FIC: The Body Found, 3/8
Six Months
House goes to Cuddy's office first thing in the morning. She's out, giving a tour to a donor. He waits. Her office is quiet, even though it's close to the clinic, to all the main action of the hospital. It's sectioned off. It's almost peaceful. House could take a nap on her couch. He's tempted. He hasn't been sleeping well, the past few nights. The past six months, really.
Kendall had called him a week ago to tell him that Wilson's case had gone from active to officially inactive; it's the bureaucratic label for a case that hasn't had a single new lead in 90 days.
"I'm sorry," he'd said, and he'd sounded it, but House had hung up on him anyway. He'd thought about pitching his phone against the wall, but it would have brought his new neighbor, Dr. Chen, Head of Oncology, running. He'd settled for downing a couple of Vicodin and then yelling at his staff until Cameron had cried.
That night, he'd shut the door to Wilson's bedroom when he'd walked by it, then taken a bottle of scotch with him to the sofa in the living room. He'd erased every program on the TiVo that he'd been saving for Wilson's return, and he'd put all of Wilson's mail in the recycling bin. He'd left a long note for the maid, asking her to deal with the extra food in the cupboards and the magazines piling up in the office. Then he'd taken an extra Vicodin and gone to bed.
Now, he has the pill bottle in one hand, and he flips it gently between two fingers, listening to the remaining two pills rolling back and forth. Since Wilson's been gone, Cuddy's been his prescribing physician, though he's also had Dr. Smythe, a rather agreeable GP who's been doing a lot of clinic hours, help out on occasion. It sucks. It sucks every time he has to ask for more. Cuddy is busy and tired and she doesn't want to deal with his problem, and Smythe, though helpful, is very proper about his paperwork. He's asked that House have an MRI before he prescribes again. It is a huge, humiliating ordeal just to get what he needs from anyone, any more. Wilson never fought him on this stuff; he disapproved, sure, but he didn't make House grovel. He wanted to help. He did, in fact, help.
This is what it's come down to: Wilson is gone and there's no one who gets House like he did. There is no one like Wilson around; there is no one with whom he can interact without effort, anymore. Everything takes such an effort. He's so very, very tired.
Cuddy walks in, but House doesn't bother getting up. He opens his eyes, and sees that she's expecting something from him. She's been hinting, in the last few weeks, that it might be time for him to take a break. He wonders if she knows that it's been exactly, precisely, six months since Wilson disappeared.
"I need a favor," he says. Cuddy's eyes narrow. She's probably wondering which patient he's fucked up now. "I want to try the ketamine again."
Her eyes go wide. "House," she says, in her warning voice, "you already tried, once, and it didn't -"
"There have been new studies," he says. "R-Ketamine, in alternating doses over a suspended period of time -"
"Suspended period?"
"Eight days," he says. This is the compromise he's come up with.
"No," she says, shaking her head. "Absolutely not. The risks are too high. Your seizure threshold would be substantially lowered, and there's something like a ten percent chance of brain damage."
The risk is closer to twenty percent, but he doesn't say that. "You weren't so worried about the risk before," he says.
She sits in the chair next to the couch and keeps her knees primly pressed together. "You were already in a medical crisis. Administering ketamine, S-Ketamine, would've been a sound medical option for anesthesia anyway. What you're asking me to do is put you at risk for no medical reason."
"There's a reason," he says, and he taps his leg with the pill bottle. She stares at him, and he ducks his head. "It's time," he says. "Either the ketamine works this time, and I don't need the stuff, or it doesn't, and I manage to sleep through the worst of the detoxing."
"Or," she says, "you suffer brain damage and spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, watching cartoons on television." He shrugs. "No," she says, "you don't get to be cavalier about that. If this is some, some ploy, if you're asking me to help you commit suicide -"
"I'm not," he says.
"Then why now?? Why six months to the day?" He looks up again. Cuddy's hand is in the air, and she clenches it, drops it back to the arm of her chair. "If it's about Wilson," she starts, and House shakes his head, just once.
"Of course it's about Wilson," he mutters.
"House -"
"If I'd asked for this a year ago, he would've helped me get it done. And then, if I'd come out the other end a vegetable, he would have spent the rest of his life pushing me around in my wheelchair, visiting me on his lunch hour, bringing me mashed potatoes and ugly plants." He shakes his head. "At least, this way, if it goes wrong, I'll get to be a burden to my parents, instead. Serve the old man right, really."
Cuddy's lips are in a tight line. "That's an answer, but it's not your answer. You don't care. You would've done it anyway, if you'd thought it would work. So why now?" she asks. "Why didn't you ask a year ago?"
