House fic: The Heart Could Wish
Title: The Heart Could Wish (sequel to Nightdog's Kingdom Come)
Authors: blackmare and nightdog_barks.
Characters: Wilson, House, original characters
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: 1,995 words.
Author Notes: Well, it's happened again. The lure of a Nightdog ficverse got to me.
Intrepid Readers: pwcorgigirl
The Heart Could Wish
The man in the northwest corner bed has two names on his chart, each followed by a question mark. If he were conscious, it would be possible to ask which one was his.
If he were conscious.
Alas, he is not. He is at least clean now, having been bathed by the nursing staff, one of whom he punched in his delirium. The orderly on duty being otherwise occupied with a bottle of corn whiskey, Doctor Wilson was called in to hold the man still for the remainder of his bath. Bright blue eyes had stared up at him for a moment, as the patient told him Go to Hell, I've already been there, and then fell again into the heavy sleep of his illness. After that there was no further trouble, but also no further information.
And so for the moment, the man still has two names. One name had been sewn into his filthy chaplain's jacket; the other was inscribed on a matchless cigar lighter, brass and steel, that the nurses had found in one of that jacket's pockets.
On the lighter's reverse was a second engraving, of the nude and languorous form of a woman. Currently she resides in Doctor Wilson's vest pocket, purely for safekeeping. It will be some time before her emaciated, malaria-stricken owner has any further need for her services.
"I will assume," Doctor Wilson says to the man who cannot hear him, "that the lighter is yours, and the trappings of faith are not."
There had been nothing else in the pockets -- no wallet, no papers, no creased and stained photograph of a girl back home or anywhere else. The only other luggage the man had been carrying was in a rough leather pouch tied to his belt. Three greasy silver dollars, bearing the dirt-encrusted lines and whorls of anonymous fingerprints.
Wilson flips one of the coins. It comes up heads.
"Chicago?" is the first thing the man asks, once he's drained the glass of water Wilson brings him.
"Chicago, indeed, and Cook County Hospital, to be precise. I'm afraid you've contracted malaria."
"I'm afraid you've mistaken me for a fool who didn't know that." The man's stomach makes an audible gurgling sound. "Food before quinine, or both will come back to haunt you," he says.
"One order of hardtack and bacon," Doctor Wilson replies, feigning the motions of writing it down. Across the room, he's aware of a nurse pausing to stare at him.
"You bring hardtack within fifty feet of me, and you will be the war's last and least lamented casualty."
"In your current state," Wilson replies, "I'd like to see you try. But it happens we ran out of hardtack last night. You'll have to make do with good potato hash and a poached egg on toast, Mister House."
"Not 'Mister'."
"I do not for a moment believe you're a Reverend. But as you are hungry, House, I suppose that answer can wait for another time."
Not-Mister-House lies back, declining to answer, his energy obviously spent by their brief exchange. And yet, on his face there is something approaching a smile.
Doctor Wilson makes a mental note to bring the man a shaving kit.
House (and his name is surely House, because the nurses have heard him calling out to Frank in his nightmares) does not bother to shave for two more days.
He sleeps a great deal, eats not enough, and when awake he demands quinine. Wilson has prescribed the correct measure, of course, but House wants a dosage that would be high if he were otherwise healthy, let alone after the war left him wasted away.
On the third morning, Wilson looks at the still-unused shaving kit on the bedside table and asks whether House might have abandoned his post as a chaplain in favor of becoming a rabbi like Wilson's Uncle Sol.
"You could give me a real blade," House gripes, "instead of this ridiculous German thing."
"Safety razors are standard here. There's some ... strange rule about not letting patients kill themselves or the staff."
He turns away before House can see him smile, and goes upstairs to see to his morning rounds.
When he returns at lunch time, House is asleep again, and the beard he'd been growing is gone. The lines of his face are so sharp and gaunt that Wilson half regrets having teased him.
MOTHER, reads the telegram, THE WAR DID NOT KILL ME STOP AM IN ILLINOIS STOP NOT COMING HOME STOP LETTER TO FOLLOW STOP
It's hardly the strangest message Doctor Wilson has ever sent for a patient, but it seems odd that the only person this patient wishes to contact is in Kentucky, while he has dragged himself onward to Chicago.
