Part Nine
Here is the next chapter: Warning! It's quite a long one.
On a side note: I don't have a beta, and so I haven't been able to discuss this newest update with anybody, and I'm slightly nervous about it. I hope it doesn't seem too OOC. Let me know what you think; as ever, reviews are v. welcome, and I hope you enjoy it:
Wilson gazed around his hospital room with a new sense of appreciation. Sitting upright: it made all the difference. Compared to the last few days of staring hopelessly up at nurses, cops and visitors, he suddenly felt master of his own world again - albeit a reduced and rather tedious world, that consisted mainly of watching daytime soaps and the path of the sun as it moved across his window. All those things - being drugged, incapable, voiceless, helpless, - that had made him feel taut and skittish since his admission were steadily fading with the speed of his recovery. He'd managed drinking, sitting, even walking for a few wobbling seconds that morning; he'd graduated to the less stupefying brand of painkillers - and now eating was next on the list. He glanced impatiently at the door.
Of course, on the down side, everything still hurt like a bitch, and he was always slightly too cold, and anything beyond wielding a remote tended to wipe him out for a good half-hour. And then there was his arm.
He couldn't move his right arm too well, because of the unsettling feeling he got whenever he stretched it that his side might tear open beneath his aching ribs. That was annoying. But his left arm -- He glanced down ruefully at the newest addition to his wardrobe that had been fitted painfully that morning. It was less like a sling than a straitjacket. His left bicep was pinioned to his side by a strap that wound tightly around his torso, with his forearm secured across the front of his chest and further immobilised by a diagonal strip reaching from wrist to shoulder. His fingers curled uselessly against his chest, and he noticed how oddly vulnerable they looked set against the sturdy restraints; like a crab that had been exposed and robbed of its shell.
Wilson had already guessed he'd have to come back at some point (when he wasn't still healing from two other surgical scars, he'd decided) for surgery to repair the tendons that had been damaged in his shoulder, but he'd been too dazed from the morphine to connect the prickling in his fingers with the nerve damage that caused it. Lesions to the brachial plexus, he recalled, remembering how the woman (neuromuscular specialist - he had no idea what distant recesses of the hospital Cuddy had conjured her from,) had held his hand in her own and gently probed his fingers in search of numbness. He thought of his patients in remission, knowing the odds of the cells mutating again, the tumours re-growing, and the futile, fervent hopes that their bodies wouldn't turn against them. Maybe the nerves would regenerate and his hand would be fine, and he'd write and grip and flip people off as well as ever. Or maybe not.
A paper bag flew through the doorway and landed on his lap, showering crumbs. Wilson looked up with a glare.
"Happy? I walked all the way down to the cafeteria, queued for ten minutes behind Cuddy's newest batch of babbling interns, and then came all the way back up here, so you don't have to eat jello like the proles," griped House, entering the room with a slightly overwrought limp and collapsing into the chair by his bed.
"Beautifully served," said Wilson sardonically, but he was too hungry to lodge further complaint against House's style of delivery. He attacked the wrapping as enthusiastically as his one hand would allow him. Thank God that they were letting him eat, and that he'd actually succeeded in cajoling House into playing hunter-gatherer and foraging for something fit for human consumption. He unearthed a sandwich; it looked bland next to House's meal, but at least it wasn't neon or gelatinous.
House looked at him in amusement. "Would you calm down? I have no intention of performing a tracheotomy when you start choking. I just sat down."
"I've been buying you lunches for years," said Wilson, in the pause between bites. "Minor surgery is the least you could do in compensation."
"And now I've bought you one back," said House, his tone of voice clearly suggesting that the debt had thus been paid.
"Yes. All it took was my near-death and the fact I'm tied to a bed," said Wilson drily.
"Ingrate."
They chewed in companionable silence for a while, House commandeering the remote while Wilson basked in the joys of consumption.
"You're not." Wilson blinked.
" . . Care to elaborate?"
"You're not. Tied to the bed anymore. They removed the cath, right?" he added, ignoring the immediate rush of colour flooding Wilson's exasperated face. "Aren't you bored in here? You've been watching the weather channel." Wilson shrugged.
"There's nothing on. Daytime programming sucks."
"But seriously? The weather channel?"
"Well, I was considering a trip down to Broadway, maybe take in a show," said Wilson waspishly, "and then I remembered that I've just had major surgery."
"Let's take a road-trip."
