FIC: The Body Found, 4/8

[fourteencandles]

Part 2

Zero Days Back

His first phone call is to Cuddy.

"Put him back on the payroll," House says.

"What?"

Next to him, Kendall is talking on his phone, too; they're in the hallway, waiting for Wilson to come back from a CT Scan. "Wilson. Get him active again. He needs health insurance."

Cuddy's gasp is sharp, almost panicked. "Oh my God," she says. "House - is he -"

"He's here," he says, "I just saw him. They have him in for a CT." He runs through the things he knows - Wilson is unconscious now but was conscious when the F.B.I. agents found him. He's hypothermic and malnourished and alive. "And he needs health insurance."

He can hear Cuddy's shuddering breaths, but her voice is solid, professional. "I'll fix it. Right now. And I'll call Statler and see if I can get you temporary privileges at PG."

House hasn't even thought that far, but it's a good idea. He's not trusting these morons with Wilson's care. "All right." He hangs up.

A receptionist pushes a clipboard into his hands, and he spends ten minutes filling in the things he knows before it gets boring. He flips through the papers he's brought, looking for answers to the questions he doesn't know - family history, for instance - but it's all just papers. This is not the kind of medicine he's good at. He harasses the nurse at the desk until she lets him take a look at Wilson's chart. There's nothing new there, yet, just a record of the fluids that the EMTs provided. "Patient confused and lethargic." They don't list any obvious trauma. House doesn't feel better for that; obvious things are easier to fix.

After forty minutes, Wilson isn't back yet, and Kendall has taken his call outside, into the rain. He still hasn't told House any of the details from finding Wilson. Unless it becomes medically necessary, House isn't going to ask him.

He calls Cameron. "I need you to come down here and do some paperwork for me," he says. "For Wilson."

"House," she mutters, and he can hear her gearing up for a lecture, getting ready to tell him off for using Wilson's name in vain.

"I'm at Princeton General," he says. He looks up and sees they're pushing Wilson down the hall; his hand is curled around the top rung of his bed. He's awake. House gets to his feet, still holding his phone. For once, he has nothing sharp to say, and this time, he allows himself to say the words. "They found Wilson. He's here."

He hangs up before he can hear Cameron start to cry and goes back to the cubicle Wilson was in before. A nurse looks up at House and smiles. "He's disoriented," she says, "but that's to be expected. Dr. Evans will be in shortly."

House doesn't acknowledge her. He's seen a hundred patients' family members take this exact walk, the hesitant shuffle-step up to the edge of an ailing relative's bed. They usually gasp, or whimper, or stagger back. The bold ones reach out. This is what House does, albeit it tentatively. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing, so he goes on memory and instinct and puts the backs of his fingers to the skin just beneath Wilson's jaw, his knuckles brushing the carotid artery.

"Hmm?" Wilson's voice is breathy and high. He turns into the touch, just a little, so that his chin is tucked over House's wrist. The skin of his face is tight across his bones. He's very, very thin.

"Wilson." House's voice is deeper than usual; maybe it's just in contrast to Wilson's weak murmur. "Wake up."

Wilson's eyes open very slowly, and his chapped lips part. He doesn't look surprised to see House at all, just blinks two times, slowly, and then closes his eyes again. House hears a soft wheeze at the end of Wilson's breath.

A doctor in blue scrubs walks in, carrying Wilson's CT films. House pulls away to follow him toward the light board, and Wilson mutters and turns more firmly into the hospital pillow.

"Head trauma?" House asks. The doctor - probably Evans - looks at him, startled, and House frowns. "I'm a doctor. So is he, actually. Let me see the damn films."

Evans nods, after a moment, and jams the scan up into the board, then flicks on the light. "Doesn't seem to be anything," he says.

House's eyes scan the pattered grays and whites of Wilson's brain; he checks it all, eyes combing the films for any sign of subdural hematoma, for the slightest crack, the smallest darkened patch. Nothing. His brain looks fine, which means that his confusion and lethargy probably aren't neurological. It means Wilson is alive, and he's coming back.

It's all House can do to stay standing.

