Part Fourteen, i) House
I finally had a night to write! Apologies for the delay, but part ii) is already in the works, so I'll be updating soon. Thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to comment on this story so far, I hope you enjoy this update.
(As a side note -- medicine? I did my research, but apologies if this section has some inaccuracies in it. Let me know and I'll try and correct them.)
Click for Part Fourteen, i) House.
Fuck you, House.
The door smacked closed behind him with a satisfying thud, and then House was gouging his way across the lobby floor, leaving a trail of muddy dots behind him.
Son of a bitch. Couldn't resist the chance to mess with me ---
A nurse eyed his progress across the linoleum and glowered at him. He practically snarled back. He jabbed at the elevator; heard the distant creak from above him; watched the button burn red.
Don't talk to me.
With pleasure, he thought bitterly.
"House!"
He jabbed the button a few more times, but it was too late. He swivelled round to face Cuddy, who was wrapped in her winter coat, clearly on the verge of leaving, and looking at him with deep suspicion. "It's past eight," she said, narrowing her eyes. "What are you doing back here? Patient crash?"
"Unfortunately, he's stable." He stepped into the elevator and then glared in annoyance when she followed suit. "Treatment's not working."
"So you rushed back to work," she said flatly. "You didn't want to be within fifty feet of this case last week. I thought you were meant to be looking after Wilson?"
"He's not a goldfish," snapped House. "I left the remote within cripple distance. He'll be fine."
"He's sick! The whole point of him moving in with you was that you might actually be there -"
"I said, he's fine. He wanted some alone time, and I wanted to actually do my damn job, so -- " He strode out of the elevator, and felt a hand catch his sleeve.
"House." Suddenly she sounded alarmingly earnest, and he turned around despite himself. "You told him?" Cuddy stared at him, her eyes wide and curious; no doubt taking in the sag of his shoulders and his general air of exhaustion, as he tried to look at anything but her.
"Not me," he muttered. There was a pause, until House finally had to risk a glance at her face. She looked concerned (guilty) and he felt a stab of empathy along with irritation - irritation that she was his conspirator in this situation; that she was dumb enough to look upset when it had always been obvious that this would happen. From the moment she'd lured him into her office - how could she not have seen that it was inevitable?
"How did he take it?"
"He's thrilled," said House sourly. Cuddy folded her arms and gave him a warning look.
"What did he say?"
"What did you think he was going to say? 'Mazel tov'? Seeing as how it's barely been a week since the guy decided to skewer him, I think you can assume he took it fairly personally -- " He stopped himself before he could let his anger run on. It was worse than pointless to adopt the other side of the argument - Wilson's side (and when had that stopped being his side? he wondered, with a jolt in his chest). He'd sacrificed the right to fight from that corner.
"You didn't tell him?"
"He . . . heard a message on the answer-phone." Cuddy winced.
"I'm guessing he was pretty upset," she murmured quietly.
"It's Wilson. He's always had a flair for melodrama." He shrugged, and tried to sound lighter than he felt. "He needed to yell at someone anyway. He's been disgustingly calm about this whole thing."
"Right," said Cuddy dryly, but eyeing him kindly all the same. "You wanted to get him mad. I'm sure this is just how you planned it."
"Alright, so maybe not exactly like this," House admitted. "I probably would've just hidden his sling or something."
She gave him a small smile. "Is he, . . . ok?"
House's immediate impulse was to say He's fine, with enough vehemence to make her drop the subject (especially now that he was pissed at Wilson, he reminded himself). But that didn't change the fact that Wilson's histrionics had left him on the verge of collapse - idiot, he thought savagely - and House had walked out. A month ago he would have all too happily decided that whatever damage Wilson inflicted on himself whilst denouncing House would serve him right - but now, . . . He was still a moron, and he could still go to hell, but House hadn't spent an entire evening glued to Wilson's surgery, screwing up his leg, just so that Wilson could have some stupid, ironic accident before House could yell back.
Red and white hands, he recalled; the surgery; the calm, still body. House imagined coming home to silence, and red-slicked bathroom tiles.
"You could check on him," he said suddenly, his mouth very dry. "Obviously you want to play nursemaid," he amended, trying to sound as scornful as possible. "And we both know that I'm the only one of us who actually has better things to do." Cuddy rolled her eyes and nodded, and House felt his stomach unclench slightly. Good. If Wilson was taken care of (and fuck Wilson, saying those things to him,) then House could go back to concentrating on what a jerk he was.