"Now is the time you try to talk me into going to Vegas? I'd say your timing's a little off."
"I'll grab a wheelchair." Wilson looked at him suspiciously. "Cuddy needs to think I'm entertaining you or she'll slam me in the clinic faster than you can say 'she-devil'," explained House. "And this place is boring."
"Right. You're bored. It must be very hard for you." House hopped up with surprising agility and vanished from the room. A few moments later, he returned with a wheelchair and what Wilson would categorise as a distinctly dangerous look of anticipation. He eyed the thing with trepidation and shook his head.
" --- Nooo," he said firmly. House looked outraged.
"Why the hell not? Haven't the ceiling tiles lost their entertainment value yet?"
"I'm not letting you shanghai me!" said Wilson incredulously. "House, I can hardly walk!"
"Wheelchair!"
"If you're bored -"
"Oh, like you aren't," snorted House. "Hop in." Wilson didn't budge, glowering at him obstinately. "What do you think I'm going to do? If you want, I'll let you drive." He smirked perversely. "Of course, you only have one arm, so I'd just be watching you go round in circles for a while, but - "
"We go to my office," said Wilson adamantly. "You push where I tell you. No detours, no fellows, no anyone." He was bored; even when regarded from new and exciting angles in his upright state, his room only held so much interest to the keen observer. But being wheeled through the hospital like an invalid -- What else are you? he wondered crossly. It's not like you haven't seen other people being pushed around a thousand times before, it's not like there's anything to be ashamed of . . .
House knew he'd won; he parked the chair by the bed.
"Need a hand?" At Wilson's shake, he drew the blinds while Wilson glanced at the chair dubiously, and nudged the pulse-ox from his finger. He'd had his meds pretty recently, so he should be ok for a while -
"Come on, come on." House looked like he was performing some sort of heist, eyeing the corridors nervously, and Wilson stifled a groan. He'd finally regained some autonomy, and he was basically handing it over to House of all people, against every practical instinct. But it was too late now; he managed to lower himself stiffly into the chair while the room span briefly, and surrendered himself to the situation.
Would he go past the room where Shirty was being kept? The thought popped into his head unannounced and shocked him for a moment, filling him with the urge to dive back into the bed. He shook himself. Shirty was under guard; it was a ridiculous fear, he told himself scoldingly. Not to mention, whispered a shameful but not entirely unwelcome voice in his head, the fact that you know there's no way House is going to take you within fifty feet of him.
House, looking unnervingly gleeful, snatched a blanket from the bed and shoved it in his lap, before thrusting the cane into his hand and seizing the handles.
"I don't need -"
"Then just hold on to it. I'm not getting a lecture off one of the nurses for letting Jimmy catch cold." He pushed Wilson through the doorway, and shouted at the nearest nurse (Alicia, Wilson remembered, wincing): "I'm stealing your patient. I'll return him in a couple of hours. Don't tell Cuddy." And they were off.
It was weird, travelling along the busy corridors as a passenger, weaving left and right around people at someone else's whim, and Wilson was surprised to find himself slightly nervous. He gripped House's cane tightly in his good hand, and tried to focus on the fact that, for the first time in days, he wasn't in that room, he wasn't static and silent, - and he definitely wasn't bored.
Stupidly, he wasn't even suspicious, until it was too late. House pushed him into an empty elevator and pressed the down button, whistling in a parody of innocence. Wilson did a double take.
"What - House! My office is up! You said -"
"Your office is boring. What are we going to do there, paperwork?" Wilson twisted round in his chair and jabbed the right button, but it was too late: they were moving.
"I mean it, I said - " Maybe he sounded more panicked than he intended, because House lost the flippant air and interrupted him.
"I promise, if you decide you still want to go to your office, we'll turn back. Just enjoy the ride." Wilson gripped the wheel in a death grip to halt their progress.
"Where are we going?" he demanded.
"Unless the floor has moved, I'd say this is NICU." Wilson let go in surprise, although he had no idea what answer he'd expected, and House immediately set off again.
"Is there any point in asking where we're going, or are you just going to lie to me?" he asked peevishly, trying his best to relax back against the seat again.
"Jeez, I'm not going to roll you off a balcony. Anyway, we're here." They had pulled up in front of the OB/GYN lounge. Wilson furrowed his brow. "What - ?" There was a sign hanging from the door handle that stated, in official looking letters: CURRENTLY IN USE: CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.
