Knots: Never Say Goodbye (8/12)
Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
House needs to take a second to parse what Wilson told him. Simons is dead. Simons, the cancer patient with the bacterial infection that was really a virus; the patient who got the right drug starting yesterday, is dead. Just like that, it happens sometimes, but House doesn’t have to like it.
Viruses are so much more predictable in the lab. House thinks it’s a shame that lab work bores him. His gifts have always played out best on the human body, which is also a shame, since he can’t stand most of the people that live in them.
Wilson stands in front of his desk, staring blankly. His arms hang loose at his sides, and he looks like he has lost his own name. He’s as good with people as he is with disease. House wonders sometimes if that’s a gift, or a curse.
He hears Wilson’s tone, a dark, weary timbre. The words don’t matter all that much.
“Give them some time,” House tells him. As much as House does not care about Mr. Simons and his family, he sees that Wilson is in no shape to deliver this kind of news now. He’s on the verge, he needs to wait until he can step back, or get somebody else to do it. The guy wasn’t his patient, either. He’s struck by the irony that they are friends, and the only reason they’re speaking to each other right now is a random dead guy.
He looks up at Wilson’s face and rests on his eyes. The pain he finds there is too familiar. He’s seen it in his own eyes, on waking, before the narcotics kick in. He noticed it first when he was learning how to walk again.
The silence between them is like an egg, whole and fragile, but perfect.
He could tell Wilson that he knows, that he understands, but House will not break the connection to form a simple sentence and speak it aloud. Anyway, Wilson knows. He has always known.
House has no idea how much time passes before Wilson turns and walks away without saying goodbye.
Four days ago, House would not have guessed that he wouldn’t see Wilson again. He ought to be relieved, but his friend’s absence is stranger than his presence. Being here at the hospital carries extra weight without the escape that Wilson provided. House doesn’t use it now, but the potential of some small break from routine kept him on track.
Now, that potential is missing, and he doesn’t know why. He feels like people are trying to protect him from something, and that annoys him. He’s been snapping more, his co-workers are looking at him funny, like they know something is going on. They can’t know what, but House still hates the vague pity that radiates from everybody around him.
He moves into the Infectious Diseases suite and pauses before going all the way into his office. His bad leg is worse today. His problem was vascular, not orthopedic, but the whole leg has changed. Its muscles no longer work together; its joints seem to snag. It has limits now; he has limits. Sometimes he thinks that acknowledging the limitation is what cripples him. But that’s in his head; the physical pain sucks, too.
He blames the cold. Last winter, he wasn’t really walking, and he rarely went outside. Now that his life is back to so-called normal, winter slaps him in the face every time he leaves his apartment.
“You authorized brain surgery on my meningitis patient!” A voice bellows from behind him.
“You’re welcome,” House says. He’s fully aware that Tucker is not thanking him, though he should.
“You could have killed him,” Tucker says. His face is red, but that’s normal. His hair was turning white before House went out on medical leave, but his capillaries don’t seem to know that. Tucker still flushes like the redhead he once was when he gets mad, which seems to happen a lot.
“There’s no guarantee he’s going to survive, you’re correct,” House says. “But on the off chance he does, I figured he might like to be able to wipe his own ass, tie his shoes, twist the cap off a beer bottle. You know, those little things you can’t do when you’re brain dead.”
“I’m calling Cuddy,” Tucker says.
“That will be the highlight of her day,” House says. He wanders upstairs to check out the lounges, thinking to himself that something sweet would complement his morning coffee, but really, he doesn’t want to deal with his annoyed colleague any more.
“I was just coming to find you,” Cuddy greets him in the hall.
“Did you bring me a danish?” House asks.
They make their way to the cafeteria through a crowd. Cuddy walks in front of House, to clear a path.
“So, what about this craniotomy?” She quizzes him.
“Medically necessary, standard treatment,” House says. “The kid has resistant bacterial meningitis. Brain surgery sounds very dramatic., but you know, and Tucker knows it’s not that big a deal. The real risk was not doing it.”
Cuddy shoots him a look. “House…”
“I wasn’t showboating. Tucker was home with his family,” House says. “The patient had two seizures. CT showed significant swelling, and we had to relieve the pressure. It was my call.”
House examines a blueberry muffin for a few seconds and then walks away from the line. The cafeteria does not have what he wants, and cafeteria coffee sucks, anyway. Cuddy follows him.
“Are you all right, Dr. House,” Cuddy asks. “I mean, how are you holding up?”
He is tired of the question, even though Cuddy is the only person in the hospital who actually asks. He should be grateful for that, but he’s just not that big a person. He knows that she’s expressing ordinary concern, but he still thinks of it as interference.