He doesn't listen as the doctor gives him a rundown of Wilson's other particulars; House can read the chart, later, and as soon as Wilson's up for transport he's out of this place. He does mention the wheeze, and Evans listens to Wilson's chest, nods. "Probably pneumonia, or the start of it," he agrees. "I'll send a nurse in, get him started on Levaquin."

"EEC," House says. He wants the old stuff, the stuff Wilson probably hasn't built a tolerance to, not the flashy Levaquin.

"Fine." He gives up too easily; House doesn't like that, but he's glad to see him go.

He takes a chair next to Wilson's bed when one of the nurses pushes it toward him. She checks Wilson's fluids and gives him an injection, which makes Wilson flinch. Response to pain: good. He stirs and tries to curl onto his side, and House stands up to pull the blanket more securely around Wilson's shoulders.

"Cold," Wilson whispers. His arms are crossed over his chest, his fingers reaching for his shoulders. His temperature is four degrees below normal; it will take hours to solve that problem.

For the moment, House does the only thing he can do: he treats the symptoms. "It's fine," he says, reaching out, putting his hand over Wilson's, then drawing Wilson's cold fingers into the warm circle of his own. "Everything's going to be fine."

Day 1

Wilson wakes up to bright, blinding whiteness and chilling cold. Snow, he thinks, curling into himself. It's snowing again. It's snowed quite a bit recently, the snow piling up against the tiny window in his room, dripping icicles down and through the crack in the cement wall. He'd thought winter was almost over. He's been trying to keep track, but sometimes he sleeps for so long that he isn't sure how many days have gone by. He can't be sure if he is waking up in the same night or the next; the room is so dark, most of the time. The window cut at the top of the concrete wall opposite his bed is about four inches high and as long as his forearm, and it looks out into a tiny cement shaft. For days at a time, there is no light. Thus this whiteness, now, is blinding. No more snow, he thinks. It gets too cold when there's snow.

He tries to pull the blanket up closer around his shoulders, but when he reaches up, it feels funny: softer and thicker, and there's a sheet, too. A sheet, and a thicker blanket, and when Wilson opens his eyes wider, he realizes that's where the whiteness has come from. He's under a blanket and a sheet, and lying on a mattress. And, beyond that, he can hear people talking.

People talking.

"Help," he says, or tries to say, but his throat is still so sore, his voice tinny and weak. He's afraid to try saying more, because if he starts coughing, he might not stop.

But there are people. Maybe, if he coughs, they'll hear that.

"Help," he says, again, pushing as much as he can, and then he does cough, a few sobbing coughs that leave him blurry-eyed and exhausted. He closes his eyes. It's not the first time he's heard voices.

The sheet rustles back, and a warm hand lands on his forehead, stilling his head. "Jesus Christ, did you hear that?"

Wilson keeps his eyes closed. Oh, he likes this dream. He's had it before. House, he thinks, and he forms the name with his dry lips.

"Wilson, how long have you had that cough?"

"Not long," he murmurs. He wants to explain to House that it's all a dream, that he's just going to keep his eyes closed because as soon as he opens them, as soon as he tries to look for House, he'll disappear. And Wilson can't deal with that. He wants to stay in the dream, with the warm touch, for as long as he can. "Don't go."

"I'm not - go get a stethoscope." The hand retreats, and Wilson sighs, and coughs a little again. Stupid, to have tried to call out. He's wrecked the dream. He'll open his eyes and be back in the bitter cold cement room again. And because he's so cold, and because he's alone, and because his chest hurts and his hands throb, and because the dreams are never real, so there's no one to watch, he lets the tightness in his chest swarm upward. He curls a little tighter into himself and he's crying, and that's fine, no one cares if he cries.

"Hey." The hand is back. This is new. The touch never lasts; he never gets the dream back. "Wilson. Wilson, come on, open your eyes."

Wilson does, very slowly. He's used to tricks.

House is there, just in front of him. His face is the same lined face as ever, the same stubbly chin, the same bright eyes. "House?"

"Wilson."

Wilson blinks. His vision is blurry again. "You," he says, really working to push the words out, "always leave."

"No," House says, "you left." His hand moves down to Wilson's neck, and Wilson feels his fingers curling around the back. God, it feels so real. Wilson nods, just barely. He doesn't want to blink; he doesn't want to go back to the cold, lonely room. "I'm going to listen to your chest, OK?"