He shrugs. "Wasn't worth the risk, then."
Her eyes narrow, again, and she sits back. She looks tired, too. After a moment, she says, "I'll talk to Avery."
"No," he says. "I want Dan Michaels."
"Michaels went to Mass General," she says, "you'll never get him back just for -"
"He owes me a favor."
Cuddy groans. "You can't blackmail someone into doing your own procedure."
House smiles, as best he can. "Actually, he owes Wilson. But he's willing to trade."
He watches her thinking about it, watches her tipping her head in the way she always does when she's considering something thoroughly. After a moment, she nods. "Fine. When?"
"Monday," he says. "I told the kids already. Cameron's in charge while I'm gone. And -" He pauses, because it's actually harder to say this than it was to do it. "I talked to Stacy, redid my will, all of that, and my benefits." Until yesterday, it had all been slated to go to Wilson. Now, half of his estate goes to his parents, and half to establish the Gregory House Scholarship of Greatness for pre-med students at Michigan. He's named Foreman, Chase, Cameron, and Cuddy as the permanent judges on that board.
Cuddy nods. "I'll talk to Michaels, get him temporary privileges, then."
He gets to his feet slowly. "Thanks," he says. He means it.
"House," she says, just as he gets to the door. "It's a good thing. That you're moving on."
He wants to have a witty retort for this. He wants to crack out one of the hundreds of lines he's used over the last six months to deflect whatever negative comment someone's had about Wilson's improbable return. He just doesn't have anything left that sounds true, so he nods, and limps out into the hallway, pausing near the window to take another pill. The parking lot is shimmering with heat, outside, but this is the last gasp of summer. He'll go to sleep on Monday and he'll wake up in a week and it will truly be fall.
One Year Missing
They have a patient. Twenty-one with stroke-like symptoms but no evidence of any blockage or damage on the CT scans. They scramble. The patient loses feeling in his left side. His speech is slurred; he is drooling; he can't remember his own name. Cameron talks to the family; Chase checks out the house; Foreman oversees an MRI. The patient gets worse. Cuddy comes in at four to tell them that they cannot, absolutely cannot, biopsy this man's brain without consent from a family member.
House steps onto the balcony and calls for a consult. He doesn't flinch when it's Chen, not Wilson, that walks through his door.
Fourteen Months Missing
House wakes up in his new condo. He makes breakfast, feeds a carrot to Steve, throws on clothes that are draped over a chair. He drives past the hospital to the Princeton Health Club, where he swims for a half hour, good, low-impact exercise in complete quiet. He gets out, showers, redresses in the crumpled clothes, and goes to work.
He walks into the hospital and over to the elevators. He hasn't had a speck of pain in months, but that's no need to test it. The years of relentless cane use have set him up as a definite candidate for knee replacement before he's sixty; no use adding stair-climbing to bring it on sooner.
His staff is in the conference room, already studying a case file. Only Cameron is still a fellow, at this point. Foreman was formally hired by the hospital a month ago, and now works half time for House and half for Neurology. Chase is House's primary, full-time staff member; unless House manages to really piss her off, Cameron will join him when her fellowship ends in a month. They have already started interviewing for a new set of fellows, who will start in the fall and beef their staff total up to six (well, five and a half, since Foreman's part time). It's time, as Cuddy has said and as House has agreed, for his department to start carrying its own weight, and to start flexing some of its muscle. Either that, or House has to start taking more clinic hours, and no thanks.
House nods his greetings and goes to his own office. Dr. Chen is out on the balcony, and she waves a polite hello. House nods to her, as well, and takes a seat at his desk. He punches the button for the speakerphone, and then for his voicemail. He requested a consult from Germann in cardio late last night, and he's hoping the results are waiting.
"First message," the computer voice says, "received today, at 2:32 a.m. Length: fifteen seconds." He hits 1 to continue, and he hears a click, and loud breathing, and then, in a rumble so low and fast he can barely make it out: "1527 Adelphia Street, in the basement." The breath, again, and then a noise in the background - a shout of some kind - and then nothing. Nothing.
House hits the buttons again, listens to the message, yells for Cameron. When she arrives - Chase and Foreman in tow - she walks him through the process for finding the phone number of the caller. It's a Jersey number but not local, not something he recognizes.
"Wrong number?" Chase asks, tentative.
House dials it; he gets nothing, not even a recording. His next call is to a number that he'd thought he'd forgotten.
"Bettes."
"This is Dr. House," he says. He explains the call. Bettes, to his credit, doesn't sound explicitly bored. He takes the address from House and promises he'll check it out.
