You Already Know How This Will End: Part 2
Notes in Part 1.
11. Red
The old man keeps coming back. "At some point, you will have to actually do the therapy part," Earle says.
"I have been doing it." House is sitting in his bed, leaning against the wall. He tosses a red ball up into the air and catches it; toss and catch, toss and catch. It's soothing, except that this used to be what he did when he wanted to think, and now there's a complete lack of cool things to think about.
He has already privately diagnosed every single one of the other inmates - residents, as the counselors prefer to call them. They are all boring cases. Pre-diabetes, one counselor with noticeable cardiac problems, and every resident showing predictable, almost textbook signs of past drug use. They lie about it a little, but not nearly so much as House would've expected. He wishes they would lie more, in fact; he wishes they would hold more things back, so that their every-morning group sessions wouldn't run into lunch time and thus make him late to view General Hospital.
"Ah, see, just showing up doesn't count here," Earle says, reaching out and grabbing the red ball. "You have to actually try."
"Do, or do not," House says in his best Yoda voice. "There is no try."
"And if you do not, then you don't get to leave."
House snorts. "Who's to say I'm not making remarkable progress? I almost cried this morning in group. Wait - no - I think I feel it coming - I just," and he puts his head in his hands and fake-sobs for a moment, then looks up at Earle and smiles.
"That's all very cute. But I sincerely doubt that a judge will find it so adorable as to grant the conditions of your deal."
"My deal is already signed and sealed and in place," House says. He remembers that particularly bitter pill, having to sign those forms, waiting for Wilson to come and pick them up from his condo and drive them over to Tritter. "I'm doing my part."
"No," Earle says, and he tosses the ball back, "you aren't. Step nine."
House feigns absolute innocence. "Hey," he says, "I wrote a very nice note of apology to my parents for all the pain I've caused."
"No, you wrote a rather mean-spirited little note to Dr. Cuddy about the care and feeding of your pets."
House tries not to let the surprise show on his face. "You talked to Cuddy?"
"I read your mail." Earle draws the letter, opened but without a postmark, from his inner jacket pocket. He holds it out to House. "Care to make a deal with me, Doctor?"
House takes the letter. He's actually disappointed that it didn't get through. Yes, it is a little mean-spirited - particularly the part about making sure not to get Chase too excited, so he doesn't ruin the carpet - but it had been his first attempt, his only chance since he'd been here, of making contact with his old world. He misses the hospital every single day. He misses the cases, misses the adrenaline rush of solving problems, of doing his job well, but he also misses the down time, the toys on his desk, the elaborate plans to escape clinic duty, the gossip. The people. "What do you have in mind?"
"I'll visit you every day for the next two weeks. Staring tomorrow morning, every time I visit, you have to make a call."
"I knew I memorized those 900 numbers for a reason."
Earle smiles thinly. "You have to call and apologize to one person. Every visit."
House tosses the ball up high enough that it hits the ceiling. "That's not a deal. Deal implies that I get something in return. And besides, the point of all of this is to inspire me to change, right? How exactly does forcing me to make apologies I don't and won't mean work toward making me a better person?"
"It doesn't," Earle says. "But it will probably go a long way toward improving your quality of life once you leave this place if you actually have some people willing to offer you support. And there is that whole 'compliance with the order of the court' thing."
House taps his fingers on the bed. He wants to just sit here, to just wait Earle out, but this time it's not enough to win the battle. If he doesn't win the war, he doesn't get to go back to work. "Fine," he says. "So who do you want me to call?"
12. Orange
Wilson is in Cuddy's kitchen, slicing an orange to have for breakfast, when the phone rings. He jumps at the sound, then laughs at himself. Cuddy - Lisa - is out on a run, and he's an invited guest. He shouldn't feel like an intruder, but he does. It's why he's already wearing his shirt and pants; it would seem weird to pad around Cuddy's house in just his underwear, even though he woke up wearing less than that in Cuddy's - Lisa's bed.
The answering machine kicks in, giving Lisa's terse message, and Wilson makes the last cut on the orange. He lines the slices up on a paper towel, trying not to make a mess. Maybe he should have makes orange juice. There's a whole basket of oranges, there certainly would be -
"Cuddy, it's me."
Wilson jumps again at the harsh sound of House's voice, echoing across Cuddy's kitchen. He turns and reaches for the phone on the wall by the refrigerator, grabs it even as House is talking into the machine. "I need to talk to you. Now. Hello? Hello, I know you're -"
"House? What's going on?" Wilson takes the cordless phone into the living room and stabs the stop button on the answering machine, which ends the horrible feedback. "House?"
"Wilson?"
Wilson looks at the caller ID. It's a 617 number, registered to V. Earle. If House is in Boston, then the whole deal's off. Wilson sits on the arm of Cuddy's couch. "Where are you? What's going on?"
"What's - what are you doing at Cuddy's place at 6:30 in the morning?"
"Where are you?"
"Though I guess I can connect the dots on that one myself. And I'm exactly where you put me," House snarls.
Wilson sighs and tries to speak through clenched teeth. "You're calling from a Boston number."
"Cell phone," House says. "I traded a couple packs of cigarettes for it."
Wilson groans. He closes his eyes. He's been trying so hard not to think about House these last few weeks, trying to think only of what might be coming in the days ahead. Seabrook is supposed to be a guaranteed fix, but this is the same House as always. Wilson rubs his face. "What do you want, House? Did you leave? Are you - where are you?"
House sighs, and his voice, for a moment, is serious. "I'm at the place. I'm borrowing a cell phone. And I need to talk to Cuddy, if she's there."
"She's not."
"Fine," House says, the snarl back in his voice.
Wilson stands up, and he's snarling, too. "If you're just calling to say you're giving up or that you've decided it's not going to work, to pitch another brilliant plan, you should give up now, House. You should just -"
"It's working just fine!" House snaps. "I'm on step nine, you fucking moron. But I'm not ready to talk to you yet." He hangs up before Wilson can ask anything more.
Wilson is still standing in the middle of the living room, the phone in one hand, when the front door opens. Cuddy looks from him to the phone and back, then puts a hand out to the wall. She pulls one leg up behind her, stretching her hamstring. "What -"
"House called," Wilson says, and his voice sounds too high in his own ears.
"What?" She drops her leg. When she walks toward him, her strides are stiff and uneven. She swallows as she takes the phone from him. "He's quitting?"
Wilson shakes his head and sits on the couch. "He says it's working, he says he's on step nine." He looks up at Cuddy, who's staring back at him with wide eyes. "I don't know whether to believe him or not."
She nods. She takes the phone over to her desk and flips through pages on her planner. He hears the beep of numbers being dialed, then Cuddy says, "Yes, this is Dr. Lisa Cuddy. I just had a call from one of your patients, and I want to ascertain whether he's still in your facility. Can you tell me if Gregory House has checked himself out?" There's a pause, and Wilson drops his head into his hands. He's invested in this, in House's success. He hasn't thought at all about what it will mean if they fail. His stomach churns. "Thank you. I see. Of course. Thank you."
He hears the beep of the phone being turned off, and a moment later feels Lisa sit next to him on the couch. She smells like sweat and rain. "He's still there," she says, and Wilson slides a little further forward. "Step nine is making amends."
Wilson nods. He pulls back, sits up, tries to shake it all off. "Well, I think he'll call you back, then," he says.
She laughs, a dry, humorless laugh. "God, what do you think he'll apologize for?"
Wilson leans back on the couch. "He's got quite a list to choose from," he says. Lisa sits forward and groans just slightly at the move, and Wilson says, "Stay put, I'll grab your water."
He brings back a bottle of water from the kitchen and the paper towel with the oranges. Lisa gulps the water, then takes an offered slice of orange. They sit for a few more minutes and talk about House, and then she goes to shower and Wilson goes out to his own car. He turns the key and realizes they never talked about last night. "Impeccable timing, my friend," he mutters as he backs out of the drive, "just like always."
13. Yellow
By Tuesday, Chase and Foreman have both had a call from House.
"Bit weird, really," Chase says, sitting at the conference table and torturing a donut. "He just said he was sorry for hitting me, and sorry that he didn't make the catch on the EP sooner with Alice."
"House said he was sorry?" Cameron asks, leaning forward. "Maybe he hasn't stopped taking the drugs."
"Yeah, he said that, and he said - you're going to think I'm making this up," Chase says, shaking his head, "but he said I'm a good doctor."
Cameron leans back. She does think he's making it up, until Foreman sits at the head of the table. He's concentrating on his cup of coffee. "He said the same thing to me," he says, his voice uneasy. "Not - not the same words, but, something like it. Said he'd gotten used to having me on the team, and -" Foreman pauses, and Cameron's stomach does a little flip-flop of nervousness.
"Well, go on," Chase says.
"He said he was sorry if his problems had gotten in the way of my learning."
They all stare blankly at the table for a moment, and then Chase scoffs. "If it were anyone else with this kind of radical personality shift, I'd say he's high."
"Maybe it's really working," Foreman says. His voice holds the equal measures of dread and excitement that Cameron has been feeling for weeks.
Now, though, she's only feeling left out. "He hasn't called me."
"Really? It's a 617 number," Chase says. "I almost didn't answer, didn't recognize the number."
But Cameron checks her phone and her pager constantly, conscientiously. She hasn't missed a call in days. "I'm sure he's just nervous about calling you," Foreman says.
"Nervous?" she asks, trying to imagine what that would look like on House.
"Afraid," Foreman says.
"Yellow-bellied bastard," Chase adds, and Cameron laughs at that. "You do have a bit more personal history with him."
"And you've had your feelings hurt a bit more," Foreman points out.
Cameron doesn't need a reminder. "Chase got hurt, too," she says, but it sounds petulant. She accepts their reasons, and promises to take notes when he does call.
Since House left, they've been a better team, somehow, even though they rarely work together anymore. There's a foxhole mentality, and Cameron likes it in spite of herself. She feels like they've all agreed that if they can get through this, they can get through anything.
By Thursday, she's tired of waiting. She imagines House has a pretty long list of people he needs to make amends to, and knows him well enough to think that she's probably not the first person he wants to talk to, but she wants the call. She tries to think about what she wants him to say, what she wants to say, herself. It's a long list, and so she starts to write things down in her planner, which she tries to keep with her at all times, just in case. It weighs down her lab coat and makes it uneven, but she doesn't care, really. There's no one at the hospital that she's trying to impress, at the moment.
