Fanfic Fanfic: Anger Management, Pain Management
Sometimes when a favorite WIP fic goes on a long hiatus, I get impatient and supply my own chapters. That makes it a kind of fanfic fanfic. I got to worrying that Priority would never update her wonderful fic, Exigencies, so wrote this to amuse myself. It is, obviously, part of the Sheep's Contract-verse, wherein House is falsely imprisoned and tortured. Thanks to both authors for letting me play in their sandbox.
Title: Anger Management, Pain Management
Characters: House, Wilson
Summary: Part of the Contract-verse. After House comes back to work
Wilson was at the kitchen sink, washing up the evening’s dishes, occasionally shooting a glance at House from the corner of his eyes. Snatches of the show they’d been watching on the Discovery channel drifted into the kitchen as he worked.
In the last couple of days it seemed like House had turned a corner. Not that he was anywhere near the House of old, but certainly better. Since the rocky start to work, back at PPTH, there had been progressively fewer incidents. In fact, he’d only been paged a few times by House’s fellows. And nothing had been as bad as the incident in the cafeteria. It still gave him a case of the major creeps to think back to that day-maybe it was House’s second week back at work. He’d finally ventured into the cafeteria, although insisting on a remote corner, evidence he was gradually feeling more confident about being seen in public, about getting a positive reception around the hospital. He was eating lunch with Wilson-he was still clumsy with silverware but he could manage sandwiches okay-when an endocrinologist Wilson recognized, a Dr. O’Hare, marched up to them from behind and shouted angrily, “House!”
The effect on House was instantaneous. He dropped his sandwich and pushed himself upright as fast as he could, muttering “Yes, sir, boss.” He then stood there with his head bowed, staring at the ground while O’Hare thrust his angry red face into his.
“Stay away from my patient, House!” O’ Hare yelled. “I don’t know who let you back in this hospital, but you’re not competent to practice medicine and I don’t want you near any of my patients. You understand?”
To Wilson’s horror, House just nodded mutely. When O’Hare strode away, House continued to stare at the ground until Wilson, keenly aware of the hush that had fallen on the cafeteria and that all eyes were on the two of them, finally came to his senses. “Sit down, House,” he said in an undertone, as authoritatively as he could.
“Yes, sir,” House murmured, sitting as quickly as he had stood.
Wilson tried to catch his eye, but House was gone, off in a world Wilson could only imagine. He sat, gripping his own elbows and rocking slightly back and forth, eyes open but unfocussed. Despite House’s efforts to almost literally hold himself together, Wilson could see his whole frame trembling violently. “Take it easy, House,” he said quietly, reaching out to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Everything’s cool. Look at me. Everything’s okay.”
House appeared not to hear him, and Wilson tried not to panic. What he really needed was some Ativan, but there was no way he could give House a shot of Ativan in front of the entire cafeteria-not unless he wanted House to hand in his notice the next day. As he agonized about it, a nurse sitting at a booth beside them, a nurse who had gone out of her way to let House feel welcome back at PPTH, began talking again in a loud voice to the woman opposite her. The sound broke a spell of sorts, and the rest of the cafeteria quickly returned to its normal noise level. Wilson could almost feel the effort being made to take the spotlight off the two of them. He shot a look of silent gratitude to the nurse. Then he began talking to House. He talked in a low, calm voice. He talked about baseball and radiology, his latest patient and Foreman’s latest hot date, anything he could think about. He ate his sandwich as if nothing was wrong and stole a pickle off House’s plate. He talked until gradually House came back. Slowly he stopped shaking. Then the rocking subsided. The thousand yard stare refocussed onto the plate of food on the table, and finally onto the man in front of him.
*****
Even though there had been no repeat of the kind of chilling scene Wilson had witnessed in the cafeteria that day, even though House appeared to go through his days without incident, the best way to describe what Wilson was feeling was a kind of very gradual unwinding of tension. With each passing day, the danger of something triggering a post-traumatic response from House seemed to recede a bit further. Slowly Wilson allowed himself to hope.