"You have no family here?" Wilson asked him, on taking the note. "No friends?"
"You've met me," House had replied. "What do you think?"
Wilson thinks this is an interesting case. He strolls back from the telegraph office, turning it over in his mind: Too old to have been a regular soldier, but clearly not an enthusiastic volunteer; too abrasive and too poor to have been an officer of any rank; too profane to have been a chaplain. Why on earth was he in the Army at all?
He considers the first possibility -- the man is a reporter, following the troops. Wilson has seen such stories in the Hearst papers, glancing at the screaming headlines on his way to work. He dismisses the thought -- considering the source, a reporter would already have asked Wilson for an interview and regaled the ward with tales of personal derring-do. And as far as Wilson can tell, that's neither Joseph Pulitzer nor Nellie Bly in a hospital bed.
"Not 'Mister'", his patient had insisted, but he's also not Reverend, or Rabbi, or Major, so what more is left?
He stops pondering that question when, upon his return to the ward, he finds House nowhere in sight.
The one thing of which everyone seems certain is that House has not left the hospital. Mentally unwell patients sometimes do -- sallying forth into the city in their pajamas and bare feet, leading to, on one unfortunate occasion, being run over by an ice wagon -- but whatever else House may be, he is sane enough. Saner than that.
It stands to reason, therefore, that he is somewhere in the building. The only trouble is, he can't be; Wilson has checked, or had someone else check, every room from the basement to the ... ah.
The roof?
Doctor Wilson's patient is, indeed, on the roof.
He's found a place to sit, leaning against the peaked facade to take advantage of the shade it provides. His bare feet jut out into the afternoon sunlight. House has a cigarillo, and a gentle downdraft wafts the smoke across his toes.
"About time you joined me," House says. He pats the brick surface beside him. "Olly olly oxen free," he says.
"This isn't a game of hide-and-seek," Wilson snaps. "You are four days into a recovery that will take at least another three weeks. It's five flights of stairs to get up here, and you're in no condition to climb that, or to be smoking."
"Don't be tedious, Doctor Wilson." House takes another puff and blows the smoke in his direction. The scent is mild and sweet, familiar somehow ...
"Where did you get that?" Wilson demands.
House takes the cigarillo out of his mouth, but only to waggle it between two fingers.
"Your office," he says.
"My ... "
"Had to see if you were as smart as I think you are."
"As you ... "
Wilson wants to say more, but somehow he's lost control of the conversation before it ever really started.
"Read some of your case files, too. You're pretty good at what you do."
"You had no right. No right to go snooping -- " Wilson stops. House isn't listening, anyway. He's looking through the balusters of the widow's walk, out to the horizon. "Well," Wilson says, "thank you, I suppose," and when House still doesn't respond, Wilson looks himself, squinting against the sun.
A flash of color moving across the sky -- a blue jay? -- but when Wilson lifts a hand to shield his eyes, it's nothing, just an off-course seagull, heading back to the lake.
"You have a dozen other patients," House says, interrupting Wilson's reverie, "and you've abandoned them all in favor of looking for me?"
Wilson puts his hand down, the seagull lost to view. "Well," he says, "none of them were missing." It's hot up here, and House will need to rest a while before attempting the trek downstairs. That spot of shade looks very inviting. Wilson finds himself shedding his new white coat and rolling up his shirtsleeves. "Move over, you lunatic. I don't intend to leave you alone. You'll fall asleep smoking and set yourself on fire."
"You must admit," House says, as Wilson settles into the shade beside him, "it's not a bad view from here." He takes another puff on his cigarillo, drawing the smoke in and letting it out slowly.
"Better than Cuba, I take it?"
"Different," House says. "Different."
He stretches out his left arm, and catches a second cigarillo as it falls out of his pajama sleeve. "I wasn't sure I'd have company," he says, while holding the cigarillo tips together to light the new one, "but I try to be prepared."