Her phone stays silent all day, and her list takes up a full page in the notes section of her planner. At the end of the day, she goes to the office of the last person she figures House will call.
"I take it you haven't heard from him," Wilson says, setting his glasses down on his desk.
Cameron sits in the chair across from his desk. "He's called Chase and Foreman."
"I know," Wilson says. She knows he knows. He's been debriefing people all day about the calls. The walls between his office and House's really aren't that thick. "He will call."
She shrugs. "I don't know if it matters. Chase thinks there was someone there making him do it."
"Chase has a lot of experience with this kind of program," Wilson says.
"So there is someone?" Cameron thinks back to what she knows about Seabrook - she knows a lot. She researched the place pretty thoroughly even before she took House up there, and she stayed for the guided facility tour after he'd checked in. It uses the same twelve-step philosophy as AA or NA, though slightly altered. She hopes that the alterations will be able to accommodate House's demand for special attention. "He has a sponsor?"
"Yes, I think so," Wilson says, but he doesn't elaborate, and Cameron can tell that he's not going to. She wonders if Wilson's gotten a call. "No," he answers when she asks. "And frankly, I don't expect one."
Cameron nods. If she could, she would learn to do that, to expect nothing from House. She stands up. "It'd be easier, that way," she says. She stops at the door. There's something she's been afraid to ask, and so she does it without turning his way. "You and Dr. Cuddy."
"We're - not really," Wilson says, but that's enough of an answer. Not really is more than they ever were. It's more than she ever wanted from Wilson. She nods and opens the door. Next door, in the foxhole, Chase and Foreman are laughing and watching something on the new high-def monitor in House's office. She makes sure her phone is on and her ringer turned up before she walks in and sits between them.
14. Green
They have an emergency meeting of the transplant committee at 6:45 on Saturday morning. Wilson is barely able to pull himself out of bed, and he goes to the hospital in jeans and an old sweatshirt, unshowered, because it takes too long for the hot water to kick in at House's place. Four kids from Princeton all need new livers. At first, Wilson hears that headline and thinks it's a diagnostic nightmare, a new plague, but the man at the front of the room - Chad McIntyre, an internist who's had the luck to be on call this weekend - tells the full story and Wilson's panic recedes. The boys - seventeen and eighteen years old - were part of a hazing ritual at one of the nearby fraternity houses, some kind of drinking challenge called a "green bean." These boys, however, had some very bad advice from a Web site beforehand, and instead of eating a good dinner to hold back the alcohol poisoning, they each chose to down a couple of extra-strength Tylenol. Having done this every night for a week, their livers are shot.
"Two of them have been matched with members of their own families," McIntyre says, "and they're already being prepped for surgery. But these other two boys are running out of time. I'd like to propose moving them to the top of the transplant list immediately."
They vote to move the boys to top because the situation is so desperate. Wilson never has mixed feelings about this, because he knows there are other boards in other hospitals meeting at the same time and making similar calls, and he figures that in the end, they do the best they can with the information they have. He agonizes over decisions that he has some control over; this one is a simple yes or no vote. No one dies immediately if he votes yes, so that's what he does.
In the hallway, he stands with Stan Tyrell, a guy from pediatrics who has three kids of his own. Stan is already dressed in slacks and a pressed shirt. "Have to get rounds in early," he says. "It's my weekend with the kids."
When he was married, Wilson used to look at guys like Stan and think, there but for the grace of God. His first wife had wanted children, his second had been indifferent, and his third, a child of divorce herself, had said "only if we make it past five years." And now Wilson looks at Stan and feels a little pang of regret, because all he has to show for the last fifteen years of his life outside the hospital are piles of lawyers' bills. There are almost no people on earth to whom he is anything more than just Dr. Wilson.
Lisa and Chad come out after a moment, and Wilson stares at Lisa for maybe a moment too long, because he misses half of what Stan's saying. He nods, and that seems to be the right response. Stan says his good-byes and heads for his rounds, and Wilson tries to engage in Lisa's conversation.
"Why is it a green bean?" Lisa asks Chad. "I get the green part, but -"
He shrugs. "They take them out and get them so drunk that the next day, they're all strung out and limp - like green beans, I guess."
"So it's a figurative and a literal green," Wilson says, and Chad nods.
He taps his chart in his hands. "Gotta go tell the families."
He walks away, and Wilson and Lisa are left in the hall, standing side by side. She clears her throat. "Do you want to come in, for a minute?"
"Sure."
He goes into the office with her and takes a seat on her couch. She sits in the chair against the wall, and they smile awkwardly at each other for a moment. "Nice sweatshirt," she says after a moment, and Wilson looks down and shakes his head. It's a Michigan sweatshirt, clearly not one of his, but it was clean and apparently a little too close to his own laundry when he was groping around in the half-dark.
"Go Wolverines," he says. "I've been staying at House's place."
"I know," she says, and when Wilson lifts a questioning eyebrow, she shrugs. "You called to say you'd be late, and it showed up on caller ID. Can't tell you how unsettling it was to see that number pop up."
Wilson nods. He can imagine. Since the morning at Cuddy's, he's been half convinced that every time the phone rings or there's a knock on his office door, it's going to be House, saying he's decided therapy is crap. Please make it through, please make it through, he thinks, because the alternative is that House goes to jail. And if he goes, it will be in part because Wilson sent him.
"So the other night," Lisa starts, and Wilson snaps his head up.
"Yeah," he says, nodding fast, "about that."
"It was - nice," she says.
"Nice," he echoes. "Good."
"Yes, good." She's blushing, and Wilson thinks he probably is, too.
He shakes his head. "Oh, for god's sake," he mutters, hearing House's voice taunting him, "look, we're adults, right? We can - deal with this. In a grown-up manner."
"Absolutely," she says, and she sounds relieved.
"So. We had sex," Wilson says. "Pretty good sex, if my memory is correct."
She smirks. "I think it is."
"And, if my calculations are right, we had sex while you were ovulating, and I didn't use a condom, and I'm guessing you aren't on the pill." Lisa swallows. It's confirmation. He's been thinking about this for a week, now, just in flashes during the days. He understood last week what was being asked of him, which doesn't mean he's thought at all about what comes next. Yet each time he's pictured this conversation, he's said the same thing at this moment. "It's OK," Wilson says. "I knew what was going on."
She nods, at first just a few jerky nods, then faster, more assuredly. "OK."
"So. The question is - well, I guess there are a few questions, right?"
"I don't know yet," she says. "I was going to test today." She looks up. "Actually, you could help."
"Blood test? Sure," he says. "But - I mean, if it is -"
She shakes her head fast, fierce. "I can't talk about it until I know. Until we know," she corrects, and he nods.
"OK," he says. He stands up slowly, feeling suddenly very much like he needs more sleep between him and the rest of this day. "I think I'm going to go home, get some more sleep. I'll be in after lunch, though, so -"
"I'll find you for the test," she says, and he nods. He waves, feeling awkward, as he walks out the doors.
15. Blue
Wilson does come back in after lunch, but he has a meeting at 1. Lisa spends most of the afternoon trying to avert a crisis in Nuclear Medicine after one of the doctors picks a fight with one of the technicians, and thus all radiology requests are backed up four additional hours. She meets for half an hour with the department head, who tries to stick up for his underlings, but eventually caves and agrees that they'll all stay over that evening to finish up the work created by the mess. Lisa even gets him to agree that he'll be the one to break the news to the radiologists. As he leaves, she thinks this is too easy. She's sharpened her skills over the years by fighting with and against and sometimes even for House; the rest of the hospital seems like a cakewalk compared to those battles.
Wilson ducks his head into her office after that meeting, and she waves him inside. "I brought everything," he says, holding a syringe, vial, sterile pad, and maybe even a rubber tie in his hand.
She groans. "I - is it OK if we wait on that until tomorrow? I have Grossman coming back in at 4."
He's agreeable, as always. She watches him try to slide the supplies into the lab coat that he's not wearing, sees his surprise when he realizes his habit. "Well, listen, if you change your mind, I'm going to hang out in diagnostics for a while. They're working on -"
"The Balzer case, I know," she says. She's seen the file. It's a mildly interesting case, though nothing that House would've ever taken on. For one, there seems to be little threat that the man is going to die; he just has an unexplained limp.
Wilson says good-bye and heads out the door, and for a moment she watches him go. She has a fantasy, at the moment, of how things could go for them. The baby will be a girl, and lovely, with all of the right features from each of them. They will be the most equitable and modern of parents, switching off mid-week for care, conferencing and agreeing on every aspect of parenting from the best day-care to the best kind of formula. She pictures them sharing late meals to catch up on school news, and then sometimes falling into bed simply for the company and comfort of it all. In her fantasy, Wilson stays single, and so does she, though they start to lean on each other more, in the way that Wilson used to lean on House, the way that means she'll never have to go to another charity ball without a built-in dance partner.
She isn't in love with Wilson, and she means to tell him that. He isn't in love with her, either, and that's why the fantasy feels like something that could come true. But it hinges on him giving up, and she's not sure he's there yet.
She dodges him for the next three days, because once she takes the test the fantasy will be over. Instead, on Wednesday, she goes home and takes one of the boxed tests. The results are less reliable, so if there's no blue plus sign, she'll still have at least one more night in which to comfort herself with the idea that the plan could still work.
It comes back blue, and so do the next two.
16. Purple
"I don't understand when I turned into a slut," Cameron says, and Chase chokes on his beer.
"You don't understand when, or you don't understand how?" Foreman asks. "'Cause I'm guessing one will be easier to trace than the other."
"Who - says you're - a slut?" Chase gasps, setting his beer on the table.
Cameron shrugs. No one has said it, but she feels it. She's pretty sure that Dr. Wilson is a slut, in a male way, and she thinks that maybe screwing the best friend of the man she's not at all secretly really in love with might be slut material. "I slept with Dr. Wilson," she says, and Chase, who is mid-drink, starts making terrible heaving noises. Cameron holds up her hand and ticks down fingers. "Slept with Wilson. Went on a date with House, and would've slept with him. Slept with Chase." She looks at Foreman, who raises both eyebrows.
"I don't sleep with friends," he says, holding his hands up.