House reached for the door handle, and Wilson's stomach froze in horror, as in his mind a long table unrolled, edged with cold faces staring at him in his hospital gown, strapped up and nearly shivering.
"House, no - !" And he was pushed through the doorway.
The room was deserted. There was just the sofa, and the tv, closed blinds and warm radiators, and a small stack of dvds balanced precariously on the arm of a chair. House clicked the door shut stealthily behind him, and stepped forward triumphantly into the room. "Told you it wouldn't be so bad," he said cheerfully, while Wilson unclenched his grip on the cane and felt the feeling rush back into his limbs. He gaped at House as he swivelled round and shoved the pile of movies onto Wilson's lap, grinning at him triumphantly. "See? Widescreen!"
Hopefully, none of the nurses would complain to Cuddy about House's guerrilla conference for at least another couple of hours. House grinned at his own handiwork. Wilson's indignation had died away the moment he'd started inspecting the dvds House had thieved from around the hospital, and for once he hadn't voiced any displeasure over House's blatant thwarting of hospital protocol. Three solid days of rain forecasts and cold fronts would make the best of men abandon their principles.
He'd magnanimously let Wilson choose the film - some black and white thing, with perfectly coiffed men and glamorous Hollywood women. Against his own tastes, he'd already purged the pile of the gorier thrillers that he'd uncovered - probably best to avoid the bloodbaths for now, he'd reasoned. Wilson, still in the wheelchair, now adjusted to its most laid-back setting, was watching the movie avidly. Apart from the occasional grimace every time he seemed to remember that he had the shoulder immobiliser on, and the fact that he was still draped in the blanket despite House having maxed out the thermostat, Wilson was actually looking -- like himself.
Movie night had always been the best time to broach a topic with Wilson. House shifted on the sofa, and kept his eyes fixed on the screen. He cleared his throat with an impressive approximation of casualness and asked;
"So how'd it go with the cops?"
"Watching, here." Damn. Wilson didn't take his eyes off the tv.
"Come on, you've seen this movie what, fifteen times? You know how it ends; it's not like you actually need to pay attention." Wilson looked up, and House suddenly realised, with a burst of horror and a flashback to one of their more recent Hitchcock marathons, that he had laid the perfect path for Wilson to embark upon one of his 'Classic Cinema' lectures. "Forget it! Watch the damn movie." Wilson smirked.
House managed to keep his fidgeting to a minimum for the rest of the film, sneaking the occasional glance at Wilson, who was looking steadily more tired, but enthralled.
House went cold at the very idea of a Cameron-esque heart to heart. He didn't want to talk about the details of this; he didn't even want to think about it, although he hadn't really been able to stop himself. The idea of Wilson in a knife fight was so utterly incongruous it verged on comical, and had inevitably led to House speculating about a dozen different scenarios, all of which were absurd and unsettling and unravelled without a trace of humour on the canvas of his imagination. But there was something uncomfortable about Wilson's continued silence on the matter of what had apparently been an attempted murder. And also, (who was he kidding? Most of all) the picture was incomplete, and House always wanted to know; and now he had the added mystery of wondering if James "you need to talk about this" Wilson didn't want him to know, and if that was true, he wanted to know why . . .
Finally the credits rolled. "Well?"
Shrug. "It went fine." House looked expectant, and Wilson rolled his eyes. "I know this will be difficult for you to understand, but when you haven't actually committed any crime, there's no reason for the cops to get you worried."
"You remember all the details they needed?"
"I said, it was fine. I just - told them what happened."
"What were you doing there anyway? You never go to that part of town."
Wilson shifted in the chair and looked put-upon. "I was just - driving around. Late night shopping."
Liar. House had googled the area as soon as he'd got back to his office after speaking to the cops. No gay bars, no cross-dressing communities, definitely not a mall in sight, but there had been a temple about two minutes walk from the parking lot. Hate crime. Unlikely as it seemed, nothing else made sense, and as much as anyone getting stabbed for who they were could make sense, the whole situation seemed doubly weird when you applied it to Wilson. Since his birth and bar mitzah, it was an element of his character that had just slipped into the background, a single pixel on the page that made up the grand vista of Wilson's screwed-up self. It was as much an aside as having brown eyes or expensive taste in shoes, and now suddenly it seemed it was the trigger behind all of this; all he had been and all that had mattered in this one stupid evening.
