[12.3.3] There wasn't any way to make it better…
There wasn't any way to make it better. In House's line of work, he'd had to learn to accept that sometimes there was no "better." There were puzzles and solutions, but solutions didn't always mean fixes. Solutions were answers. And sometimes the answers just plain sucked.
Given a clinic patient who'd jumped through hoops to avoid talking-to make it seem like he couldn't communicate so he wouldn't have to-who'd come in with a laundry list of injuries and the flimsiest of excuses how they'd happened, who'd tried to avoid presenting any part of his bare body for examination, and who now sat before House like a veritable roadmap of How To Beat the Hell Out of a Teenage Boy, given all that, there were only so many conclusions House could reasonably come to.
Scars that crossed and recrossed, cut over and through, knitted together in layers of white and keloid pink, scars like these didn't happen in days or weeks. They took years. They weren't the result of a few accidents either. No one went through that much trouble to cover up accidents.
House didn't like to talk to patients because patients lied. Test results and labs, x-rays, MRI's-these things told the truth. Bodies. Bodies didn't lie. If he was more the romantic, House might have said the boy's silence was the best truth he could have told. Even that lie told him something though: this wasn't a medical mystery. It was a human one. And this kid wasn't going to give up whoever was doing this to him.
To a less cynical man, the idea of reporting the abuse, of demanding to talk to the kid's parents, of calling CPS all might have seemed preferable to just treating him and leaving him be. But this boy wasn't five or six, and House wasn't callow enough to believe that reporting this was going to fix anything.
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He told himself he was angry because people were stupid and cowardly. He told himself he didn't give a damn about nursemaiding morons. He snapped on a pair of exam gloves and wasn't even gentle as he began to check the deeply purpled bruise at the boy's side.
This kid's body was his answer, the solution to his puzzle, and it wasn't like House to be angry because the solution wasn't to his liking. But angry? Yes. He was still angry anyway. Because he knew that there was nothing medicine could do to make this "better."
Muse Gregory House
Fandom House
Word Count 430
House's patient, Josh Slade (silenceisblue), referenced with permission.
Given a clinic patient who'd jumped through hoops to avoid talking-to make it seem like he couldn't communicate so he wouldn't have to-who'd come in with a laundry list of injuries and the flimsiest of excuses how they'd happened, who'd tried to avoid presenting any part of his bare body for examination, and who now sat before House like a veritable roadmap of How To Beat the Hell Out of a Teenage Boy, given all that, there were only so many conclusions House could reasonably come to.
Scars that crossed and recrossed, cut over and through, knitted together in layers of white and keloid pink, scars like these didn't happen in days or weeks. They took years. They weren't the result of a few accidents either. No one went through that much trouble to cover up accidents.
House didn't like to talk to patients because patients lied. Test results and labs, x-rays, MRI's-these things told the truth. Bodies. Bodies didn't lie. If he was more the romantic, House might have said the boy's silence was the best truth he could have told. Even that lie told him something though: this wasn't a medical mystery. It was a human one. And this kid wasn't going to give up whoever was doing this to him.
To a less cynical man, the idea of reporting the abuse, of demanding to talk to the kid's parents, of calling CPS all might have seemed preferable to just treating him and leaving him be. But this boy wasn't five or six, and House wasn't callow enough to believe that reporting this was going to fix anything.
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He told himself he was angry because people were stupid and cowardly. He told himself he didn't give a damn about nursemaiding morons. He snapped on a pair of exam gloves and wasn't even gentle as he began to check the deeply purpled bruise at the boy's side.
This kid's body was his answer, the solution to his puzzle, and it wasn't like House to be angry because the solution wasn't to his liking. But angry? Yes. He was still angry anyway. Because he knew that there was nothing medicine could do to make this "better."
Muse Gregory House
Fandom House
Word Count 430
House's patient, Josh Slade (silenceisblue), referenced with permission.