Post-Trauma 7.1/ ?
“We only have a couple more minutes, Sarah,” Temas says, preparing his patient for the upcoming end of their session.
“The Mommy and the babies aren’t ready to go out yet,” the girl points out. She’s just finished changing the clothes on most of the dollhouse family, and now she has the mother doll posed in front of the dressing table in the dollhouse parents’ bedroom.
“Maybe they won’t go out today,” he suggests. Temas knows as well as Sarah does what happens after the Mommy and the babies leave.
“I guess they’ll just hurry.” She snatches up the mommy and baby dolls and puts them in a toy car. “They’re going to the store,” she says, giving the toy car a push away from the dollhouse. “Now that they’re gone, the daddy gets up,” she continues, going back to the dollhouse and taking the Daddy doll off of the sofa. “He’s going upstairs to Sally’s room.” She marches the doll up the stairs. “Uh-oh. Sally’s been bad. Daddy has to punish her.” She puts the Daddy doll on top of the little-girl doll that’s laying on the bed, and pumps him up and down on top of her. “‘Daddy, stop!’” she says in a high voice, being the girl doll. “ ‘Be quiet, Sally,’” she continues in a gruff voice. “ ‘You’ve been bad. Now you have to take the consequences because I love you.’” Leaving the male doll on top of the girl doll, she leaves the dollhouse and drives the toy car back toward the dollhouse. “ ‘Oh no!’” she says in the “Daddy” voice. “‘I hear the car! Sally, you’d better clean up this mess so that I don’t have to tell Mommy I had to punish you!’”
The Daddy doll is back on the couch by the time Mommy-doll gets the babies out of the car. “Maybe next time she’ll get home in time,” Sarah says matter-of-factly as she puts the dolls away. A few months ago, Sarah’s mother had gone to the store, and, when she got there, realized she forgot her shopping list. When she went home to get it, she’d walked in on Sarah’s father raping her. Sarah had used the dolls to act out her abuse in almost every session so far, but hadn’t played through the discovery yet.
“Maybe Sally should tell her Mommy her Daddy’s doing to her,” Temas suggests. Sarah’s real-life abuse was discovered by pure chance. It might be empowering for her to make “Sally’s” ordeal end differently.
“Her Mommy won’t believe her,” Sarah explains. “She has to see it.”
Ah. That gives him a place to start next session-convincing Sarah that what she had to say would be heard and believed.
Once they’ve finished putting away the toys, he takes Sarah out to her mother in the waiting room. “Did you have a good session?” her mother asks.
“Yes,” Sarah tells her. “We played dolls.”\
“That’s good, honey. Go sit over there for a minute, I have to ask the Doctor something.” Sarah goes. “Her father wants to see her. To apologize, supposedly. He’s petitioned the judge to let him have a visit, supervised by his therapist. I have a letter here from the therapist about it.” She hands him an envelope. “It’s a copy, you can keep it. I hope you’ll tell the judge, that it wouldn’t be good for her. I just know he only wants to apologize because he thinks it’ll make him look better in the trial.”
Temas wants to say she’s probably right, but restrains himself-that kind of comment can come back and bite you in the ass. “I’ll look over this, and get in touch with the other therapist, maybe talk about it with Sarah next time. She might have some things she wants to say to him.”
“I don’t want her in the same room with him,” Sarah’s mother protests.
“We’ll see. See you on Wednesday.”
As he heads back to his office, the receptionist says, “Doctor Temas, you have three messages.”
He picks up the slips. Two messages are from Greg House, one from Doctor Wilson. Back in his office, he calls Greg first.
“Diagnostics,” a man’s voice answers brusquely.
“Hello, I’m calling for Greg House.” He carefully doesn’t identify himself-the person on the phone must be one of Greg’s co-workers, and there’s confidentiality to think of.
“This is House.”
It hadn’t sounded like Greg at all-there’s too much confidence, and far too much animation, in his voice. “Greg, this is Andy Temas. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Would it kill you to return your calls promptly? What if I was having a crisis here?”
Temas raises an eyebrow. This is certainly different. “I was in session. You wouldn’t like me interrupting your session to answer a phone call.”