"No," Wilson says. "I don't want to go back." He keeps his voice thin, quiet. It doesn't matter what he says.

"Don't worry," House says. "You're not going anywhere, except maybe back to our hospital, if you don't have pneumonia."

"OK," Wilson says. He remembers the hospital. Bright lights, smooth halls. Lots of sound. Lots of people. Warm. He's getting sleepy; how can he get sleepy when he's dreaming? "I won't," he says, because he's not going to fall asleep, not yet. Not away from this dream, where House is looking at him like this and touching him and he's in a bed and there's light in the room. No, he's not going back, he thinks, and he tries to fight the sleep.

"Just relax," House says. His hand is still there, still warm, still heavy, so real, as Wilson falls back to sleep.

Day 1

Cuddy goes to PG at 11 p.m., driving through a late-summer thunderstorm to get there. She runs from the car to the hospital, finding her way through a sky lit by lightning. Dripping wet, she blasts her way through the reception desk and onto the floor, flashing her PPTH ID and her knowledge of Director Statler's personal phone number at anyone who tries to move her off. By the time she reaches Wilson's room in the Intensive Care Unit, she's not at all surprised to hear House's voice, arguing. "I'm a doctor," he's saying, "I'm his doctor."

"Let him stay," she says. She introduces herself to the two nurses and the security guard who have been trying to convince House to leave. They make a call and then give up, grudgingly.

"We need to get him moved," House mutters. He turns and walks back into a room, 4114, and Cuddy takes a deep breath and follows.

Cuddy did her residency in New York, working in a level-one trauma center. One of her last patients was a 30-year-old woman who'd collapsed on a subway train. She was cachexic, starving from a long struggle with cancer, and Cuddy can remember even now the cave-in of her stomach, the horrifying triangular cuts of her hipbones, the sunken, ashen look of her face. She'd been twenty-four and hardened by medical school and her internship and the day-in, day-out horrors of the emergency room, but that woman, the secret troubled fall of her flesh, had made her ache and nearly throw up.

It's what she sees in Wilson, now, and her medical training melts away. All she can think, looking at the sharp angle of his chin and his thin, dull hair, is no. No.

He's sleeping, or sedated, it's hard to know. Thin blue veins are visible on his eyelids; he is bundled deeply into warming blankets, curled up into an impossibly tight and small ball. The pallor of his face could well be the white shine of bone through skin; that's how thin he looks. Cuddy puts a hand to the wall and takes a few slow, deep breaths. She tries to think of a professional question to ask.

House saves her. "The worst of it, right now, is the respiratory stuff."

She blinks. "He's a skeleton," she whispers. "House -"

"One-thirty-five," House says. She does the math as best she can, figuring Wilson at 165, maybe a little more, when he went missing. It's almost a twenty percent drop in total body weight. She wants to throw up. There's a line from which a person can't come back.

"His heart?"

"Testing tomorrow," he says. "Have to get his temperature up, first." He leans against the wall, and for the first time, Cuddy really looks at him. He is almost as pale as Wilson, standing in the shadows. "He thinks it's still winter," he murmurs.

She takes a few steps forward and looks down, her hand falling lightly on the bed rail. "God," she says. "He's so -" but there aren't words. She feels unequipped for this. It's not a familiar feeling. Usually, she can handle anything; she handles everything. It's what she's best at. This, though, just the two of them standing here, with Wilson, this broken, faded version of Wilson, between them - it's too much. He looks sunken. He looks unfixable. He looks like a very long road ahead.

"House," she says, softly, wanting to say this to him, wanting to find a way to slip quietly from the room and back into the hallway, back into the buzz and whir of the hospital and the paperwork and the things she knows how to do. But when she looks up, he has his hand over his face, both hands, and his shoulders are curved in and he's shaking. She pieces the symptoms together and grips the bedrail more tightly when she figures it out.

She walks around the bed, and this she can do, this she has done before, comforting the family. She puts her hand on his shoulder, rests her head against his shaking biceps, just stays there, hardly touching him, sharing it all with him. "We'll get him through this," she says. It is something she always says.