“Never better,” he says. He feels a little like he’s going to choke. “If I could just get Tucker off my back, my life would be perfect.”
“I was talking about your other problems,” she offers.
“You mean the ones that are none of your business?” House asks.
“I’ll talk to Tucker,” Cuddy offers. “Maybe I can get him to leave you alone.”
“I can do that myself,” House says. “I don’t want you playing him for sympathy on my behalf. He’s not concerned about this case, he’s jealous because Gorman left me in charge. It’s not your problem.”
“If you can’t resolve the issues Dr. Tucker has with you, hand it over to me,” she says. “He’s going to run to me every time you make a treatment decision, and that makes it my problem.”
House closes his eyes and shakes his head. Whatever, Cuddy. Don’t try to make things easy, I can do my job, he thinks. He’ll deal with it but he’ll do it later. Tucker will be just as pissed off after lunch.
Right now, rounds appeal to him. He’ll seem to be working, but if he can find Robinson or Patel, he won’t have to do anything more complicated than half-assed listening.
He leaves the hospital around lunchtime. He goes to a coffee place downtown and waits at the counter. He asks for a large coffee to go. The guy behind the counter has the sort of skin that makes House envy the young. The guy looks like he’s about twenty-five, maybe a grad student in something sensitive like English lit. He is untouched, almost surreal in his smoothness. House was never so young. The guy is almost unbearably attractive.
House catches himself wondering what the coffee guy looks like without the stupid apron. That sort of speculation is supposed to be reserved for flight attendants, nurses, and Cuddy. He feels self conscious, as if everybody in the world knows that he’s checking out a guy who works in a coffee shop.
“Be a few minutes, the Double A is brewing,” the guy says. “Do you want to wait?” He shows perfect white teeth and small dimples. His eyes crinkle just enough to confirm his smile. House pays for his coffee and moves to the side to wait and watch.
The guy turns around. His jeans fit entirely too well, and he’s got a nice ass.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” House whispers. He’s been looking at men differently over the past week or so, as if he’s trying to figure out what Wilson wanted from him. That makes a little bit of sense, but not much.
He jumps when something heavy knocks against his back. He follows the movement of the object and sees two girls with backpacks stuffed full slung over their shoulders. They do not apologize to him. Their packs thump against the floor as the girls sit at the bar and begin to talk.
A bell on the front door clangs as a group comes inside. They bring the cold air with them. One of them is describing a party, how she drank too much champagne and woke up the next morning in a complete stranger’s bathtub. Her voice pierces the air like a car alarm. Her companions laugh, because this sort of behavior must be typical for the loud one.
House drums his fingers on the countertop as the newcomers take a break from their conversation to order. One of them can’t decide.
“Latte or mocha, latte or mocha, what do I want?” the straggler asks his friends.
“Just order something!” The two men in the group punch each other in the arms. One of them lurches sideways and bumps into House. “Hey, sorry dude.”
House rolls his eyes.
“I’ll have the chai,” the straggler decides.
There’s a clock on the wall, above an open door that leads into a darkened room.
House freezes there. His eyes travel in record time between from the white circle to the black rectangle. His is blood races and his heart pounds. His breathing is heavy, and he can’t move. House feels like the events of a year are being sucked into right now.
“Large coffee to go.” The guy behind the counter sets a paper cup in front of him.
His cane falls to the floor as the scents of clove and cardamom waft over him. The chatter in the shop subsides to a white static. House can’t breathe.
This is it. He’s sure he’s dying. He leans over the counter for support. “Somebody call 911! I think this guy’s having a heart attack…”
He feels himself being pulled back, but he does not fall. There’s a pair of strong arms, and a chair.
“It’s OK, I’m a doctor. Give him some room, and bring me some water.” The voice is so familiar that it might not be real. Fingers on his neck and a steady hand on his head, the noise fades as the crowd moves away.
“You’re tachy at 150. Any tingling in your left arm?”
“Dunno…no.” House opens his eyes.
Wilson is not a hallucination. He is there, not six inches away, cuing House’s involuntary actions. “Breathe. You’re having a panic attack, you’ll be OK.”
How is Wilson so calm? What is he doing here? “Take this.” He hands over a white pill, more oval than his usual Vicodin.
“Take it, Greg. It’ll help.” Wilson looks at him with concern and certainty. House swallows the pill. They sit quietly for several minutes. Wilson reaches for his wrist. “I have to check your pulse again.”
House nods. Wilson feels for his radial artery and presses his thumb over it. “Better,” he says, obviously relieved. “I gave you Xanax so you don’t have another attack later.”