(But then, there was the temple. When the hell had Wilson gotten religion?)
"You don't shop, unless it's buying crap for other people. Anyway, what did happen?"
"I got mugged," said Wilson harshly, as if he was stating the obvious, "what do you think happened? I'd have thought it was pretty self explanatory."
"Did you put up a fight or something? Insult the guy's mother?" Wilson's expression changed to that flushed look that was half embarrassment and half anger.
"No, I didn't put up a fight to the three angry guys who were armed, ok? I gave them the money." House looked slightly appeased, but didn't relent. A near-death experience might have stretched him to buy lunch, but it would take a hell of a lot more than that to introduce sensitivity into his repertoire.
"Good. Glad to hear it. I'm just saying - for a guy who went without a fuss, the stabbing seems like overkill."
"Well I'm sorry if it offends your sense of logic," snapped Wilson. "I know this has probably ruined your plans for the week and now you're itching to call me a moron, but I'm afraid this wasn't actually my fault. I mean," his right hand gestured in the familiar, furious way, and his voice rose slightly like when House had him cornered on some issue - his fidelity or flirtations, - "do you think I asked for this? You think it was personal?"
"No," House said carefully. "Of course not. It just - doesn't make much sense."
"Well, they didn't either. It just happened," said Wilson firmly, looking slightly mollified by House's tone. "People aren't reasonable, remember? They don't need reasons to act like asses," he said pointedly, "they probably weren't even thinking. Isn't that a basic tenet of your entire belief system?"
"I think it's more like people are morons," muttered House. "But yeah, I see your point."
Apparently satisfied by this admission, Wilson relaxed back against the chair back and starting pressing buttons on the remote. He didn't seem aware of the fact House was looking at him warily, unsure of where to go next. Wilson's grimace decided that for him.
"Meds wearing off?" Wilson nodded glumly.
"Shoulder. I can't believe I have to wear this thing until the nerves have healed," he grumbled.
House decided not to comment on his optimism; from what he'd seen in Wilson's file, (he'd had a leisurely read through earlier once he'd been certain Wilson was asleep) it was more of a hopeful 'if' than a definite 'when'. House was more than happy to not have to bewail the issue if Wilson had decided he didn't want to talk about it.
"Drugs it is." House popped a Vicodin with relish. "Let's go. That nurse is going to be wondering where I've stashed you by now anyway."
"Alicia," corrected Wilson, as he pivoted round to face the door.
"First name terms already?" crowed House. "I knew it! I told you -" The door opened, and they both froze, exchanging looks of guilty apprehension.
"Conference over?" asked Cuddy scathingly. She strode in, arms crossed, and House fought the urge to smirk. The sign had been a neat piece of improvisation.
"Sorry, patient needs his meds," he said briskly, grabbing the chair and moving forward. "Love to stay and chat, but the patient comes first, you know me - " Below him, Wilson was endeavouring to look as much like a kidnap victim as possible in the face of Cuddy's exasperated glare.
"While I'm glad you're feeling better, is there any chance you wouldn't mind convalescing in your actual room?"
"Give the man a break," said House. "He's spent a week staring at the walls in there. He's got cabin fever." Unimpressed, but amused despite herself, Cuddy shook her head.
"Whatever. The staff want their lounge back." She held the door open as Wilson was pushed out into the corridor. He looked slightly self-conscious, House noted, now that Cuddy was here. Maybe the next time House was bored he could wheel him to the nurses' station and clamp him in front of the hot blonde's desk; that might be fun to watch.
Cuddy turned away from whatever she'd been saying to Wilson, and fixed House with strict look. "When you've taken James to his room - with no detours - I need a word in my office." House opened his mouth to protest, but Cuddy shook her head, and something in her expression made him stop. She looked . . . strained.
She turned back to Wilson, and gave him a too-nice smile. Was she still feeling guilty over the mistake with Smith? "I'll see you later. You - ten minutes." She walked away into the bustle of the hospital, and Wilson exhaled.
"That went . . . pretty well."
"Only because she can't yell at the invalid with all these potential donors standing round. I might have to start using you as a human shield."
In spite of Wilson's snort of amusement, something tightened in House's stomach, and joined in with the chorus of unsolved questions chiming around his brain. Something was niggling in his head; something that he hadn't been paying attention to in the confusion of the last few days, but that been building and developing in the background, and was now trying to make itself heard.