And yet.
And yet, Wilson could not summon up any feelings of happiness on House’s behalf. True, he seemed to be coping better. Physically, he was also improving. He was getting stronger with the PT, able to walk a bit further every day. In the last week, he’d started working full days. He’d put on a bit of weight-not a huge amount, but every bit helped. He was managing better on crutches and talking about reconstructive surgery on his left knee.
Still, it was like he was on auto-pilot. Parts of House seemed as alive as ever-chiefly his intelligence, his intuition, his medical acumen. According to his fellows, his ability to put clues together in a way no one else could was as startling as ever, his fascination with the puzzle, his zeal to solve it as relentless as ever.
And yet. In every other way, the fight seemed to have gone out of him. It was as if he was just going through the motions. There was nothing, not even a flicker, of the old House’s sense of humor, his wit, the zest and intensity with which he went after things or people that frustrated or annoyed or fascinated him. There was never a spark of anger, never a smile, a leer, a joke. He was polite to all, respectful, contained, affectless-in a word, unrecognizable. As Cuddy put it to Wilson one day in a rare outburst, “What I wouldn’t give to have him make a crack about my breasts, or stomp out of my office.” She smiled sadly. “And I can’t believe I just said that.”
Wilson knew that House was seeing a therapist to deal with the PTSD symptoms, and he had to trust that House was also working on whatever emotional issues he was sorting through. Because he had never talked about it to Wilson. Not a word about what he had gone through, how he had survived, how he was surviving now. It was all locked away in a box as remote as the expression on House’s face that day in the cafeteria. And it was a box that Wilson, as much as he longed to help House, didn’t dare to pry open.
As he washed the dinner dishes, shirt sleeves neatly rolled up, he listened with half an ear for sounds that House was okay. House still wouldn’t ask for help when he needed it, or in any way acknowledge that he needed it. The other day he’d been unable to get the remote to work-his ruined fingers often had difficulty even with the large-button model Wilson had bought him-and his attempt to limp to the TV to turn up the volume, without his crutches, had ended with him on the floor, along with a large standing lamp and a heap of books.
This night Wilson had made sure the volume was set high before leaving to do the dishes,
and he could hear the Discovery channel interviewer talking to the lone survivor of an ill-fated Everest expedition.
“What was the worst moment of your ordeal?” she asked the man. “What”-in case he hadn’t understood the question-“was your lowest point?”
The man began answering the question, but the sound suddenly cut out on the TV.
“You okay in there, House?” asked Wilson, craning to see while up to his elbows in soap suds. House was still on the couch, as far as he could tell. There was no reply. “House?” Wilson, with a bad feeling in his stomach, quickly dried his hands on a towel and walked back into the sitting room.
The TV was off and House was sitting on the couch, his elbows on his knees, and the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. He was breathing in long shuddering breaths. Wilson’s first thought was some kind of respiratory distress, but then he realized, with the force of a hand-grenade going off, that House was crying.
Wilson walked silently around the couch and sat close to his friend, their shoulders touching. Some instinct told him to be still. He said nothing for several long minutes until he could hear House getting control of his breathing. At last Wilson said, “Want to tell me about it?”
House was silent for so long, frozen in place, that Wilson thought he had lost him again. But suddenly he spoke. He spoke without lifting his head from his hands, without looking at Wilson, without any kind of inflection in his voice.
“It was the pictures they took,” he said, with no preamble. Wilson had no idea what House was talking about, but he forced himself to remain quiet. In fact, he realized he was holding his breath, so afraid was he of disturbing the moment. “There were plenty of low points, times the pain was so bad I wanted to die. But I couldn’t. Because of the contract. There was a clause that said if I killed myself, they’d go after everyone who’d ever meant anything to me. I did try, once. I waited until they had beaten me up really badly and after they left, I slammed my head against the cell wall as hard as I could. I thought maybe they’d blame the guys who’d beaten me, so the contract wouldn’t apply. It didn’t work, of course. I just gave myself a concussion. And after that they put video cameras in the cell. “
“House-“
“That wasn’t the worst moment. The worst moment was the next day, after I’d recovered consciousness. They came by the cell, Thomson himself came by. He had an envelope full of photos. ‘I want to show you what will happen if you ever try a stunt like that again,’ he said. I thought they were pictures of some elaborate new form of torture. I tried not to look. But they made me. They were pictures of, pictures of…” His breathing was growing labored again, and Wilson interrupted him..