House offers the ridiculous gift -- the very thing he stole -- with such aplomb that Wilson could laugh at the absurdity of the gesture. Refuse it, his better nature tells him, but he's tired of listening, and that voice is not as enticing as the cool shade and warm smoke.
"I feel like a boy skipping school," he confesses.
"You've never skipped school in your life."
"Sadly," Wilson murmurs, "my career as a master criminal over before it began."
House pays no attention.
"Mother's little angel, Doctor Wilson. That was you."
"You don't know my mother. Speaking of which, has your father died, or do the two of you simply not communicate?"
Wilson is rewarded with the sight of House's eyebrows shooting up nearly to his hairline. The unguarded moment does not last.
"That's why you climbed up here? To ask why I didn't write to dear old Dad?"
"And to reassure myself that you weren't about to jump to your death."
House takes another, maddeningly calm puff.
"I can't die yet," he says. "I promised my mother a letter. Which I will send as soon as I figure out how to write two sentences without lying about why I'm here."
"Why are you here?"
"I asked you first. I'm a routine malaria case. I'm not dying. You've begun a study of cancer patients, but I'm no use for that. I'm not even pleasant company. The last fool who chose to associate with me had literally the patience of a priest. Yet you come looking for me yourself, rather than let the orderlies do it. Why?"
Wilson considers the question. The tobacco smoke wraps around his shoulders as the breeze shifts and calms and House waits.
"Perhaps," he replies at last, "it's because you aren't boring." He leans back and blows out a few smoke rings. The perfect circles hang in the air above them. "Doctor House."
House attempts to hide his smile by chewing on his stolen cigarillo. "I believe we can dispense with the titles, Wilson."
"It's curious that you don't wish your profession known, but very well. I will keep your secret on one condition."
House waits.
"Tell me why you came to Chicago."
"Well," House says. "Well, that's a long story." He chews on the cigarillo some more. "It may require more than one telling."
Wilson settles back. "Your treatment lasts three more weeks," he replies. He stretches his legs into the sun, dares to wiggle his toes inside his shoes.
"I'm sure we can find the time."
~ fin
Authors: blackmare and nightdog_barks.
Characters: Wilson, House, original characters
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: 1,995 words.
Author Notes: Well, it's happened again. The lure of a Nightdog ficverse got to me.
Intrepid Readers: pwcorgigirl
The Heart Could Wish
The man in the northwest corner bed has two names on his chart, each followed by a question mark. If he were conscious, it would be possible to ask which one was his.
If he were conscious.
Alas, he is not. He is at least clean now, having been bathed by the nursing staff, one of whom he punched in his delirium. The orderly on duty being otherwise occupied with a bottle of corn whiskey, Doctor Wilson was called in to hold the man still for the remainder of his bath. Bright blue eyes had stared up at him for a moment, as the patient told him Go to Hell, I've already been there, and then fell again into the heavy sleep of his illness. After that there was no further trouble, but also no further information.
And so for the moment, the man still has two names. One name had been sewn into his filthy chaplain's jacket; the other was inscribed on a matchless cigar lighter, brass and steel, that the nurses had found in one of that jacket's pockets.
On the lighter's reverse was a second engraving, of the nude and languorous form of a woman. Currently she resides in Doctor Wilson's vest pocket, purely for safekeeping. It will be some time before her emaciated, malaria-stricken owner has any further need for her services.
"I will assume," Doctor Wilson says to the man who cannot hear him, "that the lighter is yours, and the trappings of faith are not."
There had been nothing else in the pockets -- no wallet, no papers, no creased and stained photograph of a girl back home or anywhere else. The only other luggage the man had been carrying was in a rough leather pouch tied to his belt. Three greasy silver dollars, bearing the dirt-encrusted lines and whorls of anonymous fingerprints.
Wilson flips one of the coins. It comes up heads.
"Chicago?" is the first thing the man asks, once he's drained the glass of water Wilson brings him.
"Chicago, indeed, and Cook County Hospital, to be precise. I'm afraid you've contracted malaria."