I thought you actually gave a damn --
Not that he particularly wanted to think about that, either.
He nodded at Cuddy and headed towards his office. Harvey might be the root of the problem, but right now he could double up and serve as a distraction. If he could just solve the damn case . . . The situation wouldn't be fixed; it wouldn't be over -- but at least he'd have solved something.
House sat at his desk, glowering at the scrawled list of symptoms.
How did he take it?
He's thrilled.
Wilson had been . . . Not flabbergasted, because that was a word House always enjoyed using, and he knew that one; saw it on a daily basis as Wilson gaped around for words, eyebrows skirting his hair line. That one was fun.
Not even lost, although it was a closer match. If you factored in some extra bewilderment, upset, and a look like House had just socked him in the gut.
For the first time, House wished Wilson had a better poker face.
Was all this because he was treating (failing to treat, sniped a little voice in his head) Harvey? Because House hadn't told him about it? Or because Wilson thought House had somehow wormed out all the intricacies of whatever had happened to him? Sure, House had wanted to know, and if he'd had less distractions he probably would have put a lot more effort into actually finding out, but for once he was doing the time without committing the crime. He couldn't be punished for wanting to know, he decided. Wilson had been around him for long enough; he couldn't possibly get worked up about the fact House would want to know. That would be like House condemning Wilson for wanting to help snivelling nurses in distress.
Maybe it didn't matter. He was trying to fix Harvey. Wilson was irrelevant to the diagnosis, and he needed to concentrate. Harvey could still be fixed; Wilson -- House had pushed, and whatever was there had probably, finally, broken. Wilson had looked at him like he was foreign somehow, like he was suddenly incomprehensible - or worse, like he was finally understanding him for the first time. House - everything he'd done, every question he'd asked, even offering up his home, everything - it had been translated. Every word had been refocused through the lens of this one act, and House had to admit that, given that spin, he was screwed. For someone without his heartless, prying reputation, it was still pretty hard to justify multitasking a friend's recovery with frantic work to save his assailant. If it mattered so much to Wilson why Harvey had stabbed him, . . . Then it was going to matter why House was trying to save him.
Wilson was probably going to try and examine him now; establish a motive, deliver judgement. House bristled at the idea. Of course, that was if he was lucky. Wilson might decide just not to bother. It wasn't as if House had anything to offer that was worth that kind of work.
"Any ideas?" asked Foreman, striding into his office. Chase and Cameron trailed after him; Chase looked disgruntled, as always when he was made to stay late; Cameron was standing the furthest away. Of course, she didn't know yet that her self-righteous little putsch had worked.
"Maybe, - " Chase scrubbed a hand through his hair hopelessly, "maybe one of our assumptions is wrong. Maybe the anaphylaxis wasn't anaphylaxis."
"And maybe his cardiovascular collapse was just a hiccup," suggested Cameron, rolling her eyes. "The symptoms are right. We just - don't have a fit."
"We can isolate the infection," said Foreman, "we rule that out as a different problem." They all turned and looked at him expectantly. There was pause.
"Everything's related," said House, tapping the desk. Foreman glared at him.
"I thought we decided --"
"The infection might not be what brought him in, but it's still a part of this - thing. Part of the picture. What we have here -- is a chain of circumstances. We have an action, we have a consequence, action, consequence. We need a reason that explains the sequence."
"What, no metaphor?" snapped Foreman. "That doesn't help us with anything!"
"Ok, let's try that again, for the slower members of the class. What we have is . . . a domino run. That better?" he asked witheringly. "It doesn't matter what got the last few dominos tumbling, we need to find what decided to come and knock the first one over." He stared at the symptoms, and let his eyes unfocus. "If from the beginning, this was inevitable . . ."
He felt all the pieces start to sidle into sequence, but without the usual flash of satisfaction; instead he had a sinking feeling. Nothing felt different; the answer might be right, but nothing felt like it had been solved. "Inevitable," he declared slowly.
"We've been blindsided. It's not what triggered the anaphylaxis, it's why. Why does an adult male suddenly develop anaphylaxis? Whatever caused it can't be that obscure, it was a Jersey parking lot. And the next question is why does he still feel crap after we've flooded his system with anti-histamines, and then why the anaesthesia we gave him triggered a collapse . . . "
"You're saying we did this?" asked Chase, unimpressed.