House wipes his face and turns to the side, a quick, harsh turn, back into himself. "We need to move him," he says, again.

"If he has pneumonia -"

"Upper respiratory infection," he says. "He said he's only had the cough for a few days."

"He's been conscious?"

"Just briefly," House says.

"Do they know what happened?"

He shrugs. "Kendall won't say. They're working on it."

She clears her throat, softly. She doesn't want to wake Wilson. She isn't ready for it. "I called his parents," she says. "They'll be in tomorrow."

House nods. "Probably good. I called Cameron, so - everyone will probably know he's back by tomorrow." He steps closer to the bed, taps his fingers on the rail, then looks back at her over his shoulder. "Think you can pull some strings and get another bed in here?"

She looks at his eyes, red but bright, and then down at Wilson, lost in the blankets. "Yes," she says. Organization, she can do. "I'll do it now."

Day 2

Everyone visits Wilson at Princeton General except Foreman. Cameron goes because she's Cameron and she cares; Chase goes because he wants House to see him visiting Wilson. Cuddy has taken the rest of the week off. Foreman stays at Princeton-Plainsboro, does rounds on the patients in neurology, writes orders for another who will be checking in that evening, and then goes back to his own office to finish the crossword.

Chase stops in at lunch time. "Where've you been?" he asks.

"Right here," Foreman says. "How is he?"

Chase straightens his tie. "Pretty rough," he says. "Massively underweight. Doesn't even look like himself. House is already running a hundred tests."

Foreman nods. "PG won't know what hit it."

"Cameron's a mess, too," Chase says, and he rolls his eyes. "Anyway. Lunch?"

They get food in the cafeteria but take it up to the diagnostics conference room to eat, because two nurses try to stop Chase in line to ask about Wilson's condition.

"Doctor patient confidentiality? Anyone?" Chase mutters as they ride up in the elevator.

"You aren't really his doctor," Foreman points out.

Chase shrugs. "You could be, though. House is convinced there's some kind of neurological problem."

Foreman unwraps his sandwich. "Brain damage?" he asks.

"Nah," Chase says. "Nothing shows that. But Wilson's still pretty confused, shook up."

"That's only going to get worse," Foreman says. "The minute he gets back here, it's going to be like having Elvis as a patient."

"If Elvis looked like he'd been through a concentration camp." Foreman looks over, watches Chase flinch at his own words. "He's not very well," he says.

Foreman goes back to his own office. He has three messages waiting, all of them from other doctors in neurology. Despite all the talk of expanding the Diagnostics Department, when House is gone, all activity on that side stops. Foreman wonders what Wilson's return means for their patient load. He's pretty sure he can guess.

Around 3, he gets the page he's been half-expecting all day. He excuses himself from Exam Room 2, where's he's just started his two hour stint in the clinic, and calls House back from the nurse's station.

"Need a consult," House says, and Foreman sighs.

"Where are you?"

"Princeton General."

"So call Bailey. He's very good."

"I've seen Bailey's take." House's voice is much less commanding over the phone. "I want yours."

A year ago, Foreman might have been flattered. Now, he understands House a little better. "No, you don't," he says. "You want me to come over and tell you that whatever you're thinking is right."

"Jesus Christ, Foreman, would you listen to me?" Foreman actually takes a step back; it's not surprising to hear House get angry - it never is - but this is a different kind of anger. This is a desperate anger. "This is Wilson we're talking about. If you think I'm just going to take Bailey's word, if you think I trust some outsider -"

"OK," Foreman says. "He did an MRI?"

"Yeah."

"Bring the films over and I'll look."

He knows this isn't what House wants, or even what he's asking, and so he's surprised when House says, "All right. I'll send them over with Cuddy."

They hang up, and Foreman realizes that one of the other doctors has been listening in, probably hoping to hear something about Wilson. He meets the man's eyes, shakes his head, and then goes back to his patient.

Cuddy brings the films to his office as he's getting ready to go home for the day. He pushes them up into the lightboard on his wall and looks them over. There's nothing to see; he knows that. If Bailey didn't find anything, if House didn't find anything, Foreman probably won't, either. But he looks, tracing his finger just over the white lines in the film, because it's professional. This is his job.

