his head back and met the Oncologist’s worried eyes, waiting for a repeat of the inevitable question. “What’s going on?”
House measured up every possible answer before inwardly sighing. “I don’t know,” he replied quietly, “but I know someone who does.” He limped off towards the nearby elevator, albeit slightly unsteadily, and pressed the call button whilst leaning heavily on the wall for support. He felt as though he’d had an anvil dropped on his head. He waited for the roadrunner to show up.
True to form, it didn’t take long for Wilson to join him. “Who are you going to see?”
“An old friend,” House muttered, “he owes me an explanation, dead or not.”
“The homeless guy,” Wilson said disbelievingly, “You’re going to the basement, to speak to a dead man. You need to be checked over-”
“I’m fine. It was just a panic attack.” House insisted, glaring at a couple of nurses who were gawking at him from down the hall.
“Oh, cut the crap!” Wilson snorted angrily, making House flinch slightly. He couldn’t fool the younger man with that kind of brush off. “You haven’t had a panic attack in your life.”
House glanced up at the numbers above the elevator doors, willing it to arrive quicker. “What do you want me to tell you?” he asked, throwing Wilson completely with the question. That I think I’m losing my mind. That I think some homeless man cursed me?
“I want you,” Wilson began calmly, “to tell me what just happened back there.”
“I passed out-” House started, frowning as he caught Wilson shaking his head. Obviously not the answer he was looking for.
“Before that…what did you do to my patient?” he hissed, following House into the empty elevator as the doors opened.
“I didn’t - I only touched him, and then I tripped - had to get some air…” House stumbled over the words. You cant explain it because you don’t have a clue what you did to him - or what he did to you! he thought worriedly.
Wilson gave him a skeptical look. He was used to hearing his friend lie, but this was ridiculous. House hadn’t even decided what his story was. “What did you give him?” he asked again.
Realisation dawned on House. He thinks you actually did something to wake his stupid cancer patient up. “I didn’t give him anything” House whined pitifully. He felt like the child who’d been found peering over the surviving pieces of a broken vase and been dubbed the culprit by an angry parent, regardless of his innocence.
“I know you like messing with your own patients - but how am I going to explain to Mr Porter’s wife that he’s suddenly awake? I only told her last week that he would be gone soon. What did you give him? Drugs? I don‘t understand how you managed to get him up…No, I don‘t want to know…” he trailed of with a groan, putting his head in his hands.
“If you’re so worried, why aren’t you with him?” House asked, testily, wondering how he was possibly going to convince Wilson that he hadn’t done anything to his precious cancer patient.
“Brown’s with him,” Wilson replied, “I was more worried about you, running off without your cane and collapsing in my arms two minutes later in the men’s room.”
House winced at the thought. Yeah, I’m a little worried about that too…he thought, watching the numbers decrease steadily above the doors. 3, 2, 1, G, B…
The elevator completed its decent with a shudder. House pushed himself away from his position by the far wall, taking each step with suspicious caution as he tackled the small staircase down to the self-contained morgue. Wilson followed, failing to keep the mixture of annoyance, worry and exasperation from his face.
“What, exactly, are you hoping to find?” he asked, sensing House’s air of determination as he scanned the name cards for one ’John Doe’.
House ignored the question as he found the right drawer. He stared at it, swallowing nervously as he started to have second thoughts about wanting to see the guy again. “I hear you can see them a lot better if you slide the drawer open.” Wilson deadpanned, stepping forward to pull it open, but finding himself rewarded with a cane-jab to the chest.
“Hold this.” House ordered, keeping the cane up for Wilson to take. “You wouldn’t be able to pull this baby out, not with your back” he defended lightly, pushing his fear back to allow the false bravado to take over. How can you be scared of a dead guy? Didn’t you say the same thing about him when he was alive…
House slid the drawer open in one speedy motion, working on the basis that it was like pulling off a band aid. Do it quick, get it over with, get on with your life.
It didn’t stop him from sucking in a shocked breath as the Vagrant’s torso rigidly sat up straight without the inside of the cubicle to hold it down. Rigor mortis. Rigor mortis. Rigor mortis House’s mind was screaming at him, accompanying his racing heart. Luckily, he heard Wilson curse at the sight too, making him feel less like a jumpy idiot.
“Help me get him back down” he growled, using the new platform to lean his hands on for support. Wilson hooked the cane onto the handle of a nearby drawer, then stepped over to the other side of the body awaiting further instruction. “Heads or tails?” House called, raising a questioning eyebrow.
“You actually have a preference?” Wilson asked disbelievingly.
“No, but I thought you might, what with over half of your patients ending up here.” House replied, “Luckily, I don’t get down to visit these parts of the hospital…much.”
“Are you trying to insult me, or impress me?” Wilson muttered under his breath, moving to the Vagrant’s legs. He held them down as House started to gingerly push the nameless man’s shoulder back down on the cold, flat surface.
He paused for a moment to examine the subject’s back; the spine was a mess. It had all the characteristics of one that had been broken so many times, it had healed in all the wrong places. In fact, it didn’t looked like it had finished healing at all. The way it jutted out unhealthily from the subject’s back was particularly gruesome and gave House a twinge in his own back he could only put down as a sympathy pain!