"What about colleagues?"
He laughs. "Allison," he says, and he puts his hand on her arm, bringing her hand back to the table to stop the counting. "You're not a slut."
She rolls her eyes, but she somehow appreciates this coming from him. He squeezes her arm, then pulls his hand away and turns to Chase, ducks to get a look at his face. "Chase, you OK? You're turning purple."
"Mm - fine," Chase says. He sits up and presses his back straight against the booth, coughing once or twice into his hand. "Can we go back a page to where you're sleeping with Wilson?"
"Only twice," Cameron says, though that sounded less slutty in her head. "He was - upset about House, and I -"
"And you were upset about House," Chase says. "It's all a bit sordid, isn't it? You sleeping with House's best friend, both of you probably thinking about him the whole time -"
"I hardly think Wilson was thinking about House," she says. She feels herself blush, and is glad the lights in the bar are low, because she's not sure about this at all. She doesn't completely understand Wilson's motivations for their liaisons, beyond the purely physical. Maybe it was just that. He has been divorced for a while, and living at House's place has to be kind of lonely.
Chase is breathing normally again, and he reaches for his beer just as Foreman says, "Well, just don't ever tell House about it and everything should be fine."
Cameron thinks her blush must be visible even under these lights as she says, very quietly, almost just to the table, "I already did."
This time Chase actually snorts beer through his nose. Foreman hands him a napkin but doesn't look away from Cameron. "You what? Why would you do that?"
She shrugs. She can't explain to them what it was like, that horrible trip with House up to Seabrook. The whole way there, she'd wanted to say something to him - something meaningful, something that he'd understand and file away in his weird, damaged, beautiful brain, something that he could hold on to, cling to, even, in the coming days. And when she'd seen him limp out of his building, wearing a faded old cotton jacket and equally faded jeans, looking pale and sad and defeated, she'd believed that he might be able, just this once, to accept some help.
Instead, there had been silence, and a long, awkward drive, and she'd thought about all of the things that he should have been saying - the apologies he should've been making, or even the excuses he could've been offering - and she'd stared to get mad, to really, truly hate him. When he'd shoved away her offer of help - just some water, just a simple fucking bottle as a mark of human kindness - she'd turned mean, and the truth had been an excellent weapon.
But she can't say that to Foreman or Chase. So she says, "It seemed like the right thing to do."
Chase's voice is rusty when he sits forward and speaks. "Guess we know why you haven't got a call from House yet, then, don't we? He probably thinks you're even."
Foreman shakes his head, then sends Chase to the bar for another pitcher. Cameron looks down at her empty glass, surprised when Foreman's hand again brushes her arm.
"Wilson's a nice guy," he says, "but he actually is a slut. You're not. You're really a nice person. You care about people, about House, about patients, everyone. And I'm saying this as a friend, OK? You probably should give up on House. And stay away from Wilson."
"Because he's a bad influence?"
Foreman shakes his head, and his mouth quirks the way it always does when he's explaining something. "Because those two have years of history. They're all tied up in each other's lives and business, and it's complicated. It could get really messy. Wilson can afford to get messed around by House. He's got tenure and he's got a good reputation."
"Aside from being a slut," Cameron says, but she knows this is all true. Wilson is somehow one of the better-liked doctors in the hospital, even though he's best friends with a maniac and has specialized in field where the mortality rate is astronomically high. He has even managed to come out on top of this entire Tritter business - still a department head, and now apparently Cuddy's new personal favorite.
"All I'm saying is, there are a hundred other guys out there that would be better for you. Hell, Chase is a better match, particularly if you're just looking for someone to pass the time." Foreman gives her a stern look that makes Cameron laugh, just slightly, and then nod.
"Point taken," she says, as Chase sets the new pitcher down on the table. "He is pretty good," she muses, and Chase gives her an unsteady look.
"Wilson?" Chase asks, and Cameron waits until he's pouring his own drink to answer.
"You."
When he spills the pitcher, Chase blushes, and Cameron doesn't look away.
17. Brown
House gets a package on the first day of his second month in rehab. Carl escorts him down to the main desk of the residential building. A UPS driver is leaning on the desk.
"What can brown do for me?" House asks him. "What's the going rate on overnight delivery out of hell?"
The driver just looks bored. He hands House an electronic clipboard thing to sign, which House does under Carl's watchful eye. The driver hands over a box about the size of a shoe box, only not as deep. "What, you aren't going to search it for drugs?" he asks Carl. He makes a show of shaking the box; something inside rattles. "I dunno, could be full of Vicodin."
"We've been expecting this," Carl says, and House scowls. That somehow makes the package much less fun.
Everyone is lurking in the lobby when House returns to his floor, and they look at him with open curiosity. They have an hour off between morning group and lunch, during which time some of the residents have their one-on-one counseling sessions. House's sessions are in the afternoons.
He takes the package back to his room, refusing to open it in front of the crowd in the television room. Privacy isn't something they're big on here, but at least House has graduated to having his own tiny room. He limps inside and sits on the bed, then studies the brown box. The return address is corporate, some Internet sales company that House doesn't recognize. Someone's sent him a toy, he thinks, and he hopes it's a Gameboy. Or a tiny television, even though he gets to watch General Hospital without argument in the afternoons, now, on the big screen. He's gotten three other residents hooked, and has spent considerable time applauding himself for addicting people who are in an addiction treatment center.
He shakes the box again. Something slides around inside, but it feels heavy. He wishes for a pocket knife, but those aren't allowed, so he has to pull at the packing tape with his dull fingernails until the box opens, revealing another box. This box is glossy, though, and House pulls it out and stares at it. It's a cell phone, a small, flat, black model, complete with a wall charger. There's a packing slip inside, and House looks at it, sees a note at the bottom.
From V. Earle - Three left.
House reads the details of the phone, sees that it's been charged for 800 minutes of talk time. Plenty of time with which he could call any one of a dozen sex-talk lines, or maybe just the time and temperature line from PPTH.
He hears a shuffle of feet and doesn't have to look over to know that Carl is in his doorway. House holds up the phone.
"Isn't this illegal?" he asks. "Shouldn't you be confiscating it?"
Carl smirks. It's just about the only expression that he has, and House has come to respect that. "Like I said. Expected."
House nods. He knows exactly which three phone calls Earle thinks he has left, and he's not eager to make any of them. "Where's Dr. Earle?" he asks.
"Had an emergency in St. Louis. Flew out."
House tries to think about what kind of emergency could draw out a vascular specialist. The list is long and interesting. It will be a good mental puzzle for the rest of the day. He wonders if he can get a pass to the computer room for the evening. The machines are pretty well locked down - no porn sites, no messaging programs, not even any e-mail allowed - but they are able to consult Web sites for sports scores and news stories. And House has found that there are no blocks on most medical sites, which is very handy.
He sits around for most of the day with the phone in his pocket. They have chicken and pasta for lunch, better than cafeteria quality but not great, nothing to call home about. He sits in the corner and doesn't talk to anyone, and he has to give the people here some credit for not being complete cardboard cutout camp counselors, because they do let him be alone sometimes. After lunch they have more free time - House watches General Hospital - and then an afternoon group session, in which Bobby Bartan, a very eager Phase One kid, gives an eight minute confession about the wedge driven into his family by his addiction and how Jesus is going to get him through. House bets he's a burnout by week three, and Darien takes the bet. "Sooner, man, the Jesus guys always go out sooner," he says. "They think they can cut it with just a Bible and their own damn selves."
House has his personal therapy session in the afternoon, but it's boring and he doesn't have anything new to talk about except the phone. He doesn't mention it, but Gloria, his therapist, does ask how the amends are going.
"It's great," he says. "It's so great, I'm thinking of apologizing for things beyond the scope of the program. Castro's gotta be waiting for someone to give a my bad for that whole Cuban Missile Crisis thing, right?"
Gloria's face barely changes. "How's your pain level?" she asks.
"Also fabulous," he says. This morning, when he woke up, his leg had felt like fire on top of fire and he'd wanted the bitter taste of dry Vicodin in his mouth more than anything he'd ever wanted in the entirety of the world. "Thanks for asking."
She leans forward just a little. "It's going to get worse," she says. "Tomorrow, the next day, it's just going to be more pain."
He wants to shift in his chair, but movement shows weakness. "Aren't you a ray of sunshine?"
She sits back in her chair, and for someone who's supposed to be helping him, who's chosen a career where the main goal is to assist others in healing, she seems very satisfied about his continued pain. "You know what you need to do," she says.
He says nothing for the next fourteen minutes, choosing instead to use his therapy time to picture Pia Zadore in various flattering poses. In the last three minutes, he stares at the diplomas on Gloria's walls. He wonders how a girl who graduated from the University of Minnesota, who still has that strange, elongated Midwestern speech pattern, ended up as a drug counselor in New Jersey. What kind of bitter switch of expectations must she have met to end up here? He tries to picture her fresh out of school, taking her first case, eager to help and solve and comfort. He's glad when the time runs out.
After dinner - steak strips and salad, a definite improvement - House goes to his room instead of to the TV lounge or computer room. He doesn't bother closing the door, because there is no door. He checks his watch, then pulls the phone out of his pocket. The box is still on the floor, and he finds the charger and plugs it in and starts the phone charging. The directions say it needs a full day, but House doesn't have that kind of time. It powers up, and he dials a number he wasn't even sure he had memorized.
A fist of nervousness clenches in his stomach as it rings - one, two, three, and then four, and he laughs to himself as it rolls into voice mail. This feels too easy, too perfect. He takes it anyway. "Cameron," he says, "it's House. I wanted - to apologize." He pauses. "I wanted to say, I'm sorry for hiring you. I'm not saying I'm sorry I did that, or that I'm sorry to have you around, because I'm not. You're a great doctor and I stand by my decision to bring you on. I'm saying - you were someone different before you started working for me, and you're not that person now, and I think you're less happy, or you think you're less happy, and so, I'm sorry for what's caused those changes. I'm sorry if this job - " He pauses. "I'm sorry if I've, that I've contributed to you being a less happy person. You deserve to be happy," he says, and he really believes that. "Anyway. I just needed to tell you that. All right, hope you're not, uh, too bored without me." He hangs up, then tucks the phone under the bed. Enough for today, he thinks, rubbing his leg. Enough for a very long time.