After a few minutes, he pulls the films down and Cuddy slips them back into their wide envelope. "I don't see anything," he says, and she nods. She doesn't seem surprised, but she does seem relieved. "I'll call House, unless you're going to see him."

Cuddy slides the envelope under her arm, holds it there. "You aren't going over?"

Foreman pulls on his coat. "I'm going home."

He waits for her to walk into the hallway, then follows her, locks his door. It's nice to see his name on the plaque beside it. It's nice to be in charge of his own practice, his own world, even if he still owes half of his time to House.

"I don't blame you," Cuddy says, when he turns around. "It's pretty hard to see him, like that. He's -"

Foreman shakes his head. "I'm a doctor," he says. "I'm not avoiding seeing him because I don't think I can handle it."

"Then what is it?"

He looks at her, sees the dark circles beneath her eyes, the tiny wrinkles at their corners. He sees the white clench of her knuckles on the paper envelope and the slight redness of her nose. He sees that the emotional wear is only just starting. "Look," he says, "right now, Wilson has the best doctor in Princeton at his bedside. He has round-the-clock care at PG. I'm not going because I'm not needed."

"You're his friend," Cuddy says, quietly. "He needs friends right now, familiarity."

"What he probably needs is more rest," Foreman says.

She shakes her head. "You're House's friend, too," she says. "He could use a break."

She walks away, with the films, and Foreman watches her go. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials House's number as he walks to the car. "Yeah?"

"Nothing on the MRI," he says. "Completely clear. No damage I can see."

It takes House a second to respond, and it's that silence that makes up Foreman's mind. "All right," House says. "I'm going to run another when we get back to Princeton-Plainsboro."

"If he's up to it," Foreman says, sliding into his car. House doesn't hang up, and that's what changes Foreman's mind. "Look, if you want, I'll come by tomorrow, run a neuro exam."

There's a moment of silence. "Yeah," House says, finally. He does sound tired. The worst isn't over yet, after all; it's only just beginning again. "Can't hurt."

Day 3

Both CNN and FOX have been covering the return of Wilson like it's a national event. The televisions back at Princeton-Plainsboro have been tuned to cable news non-stop. From their broadcasts, Chase has learned where Wilson was held -- CNN even had its morning anchors block out the size of his 6x10 cell -- and by whom. He has the faces of the three Halloran brothers memorized. They've been showing both the released mug shots and a grainy photo from the late eighties, all three brothers with their arms around each other and around Patrick, the eldest, the brother against whom Wilson had testified in a criminal negligence trial almost ten years ago. The broadcasters talk about how close the brothers have always been, which seems like a load of crap to Chase. He loves his sister dearly, but he can't really imagine devising this kind of elaborate torture in her defense.

He's also heard a steady stream of legal analysts try to predict what will happen to the bastards who did it. Yesterday, he heard someone say, "Should James Wilson die, of course, the charges will be much worse."

Wilson isn't dying. That's what the forty-eight hours since his return have proven. Chase has spent most of his day at PG, running interference between House and the hospital's regular staff. He's had some help from Cameron, too, which is good because House has been staying at PG twenty-four hours a day. There's only so much sleeplessness Chase can take, now. Residency is over.

At noon on the third day, Chase relieves Cameron from her House-sitting shift and takes lunch up to the ICU. He's ordered sandwiches for all the dayshift nurses, and they thank him and most of them crack a smile. House is unbearable during the best of times, but with Wilson involved -- well. Chase is surprised not to find scorch marks on anyone, from the glares House hands out.

He has a Philly cheesesteak sandwich for House in a greasy paper bag. No hope of finding a way to House's heart, but his moods are often well-connected to his stomach. He knocks on the door to Wilson's room and looks in. House is sitting by the bed, watching television; Wilson seems to be sleeping, curled up, facing toward the door and away from House. Chase doesn't look too closely at him, because it's difficult to see him like this. He looks better than the day before, though; his hair has been cut short, probably the best they could do. He hadn't come in with long hair, but the cut had been very uneven. It looked like a haircut Wilson might have given himself, with a bad pair of scissors.