House sees the bottle sitting between them; his name is on the familiar hospital pharmacy label. Wilson looks guilty and contrite. House is puzzled for a moment, then the pieces fall into place.
“I was wondering what happened to these,” he says. He picks up the vial and shakes it. “I’ve been taking a lot of them.”
Wilson gets it. “Yeah, I, you... had some trouble there for a while, after…”
House understands. “Yeah, so if I needed any more of these, I would just tell you?”
“Your, uh, shrink can write for you, that would probably be best,” Wilson says slowly. “You needed it.”
“I’m… you’re right.” They look at each other. House smiles a little as he slips the bottle into his coat pocket.
It’s no surprise that Wilson is in therapy. He should be, after all that’s happened in the last year. He needs help, and House is glad he’s getting it. He wants to ask how everything’s going, but he can’t ask that simple question because he’s afraid Wilson won’t answer. He’s equally afraid that Wilson will answer. For once, he allows it to be none of his business.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Everybody eats lunch,” Wilson says. “I’m not stalking you, if that’s what you’re really asking. This is my regular coffee place.”
House fidgets a little. “I guess I should get back to the hospital.”
“You can’t drive right now,” Wilson tells him, “Benzodiazepine is a sedative, and you should take it easy for once. Call your office, and tell them you’re taking the rest of the day.”
Wilson is right, but House isn’t happy about it. “I’m not leaving my car here overnight.”
“I’ll take you home then get a cab back here.”
House hesitates. Wilson isn’t going to budge on this. He knows the effects of the medication, and House could use a break, even if he doesn’t want to take one. He has pushed himself so hard because that’s the only way he knows how to stay functional at this point. Lying down might be a really good idea.
“OK,” he says. He places his keys on the table and slides them toward Wilson. This will be a good test of his nerves, a barometer on whether they’re going to be able to be friends again. If Wilson is willing to spend time in the same space with him, if he feels like he can do that…
Wilson smiles. Is that relief on his face?
Wilson parks in House’s usual space, and pulls his phone out of his bag. House hears him giving the address to a taxi service.
They get out, and Wilson hands over the keys. His fingers are cool and smooth. House has always admired Wilson’s hands; they care so much. They look at each other again. House doesn’t know what to say. Goodbye? This almost feels like the end of something, like the weight of all the things they can’t say has crushed what little they will say to each other.
The air is cold against House’s face, a gust stings, and his eyes blur.
“You can wait for your cab inside, if you want,” House says. “It’s cold out here.”
They walk to the door. House drops his stuff on the floor next to the piano. Wilson sits down at the table near the window, to watch and listen. Several minutes dribble away. As much as House tells himself that everything is going to be all right, he doesn’t believe it. He wraps his arms around his middle, to quell the urge to throw up, but it’s not working.
He opens his mouth and a horrific, almost animal noise comes out. House hears the scrape of Wilson’s chair and the hurried rush of his shoes against the floor. He arrives too late.
Wilson crouches near the brownish puddle to examine it as only a doctor would. “No coffee grounds, and no red blood, so no GI bleed,” he says. House moves to get up. He’s unhappy when anybody sees him in a weakened state.
“I don’t have an ulcer, Dr. Wilson,” House says. “I don’t have esophageal varices or gastric erosion; it’s garden variety stress.”
“Or a reaction to your meds,” Wilson suggests as unravels a length of paper towels and spritzes cleaner from a bottle. It smells of orange peel.
House watches Wilson crouch before him, cleaning up after him, wiping vomit off the floor. He looks so determined.
“No white fragments,” House says. “I haven’t taken anything in the last hour.”
“From the looks of this, you haven’t eaten anything, either.” He finishes his chore. House hears the water in the kitchen sink, and some rustling. Wilson sits down on the couch, maybe a foot away from House. “Here, crackers and ginger ale. This looks like the stuff I bought the last time you were sick.”
House doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need to be comforted or coddled; he’s not six years old. He makes a face.
“One cracker won’t kill you.”
He takes the offered food, but grumbles about it. Wilson is watching him. Neither of them is comfortable.
“I’m, uh,” House hesitates. “I don’t always know who I am these days.” He takes a sip of the ginger ale. “When I freaked out, I was looking at the guy who works at the coffee shop.”
Wilson seems surprised at his confession. He obviously wasn’t expecting it.
“Huh,” Wilson says. He nods so subtly that House wouldn’t have noticed it if Wilson were across the room. “He’s a nice looking guy, it’s perfectly normal to notice.”
“It was more than that,” House says.
“Yeah,” Wilson says. “I… I’m sorry.”
“What for?” He hopes Wilson has the good sense not to answer that. He stuffs a couple of crackers into his mouth and crushes them. “Where’s your cab?” he mumbles through the food.
