What does 'comfort' mean to you?
Greg House has always considered the darkness to be comforting.
There's something about not being able to see the ugly, ragged, harsh reality of life that the dark brings to a person. Things get hidden in the shadows, the bad things, the things nobody wants to look at. The dirt and the blood and the trash, all hidden away.
Lights glitter in the darkness. Something to draw your attention near the activity, away from the darkened shadows. People can hide in the dark, if they don't want to be seen. Passer-bys on the street don't look twice at a man with a cane moving along. They won't stare like they normally do, when they can see clearly enough to see the details.
He can hide in the darkness. He has a habit of going to the roof. It hurts like hell, most of the time, damaged muscle protesting each and every step up the stairs, but in the shadows he can lean against the wall and catch his breath. Why he punishes his mental process with the climb up the stairs he won't ever know, but he makes it and spends time on the roof, sitting up against the edge on the wall.
A foot from a seven story drop.
It doesn't scare him.
The only time he can remember being scared of the dark was two days after learning his father was shot down over the jungles of Vietnam, before they had details of the accident, he'd had a premonition of a fireball in the sky, raining flames he couldn't avoid no matter how fast he ran from them. He slept in his mother's bed for a week after that, and on occasion after the recurring dream for the next six and a half months.
There's something about the dark that makes everything much more difficult. More difficult to see, more difficult to figure out, and he's always liked a challenge. It's like reaching, grasping blindly at straws sometimes, and he works best under pressure.
But as he's lying on the floor of his office, bullet wound in his stomach, dark red blood on his shirt, on the carpet, seeping into the fibers, he thinks of the fact that everything is getting really hazy. He can see Moriarty grinning smirking down at him, past the barrel of the loaded gun that just was used to shoot him.
In his office. His territory. He's bleeding out of his stomach, everything is going dark, darker than he's even known.
Except for the time ten years ago, when he died in his hospital room, monitors going flat, nurses hurrying to grab the medicine, the adrenaline to his heart, paddles to his chest. That was light. Bright light, bright, white light. His life before his eyes like a silent movie. No sound, no voices, just images, last thoughts and memories his brain decided he needed to relive in that last moment before it's all over.
He won't recall what he saw until later, after the pain wears off and he realizes that he's still alive, that his leg is permanently damaged because of it. That light starts him on a downward spiral into darkness, addiction, and a loss of faith in humanity and faith in himself and his ability to live a normal life.
Flash forward to the gunshot, the ringing in his ears, the haze over his eyes. The faint click of a safety, the explosion of the second gunshot, then pain and darkness, darker than he's ever known.
The next week of his life flashes before his eyes in a time span of ten minutes. While they're (his ducklings) are rushing to his aid, while security is shooting Moriarty in the back and putting him in handcuffs, he's halluncinating about conversations and tacos, robots performing surgery, slugging his best friend, losing his mind, his leg healing, being betrayed again against his will.
The turning point comes when he's writing on the wall. It doesn't make sense, but Moriarty does, he's trying not to listen to him at his back, trying not to listen to him tear apart everything he's ever known. He doesn't know what's real and what's fake anymore, and he leans his head back against the headrest of a car, lets the fumes from the carbon monoxide overtake him, slip him into a coma, kill him.
He's killing himself.
It's not real, but he's killing himself. Each pill he swallows, each time he needs to take the Vicodin, is another chip in the shell, chink in the armor, and one day the great doctor will fall to his demise and the downfall will all be his fault.
All his fault.
Darkness overcomes.
His eyes flutter open.
Light. Bright enough to blind him. He can feel a hand on his neck, and he looks up to see Cameron. He feels dizzy. Her hand slips and he can feel the blood flowing out of his neck with each beat of his heart.
He's not dead.
He tells her to do the treatment. Give him the Ketamine. Put him in a dissociative coma. Once chance at freedom, and he tells her to take it.
For no longer will he sit back and wait for his addiction to take his life. No longer will be be a helpless, dependent, pathetic excuse for a man, for the man before the pills, the drugs, the pain.
He wants to live.
He's done with being an addict. If he can get this one chance at a painless existance to work, he can get off the drugs. He can save himself. He can stop the spiral. He has to take it, so he does. He's done playing games with his life.
Suddenly, he realizes, that the idea of the darkness?
Isn't quite so comforting anymore.
It just took another near death experience to prove it.
Dr. Greg House
House
Word Count: 952