“You don’t need to tell me.”
House didn’t seem to hear him. He took a deep breath. “They were pictures of you. Not long shots taken with a telephoto lens. Close ups. Taken right here. Through the kitchen window at night. Pictures of you,” and House raised his head at last and looked directly at Wilson, “washing dishes at the sink.”
Wilson felt a chill run through his body, as if something evil had entered the room and brushed up against him. It took him a moment to compose himself. This time he put an arm around House’s thin shoulders. “It’s all right. They’re gone now,” he said. “They’re gone. And I’m still here. And so are you. So are you.”
-------
Several days later, Wilson ran into the three fellows leaving House’s office. They had just exchanged glances, and Wilson could have sworn they were suppressing smiles. “What’s up?” he asked. Smiles had been in short supply-in fact, he couldn’t remember a single time anyone in that office had smiled in weeks. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” said Foreman. “Nothing’s funny.”
“What, then?”
“Oh,” he said, “it’s just that House” (oh God, now what?) “House told us we were all--”
“--morons,” said the new fellow, palming a tear from the corner of her eye. “Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah,” said Chase with an idiotic grin. “’You’re all a bunch of morons.’”
------
That evening, Wilson was watching the news when House yawned. “I need a beer,” he declared, standing stiffly. He took a moment to find his balance and then grabbed a single crutch. Wilson stifled his reflexive urge to offer to get the beer for him-he had to stop treating him like an invalid, even though he was-but watched from the corner of his eye as he always did, to make sure House was okay on his feet, with just one crutch. He turned up the volume on the TV to hear it better over the noise from the dishwasher, and as he did so, he decided he would like a beer, too. What the hell, he thought, House can manage two beers as easily as one. Time to stop treating him like an invalid.
“House!” He had to yell to be heard over the background racquet. “Get me a beer.” But the moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted it. House flinched and then froze, a few inches from the refrigerator. It was the tone of voice that had done it, the shouted command, and Wilson leapt to his feet, unsure of his next move. House was standing, exactly as he had in the cafeteria that day, with his head bowed submissively, eyes on the ground. He mumbled something Wilson only partly heard.
“What did you say?” asked Wilson, sure he had misheard. “House, what did you just say?”
House raised his head and met his eye. “I said, ‘Get your own damn beer.’” And he opened the fridge, grabbed a single beer, and limped slowly back to the couch, the corners of his mouth turned up in something that just might have been a smile.
The End
Title: Anger Management, Pain Management
Characters: House, Wilson
Summary: Part of the Contract-verse. After House comes back to work
Wilson was at the kitchen sink, washing up the evening’s dishes, occasionally shooting a glance at House from the corner of his eyes. Snatches of the show they’d been watching on the Discovery channel drifted into the kitchen as he worked.
In the last couple of days it seemed like House had turned a corner. Not that he was anywhere near the House of old, but certainly better. Since the rocky start to work, back at PPTH, there had been progressively fewer incidents. In fact, he’d only been paged a few times by House’s fellows. And nothing had been as bad as the incident in the cafeteria. It still gave him a case of the major creeps to think back to that day-maybe it was House’s second week back at work. He’d finally ventured into the cafeteria, although insisting on a remote corner, evidence he was gradually feeling more confident about being seen in public, about getting a positive reception around the hospital. He was eating lunch with Wilson-he was still clumsy with silverware but he could manage sandwiches okay-when an endocrinologist Wilson recognized, a Dr. O’Hare, marched up to them from behind and shouted angrily, “House!”