"Today," House says. "The call came this morning. It's got to -"
"Look," Bettes says, "I'll check it out. Today. I promise you. I'll call you back."
Foreman walks back in from the conference room. "I looked it up," he says, as House hangs up the phone. "No Adelphia in Princeton or Plainsboro; closest one is in East Windsor."
House's stomach knots up a little tighter. It's probably just a wrong number. It probably has nothing to do with Wilson. He makes himself take a long, slow breath. "They're checking it out," he says. He stands up, reaches for the cane that isn't there, that he doesn't even need. Old habits. He clears his throat. The panic, the excitement, it's passing. "Let's talk about the patient."
They work through the morning, tests wrong at every turn, the patient uncooperative. House is in the middle of quizzing the man's mother about his recreational drug use when he's paged. He leaves Foreman to finish up and goes to Cuddy's office.
"Yeah?"
She's standing, at her desk, her hands braced against the top. "The F.B.I. called. They couldn't get a hold of you, so they called me."
House strides forward, stands in the middle of the room, nothing nearby to support him. His hopes are not up; things that are dead cannot rise. "And?"
"And they found something," she says. "The address you gave, it was an old apartment building in Princeton Junction. They found - in the basement, they found," she says, and House feels a wave of nausea, of panic. Cuddy clears her throat. "They found his shoes."
"Just - just his shoes?"
"And maybe his wallet. They weren't sure."
House rubs his face. He can picture the shoes, untouched, two perfectly polished leather shoes sitting near a staircase or a doorway. Shoes, a clue, a sign. He doesn't want to picture anything more than that, but it's like any investigation, any mystery. He makes himself ask the relevant question. "Did they find a body?"
"No," she says. "But, it looks like, someone was there. Recently. Within the last few days." She takes a big, whooping breath, then sits down. "House," she says. "They think he was there. They think Wilson - they think he could be - could still be -"
"Jesus Christ," he says into his hands. "Jesus Christ." It's not easy to believe. It's not even easy to hear. It's been more than a year. It's been so long, too long. The time has become an answer: Wilson has been dead for months, now. Wilson is gone. He can't afford hope any more.
Cuddy clears her throat, again. It's how she keeps from crying, he knows. "The boss? Kendall? He said he'd call back. They're working on it right now. He'll call -" When House looks up, he sees how pale Cuddy's face has turned. He thinks he must be a perfect reflection. "All this time," she says. "I can't believe -"
"Don't." His voice is sharp. He likes it. He wants the rest of him to be just as strong. "When we know more -" He can't say anything else. He can't think about this. He shakes his head. "I have a patient."
Cuddy nods, very slowly. She dabs at her eyes. "Keep me updated," she says.
He doesn't mention the call to anyone, even though Cameron keeps looking at him like he's ill. He orders two new tests on the patient, one of which comes back positive and answers everything. House is disappointed. He'd wanted something more complex; he needs the distraction. He goes to the clinic and sees fourteen people in three hours, then takes all of the paperwork from Cameron's desk and digs in.
At 7, his office phone rings. The conference room is empty; Cuddy had called to say she was going home at 4:30. Even Dr. Chen, who is as relentless as Wilson at her paperwork, has left. House answers the phone after he watches his hand shake on the receiver for a second. "Hello?"
"I'm sending a car for you," Kendall says. "I need you to get over to Princeton General."
House closes his eyes. This is the answer he's already known, the one to which he's grown accustomed. "You need me to identify the body."
"No," he says, and House doesn't even process that word before he hears, "Dr. House, I think we found him."
He tries to ask, "Alive?" but his voice comes out as a crackle. He coughs, tries again.
"Yes," Kendall says. "But not in the best shape. That's why I need you down here. Do an ID, make some medical decisions. OK? Can you do that?"
"Out front in five."
He takes his jacket, his keys, his cell phone, and the stack of papers, at the very bottom of his lowest desk drawer, that name him Wilson's rightful stand-in and medical decision-maker. He thinks about calling Cuddy but he can't do it, not until he's seen Wilson - this maybe-Wilson - for himself. Not until he knows what's really going on.
Kendall meets him at the entrance to the PG E.R. "Over here," he says, and House follows his flapping black coat through a throng of noisy, messy people. Things don't quiet down even beyond the "staff only" doors, where they walk by three curtained cubicles before Kendall stops. "I should warn you," he says, but House pushes past him and the curtains and then he stops.
Lying there, unconscious, pale, strapped to a backboard, nearly hidden under a stack of blankets, is Wilson.
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