18. Black
They have a state-mandated emergency preparedness drill scheduled for Wednesday morning. Lisa spends Monday morning trying to brief the department heads. It won't be a full-scale drill, not like the terrorism trials that they've run before, but they'll be looking at the basic emergency plans for fire, for infectious disease and quarantine situations, and for bomb and other security threats.
"A bomb threat," she reminds them, "is Code Black." She clicks the remote control for the projector, and the presentation eases seamlessly into the next slide - which outlines the existing plans for responding to a Code Black situation. Lisa starts to talk through the points that aren't fleshed out, reminding the E.R. supervisor that staff members on the ground floor don't just get to walk out the door. As she passes the woman's chair, though, her perfume wafts up and makes Lisa's stomach do a little fumbling flip. She pauses, only for a second. Oh no, she thinks, lowering the hand with the remote to her stomach.
She keeps talking and makes it through the presentation, standing at the back of the room with her back to the wall, far from the food trays and the perfume and everything. "All right. If you know there's going to be a problem with your department, I need to know by the end of the day, in writing, and I need a planned response." The lights flicker back on and the staff members begin to rise, thought not quickly enough. Usually, she lingers at these meetings, chats with everyone as they dash out the door, but at the moment she's nauseated and very conscious of the fact that she's in a room full of doctors. At least House isn't here, she thinks, pushing into the hallway.
It's a little better in the open hall, though not much. She concentrates on walking toward her office, and her nice, private bathroom. No way is she going to throw up in the bathroom here, not where every woman on staff can walk by and hear it and start all manner of rumor. No, she can make it, she tells herself, even though her legs are starting to feel a little iffy by the time she reaches the end of the hallway and she has to pause and concentrate on breathing through the tight circle of her lips. She hears the sharp clack of dress shoes on the tile behind her, but she can't turn around.
"Easy," Wilson says, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Gonna throw up?" She nods just slightly, almost just a flick of her eyelids. "OK. Let's go."
She steadies herself by holding on to his arm with one hand, and they walk fast to her office. No one tries to stop them, and Wilson holds all of the doors for her and deflects all of the questions. She falls to her knees in front of the toilet in her bathroom and throws up horribly, pitifully. She hasn't thrown up since college. "Oh, Christ," she moans, and throws up again.
That lasts for about five minutes, and then she feels better. She cleans up and washes her mouth out and goes into the office, where Wilson is pacing by her desk. "Are you all right?" he asks, and she nods, falling into the armchair near the wall.
Wilson keeps staring at her, and she eventually finds the energy to meet his eyes. "Congratulations," she says, and his eyes go wide for a moment in what could be shock or fear, and then he grins and lets out a shocked little laugh.
"Really?" She nods. "You never asked again about the blood test, so I figured - but wow. Wow." He sits on the couch, close to her chair. "Have you been sick much?"
"No, today's a first," she says.
"And are you OK, otherwise?" She nods. "Wow. I just - we really should talk, huh?"
She keeps perfectly still. The ease of a moment ago has been lost; her stomach is unhappy again. "It's still early," she says. He's a doctor, he'll know exactly what that means. Things could go wrong.
She throws up again, and Wilson brings her water and offers to take her meeting with the Donnelys at nine if she wants to rest. It's a tempting offer, but she knows the way the hospital works. If she's not in a meeting, other work will find its way to her. "The Donnelys have six children," she says. Her voice sounds gravelly. "If I'm going to fight morning sickness in front of someone, they're not a bad choice for it."
Wilson nods. "I take it you - we aren't telling people. Anything."
"Not until the first trimester's over," she says. It sounds like an old wives' tale, but she knows the statistics. It's better to wait until things are more certain.
He opens his mouth, as if to ask something else, but there's a knock at the door. "Dr. York wants a few minutes about the research proposal," her assistant says.
Lisa rolls her eyes. "Ask her to come back," she says. "Tell her we're dealing with Code Black stuff."
Wilson laughs. "I like that," he says. "Code Black. That's the name, from now on."
Lisa pushes herself out of the chair and thinks it feels like an appropriate name. Everything inside of her feels like an explosion, in one way or another. She looks at the stunned happiness on Wilson's face and allows herself a smile. At least she's not the only one feeling all of it.
19. White
Cameron's sheets are white. Chase can't remember if they were white last time. He thinks maybe so. Or maybe pink. Her ceiling is white, too, but she has a pink tapestry tacked up so that it hangs over the ceiling light and casts the whole room with a strange rosy light. There's a metaphor to be had here, Chase thinks, but he doesn't work too hard at it.
Cameron is sleeping next to him, curled onto her side, facing him, one of her hands bent so that her fingers just brush his bare ribcage. They've had sex again, and it was pretty good. Not quite as fast or crazy as last time - there was some awkward conversation beforehand, and a beer each from Cameron's fridge - but still, pretty good. Only now, Chase is awake and wondering what it means that they've had sex now twice, and this time without any drugs.
He knows why it's happened. Cameron got the call from House three days ago. Chase knew this first from Foreman, who'd walked in on Cameron crying at House's desk and eventually had made her play the message back on speakerphone. "Brutal," he'd reported. "But not in the classic House way."
Chase has since heard the message himself, two nights ago. He agrees it isn't classic House cruelty, but he can see - had seen - exactly how hard it was for Cameron to hear it all. And now, he's pretty sure that she's going to wake up and start thinking that this - whatever it is, between them - is a sign that House is right, that she's changed, become more bitter, less good, less happy, since she joined the team. Or maybe they'll go back to the slut discussion. Either way, Chase doesn't see this morning ending well.
Cameron stirs, and Chase sucks in a breath. He wants her to wake up, because he's ready to have this over with. Whatever it will be. "Good morning," he says.
Her eyes flutter open, but she doesn't otherwise move. "Hi."
Chase doesn't know what to say. A thousand things come to mind - most of them so lame that he can feel himself starting to blush. Cameron's hand rises and rests on his chest, just near the base of the ribcage. She looks up and over him, at the alarm clock, and then lowers herself again, her head resting now on his shoulder, her arm sliding over his chest. "Still early," she says.
"Yeah." Chase pulls the white sheet up over them both. "Guess we could sleep a bit more."
Cameron doesn't open her eyes, but her tone is more alert. "Are you freaking out?"
"Are you?"
"Do I seem freaked out?"
Chase grins. "Not as much, no." Cameron nods, which he feels only as the slide of her cool, smooth cheek across his skin. "All right. Yeah, let's sleep. Together."
20. Colorless
Wilson walks into House's condo and tries to turn on the lamp by the door, but the bulb flashes - a brilliant and frightening half-second explosion of color and a whizzing pop - and dies, and the room stays dark. He blinks against the floating green-gray speckles in his eyes and closes the door, pitching the room into absolute darkness. The place is the same as always, all of the furniture living in the same spaces where Wilson had helped Stacy's brother carry it four years ago, after Stacy had left for good. He has no trouble finding his way across the room to the couch and from there to the other lamp, on the end table. This one turns on without a fight.
In the kitchen, he heats up pasta in the microwave and decides to open a bottle of House's wine. He's been debating about the wine, whether he should leave it or not. A man coming out of rehab shouldn't, perhaps, be faced with a full wine rack and a well-stocked bar and a six-pack in the fridge. Then again, Wilson is pretty sure that House will never forgive the intrusion. Thievery! he can hear him cry. But House isn't going to forgive him anyway, and he's already crossed some serious lines on the intrusion front, so maybe he will move the wine out with him. At least the medicine cabinet has already been emptied.
He pours a glass of white wine from an unfamiliar bottle. Wilson has no remarkable palette for wine. His second wife was a connoisseur, and he'd been happy to learn from her. He's retained only enough of what she taught him to be able to converse casually at fundraisers and cocktail parties. House knows more, even though he doesn't seem to enjoy wine that much. Wilson has relied on his taste several times, and has never been disappointed.
This wine is almost clear. Wilson takes a sip while he stirs his pasta. It tastes sweet, which is a surprise. He looks at himself in the reflection of the microwave and raises his glass. "To fatherhood," he says, smiling at himself.
He's going to be a father. Well, that's assuming everything goes well with Lisa's pregnancy - and he pulled her medical files earlier in the week, in a frenzy of what he likes to believe was justified curiosity, and so he knows they might have a rocky road ahead. The recent miscarriage probably means nothing. One out of five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and no one seems to have yet made any conclusive finding as to why that is. But Wilson has a good feeling about this one. It's based on no medical evidence whatsoever, but there it is. A good feeling. A fatherly feeling.
He takes his dinner to the living room, pausing on the way in to look at the answering machine. Only Lisa and Cameron know he's here, but he feels a little sad when he sees there's no blinking, colored light. No messages. He's been trying not to think too much about whether House will call. He's pretty sure he won't, but he can't quite give up hope. He's not sure he even wants an apology, at this point. He's not ready to give one.
The television remote is still balanced on the arm of the couch where Wilson left it the night before. This is one of the nice things about living alone, which is something he hasn't done in a very long time. Things stay put. His food stays in the fridge, his car always has exactly the amount of gas it did when he last drove it, his toothpaste lasts forever, and the radio is still on the public radio channel that he likes. It's a life of Wilson.
Of course, the TiVo still works for House, not Wilson, and so he never knows which channel it will be on. Right now, it's recording some kind of strange, dramatic dating show, and Wilson lets it go, doesn't try to change the channel, just lets the raucous noise of collegiate coupling run in the background.
What he wants, right now, is House. He wants House sitting next to him, cracking jokes about these stupid, these god-awful people, wants House stealing his pasta and his beer and, after a few hours of that, he wants House to say, "So, does this mean you're going to be shacking up with Cuddy?"
Instead, he has to ask himself the awkward questions, and give the awkward answers: he has no idea what any of this means. He can see a hundred different futures for himself, for this potential child, for him and Cuddy or for him and House. He's been holding his breath for five weeks, now, and the whole time, he's been thinking it's just fear that House won't come back rehabilitated. Now he's not so sure. He's afraid that House will come back and things will be better for him but worse for Wilson; that their friendship will be the price that's had to be paid.
Wilson drinks the rest of his colorless wine and sets the glass on the table. He wishes things could be black and white, love or hate, friendship or strangers.