The effect on House was instantaneous. He dropped his sandwich and pushed himself upright as fast as he could, muttering “Yes, sir, boss.” He then stood there with his head bowed, staring at the ground while O’Hare thrust his angry red face into his.
“Stay away from my patient, House!” O’ Hare yelled. “I don’t know who let you back in this hospital, but you’re not competent to practice medicine and I don’t want you near any of my patients. You understand?”
To Wilson’s horror, House just nodded mutely. When O’Hare strode away, House continued to stare at the ground until Wilson, keenly aware of the hush that had fallen on the cafeteria and that all eyes were on the two of them, finally came to his senses. “Sit down, House,” he said in an undertone, as authoritatively as he could.
“Yes, sir,” House murmured, sitting as quickly as he had stood.
Wilson tried to catch his eye, but House was gone, off in a world Wilson could only imagine. He sat, gripping his own elbows and rocking slightly back and forth, eyes open but unfocussed. Despite House’s efforts to almost literally hold himself together, Wilson could see his whole frame trembling violently. “Take it easy, House,” he said quietly, reaching out to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Everything’s cool. Look at me. Everything’s okay.”
House appeared not to hear him, and Wilson tried not to panic. What he really needed was some Ativan, but there was no way he could give House a shot of Ativan in front of the entire cafeteria-not unless he wanted House to hand in his notice the next day. As he agonized about it, a nurse sitting at a booth beside them, a nurse who had gone out of her way to let House feel welcome back at PPTH, began talking again in a loud voice to the woman opposite her. The sound broke a spell of sorts, and the rest of the cafeteria quickly returned to its normal noise level. Wilson could almost feel the effort being made to take the spotlight off the two of them. He shot a look of silent gratitude to the nurse. Then he began talking to House. He talked in a low, calm voice. He talked about baseball and radiology, his latest patient and Foreman’s latest hot date, anything he could think about. He ate his sandwich as if nothing was wrong and stole a pickle off House’s plate. He talked until gradually House came back. Slowly he stopped shaking. Then the rocking subsided. The thousand yard stare refocussed onto the plate of food on the table, and finally onto the man in front of him.
*****
Even though there had been no repeat of the kind of chilling scene Wilson had witnessed in the cafeteria that day, even though House appeared to go through his days without incident, the best way to describe what Wilson was feeling was a kind of very gradual unwinding of tension. With each passing day, the danger of something triggering a post-traumatic response from House seemed to recede a bit further. Slowly Wilson allowed himself to hope.
And yet.
And yet, Wilson could not summon up any feelings of happiness on House’s behalf. True, he seemed to be coping better. Physically, he was also improving. He was getting stronger with the PT, able to walk a bit further every day. In the last week, he’d started working full days. He’d put on a bit of weight-not a huge amount, but every bit helped. He was managing better on crutches and talking about reconstructive surgery on his left knee.
Still, it was like he was on auto-pilot. Parts of House seemed as alive as ever-chiefly his intelligence, his intuition, his medical acumen. According to his fellows, his ability to put clues together in a way no one else could was as startling as ever, his fascination with the puzzle, his zeal to solve it as relentless as ever.
And yet. In every other way, the fight seemed to have gone out of him. It was as if he was just going through the motions. There was nothing, not even a flicker, of the old House’s sense of humor, his wit, the zest and intensity with which he went after things or people that frustrated or annoyed or fascinated him. There was never a spark of anger, never a smile, a leer, a joke. He was polite to all, respectful, contained, affectless-in a word, unrecognizable. As Cuddy put it to Wilson one day in a rare outburst, “What I wouldn’t give to have him make a crack about my breasts, or stomp out of my office.” She smiled sadly. “And I can’t believe I just said that.”
Wilson knew that House was seeing a therapist to deal with the PTSD symptoms, and he had to trust that House was also working on whatever emotional issues he was sorting through. Because he had never talked about it to Wilson. Not a word about what he had gone through, how he had survived, how he was surviving now. It was all locked away in a box as remote as the expression on House’s face that day in the cafeteria. And it was a box that Wilson, as much as he longed to help House, didn’t dare to pry open.