“I cancelled it,” Wilson says quietly. “I guess I should…” House thinks that he’s asking if he can stay.
“I still feel pretty bad,” House admits.
“You should get some rest.”
House gets up slowly and moves toward his bedroom. He plants the cane and leans heavily into each step. Wilson doesn’t try to help him.
“Will you be here when I wake up?” House wants to know. The words sound like pleading. He feels lousy, and he’s sick of being alone.
“I can stick around for a little bit.”
As House lays down on his bed, as he lets the aches and pains of his daily life come up against the softness of his bed, he thinks that Wilson is acting the same way he did when he started physical therapy last year, doing a lousy job at pretending that there’s not a gorilla in the corner. No wonder he needed the Xanax.
He’s not like House, who nurses a grudge for a bit, then makes shrapnel of it, would shoot the gorilla and mount its head as a trophy to hang above his fireplace. They’re different, he and Wilson. One is shadow, one light. He’s no longer sure which of them is which. For some reason, this makes him laugh, though it’s not exactly funny.
His eyes shut as his head sinks into the pillow. He allows the chemicals to take him believing that Wilson will be sitting on his couch, probably reading a journal, when he comes back to life.
He is wrong. When he wakes from his long sleep, the apartment is empty. Wilson is gone. There’s a note on the table, signed with one initial. If you’re going to smoke, get a real ashtray.
The saucer is still filled with butts. House looks for his cigarettes. They’re exactly where he left them on the coffee table. He taps one out of the pack, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger until the thin white paper cracks and threads of tobacco spill out.
This is as good a time as any to quit. He places the saucer, the pack, and his disposable lighter into a plastic grocery bag and knots it at the top. He walks out his front door and throws the small bag in his garbage can.
There, that’s done. House knows he won’t need that stuff any more. He’s OK now. He feels good.
He picks up the note again; it’s exactly as it should be. Wilson never says goodbye.
Cuddy lingers at the desk in the clinic, checking the roster for the day. “Dr. House, I should schedule you for clinic duty; seeing some ordinary patients would keep you on your toes,” she suggests. She sounds almost hopeful. He smiles a little.
“My leg is the problem, not my toes,” he tells her.
“I can get you a stool.”
“Actually, I came to set the record straight. I forgot about the Xanax. I do have it, but I wasn’t taking them when you asked.”
She grabs him by the elbow and pulls him toward her office.
“What?” Cuddy demands.
“Did you fire Wilson?” House asks.
She shakes her head. “He’s not fired, not yet; he’s suspended for self prescribing a controlled substance.”
“Oh? So you tested him,” House is fairly sure he’s got Cuddy by the short hairs.
“No,” she admits. “But he confessed.”
“You have no evidence to support that confession.” House pulls the bottle from his pocket. “Should have run the tests.”
Cuddy takes the pills from House and examines the label. She looks confused, even angry. “He admitted everything, and I have pharmacy records showing that…”
“He wrote me a prescription for Xanax because he was concerned about my well being. Wilson’s a bit of a sucker for a hard-luck case.”
“Why are you trying to protect him?”
House shrugs. “What happened didn’t affect our working relationship, and that’s as far as you have any right to be concerned.”
“But he…”
“Leave it alone, Cuddy,” House insists. “Don’t be a girl about this. Call Wilson and unsuspend him. You can give him my clinic hours.”
She refuses. House glares at her and stays in his office for the rest of the day.
Gorman has been trying to reach him for two days. House owes him the courtesy of a return call, though he isn’t looking forward to the conversation. To his surprise, Gorman has an interesting case.
“A superbug?” House asks. “How did you diagnose it?”
“You’ll love this: we used the House method,” Gorman says. “Shots in the dark to exhaust the possibilities, and when we didn’t get an adequate response to any drug, we called in some crazy Italian biologists to run some molecular comparisons. It looks for all the world like Vancomycin-resistant staph A. We’ve been trying to isolate this bug for years!” Gorman sounds giddy, even through a sketchy phone connection and thousands of miles of ocean.
“OK, but how are you treating it?” House is very curious, almost to the point of envy. He hasn’t had a case this good in a long time.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. How would you feel about coming over to Switzerland? The guys over here are dying to meet you.”
Two days later, he boards a plane to London, where he’ll connect to Geneva. He hates to fly, but this is too good to pass up. There’s nothing for him in New Jersey, at least not right now.
He glances out the window as the plane takes off. The tarmac stays put as the plane takes flight, and gravity presses his head to the back of his seat. House wonders how long he ought to stay away.
How long before the gorilla gets tired of being ignored and leaves?