“For two hours?” Greg says accusingly. “Don’t you shrinks take ten minutes off between appointments?”
“I happened to be running late,” he says defensively. He was a few minutes late for his first appointment of the morning, which meant he had to see the second one-Sarah-immediately after the first person left. “But I’m here now. What do you need?”
“That referral. For the acupuncture place. I was going to call them first thing and try to get an appointment today. Now that the day’s half over, that plan’s shot to hell.”
“It’s not even eleven AM,” he points out. Greg appears to have gone from overly-compliant to downright obnoxious with no stops in between. Still, confidently asserting his needs is probably a development he should encourage. “I’ll give you the number, and I’ll call and ask them to try to fit you in today or tomorrow. Sometimes they keep a few appointments aside for emergencies.”
“Okay,” Greg says, then, grudgingly, “Thanks.”
“You seem…different, Greg. Has anything happened?”
“Lots. Look, we’ve got somebody here bleeding from every hole in his head, no apparent cause. That’s got to take priority over my wounded psyche. See you Thursday. And call me House.”
“See you--” Temas says, before realizing he’s talking to a dial tone.
Wilson lingers in the hallway, peering through the glass walls into the Diagnostics conference room. House is standing by the whiteboard, gesturing emphatically with his cane and, judging from his mouth movements, shouting. The team looks stunned.
Well. It has been a while since they’ve seen House in fighting trim. Hearing the phone ring in his office, he reluctantly goes in to answer it.
It’s Doctor Temas, returning his call. “Did you call House back yet?” Wilson asks. “He was carrying on about it a while ago.”
“Yes, I talked to him about an hour ago. He hasn’t called back since then, has he?” Temas asks warily.
“Not that I know of. And he’s pretty busy with his new case.” Wilson feels only slightly guilty for being glad that a complete stranger has come down with a disgusting and mysterious illness, considering how happy it’s made House.
“He seems…a bit different,”
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Wilson says enthusiastically. “This morning he made a racial remark about Foreman, and mocked Chase’s accent. Maybe he’s trying a little too hard, but it’s pretty encouraging.” It’s only when his remarks are greeted by silence that he realizes what he’s just said must sound a little strange. “He’s kind of an asshole when he’s himself,” he explains. “It’s part of his charm.”
“I…see.”
Quickly, Wilson fills him in on House’s conclusions about what he and his fellow patients were dosed with. “There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do, medically, to counteract the drugs, since they’re been thoroughly metabolized. House wants to find a way to exhume Isabelle D. and charge Luerssen with her murder.”
“Greg figured that out?” Temas sounds slightly incredulous.
“Yeah. It’s what he does. Listen, did you know that they started giving him the drugs in the rehab place?”
“Yes, he mentioned it in our last session. And I’ve become aware of other abuses at that center and others. There’s a lot more to this than just Luerssen. They need to be shut down; I’m working on it. It’s hard to decide where to start.”
“House will help you,’ Wilson predicts. “It’ll be therapeutic for him.”
It’s a couple of hours later when Chase knocks tentatively at his door.
He motions for him to come in. “What’s up?”
“It’s House,” Chase says. “I think he needs you.”
Wilson gets up immediately. “What happened?”
“He took a pill-one of these--” Chase hands him the bottle “-Cameron said something about it, and he wigged out. He’s in his office now. Under the desk, practically.”
Wilson can practically see how it went down: House got cocky for a minute and thought it would be funny to see how his staff reacted to seeing him casually dry-swallow a pill in the middle of a diagnosis. Only he forgot that he wasn’t quite ready for the kind of reaction he’d get. “What did Cameron say, exactly?” he asks, unlatching the balcony door.
Chase takes a deep breath and blows it out through his teeth, following him out onto the balcony. “Something like, ‘You’re using drugs again? After everything you went through to get clean?’ And Foreman said, ‘You’re not really surprised, are you?’ But House was already over the edge by then.”
Wilson pauses next to the wall between the two balconies. “That’s just fucking great. Go tell the others to leave him alone.” He bets that Cameron’s pleading, or else remonstrating, with him through the office door.
Chase nods. “Should I tell them you gave him the gabapentin?”