Notes in Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3 : Part 4 : Part 5
11. Red
The old man keeps coming back. "At some point, you will have to actually do the therapy part," Earle says.
"I have been doing it." House is sitting in his bed, leaning against the wall. He tosses a red ball up into the air and catches it; toss and catch, toss and catch. It's soothing, except that this used to be what he did when he wanted to think, and now there's a complete lack of cool things to think about.
He has already privately diagnosed every single one of the other inmates - residents, as the counselors prefer to call them. They are all boring cases. Pre-diabetes, one counselor with noticeable cardiac problems, and every resident showing predictable, almost textbook signs of past drug use. They lie about it a little, but not nearly so much as House would've expected. He wishes they would lie more, in fact; he wishes they would hold more things back, so that their every-morning group sessions wouldn't run into lunch time and thus make him late to view General Hospital.
"Ah, see, just showing up doesn't count here," Earle says, reaching out and grabbing the red ball. "You have to actually try."
"Do, or do not," House says in his best Yoda voice. "There is no try."
"And if you do not, then you don't get to leave."
House snorts. "Who's to say I'm not making remarkable progress? I almost cried this morning in group. Wait - no - I think I feel it coming - I just," and he puts his head in his hands and fake-sobs for a moment, then looks up at Earle and smiles.
"That's all very cute. But I sincerely doubt that a judge will find it so adorable as to grant the conditions of your deal."
"My deal is already signed and sealed and in place," House says. He remembers that particularly bitter pill, having to sign those forms, waiting for Wilson to come and pick them up from his condo and drive them over to Tritter. "I'm doing my part."
"No," Earle says, and he tosses the ball back, "you aren't. Step nine."
House feigns absolute innocence. "Hey," he says, "I wrote a very nice note of apology to my parents for all the pain I've caused."
"No, you wrote a rather mean-spirited little note to Dr. Cuddy about the care and feeding of your pets."
House tries not to let the surprise show on his face. "You talked to Cuddy?"
"I read your mail." Earle draws the letter, opened but without a postmark, from his inner jacket pocket. He holds it out to House. "Care to make a deal with me, Doctor?"
House takes the letter. He's actually disappointed that it didn't get through. Yes, it is a little mean-spirited - particularly the part about making sure not to get Chase too excited, so he doesn't ruin the carpet - but it had been his first attempt, his only chance since he'd been here, of making contact with his old world. He misses the hospital every single day. He misses the cases, misses the adrenaline rush of solving problems, of doing his job well, but he also misses the down time, the toys on his desk, the elaborate plans to escape clinic duty, the gossip. The people. "What do you have in mind?"
"I'll visit you every day for the next two weeks. Staring tomorrow morning, every time I visit, you have to make a call."
"I knew I memorized those 900 numbers for a reason."
Earle smiles thinly. "You have to call and apologize to one person. Every visit."
House tosses the ball up high enough that it hits the ceiling. "That's not a deal. Deal implies that I get something in return. And besides, the point of all of this is to inspire me to change, right? How exactly does forcing me to make apologies I don't and won't mean work toward making me a better person?"
"It doesn't," Earle says. "But it will probably go a long way toward improving your quality of life once you leave this place if you actually have some people willing to offer you support. And there is that whole 'compliance with the order of the court' thing."
House taps his fingers on the bed. He wants to just sit here, to just wait Earle out, but this time it's not enough to win the battle. If he doesn't win the war, he doesn't get to go back to work. "Fine," he says. "So who do you want me to call?"
12. Orange
Wilson is in Cuddy's kitchen, slicing an orange to have for breakfast, when the phone rings. He jumps at the sound, then laughs at himself. Cuddy - Lisa - is out on a run, and he's an invited guest. He shouldn't feel like an intruder, but he does. It's why he's already wearing his shirt and pants; it would seem weird to pad around Cuddy's house in just his underwear, even though he woke up wearing less than that in Cuddy's - Lisa's bed.
The answering machine kicks in, giving Lisa's terse message, and Wilson makes the last cut on the orange. He lines the slices up on a paper towel, trying not to make a mess. Maybe he should have makes orange juice. There's a whole basket of oranges, there certainly would be -
"Cuddy, it's me."
Wilson jumps again at the harsh sound of House's voice, echoing across Cuddy's kitchen. He turns and reaches for the phone on the wall by the refrigerator, grabs it even as House is talking into the machine. "I need to talk to you. Now. Hello? Hello, I know you're -"
"House? What's going on?" Wilson takes the cordless phone into the living room and stabs the stop button on the answering machine, which ends the horrible feedback. "House?"
"Wilson?"
Wilson looks at the caller ID. It's a 617 number, registered to V. Earle. If House is in Boston, then the whole deal's off. Wilson sits on the arm of Cuddy's couch. "Where are you? What's going on?"
"What's - what are you doing at Cuddy's place at 6:30 in the morning?"
"Where are you?"
"Though I guess I can connect the dots on that one myself. And I'm exactly where you put me," House snarls.
Wilson sighs and tries to speak through clenched teeth. "You're calling from a Boston number."
"Cell phone," House says. "I traded a couple packs of cigarettes for it."
Wilson groans. He closes his eyes. He's been trying so hard not to think about House these last few weeks, trying to think only of what might be coming in the days ahead. Seabrook is supposed to be a guaranteed fix, but this is the same House as always. Wilson rubs his face. "What do you want, House? Did you leave? Are you - where are you?"
House sighs, and his voice, for a moment, is serious. "I'm at the place. I'm borrowing a cell phone. And I need to talk to Cuddy, if she's there."
"She's not."
"Fine," House says, the snarl back in his voice.
Wilson stands up, and he's snarling, too. "If you're just calling to say you're giving up or that you've decided it's not going to work, to pitch another brilliant plan, you should give up now, House. You should just -"
"It's working just fine!" House snaps. "I'm on step nine, you fucking moron. But I'm not ready to talk to you yet." He hangs up before Wilson can ask anything more.
Wilson is still standing in the middle of the living room, the phone in one hand, when the front door opens. Cuddy looks from him to the phone and back, then puts a hand out to the wall. She pulls one leg up behind her, stretching her hamstring. "What -"
"House called," Wilson says, and his voice sounds too high in his own ears.
"What?" She drops her leg. When she walks toward him, her strides are stiff and uneven. She swallows as she takes the phone from him. "He's quitting?"
Wilson shakes his head and sits on the couch. "He says it's working, he says he's on step nine." He looks up at Cuddy, who's staring back at him with wide eyes. "I don't know whether to believe him or not."
She nods. She takes the phone over to her desk and flips through pages on her planner. He hears the beep of numbers being dialed, then Cuddy says, "Yes, this is Dr. Lisa Cuddy. I just had a call from one of your patients, and I want to ascertain whether he's still in your facility. Can you tell me if Gregory House has checked himself out?" There's a pause, and Wilson drops his head into his hands. He's invested in this, in House's success. He hasn't thought at all about what it will mean if they fail. His stomach churns. "Thank you. I see. Of course. Thank you."
He hears the beep of the phone being turned off, and a moment later feels Lisa sit next to him on the couch. She smells like sweat and rain. "He's still there," she says, and Wilson slides a little further forward. "Step nine is making amends."
Wilson nods. He pulls back, sits up, tries to shake it all off. "Well, I think he'll call you back, then," he says.
She laughs, a dry, humorless laugh. "God, what do you think he'll apologize for?"
Wilson leans back on the couch. "He's got quite a list to choose from," he says. Lisa sits forward and groans just slightly at the move, and Wilson says, "Stay put, I'll grab your water."
He brings back a bottle of water from the kitchen and the paper towel with the oranges. Lisa gulps the water, then takes an offered slice of orange. They sit for a few more minutes and talk about House, and then she goes to shower and Wilson goes out to his own car. He turns the key and realizes they never talked about last night. "Impeccable timing, my friend," he mutters as he backs out of the drive, "just like always."
13. Yellow
By Tuesday, Chase and Foreman have both had a call from House.
"Bit weird, really," Chase says, sitting at the conference table and torturing a donut. "He just said he was sorry for hitting me, and sorry that he didn't make the catch on the EP sooner with Alice."
"House said he was sorry?" Cameron asks, leaning forward. "Maybe he hasn't stopped taking the drugs."
"Yeah, he said that, and he said - you're going to think I'm making this up," Chase says, shaking his head, "but he said I'm a good doctor."
Cameron leans back. She does think he's making it up, until Foreman sits at the head of the table. He's concentrating on his cup of coffee. "He said the same thing to me," he says, his voice uneasy. "Not - not the same words, but, something like it. Said he'd gotten used to having me on the team, and -" Foreman pauses, and Cameron's stomach does a little flip-flop of nervousness.
"Well, go on," Chase says.
"He said he was sorry if his problems had gotten in the way of my learning."
They all stare blankly at the table for a moment, and then Chase scoffs. "If it were anyone else with this kind of radical personality shift, I'd say he's high."
"Maybe it's really working," Foreman says. His voice holds the equal measures of dread and excitement that Cameron has been feeling for weeks.
Now, though, she's only feeling left out. "He hasn't called me."
"Really? It's a 617 number," Chase says. "I almost didn't answer, didn't recognize the number."
But Cameron checks her phone and her pager constantly, conscientiously. She hasn't missed a call in days. "I'm sure he's just nervous about calling you," Foreman says.
"Nervous?" she asks, trying to imagine what that would look like on House.
"Afraid," Foreman says.
"Yellow-bellied bastard," Chase adds, and Cameron laughs at that. "You do have a bit more personal history with him."
"And you've had your feelings hurt a bit more," Foreman points out.
Cameron doesn't need a reminder. "Chase got hurt, too," she says, but it sounds petulant. She accepts their reasons, and promises to take notes when he does call.
Since House left, they've been a better team, somehow, even though they rarely work together anymore. There's a foxhole mentality, and Cameron likes it in spite of herself. She feels like they've all agreed that if they can get through this, they can get through anything.
By Thursday, she's tired of waiting. She imagines House has a pretty long list of people he needs to make amends to, and knows him well enough to think that she's probably not the first person he wants to talk to, but she wants the call. She tries to think about what she wants him to say, what she wants to say, herself. It's a long list, and so she starts to write things down in her planner, which she tries to keep with her at all times, just in case. It weighs down her lab coat and makes it uneven, but she doesn't care, really. There's no one at the hospital that she's trying to impress, at the moment.