Part Nine
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
House needs to take a second to parse what Wilson told him. Simons is dead. Simons, the cancer patient with the bacterial infection that was really a virus; the patient who got the right drug starting yesterday, is dead. Just like that, it happens sometimes, but House doesn’t have to like it.
Viruses are so much more predictable in the lab. House thinks it’s a shame that lab work bores him. His gifts have always played out best on the human body, which is also a shame, since he can’t stand most of the people that live in them.
Wilson stands in front of his desk, staring blankly. His arms hang loose at his sides, and he looks like he has lost his own name. He’s as good with people as he is with disease. House wonders sometimes if that’s a gift, or a curse.
He hears Wilson’s tone, a dark, weary timbre. The words don’t matter all that much.
“Give them some time,” House tells him. As much as House does not care about Mr. Simons and his family, he sees that Wilson is in no shape to deliver this kind of news now. He’s on the verge, he needs to wait until he can step back, or get somebody else to do it. The guy wasn’t his patient, either. He’s struck by the irony that they are friends, and the only reason they’re speaking to each other right now is a random dead guy.
He looks up at Wilson’s face and rests on his eyes. The pain he finds there is too familiar. He’s seen it in his own eyes, on waking, before the narcotics kick in. He noticed it first when he was learning how to walk again.
The silence between them is like an egg, whole and fragile, but perfect.
He could tell Wilson that he knows, that he understands, but House will not break the connection to form a simple sentence and speak it aloud. Anyway, Wilson knows. He has always known.
House has no idea how much time passes before Wilson turns and walks away without saying goodbye.
Four days ago, House would not have guessed that he wouldn’t see Wilson again. He ought to be relieved, but his friend’s absence is stranger than his presence. Being here at the hospital carries extra weight without the escape that Wilson provided. House doesn’t use it now, but the potential of some small break from routine kept him on track.
Now, that potential is missing, and he doesn’t know why. He feels like people are trying to protect him from something, and that annoys him. He’s been snapping more, his co-workers are looking at him funny, like they know something is going on. They can’t know what, but House still hates the vague pity that radiates from everybody around him.
He moves into the Infectious Diseases suite and pauses before going all the way into his office. His bad leg is worse today. His problem was vascular, not orthopedic, but the whole leg has changed. Its muscles no longer work together; its joints seem to snag. It has limits now; he has limits. Sometimes he thinks that acknowledging the limitation is what cripples him. But that’s in his head; the physical pain sucks, too.
He blames the cold. Last winter, he wasn’t really walking, and he rarely went outside. Now that his life is back to so-called normal, winter slaps him in the face every time he leaves his apartment.
“You authorized brain surgery on my meningitis patient!” A voice bellows from behind him.
“You’re welcome,” House says. He’s fully aware that Tucker is not thanking him, though he should.
“You could have killed him,” Tucker says. His face is red, but that’s normal. His hair was turning white before House went out on medical leave, but his capillaries don’t seem to know that. Tucker still flushes like the redhead he once was when he gets mad, which seems to happen a lot.
“There’s no guarantee he’s going to survive, you’re correct,” House says. “But on the off chance he does, I figured he might like to be able to wipe his own ass, tie his shoes, twist the cap off a beer bottle. You know, those little things you can’t do when you’re brain dead.”
“I’m calling Cuddy,” Tucker says.
“That will be the highlight of her day,” House says. He wanders upstairs to check out the lounges, thinking to himself that something sweet would complement his morning coffee, but really, he doesn’t want to deal with his annoyed colleague any more.
“I was just coming to find you,” Cuddy greets him in the hall.
“Did you bring me a danish?” House asks.
They make their way to the cafeteria through a crowd. Cuddy walks in front of House, to clear a path.
“So, what about this craniotomy?” She quizzes him.
“Medically necessary, standard treatment,” House says. “The kid has resistant bacterial meningitis. Brain surgery sounds very dramatic., but you know, and Tucker knows it’s not that big a deal. The real risk was not doing it.”
Cuddy shoots him a look. “House…”
“I wasn’t showboating. Tucker was home with his family,” House says. “The patient had two seizures. CT showed significant swelling, and we had to relieve the pressure. It was my call.”
House examines a blueberry muffin for a few seconds and then walks away from the line. The cafeteria does not have what he wants, and cafeteria coffee sucks, anyway. Cuddy follows him.
“Are you all right, Dr. House,” Cuddy asks. “I mean, how are you holding up?”
He is tired of the question, even though Cuddy is the only person in the hospital who actually asks. He should be grateful for that, but he’s just not that big a person. He knows that she’s expressing ordinary concern, but he still thinks of it as interference.