“I think he has as much right to privacy as anyone else, don’t you?” He clears the wall and taps on the glass. “House? It’s me. Are you okay?” The blinds are half-closed; he can see House, a still dark shape in the corner behind his lounge chair.
After a moment, he lurches over and unlocks the door, then retreats back into his corner while Wilson is still getting the door open.
“Hey,” Wilson says softly, going over to him.
House turns his face up, but Wilson has the impression he’s not really seeing him. House’s eyes flick toward the balcony door, as if he’s wondering if he can get past Wilson. Then he shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, and when he opens them again, it’s House behind them. “Hey,” he answers weakly.
Wilson backs off and sits in House’s desk chair. “Chase told me what happened.”
“Suck up.” It’s clear House’s heart isn’t in it.
“Yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck.
“Does everybody really think I’m going to start using again?” House asks plaintively.
“I don’t know,” Wilson answers. “I’m not a mind reader.”
“Do you think I’m going to start using again?”
It’s a hard question. It’s not just that he thinks House will start using again; he thinks that he should. But it’s just as clear that what House wants-maybe even needs-to hear is that Wilson has confidence in his ability to stay clean. “I think you can do anything you set your mind to,” he answers instead.
“Thanks. A platitude is exactly what I was looking for there.”
“House….”
“Between the rehab, and the evil therapist, and the non-evil therapist, I was running a little low. I was thinking of ordering some of those posters, with the rainbows and the kittens. ‘Hang in there, baby’ and ‘Take it one day at a time,’ those are my favorites.”
“You don’t want platitudes? Fine. I don’t think not using drugs is the most important thing for you to be working on. Dealing with what Luerssen and the rest of them did to you, getting on a sensible pain management regimen….”
“Sensible pain management regimen,” House says flatly. “You mean narcotics, don’t you.”
“I…don’t know. Let’s see how the acupuncture works, and go from there.”
House stares at him, hurt and betrayal written all over his face. “You want me to start using again. You really do.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” He struggles to his feet. “Fine. Get me some Vicodin; I’ll have a party. Might as well.”
“That’s not what I have in mind,” Wilson says, planting his hands on his hips. “We’ll find something that works. Something you can live with. Vicodin’s not particularly well suited for long-term pain management anyway, but you didn’t want to change when it was working. Now that you’re off it anyway, we’ll start over and find something better.”
“You want me to start using again,” House repeats.
“I want you to not be in pain. Or at least as little pain as possible. Taking narcotics off the table is going to make that very difficult.” Wilson studies House’s face, hoping for a clue as to whether he’s holding together well enough to follow what Wilson’s saying. He’d wanted to put this discussion off longer, until House was feeling steadier, but Cameron and Foreman, damn them, have forced his hand.
House turns away from him, studying the floor. “They said you’d do this,” he says, rocking back on his heels. “They said you wanted me to be an addict. You don’t want me to get better.”
“I bet they did,” Wilson agrees, and waits.
Rubbing his chin, House says, “They said a lot of things.” His eyes dart up to meet Wilson’s, then back to the floor. “So you think I need them. The drugs.”
“I think you’ve had about enough of people telling you what’s best for you,” Wilson answers. It was him deciding what was best for House that landed him in rehab in the first place. True, he couldn’t have anticipated what kind of place the courts would send him to, but he couldn’t tell himself that his good intentions were proof against a disastrous outcome. Not anymore. “I’ll follow your lead. I’m not going to refuse to prescribe for you if it’s medically indicated. I’m not going to shove anything down your throat, either.”
House leans into his cane. “Okay,” he says at length. “I have an appointment at the acupuncture place at four-thirty. Come with me.”
“Sure.” He considers before adding, “If you want someone else to do your pain management, I can make a referral, or Temas might know someone who’s a little bit more qualified to deal with the whole…mess.” Oncology calls for substantial expertise in pain management, but he has no training in addiction issues beyond one or two professional-development seminars. He’s had a handful of patients who were in recovery, but none had been brainwashed clean like House had, and since House wasn’t terminal, the issues were different anyway. “Or I can keep working with you on it, if that’s what you want. But it won’t hurt my feelings if you start seeing someone else.”
“Like I’d care about hurting your feelings,” House scoffs, but again, he’s trying too hard.
TBC!