Her phone stays silent all day, and her list takes up a full page in the notes section of her planner. At the end of the day, she goes to the office of the last person she figures House will call.
"I take it you haven't heard from him," Wilson says, setting his glasses down on his desk.
Cameron sits in the chair across from his desk. "He's called Chase and Foreman."
"I know," Wilson says. She knows he knows. He's been debriefing people all day about the calls. The walls between his office and House's really aren't that thick. "He will call."
She shrugs. "I don't know if it matters. Chase thinks there was someone there making him do it."
"Chase has a lot of experience with this kind of program," Wilson says.
"So there is someone?" Cameron thinks back to what she knows about Seabrook - she knows a lot. She researched the place pretty thoroughly even before she took House up there, and she stayed for the guided facility tour after he'd checked in. It uses the same twelve-step philosophy as AA or NA, though slightly altered. She hopes that the alterations will be able to accommodate House's demand for special attention. "He has a sponsor?"
"Yes, I think so," Wilson says, but he doesn't elaborate, and Cameron can tell that he's not going to. She wonders if Wilson's gotten a call. "No," he answers when she asks. "And frankly, I don't expect one."
Cameron nods. If she could, she would learn to do that, to expect nothing from House. She stands up. "It'd be easier, that way," she says. She stops at the door. There's something she's been afraid to ask, and so she does it without turning his way. "You and Dr. Cuddy."
"We're - not really," Wilson says, but that's enough of an answer. Not really is more than they ever were. It's more than she ever wanted from Wilson. She nods and opens the door. Next door, in the foxhole, Chase and Foreman are laughing and watching something on the new high-def monitor in House's office. She makes sure her phone is on and her ringer turned up before she walks in and sits between them.
14. Green
They have an emergency meeting of the transplant committee at 6:45 on Saturday morning. Wilson is barely able to pull himself out of bed, and he goes to the hospital in jeans and an old sweatshirt, unshowered, because it takes too long for the hot water to kick in at House's place. Four kids from Princeton all need new livers. At first, Wilson hears that headline and thinks it's a diagnostic nightmare, a new plague, but the man at the front of the room - Chad McIntyre, an internist who's had the luck to be on call this weekend - tells the full story and Wilson's panic recedes. The boys - seventeen and eighteen years old - were part of a hazing ritual at one of the nearby fraternity houses, some kind of drinking challenge called a "green bean." These boys, however, had some very bad advice from a Web site beforehand, and instead of eating a good dinner to hold back the alcohol poisoning, they each chose to down a couple of extra-strength Tylenol. Having done this every night for a week, their livers are shot.
"Two of them have been matched with members of their own families," McIntyre says, "and they're already being prepped for surgery. But these other two boys are running out of time. I'd like to propose moving them to the top of the transplant list immediately."
They vote to move the boys to top because the situation is so desperate. Wilson never has mixed feelings about this, because he knows there are other boards in other hospitals meeting at the same time and making similar calls, and he figures that in the end, they do the best they can with the information they have. He agonizes over decisions that he has some control over; this one is a simple yes or no vote. No one dies immediately if he votes yes, so that's what he does.
In the hallway, he stands with Stan Tyrell, a guy from pediatrics who has three kids of his own. Stan is already dressed in slacks and a pressed shirt. "Have to get rounds in early," he says. "It's my weekend with the kids."
When he was married, Wilson used to look at guys like Stan and think, there but for the grace of God. His first wife had wanted children, his second had been indifferent, and his third, a child of divorce herself, had said "only if we make it past five years." And now Wilson looks at Stan and feels a little pang of regret, because all he has to show for the last fifteen years of his life outside the hospital are piles of lawyers' bills. There are almost no people on earth to whom he is anything more than just Dr. Wilson.
Lisa and Chad come out after a moment, and Wilson stares at Lisa for maybe a moment too long, because he misses half of what Stan's saying. He nods, and that seems to be the right response. Stan says his good-byes and heads for his rounds, and Wilson tries to engage in Lisa's conversation.
"Why is it a green bean?" Lisa asks Chad. "I get the green part, but -"
He shrugs. "They take them out and get them so drunk that the next day, they're all strung out and limp - like green beans, I guess."
"So it's a figurative and a literal green," Wilson says, and Chad nods.
He taps his chart in his hands. "Gotta go tell the families."
He walks away, and Wilson and Lisa are left in the hall, standing side by side. She clears her throat. "Do you want to come in, for a minute?"
"Sure."
He goes into the office with her and takes a seat on her couch. She sits in the chair against the wall, and they smile awkwardly at each other for a moment. "Nice sweatshirt," she says after a moment, and Wilson looks down and shakes his head. It's a Michigan sweatshirt, clearly not one of his, but it was clean and apparently a little too close to his own laundry when he was groping around in the half-dark.
"Go Wolverines," he says. "I've been staying at House's place."
"I know," she says, and when Wilson lifts a questioning eyebrow, she shrugs. "You called to say you'd be late, and it showed up on caller ID. Can't tell you how unsettling it was to see that number pop up."
Wilson nods. He can imagine. Since the morning at Cuddy's, he's been half convinced that every time the phone rings or there's a knock on his office door, it's going to be House, saying he's decided therapy is crap. Please make it through, please make it through, he thinks, because the alternative is that House goes to jail. And if he goes, it will be in part because Wilson sent him.
"So the other night," Lisa starts, and Wilson snaps his head up.
"Yeah," he says, nodding fast, "about that."
"It was - nice," she says.
"Nice," he echoes. "Good."
"Yes, good." She's blushing, and Wilson thinks he probably is, too.
He shakes his head. "Oh, for god's sake," he mutters, hearing House's voice taunting him, "look, we're adults, right? We can - deal with this. In a grown-up manner."
"Absolutely," she says, and she sounds relieved.
"So. We had sex," Wilson says. "Pretty good sex, if my memory is correct."
She smirks. "I think it is."
"And, if my calculations are right, we had sex while you were ovulating, and I didn't use a condom, and I'm guessing you aren't on the pill." Lisa swallows. It's confirmation. He's been thinking about this for a week, now, just in flashes during the days. He understood last week what was being asked of him, which doesn't mean he's thought at all about what comes next. Yet each time he's pictured this conversation, he's said the same thing at this moment. "It's OK," Wilson says. "I knew what was going on."
She nods, at first just a few jerky nods, then faster, more assuredly. "OK."
"So. The question is - well, I guess there are a few questions, right?"
"I don't know yet," she says. "I was going to test today." She looks up. "Actually, you could help."
"Blood test? Sure," he says. "But - I mean, if it is -"
She shakes her head fast, fierce. "I can't talk about it until I know. Until we know," she corrects, and he nods.
"OK," he says. He stands up slowly, feeling suddenly very much like he needs more sleep between him and the rest of this day. "I think I'm going to go home, get some more sleep. I'll be in after lunch, though, so -"
"I'll find you for the test," she says, and he nods. He waves, feeling awkward, as he walks out the doors.
15. Blue
Wilson does come back in after lunch, but he has a meeting at 1. Lisa spends most of the afternoon trying to avert a crisis in Nuclear Medicine after one of the doctors picks a fight with one of the technicians, and thus all radiology requests are backed up four additional hours. She meets for half an hour with the department head, who tries to stick up for his underlings, but eventually caves and agrees that they'll all stay over that evening to finish up the work created by the mess. Lisa even gets him to agree that he'll be the one to break the news to the radiologists. As he leaves, she thinks this is too easy. She's sharpened her skills over the years by fighting with and against and sometimes even for House; the rest of the hospital seems like a cakewalk compared to those battles.
Wilson ducks his head into her office after that meeting, and she waves him inside. "I brought everything," he says, holding a syringe, vial, sterile pad, and maybe even a rubber tie in his hand.
She groans. "I - is it OK if we wait on that until tomorrow? I have Grossman coming back in at 4."
He's agreeable, as always. She watches him try to slide the supplies into the lab coat that he's not wearing, sees his surprise when he realizes his habit. "Well, listen, if you change your mind, I'm going to hang out in diagnostics for a while. They're working on -"
"The Balzer case, I know," she says. She's seen the file. It's a mildly interesting case, though nothing that House would've ever taken on. For one, there seems to be little threat that the man is going to die; he just has an unexplained limp.
Wilson says good-bye and heads out the door, and for a moment she watches him go. She has a fantasy, at the moment, of how things could go for them. The baby will be a girl, and lovely, with all of the right features from each of them. They will be the most equitable and modern of parents, switching off mid-week for care, conferencing and agreeing on every aspect of parenting from the best day-care to the best kind of formula. She pictures them sharing late meals to catch up on school news, and then sometimes falling into bed simply for the company and comfort of it all. In her fantasy, Wilson stays single, and so does she, though they start to lean on each other more, in the way that Wilson used to lean on House, the way that means she'll never have to go to another charity ball without a built-in dance partner.
She isn't in love with Wilson, and she means to tell him that. He isn't in love with her, either, and that's why the fantasy feels like something that could come true. But it hinges on him giving up, and she's not sure he's there yet.
She dodges him for the next three days, because once she takes the test the fantasy will be over. Instead, on Wednesday, she goes home and takes one of the boxed tests. The results are less reliable, so if there's no blue plus sign, she'll still have at least one more night in which to comfort herself with the idea that the plan could still work.
It comes back blue, and so do the next two.
16. Purple
"I don't understand when I turned into a slut," Cameron says, and Chase chokes on his beer.
"You don't understand when, or you don't understand how?" Foreman asks. "'Cause I'm guessing one will be easier to trace than the other."
"Who - says you're - a slut?" Chase gasps, setting his beer on the table.
Cameron shrugs. No one has said it, but she feels it. She's pretty sure that Dr. Wilson is a slut, in a male way, and she thinks that maybe screwing the best friend of the man she's not at all secretly really in love with might be slut material. "I slept with Dr. Wilson," she says, and Chase, who is mid-drink, starts making terrible heaving noises. Cameron holds up her hand and ticks down fingers. "Slept with Wilson. Went on a date with House, and would've slept with him. Slept with Chase." She looks at Foreman, who raises both eyebrows.
"I don't sleep with friends," he says, holding his hands up.
