[House] Objects at Rest [2b]
Previous Parts
Day passes into night, passes into day. Sunrise, sunset; time marches on, he'd said. Time marches on. Except-
She's beginning to believe nothing ever changes.
It's doubt, the distinct, sadistic twist of déjà -vu creeping into her aching muscles that reminds her: it's all there, all familiar; she's done this before.
Her hands clutch at her elbows because she doesn't know what else to do with them. Fatigue nips at her calves. She contemplates sitting (sliding down in a boneless puddle against the wall behind her; screaming; throwing something through the safety glass window). However, a comfortable sort of paralysis has settled, quicksand in the marrow of her bones, so she remains as is.
And there's no comfort in the familiar; she has an inkling of how this will end. (All things lead from order to chaos, but she merely moves from one moment to other; Allison, forever stuck in entropy.) Like always, she's here and he's there.
On the other side. Partitioned behind inch-thick glass and wire filaments, a jumble of limbs - arms and legs sticking off the sides; each erratic, rapid beep of his heart rate monitor, the watery gurgles of his brand-new chest tube, making the muscles in her jaw flinch.
Hodges, she recognizes, Smith, Grabinski and a pair of eyes she can't place, working between (twisted, bloody) broken ribs, re-inflating his collapsed lung, meticulously reassembling all those bits and pieces and leftover parts, and despite that, despite everything, all she can think at the moment is you bastard.
How dare he. How dare he self-destruct, fall apart and still claim fucking superiority.
(But)
Prevarication is one of the things he's best at. (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and House.) And how pretty those lies are, each wrapped in a tidy little bow. How easily he wields verisimilitude like a bludgeon; his shield, his gospel.
Stay out. Stay away. Don't look too closely.
It's funny and it's sad and it's pathetic, she knows. She tries, but only ever stumbles, with her big, brave words that he probably hadn't even heard.
(And if he were awake at this moment)
How he'd mock her.
You still think everything can be explained by a textbook. That if you study hard enough, read enough, all the answers will magically appear. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll even include a nice colored illustration.
Funny, how she'd unashamedly welcome that.
But all that happens is the door opens, Wilson shuffles in, eyes flickering up to the monitor. His otherwise immaculate shirt is mis-buttoned by a single eyelet all the way down. His tie is missing. Hair attacked from all sides, up, down, left and right, wherever his fingers have recently dragged. She doesn't remark on that, but instead takes a small step to the right as he takes the spot next to her.
"Any change?"
Unsteady fibrillation catches in her throat; a giant unswallowed egg. (trips and falls, tumbling over her words; she opts for the monosyllable)
"No."
"How are you feeling?"
She shrugs. Clutches her elbows tighter against her chest.
"You look tired." (And he looks like hell too.) "If you want to lay down for a while, I can stay and--"
Negative again. He didn't expect otherwise.
"We'll just keep standing here, then. They'll eventually find us...in a few weeks...dead from starvation."
The joke lingers, totters, and falls to its death on his tongue, but he doubts Cameron's even noticed. Not quite listening, not quite there; shoved in some quiet little corner of her head (dead babies, the Lupinos and her silence).
He wonders if he did her any favor then.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
He unhooks the second button on his shirt, still the stranglehold on his throat. It's the air, Wilson deduces, the antiseptic stench constricting his epiglottis.
Breathing heavily through his nose, he mentally reviews his schedule tomorrow: three referrals, clinic, the General Tumor Board, more clinic, and review. The numbers on his cell phone lie flat, flush against his fingers as he fiddles with the cover, snapping it open, shut; toys with the idea of calling Julie just to hear her voice. He'll tell her he loves her and he'll be there. And then say he won't be home tonight. Again.
Your eternal optimism is one of the charming things about you, Jimmy-boy. A pretty girl smiles. You fall in love. You marry her, thinking: this time, it'll be different; this time, it'll work. You fall out of love. A pretty girl smiles...
He closes the cover and drops the phone back into his coat pocket.
Patterns. Pathology. Everything eventually, inevitably, repeats itself. Nothing is random. He's spun in so many directions, so many different-sized circles, fractals and mirrors, his head feels like a Mandelbrot set.
"Where were you?" Cameron's voice startles the spiders in his brain; he blinks as they skittle back into familiar corners. "The first time," she clarifies, still staring through the glass. Picked up, from the man, the fine and familiar art of conversing without actually looking at people. "He never mentioned you. He would have, if--"
"If I'd been there?" It comes out louder, harsher than intended, a hollow shout in a room occupied only by that incessant, goddamn beeping. Wilson feels her shoulders flinch, the molecules in her body backpedaling, as her mouth begins to formulate an apology.
(She apologizes, endlessly, for so many things. House's nebbish little wallflower. Too nice, too sensitive, too compassionate for her own good.)
"You're right. I wasn't there. Chalk it up to my impeccable sense of timing."
(You fall in love. You get married. Your best friend enters the hospital; leaves two weeks later, a quadricep short.)
White noise fills Wilson's pocket, his cell phone buzzing a path of voodoo from hip to head; numbers fill up the display, leading the path back to home. Pick up. It's easy.
(You fall out of love)
"That's why you're here now. Why you've been there ever since."
(How many times are you going to go running when he calls?)
How many times? Ever since. Sounds like a long time. Feels like forever.
He watches the blue digital lights flicker a little while longer, the phone obstinately vibrating in his hand, before tucking it away again.
