The Tyrant
He plants himself on a bench in the walkway above the lobby, leg propped up and fingers massaging vigorously.
Below, people flow and move and he watches them all bustle with hurried anxiety, all going nowhere fast. It is a microcosm, an anthropological and sociological nightmare milling about below and he scoffs at the idle chatter, the asinine behavior, the myriad of unimportance hanging heavy on the air.
Somewhere between the walls, someone is dying or grieving or weeping and he sits on the bench rubbing and rubbing and rubbing because he has seen nothing of interest in the last twenty minutes.
The sliding doors part and he would be ridiculous to say that the air chemistry changes or that she is accompanied by a cool breeze but regardless, whatever it is, he notices her out of the corner of his eye.
The muscles at the corners of her mouth are contracting and pulling in a favorable manner to the day. She smiles (he would never say radiantly) to a nurse and he notices a pink blush to her cheeks.
His eyes narrow and he watches her like a hawk, high above everything on his perch.
-
“I'm not back. It's Foreman's job", he tells her with a shrug, feet up on the edge of her desk.
“This isn't a social call, House,” she responds, knocking his feet off and walking around the side.
“Such a tease,” he pouts.
“Dibala...”
“You've already had this discussion with one of my former peons. Go to the boss man. I hear he's pretty fly for a black guy.”
“Until you are fully certified, you're right. You can't practice. But you can consult and do differentials. I figured never touching a patient would be right up your alley.”
She watches him stand and step toward her. It takes willpower, urge to not retreat when he's so close.
“This is a mistake,” he tells her.
“Surely you're not going to tell me you have an ethical dilemma about all of this.”
“No,” he stops and looks down at his shoes. Or hers. She can't tell but curls her toes in her black Fendi pumps. “This is a public nightmare.”
He turns and heads toward the door.
“Nothing good will come of this,” she hears him whisper as he walks away.
-
He's sitting at the clinic's nurse's station as she comes out of exam two and she does a double take. She slides the folder into the “completed” pile and leans against the counter in front of him.
“What are you doing?” she questions.
“Catching up on some light reading,” he says from behind a file folder, trying his best to ignore her. “Marcus Garvey: Back to Africa.”
She rolls her eyes and pulls her lab coat closer to her body.
“What's going on with Dibala?”
“Nothing Dr. Foreman's team can't handle,” he shrugs. “After all. I'm only a consult.”
“Yes, I thought you were wonderfully amiable to Foreman about sitting in until you have your license back.”
“I'm sure Foreman's got his big boy pants on,” he frowns as his beeper sounds at his hip. “Gotta go.”
She catches him by the arm as he starts to walk away. Her fingers curl around his clothed bicep lightly and he tries not to let the touch unnerve him.
“Don't let him do anything stupid,” she warns.
Inside of his pocket, his cell vibrates, screen full of green and fear.
He wants to tell her “too late” but opts for silence instead of a tongue full of secrets and lies.
Only his cell is proof of what even he can not speak of.
-
It's unnerving and yes, their patient may be dead but it hardly seems like a loss. Instead of focusing on the whys and the what-ifs, he busies himself with her cryptic behavior from the morning hours.
His fingers rake, making dents and holes in places that had been filled with space moments ago. She's made of old messages, prescription pads she probably rarely touches, pictures and artifacts of Rachel, and a plethora of other things.
She writes all of her notes in black ink and puts dates on her calender in color code. (Pink for parenting items, green like money for donor meetings, red for deadlines)
Nothing stands out, screams of change or dissolution of normal daily activities. Consistency and organization create barriers for her to live in and he wonders if she boxes herself in to feel safe and connected to the world, avoiding free fall.
The clock on her wall ticks away and she's roaming the halls while he's ransacking her desk, the one from med school and the one he paid a ridiculous amount to pull out of storage and ship to her last year.
He picks up a paper clip and bends it into squares and triangles and shapes that aren't really geometric, instead more a squiggle. Something is here, something he's missing. Like a pounding in his head.
She's hiding and probably in plain sight because she thinks he's still busy with a now chilling African dictator in the morgue.
Then it glints like a beacon to him, the light at the end of the dock at night. The silver key lies underneath the edge of her computer, almost lost to the dim world down under, a dust covered omission from the world of her he knows.
He reads the lettering, the numbers, follows the grooves with his fingertips as if the metal will speak to him and whisper her white outs.
She enters and glares at him, telling him to get out and doctor his patient.
He discreetly slips the item back in its nesting spot and stands.
“He died an hour ago,” he tells her and she stands stunned, gaping. “Where were you?”
She fiddles with her phone as if trying to will the memory to contain a text or voicemail or missed call.
He's tempted to grab it from her hands but just shakes his head and walks out the door.
-
The silver gurney slides from the bay with a squeak and she flinches at the sound, at its reverberation off the walls.
Below lays evil and destruction. Her shoulders roll and she finds herself absently glancing at his fingernails, searching for signs of blood from the lives he had ripped from the world.
A shiver runs down her and she does a sweeping scan of him, of his now pale skin, his deeply lidded eyes, the stark blue hue of dying veins.
Something has to be there. Something. She'd felt it when House had told her of Dibala's death.
Flipping through the medical chart, she looks for oddities, for anything out of sorts to stand out. Lists of tests, notations from Dr. Chase, Dr. Foreman, House's signature on time of death.
Whatever it was, whatever had happened, remains too dark for even her to find. She pushes the dictator back into the locker and double checks the temperature settings before her phone vibrates in her pocket. Punching the “on” button, she answers.
“Hey,” she answers and then listens. “No, just checking up on something.”
She smiles at the voice in her ear.
“You know how House can be.”
-
“I want Foreman and Chase to do the M&M on Diabala.”
He looks up from his computer screen and peers at her over the rims of his glasses. Maybe it is age or too many dark nights staring at a computer screen by inadequate lamplight, but he needs them to read. The factors seem unimportant, another bullet on the list of things that don't work really well.
“Why?” he frowns.
“You heard me,” she says, laying a thick file on top of his keyboard.
He watches as a long string of gibberish piles onto his screen due to the file bearing down upon the plastic keys.
“Fine,” he says, annoyed by her presence, at his idiotic fellows, and at himself for shielding them against the inevitable mess that has to be brewing.
“Fine? I usually get more resistance.”
“Don't chance it.”
She frowns. “You okay? You seem more irritable than usual, if that is even possible.”
He stands and points a finger at her, condescendingly. “I told you nothing good would come of this. Still, you pressed on.”
“Dibala had diplomatic immunity. We had to treat him.”
“Bureaucratic semantics,” he waves off, agitated.
Her eyes narrow, thin. “What aren't you telling me, House?”
“I could ask the same. What are you hiding Dr. Cuddy?”
He has no idea why he uses her name with that prefix. Maybe just to chap her ass or to try to make this impersonal before it reaches its snapping point.
“So, you personally attack me because I want your team to do their jobs?” she growls.
He is close to her now, too close. Her eyes burn and she steps into him, not away. Not like he expected of her.
“I will find out, “ he tells her quietly, challenging.
He watches her fists curl into balls inside the sleeves of her crisp, white striped lab coat. Watches her lips purse into a thin line.
“And what makes you think I won't do the same?” she retorts.
He stands, silenced. But not worried. She is preoccupied, her eyes as glinting as the silver key hiding under her desk, her mind distracted and elsewhere, evidence of the ignored message he sent to her phone.
“I'll be waiting then,” he says, breaking the silence. He rounds the edge of his desk and takes a seat.
He watches her leave, vapor fumes of anger leaving a trail behind her.