House waves Chase out of the room and then follows him into the hall. They walk to the small waiting room and House opens his sandwich on the table. "How's he doing?" Chase asks.

House rattles off stats: potassium up, temperature regulated, still anemic. Heart rate steady for the last five hours. "This is good," he says, mouth half full. He looks at Chase for a moment. "There's going to be a press conference this afternoon."

"Yeah?" Chase asks. House nods. "You going to talk?"

House grunts. "I have nothing to say. I didn't find him." He shakes his head. "They want one of his doctors to talk, though, and no way am I giving Evans that glory. You do it."

Chase opens his mouth, closes it again. He takes a deep breath. He doesn't want to talk about Wilson on television. Really, he doesn't want to talk about Wilson anymore at all. "Doctor patient confidentiality," he says.

"Which can be waived."

Chase starts to argue -- Wilson's in no shape to waive his rights -- but he realizes that, if Wilson's down, House has power of attorney. "Why me?"

"Face made for television."

"Why not Cameron?"

House snorts. "Hurts the hospital's reputation if the doctor cries on camera."

Chase sighs. He works full time for House, now; there are prices to be paid. "What do you want me to say?"

"As little as possible," House says. He crumples up the paper from the sandwich. "But enough to let people know what miserable bastards these guys really were."

"We could just show them a picture," Chase says.

House glares. "Take care you don't say anything that will make this worse for Wilson." He gets up and goes back to the room.

Chase spends an hour or so making notes from Wilson's chart and transferring them to the back of a brochure he finds in the lobby. When his pager goes off, he calls the number -- a PG extension -- back from the nurse's station. "This is Agent Kendall. Could you meet us in the Gerlich Conference Room on the first floor?"

The conference room is long and narrow, with two tables set up at the front, a podium between them. Two chair sit on either side of the podium, with paper placards in front of each. Chase sees his own -- Dr. Robert Chase, Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital -- in front of the second chair down. Nice TV setup, he thinks, and feels a thrill of nerves.

"Ah, good." A woman in a navy blue suit approaches him and shakes his hand without ever introducing herself. "The lab coat is a great touch, yeah."

"I'm sorry?" Chase says, but the woman has already moved on. He spots Agents Kendall and Bettes in the corner, and they give him the rundown: they'll talk about the case and the arrests that have been made, and then Chase will have a few moments to make a statement about Wilson's status. Then they'll all take questions.

"If they want medical stuff, we'll refer to you."

Chase nods. "There are some things I can't talk about," he says, and Kendall nods.

"Whatever you can." He winks. "I was kind of hoping to set Dr. House loose on these guys."

The blue suit pushes Chase to his chair and then opens the doors at the back. Within minutes, the room is crowded with press -- reporters, cameras, people with microphones on long poles. Bight lights. Chase tries to look unaffected by it all, suddenly aware that everyone back at Princeton-Plainsboro is going to be watching this. Jesus, he'll never hear the end of this from Foreman.

The blue suit introduces herself as the press liaison for PG, and after a particularly lengthy introduction about the hospital and its services, she turns things over to Kendall. His report is no different from what Chase has been hearing on the news -- they've caught the guys, they've got evidence, they are in the process of interviewing witnesses from the area, they thank local law enforcement for their assistance. It's facts about the after and very little about the during. "And I'll turn it over to Dr. Robert Chase, of Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital, one of Dr. Wilson's attending physicians."

Chase nods to Kendall and gets up from his seat. His stomach is swirling. He looks down at his notes, clenched in his damp hands, and reads them slowly. "Dr. Wilson was admitted Tuesday night with hypothermia, an upper respiratory infection, and severe malnutrition -- starvation, in effect. We've been administering treatment, with the help of our colleagues here at Princeton General, and so far, Dr. Wilson is responding well. He remains in serious condition, in the Intensive Care Unit."

Before he can move, there are hands in the air, and the blue suit is beside him, pointing to a woman in the front.

"Is he conscious?"

"Yes," Chase says, "but not consistently."

"Do you know when he'll be released?"

"He's not likely to be released any time soon," he says.

"Is there any concern about lasting damage?"