Having deposited Wilson back in bed, where he'd fallen asleep with impressive alacrity, House made his way towards Cuddy's office, with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner approaching the gallows. He'd known he couldn't get away with doing nothing for much longer, and now the clinic loomed ominously in his mind, casting its germ-spattered, vomit-ridden shadow over the rest of his week.
"Wilson made me do it!" he announced, bursting through her office doors. Cuddy looked up from her desk and rolled her eyes.
"This is nothing to do with your little stunt upstairs, although yes, thank you for enraging an entire floor of my staff with a fictional conference." She smiled. "Wilson's feeling better?"
"All thanks to my excursion," said House, realising he was somehow off the hook.
"It was really nice of you - to do that for him," she said. House felt a pinch of guilt in his stomach, and shrugged airily.
"Don't thank me. I only do it because I care."
Cuddy didn't smile at his sarcasm, and House noticed she still looked pale. "Sit down." He didn't, but he approached her desk and stared at her, watching her shift awkwardly under his gaze. "Would you stop looking at me like I'm a tumour on a PET scan?" she snapped. "We need to talk."
"About all of the unresolved sexual tension between us?" asked House sympathetically. She didn't even give him one of her 'looks.' Interesting.
"No. About . . . your patient."
"I don't have a patient," he said, treading carefully. If Cuddy was going to use his recent inactivity as an excuse to foist one of her rich clients on him --
"You do now. At least, -" She was equivocating? House stared harder, noticing her steadfastly looking anywhere but his face. Cuddy didn't beat around the bush, she ordered. And then he ignored her. That was their time-honoured tradition. This was un-chartered territory.
"I'm hoping you'll agree with me that --" She stopped, and exhaled, and finally looked him dead in the eye. "It's Harvey," she said firmly.
The coils of suspicion in House's brain looped together and, in a long chain of circumstance, House saw the past week unroll behind him - Chase, Foreman, Cameron, all talking to him, all ignored . . .
"Harvey." He looked away. He looked back. She was still there, still appealing to him. Apparently, she was serious.
He wrinkled his brow in faux-concentration. "That would be the artist formerly known as Smith, right? Lied to the cops, lied to the staff, tried to off your department head." He kept his tone level and inquiring.
"House, I know --"
"Then that would be no. Nice talking to you." He turned to leave, before whatever his brain was thinking had a chance to burst out of his mouth in a corrosive stream. He didn't even want to yell, because he didn't know what to say; (except that he always knew what to say, and yet now he didn't even know why Wilson was lying to him, or why he'd nearly bled to death on some oil-slicked floor last week). A bubble was slowly widening inside his chest, shuddering and engorging and going to erupt, bypassing thought and emotion and stemming from some inner instinct that made him feel edgy and furious, with Cuddy and Wilson and Harvey and everyone, stretching him in every direction at once.
"House - "
"Look at you." He gave a strange half-laugh, hearing the malice in it, but not caring. "You can't believe you're asking me this. You know I'm going to say no, you want me to say no. You're not fooling anyone." He reached for the door handle.
"House - "
"What?!" He saw her flinch, and felt a rush of savage pleasure. He suddenly felt like he'd been building towards this conversation for days, without realising it; it had been dancing in the corners of his vision, and hers too, while they'd both looked aside.
Cuddy looked upset; but as ever, when presented with a fight, she hardened. "He's dying."
"Good."
She grabbed his arm as he moved for the door, trapping him. "Chase and Foreman have been on this since his admission. They're out of ideas! I'm out of ideas! This is what you do!" She met his eyes. "Foreman's been demanding it from the beginning but now even Chase is asking for your involvement, and he's terrified of the idea! I wouldn't ask, unless . . . He's too weak to be transferred, I've got no one else even half-way qualified to deal with this, there's no one I can call in instead . . . And you are the Head of the Department of Diagnostics. It's -- your job. If people find out you refused to look at his case because you didn't like him - the hospital would be in trouble, we could get sued --"
"Yeah, you can't be too careful when it comes to litigation," said House, his voice sharp with acrimony. "If only he'd killed Wilson - we could have just used his salary for the next fifteen years to settle."
Now Cuddy was pissed. She shook off his arm like it was crawling with lice and stormed back into the middle of the room, looking on the brink of an explosion.
"No! You do not get to make this about you, House, you're not making me into the bad guy! We both know it's not that simple. I care about Wilson as much as you do, but I have a duty to this hospital, and every patient inside it, and so do you!"