"I'm saying - link up abdominal pain and low blood pressure with severe, sudden onset anaphylaxis, and ignore all the crap that happened after we pumped him full of drugs."
" . . Adult onset Mastocytosis?" said Cameron. "No, . . . no skin lesions, no rash --"
"Unless, of the 0.1% of patients with mastocytosis, he's in the lucky 1% who don't present with skin lesions," said House lightly. "Explains everything - spleen, ulcers, fainting, and the original anaphylaxis. Mix it up with an infection he picked up in here, and the system failure we caused with the anaesthesia, and we're done."
None of his team looked particularly convinced. "We . . . should establish what the trigger was, or this could happen again as soon as we let him out of the hospital," said Chase uncertainly.
"Fine. You do that." He nodded to Foreman. "You, go do a bone marrow biopsy to confirm --"
"No way," snorted Foreman. "The guy's a racist asshole. He's not gonna let me get close enough to biopsy, and I don't want to get close enough to biopsy. I'll swap with Chase."
"Forget it." House rolled his eyes. "Help Chase. God forbid the patient should offend your sensibilities." No objections to Harvey stabbing a colleague, but perish forbid he might drop the N-bomb, he thought darkly. He sighed and pointed his pen like a rapier. "Cameron, do the biopsy." He narrowed his eyes and fixed her with a hard look. "I'm sure we can guarantee that you'll make it as painful as possible in your quest for justice."
House swivelled back around in his chair, and glowered out of the window. Was that it? Was he right? The footsteps trailed out of the doorway.
All except one set. "I'm pretty sure he's not going to be all that keen to stab himself," House said to the silence behind him. "Go do the biopsy."
"House . . . If I'm being punished for -- "
"Since when did telling you to do your job classify as punishment?" snapped House, spinning round. "Why don't you just skip to the real question: if your cunning little plan to inform Wilson about Harvey worked, and whether I'm going to be mad about it." Cameron actually looked shocked, her eyes wide, and House was reminded of Wilson, looking at him like a spaniel that had been kicked shivering out into the yard.
"I didn't think Wilson would hear the message," she said, with a surprising degree of sincerity. "This wasn't a - a plan to let Wilson find out. I was doing my job by informing you about the fact your patient was --"
"Right. You were just drowning in concern for a guy you have no inclination to treat, and just had to call me at home." Cameron's lips compressed into a tight, thin line.
"This isn't about you," she said coldly. "I didn't agree to become involved in your deception, I agreed to treat Harvey, which is what I've been doing and why I called you. I'm not going to apologise because your plan backfired!"
House clenched his knuckles around the edge of the desk, and stared at his hands. "Then don't. Go - do - the biopsy," he snarled, with deliberate menace. Cameron ignored him and folded her arms defiantly.
"You're just mad because you couldn't control the circumstances, and your plan was ruined," she said angrily. "I've done nothing wrong!"
She paused, and added, as a calm, curt afterthought, "Wilson deserved to know." House looked up, eyes flashing with fury:
"He deserved to be told!"
There was a breathless, heated silence and for a second, Cameron looked like she was going to say something, looking at him with something like pity or apology - he couldn't tell which. "I'll let you know the results," was all that came out. Then he was on his own again. He reached for the eraser, but stopped himself. No point wiping out the symptoms just yet.
There was nothing else to do here. Waiting had never been House's strong point. He wasn't sure why he was so hesitant, then, to go back to his own damn apartment.
Cuddy would have called if Wilson had managed to concuss himself, and Wilson would have certainly tried to drag himself back to some semblance of normality if he had a visitor. House tried to recapture some of his anger from earlier, tried to remember how he'd felt when Wilson had been standing there shouting at him, but it had fled and abandoned him along with any clue of what to do next.
It should have been enough, he knew, that Wilson was still around; he should be grateful to have him standing there in his kitchen, out of danger and yelling. But House wasn't that selfless. This wasn't about Wilson; it was always about House and Wilson, about the two of them together, and right now there was nothing to be thankful for. He might have diagnosed Harvey, but he didn't know if he could fix this.
But he could even the balance a little, he thought, with a reluctant tug in his stomach. It was the least he could do, which was still more than he was comfortable doing. And he might fail: he'd have to explain, expose himself somehow, and it still might not be enough, . . . It sucked, and the idea made him squirm a little in his seat, but he could make the same effort for Wilson that he'd made for the man down the corridor.
He could try.