“Never better,” he says. He feels a little like he’s going to choke. “If I could just get Tucker off my back, my life would be perfect.”
“I was talking about your other problems,” she offers.
“You mean the ones that are none of your business?” House asks.
“I’ll talk to Tucker,” Cuddy offers. “Maybe I can get him to leave you alone.”
“I can do that myself,” House says. “I don’t want you playing him for sympathy on my behalf. He’s not concerned about this case, he’s jealous because Gorman left me in charge. It’s not your problem.”
“If you can’t resolve the issues Dr. Tucker has with you, hand it over to me,” she says. “He’s going to run to me every time you make a treatment decision, and that makes it my problem.”
House closes his eyes and shakes his head. Whatever, Cuddy. Don’t try to make things easy, I can do my job, he thinks. He’ll deal with it but he’ll do it later. Tucker will be just as pissed off after lunch.
Right now, rounds appeal to him. He’ll seem to be working, but if he can find Robinson or Patel, he won’t have to do anything more complicated than half-assed listening.
He leaves the hospital around lunchtime. He goes to a coffee place downtown and waits at the counter. He asks for a large coffee to go. The guy behind the counter has the sort of skin that makes House envy the young. The guy looks like he’s about twenty-five, maybe a grad student in something sensitive like English lit. He is untouched, almost surreal in his smoothness. House was never so young. The guy is almost unbearably attractive.
House catches himself wondering what the coffee guy looks like without the stupid apron. That sort of speculation is supposed to be reserved for flight attendants, nurses, and Cuddy. He feels self conscious, as if everybody in the world knows that he’s checking out a guy who works in a coffee shop.
“Be a few minutes, the Double A is brewing,” the guy says. “Do you want to wait?” He shows perfect white teeth and small dimples. His eyes crinkle just enough to confirm his smile. House pays for his coffee and moves to the side to wait and watch.
The guy turns around. His jeans fit entirely too well, and he’s got a nice ass.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” House whispers. He’s been looking at men differently over the past week or so, as if he’s trying to figure out what Wilson wanted from him. That makes a little bit of sense, but not much.
He jumps when something heavy knocks against his back. He follows the movement of the object and sees two girls with backpacks stuffed full slung over their shoulders. They do not apologize to him. Their packs thump against the floor as the girls sit at the bar and begin to talk.
A bell on the front door clangs as a group comes inside. They bring the cold air with them. One of them is describing a party, how she drank too much champagne and woke up the next morning in a complete stranger’s bathtub. Her voice pierces the air like a car alarm. Her companions laugh, because this sort of behavior must be typical for the loud one.
House drums his fingers on the countertop as the newcomers take a break from their conversation to order. One of them can’t decide.
“Latte or mocha, latte or mocha, what do I want?” the straggler asks his friends.
“Just order something!” The two men in the group punch each other in the arms. One of them lurches sideways and bumps into House. “Hey, sorry dude.”
House rolls his eyes.
“I’ll have the chai,” the straggler decides.
There’s a clock on the wall, above an open door that leads into a darkened room.
House freezes there. His eyes travel in record time between from the white circle to the black rectangle. His is blood races and his heart pounds. His breathing is heavy, and he can’t move. House feels like the events of a year are being sucked into right now.
“Large coffee to go.” The guy behind the counter sets a paper cup in front of him.
His cane falls to the floor as the scents of clove and cardamom waft over him. The chatter in the shop subsides to a white static. House can’t breathe.
This is it. He’s sure he’s dying. He leans over the counter for support. “Somebody call 911! I think this guy’s having a heart attack…”
He feels himself being pulled back, but he does not fall. There’s a pair of strong arms, and a chair.
“It’s OK, I’m a doctor. Give him some room, and bring me some water.” The voice is so familiar that it might not be real. Fingers on his neck and a steady hand on his head, the noise fades as the crowd moves away.
“You’re tachy at 150. Any tingling in your left arm?”
“Dunno…no.” House opens his eyes.
Wilson is not a hallucination. He is there, not six inches away, cuing House’s involuntary actions. “Breathe. You’re having a panic attack, you’ll be OK.”
How is Wilson so calm? What is he doing here? “Take this.” He hands over a white pill, more oval than his usual Vicodin.
“Take it, Greg. It’ll help.” Wilson looks at him with concern and certainty. House swallows the pill. They sit quietly for several minutes. Wilson reaches for his wrist. “I have to check your pulse again.”
House nods. Wilson feels for his radial artery and presses his thumb over it. “Better,” he says, obviously relieved. “I gave you Xanax so you don’t have another attack later.”
