Adaptations 'verse: "While You Were Out."

[lit_luminary]

Title: While You Were Out
Author: lit_luminary
Rating: PG-13 for medical realism.
Characters/Pairings: House, Wilson; House/Wilson friendship.
Summary: In the end, what matters is how much House is willing to do.
Notes: This piece is now fully revised, expanded, and integrated into the fabric of the ‘verse. As always, thanks to resourceress7 for her

Comments

[anounceofshag]

There is so much I love about this piece. It is such an intimate, realistic portrait of House’s (and Chase’s future) pain. Your language is beautiful, poignant, striking, and brutal. I found this line: “He remembers the anguish of waking to a thigh cocooned in surgical dressing, a crevasse lined with screaming nerves where most of his right quadriceps should’ve been,” and these: “When a workday he could’ve breezed through before leaves him ready to collapse.  When he’s at home alone, in pain, working up the energy to haul himself into bed.  When he wakes up from yet another night of lousy sleep, thinks It’s never going to get better, and wonders if dragging himself back out of bed is worth the effort it costs him,” particularly striking and an excellent insight into House’s behavior. I don’t think House is ever given proper credit in canon for his very real physical pain. And as a side note, I’m familiar with blaming myself for bad events that are really no one’s fault, followed by the strong feeling that I should to be punished-as I’m sure many people are. You explore this in a mature way. Thank god for the Wilsons of the world! The Adaptations verse may well be my favorite series you’ve written so far. I can’t wait for when soonish arrives, and House visits Chase again!

[lit_luminary]

Thank you so, so much. I was going for stark and brutal, because that's the reality of chronic pain and incurable injury. Unfortunately, canon really doesn't appreciate how much of House's behavior is actually an adaptive response to pain (that is, not merely "House being an ass").

And when Chase's behavior changes in similar ways (one of the advantages of staying with Diagnostics at PPTH is that his colleagues have all been trained to accept those adaptive behaviors, no matter if they take unconventional and/or antisocial forms), there won't be anything to blame but the injury and the pain. People won't be able to say that this was always his personality.

Of all the 'verses I work in, this is the most difficult one--first because of the extent of the research involved, and secondly because it's emotionally wrenching. There's no aspect of Chase's life that won't be altered by this--and worse, the combination of disability, pain and fatigue will narrow what was already a small, work-centered world, closing off other possibilities.

He'll adapt. But he'll also wonder--often--if what he can still have in his life justifies the fight for it.

[anounceofshag]

"He'll adapt. But he'll also wonder--often--if what he can still have in his life justifies the fight for it." Even your comments are insightful. Thanks for a great story.