"What about colleagues?"
He laughs. "Allison," he says, and he puts his hand on her arm, bringing her hand back to the table to stop the counting. "You're not a slut."
She rolls her eyes, but she somehow appreciates this coming from him. He squeezes her arm, then pulls his hand away and turns to Chase, ducks to get a look at his face. "Chase, you OK? You're turning purple."
"Mm - fine," Chase says. He sits up and presses his back straight against the booth, coughing once or twice into his hand. "Can we go back a page to where you're sleeping with Wilson?"
"Only twice," Cameron says, though that sounded less slutty in her head. "He was - upset about House, and I -"
"And you were upset about House," Chase says. "It's all a bit sordid, isn't it? You sleeping with House's best friend, both of you probably thinking about him the whole time -"
"I hardly think Wilson was thinking about House," she says. She feels herself blush, and is glad the lights in the bar are low, because she's not sure about this at all. She doesn't completely understand Wilson's motivations for their liaisons, beyond the purely physical. Maybe it was just that. He has been divorced for a while, and living at House's place has to be kind of lonely.
Chase is breathing normally again, and he reaches for his beer just as Foreman says, "Well, just don't ever tell House about it and everything should be fine."
Cameron thinks her blush must be visible even under these lights as she says, very quietly, almost just to the table, "I already did."
This time Chase actually snorts beer through his nose. Foreman hands him a napkin but doesn't look away from Cameron. "You what? Why would you do that?"
She shrugs. She can't explain to them what it was like, that horrible trip with House up to Seabrook. The whole way there, she'd wanted to say something to him - something meaningful, something that he'd understand and file away in his weird, damaged, beautiful brain, something that he could hold on to, cling to, even, in the coming days. And when she'd seen him limp out of his building, wearing a faded old cotton jacket and equally faded jeans, looking pale and sad and defeated, she'd believed that he might be able, just this once, to accept some help.
Instead, there had been silence, and a long, awkward drive, and she'd thought about all of the things that he should have been saying - the apologies he should've been making, or even the excuses he could've been offering - and she'd stared to get mad, to really, truly hate him. When he'd shoved away her offer of help - just some water, just a simple fucking bottle as a mark of human kindness - she'd turned mean, and the truth had been an excellent weapon.
But she can't say that to Foreman or Chase. So she says, "It seemed like the right thing to do."
Chase's voice is rusty when he sits forward and speaks. "Guess we know why you haven't got a call from House yet, then, don't we? He probably thinks you're even."
Foreman shakes his head, then sends Chase to the bar for another pitcher. Cameron looks down at her empty glass, surprised when Foreman's hand again brushes her arm.
"Wilson's a nice guy," he says, "but he actually is a slut. You're not. You're really a nice person. You care about people, about House, about patients, everyone. And I'm saying this as a friend, OK? You probably should give up on House. And stay away from Wilson."
"Because he's a bad influence?"
Foreman shakes his head, and his mouth quirks the way it always does when he's explaining something. "Because those two have years of history. They're all tied up in each other's lives and business, and it's complicated. It could get really messy. Wilson can afford to get messed around by House. He's got tenure and he's got a good reputation."
"Aside from being a slut," Cameron says, but she knows this is all true. Wilson is somehow one of the better-liked doctors in the hospital, even though he's best friends with a maniac and has specialized in field where the mortality rate is astronomically high. He has even managed to come out on top of this entire Tritter business - still a department head, and now apparently Cuddy's new personal favorite.
"All I'm saying is, there are a hundred other guys out there that would be better for you. Hell, Chase is a better match, particularly if you're just looking for someone to pass the time." Foreman gives her a stern look that makes Cameron laugh, just slightly, and then nod.
"Point taken," she says, as Chase sets the new pitcher down on the table. "He is pretty good," she muses, and Chase gives her an unsteady look.
"Wilson?" Chase asks, and Cameron waits until he's pouring his own drink to answer.
"You."
When he spills the pitcher, Chase blushes, and Cameron doesn't look away.
17. Brown
House gets a package on the first day of his second month in rehab. Carl escorts him down to the main desk of the residential building. A UPS driver is leaning on the desk.
"What can brown do for me?" House asks him. "What's the going rate on overnight delivery out of hell?"
The driver just looks bored. He hands House an electronic clipboard thing to sign, which House does under Carl's watchful eye. The driver hands over a box about the size of a shoe box, only not as deep. "What, you aren't going to search it for drugs?" he asks Carl. He makes a show of shaking the box; something inside rattles. "I dunno, could be full of Vicodin."
"We've been expecting this," Carl says, and House scowls. That somehow makes the package much less fun.
Everyone is lurking in the lobby when House returns to his floor, and they look at him with open curiosity. They have an hour off between morning group and lunch, during which time some of the residents have their one-on-one counseling sessions. House's sessions are in the afternoons.
He takes the package back to his room, refusing to open it in front of the crowd in the television room. Privacy isn't something they're big on here, but at least House has graduated to having his own tiny room. He limps inside and sits on the bed, then studies the brown box. The return address is corporate, some Internet sales company that House doesn't recognize. Someone's sent him a toy, he thinks, and he hopes it's a Gameboy. Or a tiny television, even though he gets to watch General Hospital without argument in the afternoons, now, on the big screen. He's gotten three other residents hooked, and has spent considerable time applauding himself for addicting people who are in an addiction treatment center.
He shakes the box again. Something slides around inside, but it feels heavy. He wishes for a pocket knife, but those aren't allowed, so he has to pull at the packing tape with his dull fingernails until the box opens, revealing another box. This box is glossy, though, and House pulls it out and stares at it. It's a cell phone, a small, flat, black model, complete with a wall charger. There's a packing slip inside, and House looks at it, sees a note at the bottom.
From V. Earle - Three left.
House reads the details of the phone, sees that it's been charged for 800 minutes of talk time. Plenty of time with which he could call any one of a dozen sex-talk lines, or maybe just the time and temperature line from PPTH.
He hears a shuffle of feet and doesn't have to look over to know that Carl is in his doorway. House holds up the phone.
"Isn't this illegal?" he asks. "Shouldn't you be confiscating it?"
Carl smirks. It's just about the only expression that he has, and House has come to respect that. "Like I said. Expected."
House nods. He knows exactly which three phone calls Earle thinks he has left, and he's not eager to make any of them. "Where's Dr. Earle?" he asks.
"Had an emergency in St. Louis. Flew out."
House tries to think about what kind of emergency could draw out a vascular specialist. The list is long and interesting. It will be a good mental puzzle for the rest of the day. He wonders if he can get a pass to the computer room for the evening. The machines are pretty well locked down - no porn sites, no messaging programs, not even any e-mail allowed - but they are able to consult Web sites for sports scores and news stories. And House has found that there are no blocks on most medical sites, which is very handy.
He sits around for most of the day with the phone in his pocket. They have chicken and pasta for lunch, better than cafeteria quality but not great, nothing to call home about. He sits in the corner and doesn't talk to anyone, and he has to give the people here some credit for not being complete cardboard cutout camp counselors, because they do let him be alone sometimes. After lunch they have more free time - House watches General Hospital - and then an afternoon group session, in which Bobby Bartan, a very eager Phase One kid, gives an eight minute confession about the wedge driven into his family by his addiction and how Jesus is going to get him through. House bets he's a burnout by week three, and Darien takes the bet. "Sooner, man, the Jesus guys always go out sooner," he says. "They think they can cut it with just a Bible and their own damn selves."
House has his personal therapy session in the afternoon, but it's boring and he doesn't have anything new to talk about except the phone. He doesn't mention it, but Gloria, his therapist, does ask how the amends are going.
"It's great," he says. "It's so great, I'm thinking of apologizing for things beyond the scope of the program. Castro's gotta be waiting for someone to give a my bad for that whole Cuban Missile Crisis thing, right?"
Gloria's face barely changes. "How's your pain level?" she asks.
"Also fabulous," he says. This morning, when he woke up, his leg had felt like fire on top of fire and he'd wanted the bitter taste of dry Vicodin in his mouth more than anything he'd ever wanted in the entirety of the world. "Thanks for asking."
She leans forward just a little. "It's going to get worse," she says. "Tomorrow, the next day, it's just going to be more pain."
He wants to shift in his chair, but movement shows weakness. "Aren't you a ray of sunshine?"
She sits back in her chair, and for someone who's supposed to be helping him, who's chosen a career where the main goal is to assist others in healing, she seems very satisfied about his continued pain. "You know what you need to do," she says.
He says nothing for the next fourteen minutes, choosing instead to use his therapy time to picture Pia Zadore in various flattering poses. In the last three minutes, he stares at the diplomas on Gloria's walls. He wonders how a girl who graduated from the University of Minnesota, who still has that strange, elongated Midwestern speech pattern, ended up as a drug counselor in New Jersey. What kind of bitter switch of expectations must she have met to end up here? He tries to picture her fresh out of school, taking her first case, eager to help and solve and comfort. He's glad when the time runs out.
After dinner - steak strips and salad, a definite improvement - House goes to his room instead of to the TV lounge or computer room. He doesn't bother closing the door, because there is no door. He checks his watch, then pulls the phone out of his pocket. The box is still on the floor, and he finds the charger and plugs it in and starts the phone charging. The directions say it needs a full day, but House doesn't have that kind of time. It powers up, and he dials a number he wasn't even sure he had memorized.
A fist of nervousness clenches in his stomach as it rings - one, two, three, and then four, and he laughs to himself as it rolls into voice mail. This feels too easy, too perfect. He takes it anyway. "Cameron," he says, "it's House. I wanted - to apologize." He pauses. "I wanted to say, I'm sorry for hiring you. I'm not saying I'm sorry I did that, or that I'm sorry to have you around, because I'm not. You're a great doctor and I stand by my decision to bring you on. I'm saying - you were someone different before you started working for me, and you're not that person now, and I think you're less happy, or you think you're less happy, and so, I'm sorry for what's caused those changes. I'm sorry if this job - " He pauses. "I'm sorry if I've, that I've contributed to you being a less happy person. You deserve to be happy," he says, and he really believes that. "Anyway. I just needed to tell you that. All right, hope you're not, uh, too bored without me." He hangs up, then tucks the phone under the bed. Enough for today, he thinks, rubbing his leg. Enough for a very long time.