"I'm afraid you've mistaken me for a fool who didn't know that." The man's stomach makes an audible gurgling sound. "Food before quinine, or both will come back to haunt you," he says.
"One order of hardtack and bacon," Doctor Wilson replies, feigning the motions of writing it down. Across the room, he's aware of a nurse pausing to stare at him.
"You bring hardtack within fifty feet of me, and you will be the war's last and least lamented casualty."
"In your current state," Wilson replies, "I'd like to see you try. But it happens we ran out of hardtack last night. You'll have to make do with good potato hash and a poached egg on toast, Mister House."
"Not 'Mister'."
"I do not for a moment believe you're a Reverend. But as you are hungry, House, I suppose that answer can wait for another time."
Not-Mister-House lies back, declining to answer, his energy obviously spent by their brief exchange. And yet, on his face there is something approaching a smile.
Doctor Wilson makes a mental note to bring the man a shaving kit.
House (and his name is surely House, because the nurses have heard him calling out to Frank in his nightmares) does not bother to shave for two more days.
He sleeps a great deal, eats not enough, and when awake he demands quinine. Wilson has prescribed the correct measure, of course, but House wants a dosage that would be high if he were otherwise healthy, let alone after the war left him wasted away.
On the third morning, Wilson looks at the still-unused shaving kit on the bedside table and asks whether House might have abandoned his post as a chaplain in favor of becoming a rabbi like Wilson's Uncle Sol.
"You could give me a real blade," House gripes, "instead of this ridiculous German thing."
"Safety razors are standard here. There's some ... strange rule about not letting patients kill themselves or the staff."
He turns away before House can see him smile, and goes upstairs to see to his morning rounds.
When he returns at lunch time, House is asleep again, and the beard he'd been growing is gone. The lines of his face are so sharp and gaunt that Wilson half regrets having teased him.
MOTHER, reads the telegram, THE WAR DID NOT KILL ME STOP AM IN ILLINOIS STOP NOT COMING HOME STOP LETTER TO FOLLOW STOP
It's hardly the strangest message Doctor Wilson has ever sent for a patient, but it seems odd that the only person this patient wishes to contact is in Kentucky, while he has dragged himself onward to Chicago.
"You have no family here?" Wilson asked him, on taking the note. "No friends?"
"You've met me," House had replied. "What do you think?"
Wilson thinks this is an interesting case. He strolls back from the telegraph office, turning it over in his mind: Too old to have been a regular soldier, but clearly not an enthusiastic volunteer; too abrasive and too poor to have been an officer of any rank; too profane to have been a chaplain. Why on earth was he in the Army at all?
He considers the first possibility -- the man is a reporter, following the troops. Wilson has seen such stories in the Hearst papers, glancing at the screaming headlines on his way to work. He dismisses the thought -- considering the source, a reporter would already have asked Wilson for an interview and regaled the ward with tales of personal derring-do. And as far as Wilson can tell, that's neither Joseph Pulitzer nor Nellie Bly in a hospital bed.
"Not 'Mister'", his patient had insisted, but he's also not Reverend, or Rabbi, or Major, so what more is left?
He stops pondering that question when, upon his return to the ward, he finds House nowhere in sight.
The one thing of which everyone seems certain is that House has not left the hospital. Mentally unwell patients sometimes do -- sallying forth into the city in their pajamas and bare feet, leading to, on one unfortunate occasion, being run over by an ice wagon -- but whatever else House may be, he is sane enough. Saner than that.
It stands to reason, therefore, that he is somewhere in the building. The only trouble is, he can't be; Wilson has checked, or had someone else check, every room from the basement to the ... ah.
The roof?
Doctor Wilson's patient is, indeed, on the roof.
He's found a place to sit, leaning against the peaked facade to take advantage of the shade it provides. His bare feet jut out into the afternoon sunlight. House has a cigarillo, and a gentle downdraft wafts the smoke across his toes.
"About time you joined me," House says. He pats the brick surface beside him. "Olly olly oxen free," he says.
"This isn't a game of hide-and-seek," Wilson snaps. "You are four days into a recovery that will take at least another three weeks. It's five flights of stairs to get up here, and you're in no condition to climb that, or to be smoking."