He snapped himself out of his musings and forced the stiff body back into a prone position, doing his best to ignore the fact that the sheet had slipped down and the tramp’s face was far too close to his own for comfort. His last memory of that face was followed by bright light, intense pain and a lot of strange, unanswered questions. Not something he wanted to relive in a hurry.
Wilson cleared his throat, wanting to know what the next step would be. Hanging out in the hospital’s morgue wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed, and judging by the paleness of his friend, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for House either.
“Just want to sneak a peek,” House said, “It’s my new morbid fascination with death…”
“You couldn’t have chosen a hobby less…disgusting?” Wilson asked lightly, taking House’s deflection with a pinch of salt. He knew there was something going on, and he also knew House wouldn’t be down here if he wasn’t looking for something. The answer seemed to jump out at both of them when House pulled the sheet back a little further, revealing the vagabond’s battered torso.
“Shit…” The exclamation left his mouth without a coherent thought to accompany it. House couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone in such bad shape, even in a morgue!
The first thing to cross his mind was that this ‘old man’ wasn’t old at all. In fact, judging by the condition he was in, he couldn’t be a day over fifty - and in House’s books, that was young. Too young. Too old to rock and roll, but far too young to be homeless, have Alzheimer’s and metastasized liver cancer, then die.
The series of scars and severely mangled bones that jutted out at sickening angles were enough to ensure House’s curiosity felt generously rewarded. He wondered how to interpret these findings. He glanced up at Wilson, he also looked puzzled. “I, uh…they didn’t mention this in the charts…” he said, pulling his eyes away from a particularly crooked looking collarbone to look House in the eye.
“Why would they,” House replied, “he’s just some homeless bum, right? They probably assumed he got beaten for breakfast…literally” he saw Wilson’s jaw tense at this flippant remark. Oh crap, reminder to self: no matter how much he denies it, Wilson has a thing about homeless people he mused, thinking back to the little ‘act’ that Wilson had put on for his amusement earlier, flippantly telling House that the Vagrant would be dead within a week.
“These are old,” House stated, attempting to draw Wilson from thoughts of his own personal homeless demons by pointing to a jagged, sunken scar along the dead man’s abdomen, “really old.”
“Yeah…” Wilson agreed, sliding the sheet up to the man’s thighs to reveal more deep scars, bent bones and poorly manipulated joints. “How the hell did he walk from downtown?” he asked before being interrupted by an insistent beeping from his pager. “I’ve got to take this…” he said with a frown, stalking off determinedly to find a phone.
House barely registered the words as he mulled over the previous question. How the hell did he get here from downtown? From what House could tell from the meagre physical examination, the man had severely shattered at least one of his knee caps, the other looked no better. If he hadn’t witnessed it himself, he wouldn’t have believed that this guy could crawl, let alone walk.
He lightly traced his fingers up the inside of the vagrant’s calf muscle, noting the indents and apparent muscle waste, that should have crippled the man completely, especially coupled with the arthritic ankle bones. This unnamed bum had scars that put his own to shame. He stepped back, feeling a bout of nausea cloak him as he let his mind wander back to everything that had happened since this vagrant had appeared on the scene. He steadied himself on the side of the drawer, swallowing thickly.
Calm down, you idiot. Nothing’s happened, you’re just worrying over nothing. It’s this damned case, and three days of insomnia. This is your mind’s way of telling you to take a break! He blew out a shaky breath as he heard Wilson walking back down the steps. He managed to get it together as his friend returned to his position on the opposite side of the body.
“Okay, we came, we indulged - time to go!” House said light-heartedly, just about hiding the hitch in his voice. “You can push him back…” he trailed off as he looked up at Wilson. The Oncologist was back, in body, but his mind was clearly still on the phone. He was even paler than the guy on the slab, and that was hard considering the other guy had been dead for over twelve hours…
House frowned, “What?” he asked, taking in Wilson’s slacked jaw look. It was a look he received often, usually from his fellows, more specifically from Chase. Never from Wilson…
The younger man snapped out of it, as though he’d just realised he had company. “My…err, that was Brown - the patient is…has…showing no signs” he shook his head, House seriously reconsidered his opinion that Wilson was well articulated. “He doesn’t have cancer.” he finally announced, his voice falling to a whisper by the word ‘have’.
“Very funny.” House replied, getting a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach when Wilson failed to get to a punch line, or crack a smile.
“He’s gone into complete remission.”
“Brown’s an idiot, he probably hasn’t even tested-”
“They’ve done an MRI” Wilson interrupted, “and they’re not leaving Radiology ‘till they’ve found it.”
“So…he’ll find it, because it’s there - you found it to begin with, right?” House didn’t like what he was hearing. Maybe Wilson had misdiagnosed the patient…unlikely. How many tests did one patient have to go through to determine that they were going to die from a tumour? He assumed at some point, they’d double check…
“House…the tumour was inoperable. It was killing him. It was big enough to see with an ultrasound….and that’s the first thing they used.” Wilson said hurriedly, giving him another pleading look. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to him…” And yet, you managed cure him…
TBC…