18. Black
They have a state-mandated emergency preparedness drill scheduled for Wednesday morning. Lisa spends Monday morning trying to brief the department heads. It won't be a full-scale drill, not like the terrorism trials that they've run before, but they'll be looking at the basic emergency plans for fire, for infectious disease and quarantine situations, and for bomb and other security threats.
"A bomb threat," she reminds them, "is Code Black." She clicks the remote control for the projector, and the presentation eases seamlessly into the next slide - which outlines the existing plans for responding to a Code Black situation. Lisa starts to talk through the points that aren't fleshed out, reminding the E.R. supervisor that staff members on the ground floor don't just get to walk out the door. As she passes the woman's chair, though, her perfume wafts up and makes Lisa's stomach do a little fumbling flip. She pauses, only for a second. Oh no, she thinks, lowering the hand with the remote to her stomach.
She keeps talking and makes it through the presentation, standing at the back of the room with her back to the wall, far from the food trays and the perfume and everything. "All right. If you know there's going to be a problem with your department, I need to know by the end of the day, in writing, and I need a planned response." The lights flicker back on and the staff members begin to rise, thought not quickly enough. Usually, she lingers at these meetings, chats with everyone as they dash out the door, but at the moment she's nauseated and very conscious of the fact that she's in a room full of doctors. At least House isn't here, she thinks, pushing into the hallway.
It's a little better in the open hall, though not much. She concentrates on walking toward her office, and her nice, private bathroom. No way is she going to throw up in the bathroom here, not where every woman on staff can walk by and hear it and start all manner of rumor. No, she can make it, she tells herself, even though her legs are starting to feel a little iffy by the time she reaches the end of the hallway and she has to pause and concentrate on breathing through the tight circle of her lips. She hears the sharp clack of dress shoes on the tile behind her, but she can't turn around.
"Easy," Wilson says, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Gonna throw up?" She nods just slightly, almost just a flick of her eyelids. "OK. Let's go."
She steadies herself by holding on to his arm with one hand, and they walk fast to her office. No one tries to stop them, and Wilson holds all of the doors for her and deflects all of the questions. She falls to her knees in front of the toilet in her bathroom and throws up horribly, pitifully. She hasn't thrown up since college. "Oh, Christ," she moans, and throws up again.
That lasts for about five minutes, and then she feels better. She cleans up and washes her mouth out and goes into the office, where Wilson is pacing by her desk. "Are you all right?" he asks, and she nods, falling into the armchair near the wall.
Wilson keeps staring at her, and she eventually finds the energy to meet his eyes. "Congratulations," she says, and his eyes go wide for a moment in what could be shock or fear, and then he grins and lets out a shocked little laugh.
"Really?" She nods. "You never asked again about the blood test, so I figured - but wow. Wow." He sits on the couch, close to her chair. "Have you been sick much?"
"No, today's a first," she says.
"And are you OK, otherwise?" She nods. "Wow. I just - we really should talk, huh?"
She keeps perfectly still. The ease of a moment ago has been lost; her stomach is unhappy again. "It's still early," she says. He's a doctor, he'll know exactly what that means. Things could go wrong.
She throws up again, and Wilson brings her water and offers to take her meeting with the Donnelys at nine if she wants to rest. It's a tempting offer, but she knows the way the hospital works. If she's not in a meeting, other work will find its way to her. "The Donnelys have six children," she says. Her voice sounds gravelly. "If I'm going to fight morning sickness in front of someone, they're not a bad choice for it."
Wilson nods. "I take it you - we aren't telling people. Anything."
"Not until the first trimester's over," she says. It sounds like an old wives' tale, but she knows the statistics. It's better to wait until things are more certain.
He opens his mouth, as if to ask something else, but there's a knock at the door. "Dr. York wants a few minutes about the research proposal," her assistant says.
Lisa rolls her eyes. "Ask her to come back," she says. "Tell her we're dealing with Code Black stuff."
Wilson laughs. "I like that," he says. "Code Black. That's the name, from now on."
Lisa pushes herself out of the chair and thinks it feels like an appropriate name. Everything inside of her feels like an explosion, in one way or another. She looks at the stunned happiness on Wilson's face and allows herself a smile. At least she's not the only one feeling all of it.
19. White
Cameron's sheets are white. Chase can't remember if they were white last time. He thinks maybe so. Or maybe pink. Her ceiling is white, too, but she has a pink tapestry tacked up so that it hangs over the ceiling light and casts the whole room with a strange rosy light. There's a metaphor to be had here, Chase thinks, but he doesn't work too hard at it.
Cameron is sleeping next to him, curled onto her side, facing him, one of her hands bent so that her fingers just brush his bare ribcage. They've had sex again, and it was pretty good. Not quite as fast or crazy as last time - there was some awkward conversation beforehand, and a beer each from Cameron's fridge - but still, pretty good. Only now, Chase is awake and wondering what it means that they've had sex now twice, and this time without any drugs.
He knows why it's happened. Cameron got the call from House three days ago. Chase knew this first from Foreman, who'd walked in on Cameron crying at House's desk and eventually had made her play the message back on speakerphone. "Brutal," he'd reported. "But not in the classic House way."
Chase has since heard the message himself, two nights ago. He agrees it isn't classic House cruelty, but he can see - had seen - exactly how hard it was for Cameron to hear it all. And now, he's pretty sure that she's going to wake up and start thinking that this - whatever it is, between them - is a sign that House is right, that she's changed, become more bitter, less good, less happy, since she joined the team. Or maybe they'll go back to the slut discussion. Either way, Chase doesn't see this morning ending well.
Cameron stirs, and Chase sucks in a breath. He wants her to wake up, because he's ready to have this over with. Whatever it will be. "Good morning," he says.
Her eyes flutter open, but she doesn't otherwise move. "Hi."
Chase doesn't know what to say. A thousand things come to mind - most of them so lame that he can feel himself starting to blush. Cameron's hand rises and rests on his chest, just near the base of the ribcage. She looks up and over him, at the alarm clock, and then lowers herself again, her head resting now on his shoulder, her arm sliding over his chest. "Still early," she says.
"Yeah." Chase pulls the white sheet up over them both. "Guess we could sleep a bit more."
Cameron doesn't open her eyes, but her tone is more alert. "Are you freaking out?"
"Are you?"
"Do I seem freaked out?"
Chase grins. "Not as much, no." Cameron nods, which he feels only as the slide of her cool, smooth cheek across his skin. "All right. Yeah, let's sleep. Together."
20. Colorless
Wilson walks into House's condo and tries to turn on the lamp by the door, but the bulb flashes - a brilliant and frightening half-second explosion of color and a whizzing pop - and dies, and the room stays dark. He blinks against the floating green-gray speckles in his eyes and closes the door, pitching the room into absolute darkness. The place is the same as always, all of the furniture living in the same spaces where Wilson had helped Stacy's brother carry it four years ago, after Stacy had left for good. He has no trouble finding his way across the room to the couch and from there to the other lamp, on the end table. This one turns on without a fight.
In the kitchen, he heats up pasta in the microwave and decides to open a bottle of House's wine. He's been debating about the wine, whether he should leave it or not. A man coming out of rehab shouldn't, perhaps, be faced with a full wine rack and a well-stocked bar and a six-pack in the fridge. Then again, Wilson is pretty sure that House will never forgive the intrusion. Thievery! he can hear him cry. But House isn't going to forgive him anyway, and he's already crossed some serious lines on the intrusion front, so maybe he will move the wine out with him. At least the medicine cabinet has already been emptied.
He pours a glass of white wine from an unfamiliar bottle. Wilson has no remarkable palette for wine. His second wife was a connoisseur, and he'd been happy to learn from her. He's retained only enough of what she taught him to be able to converse casually at fundraisers and cocktail parties. House knows more, even though he doesn't seem to enjoy wine that much. Wilson has relied on his taste several times, and has never been disappointed.
This wine is almost clear. Wilson takes a sip while he stirs his pasta. It tastes sweet, which is a surprise. He looks at himself in the reflection of the microwave and raises his glass. "To fatherhood," he says, smiling at himself.
He's going to be a father. Well, that's assuming everything goes well with Lisa's pregnancy - and he pulled her medical files earlier in the week, in a frenzy of what he likes to believe was justified curiosity, and so he knows they might have a rocky road ahead. The recent miscarriage probably means nothing. One out of five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and no one seems to have yet made any conclusive finding as to why that is. But Wilson has a good feeling about this one. It's based on no medical evidence whatsoever, but there it is. A good feeling. A fatherly feeling.
He takes his dinner to the living room, pausing on the way in to look at the answering machine. Only Lisa and Cameron know he's here, but he feels a little sad when he sees there's no blinking, colored light. No messages. He's been trying not to think too much about whether House will call. He's pretty sure he won't, but he can't quite give up hope. He's not sure he even wants an apology, at this point. He's not ready to give one.
The television remote is still balanced on the arm of the couch where Wilson left it the night before. This is one of the nice things about living alone, which is something he hasn't done in a very long time. Things stay put. His food stays in the fridge, his car always has exactly the amount of gas it did when he last drove it, his toothpaste lasts forever, and the radio is still on the public radio channel that he likes. It's a life of Wilson.
Of course, the TiVo still works for House, not Wilson, and so he never knows which channel it will be on. Right now, it's recording some kind of strange, dramatic dating show, and Wilson lets it go, doesn't try to change the channel, just lets the raucous noise of collegiate coupling run in the background.
What he wants, right now, is House. He wants House sitting next to him, cracking jokes about these stupid, these god-awful people, wants House stealing his pasta and his beer and, after a few hours of that, he wants House to say, "So, does this mean you're going to be shacking up with Cuddy?"
Instead, he has to ask himself the awkward questions, and give the awkward answers: he has no idea what any of this means. He can see a hundred different futures for himself, for this potential child, for him and Cuddy or for him and House. He's been holding his breath for five weeks, now, and the whole time, he's been thinking it's just fear that House won't come back rehabilitated. Now he's not so sure. He's afraid that House will come back and things will be better for him but worse for Wilson; that their friendship will be the price that's had to be paid.
Wilson drinks the rest of his colorless wine and sets the glass on the table. He wishes things could be black and white, love or hate, friendship or strangers.
Notes in Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3 : Part 4 : Part 5