"Don't be tedious, Doctor Wilson." House takes another puff and blows the smoke in his direction. The scent is mild and sweet, familiar somehow ...
"Where did you get that?" Wilson demands.
House takes the cigarillo out of his mouth, but only to waggle it between two fingers.
"Your office," he says.
"My ... "
"Had to see if you were as smart as I think you are."
"As you ... "
Wilson wants to say more, but somehow he's lost control of the conversation before it ever really started.
"Read some of your case files, too. You're pretty good at what you do."
"You had no right. No right to go snooping -- " Wilson stops. House isn't listening, anyway. He's looking through the balusters of the widow's walk, out to the horizon. "Well," Wilson says, "thank you, I suppose," and when House still doesn't respond, Wilson looks himself, squinting against the sun.
A flash of color moving across the sky -- a blue jay? -- but when Wilson lifts a hand to shield his eyes, it's nothing, just an off-course seagull, heading back to the lake.
"You have a dozen other patients," House says, interrupting Wilson's reverie, "and you've abandoned them all in favor of looking for me?"
Wilson puts his hand down, the seagull lost to view. "Well," he says, "none of them were missing." It's hot up here, and House will need to rest a while before attempting the trek downstairs. That spot of shade looks very inviting. Wilson finds himself shedding his new white coat and rolling up his shirtsleeves. "Move over, you lunatic. I don't intend to leave you alone. You'll fall asleep smoking and set yourself on fire."
"You must admit," House says, as Wilson settles into the shade beside him, "it's not a bad view from here." He takes another puff on his cigarillo, drawing the smoke in and letting it out slowly.
"Better than Cuba, I take it?"
"Different," House says. "Different."
He stretches out his left arm, and catches a second cigarillo as it falls out of his pajama sleeve. "I wasn't sure I'd have company," he says, while holding the cigarillo tips together to light the new one, "but I try to be prepared."
House offers the ridiculous gift -- the very thing he stole -- with such aplomb that Wilson could laugh at the absurdity of the gesture. Refuse it, his better nature tells him, but he's tired of listening, and that voice is not as enticing as the cool shade and warm smoke.
"I feel like a boy skipping school," he confesses.
"You've never skipped school in your life."
"Sadly," Wilson murmurs, "my career as a master criminal over before it began."
House pays no attention.
"Mother's little angel, Doctor Wilson. That was you."
"You don't know my mother. Speaking of which, has your father died, or do the two of you simply not communicate?"
Wilson is rewarded with the sight of House's eyebrows shooting up nearly to his hairline. The unguarded moment does not last.
"That's why you climbed up here? To ask why I didn't write to dear old Dad?"
"And to reassure myself that you weren't about to jump to your death."
House takes another, maddeningly calm puff.
"I can't die yet," he says. "I promised my mother a letter. Which I will send as soon as I figure out how to write two sentences without lying about why I'm here."
"Why are you here?"
"I asked you first. I'm a routine malaria case. I'm not dying. You've begun a study of cancer patients, but I'm no use for that. I'm not even pleasant company. The last fool who chose to associate with me had literally the patience of a priest. Yet you come looking for me yourself, rather than let the orderlies do it. Why?"
Wilson considers the question. The tobacco smoke wraps around his shoulders as the breeze shifts and calms and House waits.
"Perhaps," he replies at last, "it's because you aren't boring." He leans back and blows out a few smoke rings. The perfect circles hang in the air above them. "Doctor House."
House attempts to hide his smile by chewing on his stolen cigarillo. "I believe we can dispense with the titles, Wilson."
"It's curious that you don't wish your profession known, but very well. I will keep your secret on one condition."
House waits.
"Tell me why you came to Chicago."
"Well," House says. "Well, that's a long story." He chews on the cigarillo some more. "It may require more than one telling."
Wilson settles back. "Your treatment lasts three more weeks," he replies. He stretches his legs into the sun, dares to wiggle his toes inside his shoes.
"I'm sure we can find the time."
~ fin