"That's crap! Why the hell should I help this guy? He's a liar, he's a criminal, he may have maimed Wilson - even if this wasn't personal, why the hell would I go around treating patients who spend their free time spearing other people with knives?!"
"Oh, don't give me that, don't give me ethics," she snorted. "You don't give a crap about who you treat; Death Row guy, priests, orphans, you treat everyone like crap and you insist that everyone you treat lies. It's completely personal, which is why you're going to have to disregard it. Cure him, send him to jail, get him tried by law." She sighed and put her hands on her hips, trying to sound more conciliatory. "You'll be moving justice along. End his 'holiday in the ICU'."
House felt as if they had been arguing for much longer than they had; he felt as tired as Wilson looked, and from some weird sense of premonition, he felt beaten before he had started. For a moment last week, he'd have done anything to have Wilson's heart start beating again - and now he was here, having this conversation about the man who had stopped it. The memory made him feel sick. He didn't say anything and stared at the carpet, wondering where his anger had gone.
"I'm not asking you to send him a fruit basket and a Get Well card," said Cuddy. "I'm asking you to see if you can intervene in what could be a preventable death. Treat him like any other patient - you won't even meet him. Just look at his chart, throw that weird ball around your office, have some ideas. Wilson doesn't have to know," she added, a pang of guilt shooting across her face. "Plus, the symptoms are bizarre," she added, and House felt something flare in his gut at the hope in her voice that that might be the thing that swung it for her.
"If I treat this guy," he said, trying to sound aggressive, "and he dies, do you really think that's going to solve your litigation problems? What makes you think I might not accidentally give him an overdose as soon as I get my hands on a syringe?"
Cuddy gave him a sympathetic smile, as if to suggest the very notion was absurd, and carried on as if he hadn't spoken.
"You cure people. So that they can get on with whatever they were doing before they got sick. Whether that's to go home to a wife and three kids, or to go and do time for a crime they committed - That's what you're good at. You don't hand out justice." There was a sort of unspoken confidence in her words as she looked at him that made him feel better and worse at the same time. "Foreman and Chase are desperate."
"That's because they're idiots," said House. Everything that had been fermenting and boiling inside him seemed to have collapsed back in on itself, and left him feeling oddly muted. "Would you be so keen to cure this lunatic if it was you? If Wilson had died?"
She recognised the questions for the hypothetical barbs they were, and didn't answer. "You'll look over the case?"
He didn't say anything. "House, are you ok? What's the real reason you're so against this?"
House gave her a sardonic frown, but his eyes betrayed a flash of something deeper at her question. "You don't consider the fact he nearly exsanguinated a colleague a good enough reason?"
"No." She narrowed her eyes and walked closer to him again, and the absolute certainty in her tone shocked him. If he was anyone else, he'd be offended.
"You're probably curious about the type of man who does this," she murmured, looking at him in a way he didn't like at all. "You'd probably have barged into his room at some point anyway, if not to bully him for what he did to Wilson, then to check him out, get some answers. Now you can get all the answers you like." She was only a foot away from him now, and he wondered when he'd lost the upper hand. All the answers you like. He felt a sick swirl of guilt unfurl in his stomach.
"You're not mad at me for asking you," she accused gently. "You're not even mad at the idea; it's unfortunate, but you know this hospital has to run the way it does. Who are you mad at?"
"I'll think about it," he said, mainly to stop her talking. He couldn't think at the moment, he hadn't been thinking clearly for days. He needed to go home, away from Cuddy and Wilson, and have a drink.
"Yourself? Wilson?" She tried to force eye contact, and he rolled his eyes half-heartedly. "Is everything ok with you two?"
"Everything's fine." House grabbed the door handle and, unmolested at last, opened it. Cuddy suddenly looked nauseatingly guilty again; probably because she knew she'd won.
"House, I know this is a - horrible situation. And I wasn't saying -- " He raised his eyebrows. "I wasn't implying you care more about the puzzle than Wilson. That's not what I was saying." House shrugged.
"Why not? If I take this case - that is, if I do have a choice," he spat, "that's pretty much what I'll be saying, right? That, and the fact that I'm a true professional." He met her wide, unhappy eyes and shrugged. "Hell, you're probably right. Answers over people." His voice was flat and resigned. "That sounds exactly like me."