And this is the question that Chase can't really answer, because yes, of course there's concern, but saying it out loud -- no. The whole of the hospital is listening. House is listening. Wilson, maybe, is listening. Chase takes a quick breath, sure that on television the slightest pause will seem like a death sentence. "So far, he's responding well to treatment," he says. "And we expect a full recovery."

Day 4

Cuddy arranges for an ambulance to take Wilson from PG to Princeton-Plainsboro on Saturday evening, when at least all of the office staff is out of the building. Two reporters tried to get into the PG ICU after the press conference on Friday, and she still thinks they got off easy with a trespassing slap-on-the-wrist from the PG security guards. If it had been her hospital, she would've locked them in a room with House for a while. Maybe she would've brought him his old cane.

House rides along in the ambulance, so he's the first thing she sees when the ambulance doors open. They've chosen the secondary bay, one that's usually used for patient transport like this, and not the high-traffic emergency room entrance. Too many people want to see Wilson right now, and Cuddy isn't having any of it. All patients deserve privacy, and Cuddy feels completely justified in her view that Wilson deserves it more than most. The Wilson that she's seen, over the past few days, isn't a Wilson that anyone should be seeing. He's not himself. Not yet. He's defenseless, still lost. That's why only she and Dr. Foreman are on hand to greet the ambulance, and they help House and the EMTs unload the stretcher.

Wilson is unconscious, pale beneath the blankets. "Sedated," House says when Foreman lifts one of Wilson's eyelids. "Didn't want him freaking out in the ambulance."

"Has he been --" she asks, wondering if he's had anxiety problems. House shakes his head. Cuddy's seen Wilson's chart -- she's held it in her hands every time she's been in his room over the last four days -- but she hasn't looked at it. It's irresponsible, but she doesn't want to read it. She can see Wilson's status in House's posture, in the tension of his voice over the phone, in the number of annoying requests he makes in any two-hour stretch. Wilson is a wreck.

"What'd you give him?" Foreman asks.

"Ativan," House says. "Just in case."

They roll the stretcher to the elevator, and inside, Cuddy presses three for the ICU. House presses his own floor, and Cuddy looks at him. He hasn't left Wilson's side in days -- though Wilson seems to have had a shower. "Pressing paperwork?" she asks.

"I left my keys in the desk," House says. The elevator stops, and he steps forward. The light from the hallways is bright, almost purplish. It makes House look gray. "I'm going home."

She hears Foreman cough and keeps staring at House. "Now?" she says.

House looks straight at her; his eyes never move. It looks almost as though he's trying to forget that Wilson is there. "Carpe diem," he says. "Or, in my case, carpe mattress." He backs out of the elevator and waves. "Foreman, better stay with him in case the Ativan wears off."

The doors close, and Cuddy stares at them. She glances at Foreman, who's shaking his head. "Never understand the guy," Foreman says. "But he probably is due for a break."

Wilson moans, just slightly, and Cuddy bends to look at him. He doesn't stir, and she's glad. It's not as though he'll notice whether House is gone. Every time she's been to see him, he's either been sleeping or barely awake, still floating in half-dreams and nightmares. In a way, that's easiest. It makes it easier to focus on getting him through things, medically, if he's not completely present to understand what they're doing. Terrible, she thinks, but true.

Cuddy chose his room herself -- it has a wide window (and available black-out shutters) and is situated in a corner of the unit, so that it will be easy for the nurses to observe who's coming and going. Wilson's parents are waiting just outside. His mother is a short, warm woman, blond-going-gray, who hugs Cuddy every time she sees her. She has Wilson's eyes, bright, intelligent eyes that Cuddy hasn't seen in more than a year. "Is he all right? Was the trip all right?" she asks.

"He's resting."

She watches Mrs. Wilson put her hand on Wilson's pale forehead. It's a calming motion, and Cuddy realizes she's seen it before: House has done it, when Wilson stirs and mumbles. It surprises her to make the connection between them, and she feels unsteady, suddenly, completely off balance. House hasn't left his side in four days, and she hasn't even read his chart. Cuddy swallows and pulls Foreman to the side. "I'll stay," she says.

"But House -"

"It's fine," she says, turning toward the bed. She lifts the chart from Foreman's hands. "It's my turn."