House sees the bottle sitting between them; his name is on the familiar hospital pharmacy label. Wilson looks guilty and contrite. House is puzzled for a moment, then the pieces fall into place.
“I was wondering what happened to these,” he says. He picks up the vial and shakes it. “I’ve been taking a lot of them.”
Wilson gets it. “Yeah, I, you... had some trouble there for a while, after…”
House understands. “Yeah, so if I needed any more of these, I would just tell you?”
“Your, uh, shrink can write for you, that would probably be best,” Wilson says slowly. “You needed it.”
“I’m… you’re right.” They look at each other. House smiles a little as he slips the bottle into his coat pocket.
It’s no surprise that Wilson is in therapy. He should be, after all that’s happened in the last year. He needs help, and House is glad he’s getting it. He wants to ask how everything’s going, but he can’t ask that simple question because he’s afraid Wilson won’t answer. He’s equally afraid that Wilson will answer. For once, he allows it to be none of his business.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Everybody eats lunch,” Wilson says. “I’m not stalking you, if that’s what you’re really asking. This is my regular coffee place.”
House fidgets a little. “I guess I should get back to the hospital.”
“You can’t drive right now,” Wilson tells him, “Benzodiazepine is a sedative, and you should take it easy for once. Call your office, and tell them you’re taking the rest of the day.”
Wilson is right, but House isn’t happy about it. “I’m not leaving my car here overnight.”
“I’ll take you home then get a cab back here.”
House hesitates. Wilson isn’t going to budge on this. He knows the effects of the medication, and House could use a break, even if he doesn’t want to take one. He has pushed himself so hard because that’s the only way he knows how to stay functional at this point. Lying down might be a really good idea.
“OK,” he says. He places his keys on the table and slides them toward Wilson. This will be a good test of his nerves, a barometer on whether they’re going to be able to be friends again. If Wilson is willing to spend time in the same space with him, if he feels like he can do that…
Wilson smiles. Is that relief on his face?
Wilson parks in House’s usual space, and pulls his phone out of his bag. House hears him giving the address to a taxi service.
They get out, and Wilson hands over the keys. His fingers are cool and smooth. House has always admired Wilson’s hands; they care so much. They look at each other again. House doesn’t know what to say. Goodbye? This almost feels like the end of something, like the weight of all the things they can’t say has crushed what little they will say to each other.
The air is cold against House’s face, a gust stings, and his eyes blur.
“You can wait for your cab inside, if you want,” House says. “It’s cold out here.”
They walk to the door. House drops his stuff on the floor next to the piano. Wilson sits down at the table near the window, to watch and listen. Several minutes dribble away. As much as House tells himself that everything is going to be all right, he doesn’t believe it. He wraps his arms around his middle, to quell the urge to throw up, but it’s not working.
He opens his mouth and a horrific, almost animal noise comes out. House hears the scrape of Wilson’s chair and the hurried rush of his shoes against the floor. He arrives too late.
Wilson crouches near the brownish puddle to examine it as only a doctor would. “No coffee grounds, and no red blood, so no GI bleed,” he says. House moves to get up. He’s unhappy when anybody sees him in a weakened state.
“I don’t have an ulcer, Dr. Wilson,” House says. “I don’t have esophageal varices or gastric erosion; it’s garden variety stress.”
“Or a reaction to your meds,” Wilson suggests as unravels a length of paper towels and spritzes cleaner from a bottle. It smells of orange peel.
House watches Wilson crouch before him, cleaning up after him, wiping vomit off the floor. He looks so determined.
“No white fragments,” House says. “I haven’t taken anything in the last hour.”
“From the looks of this, you haven’t eaten anything, either.” He finishes his chore. House hears the water in the kitchen sink, and some rustling. Wilson sits down on the couch, maybe a foot away from House. “Here, crackers and ginger ale. This looks like the stuff I bought the last time you were sick.”
House doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need to be comforted or coddled; he’s not six years old. He makes a face.
“One cracker won’t kill you.”
He takes the offered food, but grumbles about it. Wilson is watching him. Neither of them is comfortable.
“I’m, uh,” House hesitates. “I don’t always know who I am these days.” He takes a sip of the ginger ale. “When I freaked out, I was looking at the guy who works at the coffee shop.”
Wilson seems surprised at his confession. He obviously wasn’t expecting it.
“Huh,” Wilson says. He nods so subtly that House wouldn’t have noticed it if Wilson were across the room. “He’s a nice looking guy, it’s perfectly normal to notice.”
“It was more than that,” House says.
“Yeah,” Wilson says. “I… I’m sorry.”
“What for?” He hopes Wilson has the good sense not to answer that. He stuffs a couple of crackers into his mouth and crushes them. “Where’s your cab?” he mumbles through the food.