"Where else am I going to be?"
Day passes into night, passes into day. Sunrise, sunset; time marches on, he'd said. Time marches on. Except-
She's beginning to believe nothing ever changes.
It's doubt, the distinct, sadistic twist of déjà -vu creeping into her aching muscles that reminds her: it's all there, all familiar; she's done this before.
Her hands clutch at her elbows because she doesn't know what else to do with them. Fatigue nips at her calves. She contemplates sitting (sliding down in a boneless puddle against the wall behind her; screaming; throwing something through the safety glass window). However, a comfortable sort of paralysis has settled, quicksand in the marrow of her bones, so she remains as is.
And there's no comfort in the familiar; she has an inkling of how this will end. (All things lead from order to chaos, but she merely moves from one moment to other; Allison, forever stuck in entropy.) Like always, she's here and he's there.
On the other side. Partitioned behind inch-thick glass and wire filaments, a jumble of limbs - arms and legs sticking off the sides; each erratic, rapid beep of his heart rate monitor, the watery gurgles of his brand-new chest tube, making the muscles in her jaw flinch.
Hodges, she recognizes, Smith, Grabinski and a pair of eyes she can't place, working between (twisted, bloody) broken ribs, re-inflating his collapsed lung, meticulously reassembling all those bits and pieces and leftover parts, and despite that, despite everything, all she can think at the moment is you bastard.
How dare he. How dare he self-destruct, fall apart and still claim fucking superiority.
(But)
Prevarication is one of the things he's best at. (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and House.) And how pretty those lies are, each wrapped in a tidy little bow. How easily he wields verisimilitude like a bludgeon; his shield, his gospel.
Stay out. Stay away. Don't look too closely.
It's funny and it's sad and it's pathetic, she knows. She tries, but only ever stumbles, with her big, brave words that he probably hadn't even heard.
(And if he were awake at this moment)
How he'd mock her.
You still think everything can be explained by a textbook. That if you study hard enough, read enough, all the answers will magically appear. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll even include a nice colored illustration.
Funny, how she'd unashamedly welcome that.
But all that happens is the door opens, Wilson shuffles in, eyes flickering up to the monitor. His otherwise immaculate shirt is mis-buttoned by a single eyelet all the way down. His tie is missing. Hair attacked from all sides, up, down, left and right, wherever his fingers have recently dragged. She doesn't remark on that, but instead takes a small step to the right as he takes the spot next to her.
"Any change?"
Unsteady fibrillation catches in her throat; a giant unswallowed egg. (trips and falls, tumbling over her words; she opts for the monosyllable)
"No."
"How are you feeling?"
She shrugs. Clutches her elbows tighter against her chest.
"You look tired." (And he looks like hell too.) "If you want to lay down for a while, I can stay and--"
Negative again. He didn't expect otherwise.
"We'll just keep standing here, then. They'll eventually find us...in a few weeks...dead from starvation."
The joke lingers, totters, and falls to its death on his tongue, but he doubts Cameron's even noticed. Not quite listening, not quite there; shoved in some quiet little corner of her head (dead babies, the Lupinos and her silence).
He wonders if he did her any favor then.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
He unhooks the second button on his shirt, still the stranglehold on his throat. It's the air, Wilson deduces, the antiseptic stench constricting his epiglottis.
Breathing heavily through his nose, he mentally reviews his schedule tomorrow: three referrals, clinic, the General Tumor Board, more clinic, and review. The numbers on his cell phone lie flat, flush against his fingers as he fiddles with the cover, snapping it open, shut; toys with the idea of calling Julie just to hear her voice. He'll tell her he loves her and he'll be there. And then say he won't be home tonight. Again.
Your eternal optimism is one of the charming things about you, Jimmy-boy. A pretty girl smiles. You fall in love. You marry her, thinking: this time, it'll be different; this time, it'll work. You fall out of love. A pretty girl smiles...
He closes the cover and drops the phone back into his coat pocket.
Patterns. Pathology. Everything eventually, inevitably, repeats itself. Nothing is random. He's spun in so many directions, so many different-sized circles, fractals and mirrors, his head feels like a Mandelbrot set.
"Where were you?" Cameron's voice startles the spiders in his brain; he blinks as they skittle back into familiar corners. "The first time," she clarifies, still staring through the glass. Picked up, from the man, the fine and familiar art of conversing without actually looking at people. "He never mentioned you. He would have, if--"
"If I'd been there?" It comes out louder, harsher than intended, a hollow shout in a room occupied only by that incessant, goddamn beeping. Wilson feels her shoulders flinch, the molecules in her body backpedaling, as her mouth begins to formulate an apology.
(She apologizes, endlessly, for so many things. House's nebbish little wallflower. Too nice, too sensitive, too compassionate for her own good.)
"You're right. I wasn't there. Chalk it up to my impeccable sense of timing."
(You fall in love. You get married. Your best friend enters the hospital; leaves two weeks later, a quadricep short.)
White noise fills Wilson's pocket, his cell phone buzzing a path of voodoo from hip to head; numbers fill up the display, leading the path back to home. Pick up. It's easy.
(You fall out of love)
"That's why you're here now. Why you've been there ever since."
(How many times are you going to go running when he calls?)
How many times? Ever since. Sounds like a long time. Feels like forever.
He watches the blue digital lights flicker a little while longer, the phone obstinately vibrating in his hand, before tucking it away again.
"Where else am I going to be?"