Day 5

On Sunday they have storms. Wilson looks surprised at every new noise. "Just the thunder, dear," his mother keeps saying, and Cameron notices, even if Mrs. Wilson doesn't, that Wilson looks surprised every time she speaks, too.

Noise is what's hard for him. It takes Cameron only a few visits to realize this. Wilson flinches when the door opens, flinches when the monitors beep, flinches, even, when she says, "Good afternoon, Dr. Wilson."

It always takes him a moment to surface, again, to come up from the panic or memory that he slides into. "Afternoon," he says, like a reminder to himself. It still seems to be hard for Wilson to understand things and try to respond, so Cameron doesn't try to start a conversation, even though she desperately wants one. She wants to hear him talk, she wants to know he's in there, she wants to know he'll be OK. In lieu of this, she notes all of the readings on his monitors and in his chart, then says she'll be back again in the afternoon.

"Do you need anything?" she asks, meaning both Wilson and his mother. There isn't much she can bring him; he isn't allowed to have solid food yet, as his nutrient intake has to be exact and precisely monitored.

Wilson doesn't answer, just blinks until his mother says, "We're fine, dear, thank you," and pats his hand again.

Wilson's eyes are already closed again. He sleeps, most of the time. It's hard to see him, but Cameron comes by three times a day, beginning, middle, and end of her shift. She is one of the only hospital staffers who is allowed to do this; House has made sure that all well-wishers of no direct medical use to Wilson have been banned from visiting.

He's been back at Princeton-Plainsboro since Saturday, after four days at Princeton General. House had spent all of that time at PG; now, he won't leave his office. Cameron tries to believe that this is because Wilson's parents are around, that House is trying not to crowd them, but she thinks there's more to it. She thinks it's enough, for him, just to have Wilson back in the building, and maybe too much for him to have to go in and show that he cares.

She goes to House's office and tells him everything she's recorded from the charts. House grunts and picks up the phone, changes his orders on Wilson's fluids. "You could go see him," Cameron suggests.

"I've seen him," House says. "He's got that whole Paris-Catwalk look going for him, doesn't he?"

Cameron rolls her eyes. She remembers the way Wilson turned automatically toward House's voice when he was at PG and feels a flare of anger and hurt on Wilson's behalf. "Fine," she says, turning toward the conference room. "You probably won't have to work so hard to avoid him for very much longer, at least."

She goes to her desk. It takes House a minute or two to follow her, but he does, just as she'd known he would. "What do you mean?" he asks, leaning on the wall next to her desk.

She looks up. "His parents are talking about taking him back to Chicago while he recuperates."

House's eyes narrow. Cameron waits. The story isn't completely true - Mrs. Wilson had just asked, in passing, what would happen to Wilson next and whether he might be able to get the same care in Chicago - but she's been saving it, waiting to drop it on House so that it will have maximum effect. She's waiting for him to say, "Like hell they will."

What she gets, instead, is a slow blink. "Maybe they should," House says.

Cameron flinches. "What?"

House shrugs. "Makes sense. He'll probably want to be around family, they'll have a shorter drive to check on him -"

"House," Cameron says, "you can't be serious. You've been missing Wilson for a year."

"That's not Wilson, down there." House shifts, just slightly. "It's like pre-Wilson, or something. Just because they found his body doesn't mean Wilson's not still missing."

Cameron gapes at him, her mouth open, her hands clenched too tightly on the desk. House isn't looking at her; he seems to be studying the floor. Behind her, she can hear rain tapping on the glass, and she thinks of Wilson's wide, bewildered eyes, his small, uncertain voice. "You jackass," she says, finally. "He's been through hell and you're avoiding him because he's not himself, yet? God, House, you're a worse friend than I thought."

"I am doing what I can," he snaps, gesturing toward his desk, where Cameron's notes from Wilson's chart still lay.

"No, you're doing what you want, which is what you always do." She picks up the nearest chart, not even looking at the name, and stands up. She'll sit in the lab, or the medical library, or the goddamned cafeteria, but no more of this. "He needs you," she says. Her voice is trembling. "You want to avoid him, you're going to need to find a new spy," she says, and leaves the office.

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