“I cancelled it,” Wilson says quietly. “I guess I should…” House thinks that he’s asking if he can stay.
“I still feel pretty bad,” House admits.
“You should get some rest.”
House gets up slowly and moves toward his bedroom. He plants the cane and leans heavily into each step. Wilson doesn’t try to help him.
“Will you be here when I wake up?” House wants to know. The words sound like pleading. He feels lousy, and he’s sick of being alone.
“I can stick around for a little bit.”
As House lays down on his bed, as he lets the aches and pains of his daily life come up against the softness of his bed, he thinks that Wilson is acting the same way he did when he started physical therapy last year, doing a lousy job at pretending that there’s not a gorilla in the corner. No wonder he needed the Xanax.
He’s not like House, who nurses a grudge for a bit, then makes shrapnel of it, would shoot the gorilla and mount its head as a trophy to hang above his fireplace. They’re different, he and Wilson. One is shadow, one light. He’s no longer sure which of them is which. For some reason, this makes him laugh, though it’s not exactly funny.
His eyes shut as his head sinks into the pillow. He allows the chemicals to take him believing that Wilson will be sitting on his couch, probably reading a journal, when he comes back to life.
He is wrong. When he wakes from his long sleep, the apartment is empty. Wilson is gone. There’s a note on the table, signed with one initial. If you’re going to smoke, get a real ashtray.
The saucer is still filled with butts. House looks for his cigarettes. They’re exactly where he left them on the coffee table. He taps one out of the pack, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger until the thin white paper cracks and threads of tobacco spill out.
This is as good a time as any to quit. He places the saucer, the pack, and his disposable lighter into a plastic grocery bag and knots it at the top. He walks out his front door and throws the small bag in his garbage can.
There, that’s done. House knows he won’t need that stuff any more. He’s OK now. He feels good.
He picks up the note again; it’s exactly as it should be. Wilson never says goodbye.
Cuddy lingers at the desk in the clinic, checking the roster for the day. “Dr. House, I should schedule you for clinic duty; seeing some ordinary patients would keep you on your toes,” she suggests. She sounds almost hopeful. He smiles a little.
“My leg is the problem, not my toes,” he tells her.
“I can get you a stool.”
“Actually, I came to set the record straight. I forgot about the Xanax. I do have it, but I wasn’t taking them when you asked.”
She grabs him by the elbow and pulls him toward her office.
“What?” Cuddy demands.
“Did you fire Wilson?” House asks.
She shakes her head. “He’s not fired, not yet; he’s suspended for self prescribing a controlled substance.”
“Oh? So you tested him,” House is fairly sure he’s got Cuddy by the short hairs.
“No,” she admits. “But he confessed.”
“You have no evidence to support that confession.” House pulls the bottle from his pocket. “Should have run the tests.”
Cuddy takes the pills from House and examines the label. She looks confused, even angry. “He admitted everything, and I have pharmacy records showing that…”
“He wrote me a prescription for Xanax because he was concerned about my well being. Wilson’s a bit of a sucker for a hard-luck case.”
“Why are you trying to protect him?”
House shrugs. “What happened didn’t affect our working relationship, and that’s as far as you have any right to be concerned.”
“But he…”
“Leave it alone, Cuddy,” House insists. “Don’t be a girl about this. Call Wilson and unsuspend him. You can give him my clinic hours.”
She refuses. House glares at her and stays in his office for the rest of the day.
Gorman has been trying to reach him for two days. House owes him the courtesy of a return call, though he isn’t looking forward to the conversation. To his surprise, Gorman has an interesting case.
“A superbug?” House asks. “How did you diagnose it?”
“You’ll love this: we used the House method,” Gorman says. “Shots in the dark to exhaust the possibilities, and when we didn’t get an adequate response to any drug, we called in some crazy Italian biologists to run some molecular comparisons. It looks for all the world like Vancomycin-resistant staph A. We’ve been trying to isolate this bug for years!” Gorman sounds giddy, even through a sketchy phone connection and thousands of miles of ocean.
“OK, but how are you treating it?” House is very curious, almost to the point of envy. He hasn’t had a case this good in a long time.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. How would you feel about coming over to Switzerland? The guys over here are dying to meet you.”
Two days later, he boards a plane to London, where he’ll connect to Geneva. He hates to fly, but this is too good to pass up. There’s nothing for him in New Jersey, at least not right now.
He glances out the window as the plane takes off. The tarmac stays put as the plane takes flight, and gravity presses his head to the back of his seat. House wonders how long he ought to stay away.
How long before the gorilla gets tired of being ignored and leaves?
Part Nine