As he washed the dinner dishes, shirt sleeves neatly rolled up, he listened with half an ear for sounds that House was okay. House still wouldn’t ask for help when he needed it, or in any way acknowledge that he needed it. The other day he’d been unable to get the remote to work-his ruined fingers often had difficulty even with the large-button model Wilson had bought him-and his attempt to limp to the TV to turn up the volume, without his crutches, had ended with him on the floor, along with a large standing lamp and a heap of books.
This night Wilson had made sure the volume was set high before leaving to do the dishes,
and he could hear the Discovery channel interviewer talking to the lone survivor of an ill-fated Everest expedition.
“What was the worst moment of your ordeal?” she asked the man. “What”-in case he hadn’t understood the question-“was your lowest point?”
The man began answering the question, but the sound suddenly cut out on the TV.
“You okay in there, House?” asked Wilson, craning to see while up to his elbows in soap suds. House was still on the couch, as far as he could tell. There was no reply. “House?” Wilson, with a bad feeling in his stomach, quickly dried his hands on a towel and walked back into the sitting room.
The TV was off and House was sitting on the couch, his elbows on his knees, and the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. He was breathing in long shuddering breaths. Wilson’s first thought was some kind of respiratory distress, but then he realized, with the force of a hand-grenade going off, that House was crying.
Wilson walked silently around the couch and sat close to his friend, their shoulders touching. Some instinct told him to be still. He said nothing for several long minutes until he could hear House getting control of his breathing. At last Wilson said, “Want to tell me about it?”
House was silent for so long, frozen in place, that Wilson thought he had lost him again. But suddenly he spoke. He spoke without lifting his head from his hands, without looking at Wilson, without any kind of inflection in his voice.
“It was the pictures they took,” he said, with no preamble. Wilson had no idea what House was talking about, but he forced himself to remain quiet. In fact, he realized he was holding his breath, so afraid was he of disturbing the moment. “There were plenty of low points, times the pain was so bad I wanted to die. But I couldn’t. Because of the contract. There was a clause that said if I killed myself, they’d go after everyone who’d ever meant anything to me. I did try, once. I waited until they had beaten me up really badly and after they left, I slammed my head against the cell wall as hard as I could. I thought maybe they’d blame the guys who’d beaten me, so the contract wouldn’t apply. It didn’t work, of course. I just gave myself a concussion. And after that they put video cameras in the cell. “
“House-“
“That wasn’t the worst moment. The worst moment was the next day, after I’d recovered consciousness. They came by the cell, Thomson himself came by. He had an envelope full of photos. ‘I want to show you what will happen if you ever try a stunt like that again,’ he said. I thought they were pictures of some elaborate new form of torture. I tried not to look. But they made me. They were pictures of, pictures of…” His breathing was growing labored again, and Wilson interrupted him..
“You don’t need to tell me.”
House didn’t seem to hear him. He took a deep breath. “They were pictures of you. Not long shots taken with a telephoto lens. Close ups. Taken right here. Through the kitchen window at night. Pictures of you,” and House raised his head at last and looked directly at Wilson, “washing dishes at the sink.”
Wilson felt a chill run through his body, as if something evil had entered the room and brushed up against him. It took him a moment to compose himself. This time he put an arm around House’s thin shoulders. “It’s all right. They’re gone now,” he said. “They’re gone. And I’m still here. And so are you. So are you.”
-------
Several days later, Wilson ran into the three fellows leaving House’s office. They had just exchanged glances, and Wilson could have sworn they were suppressing smiles. “What’s up?” he asked. Smiles had been in short supply-in fact, he couldn’t remember a single time anyone in that office had smiled in weeks. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” said Foreman. “Nothing’s funny.”
“What, then?”
“Oh,” he said, “it’s just that House” (oh God, now what?) “House told us we were all--”
“--morons,” said the new fellow, palming a tear from the corner of her eye. “Isn’t that great?”
“Yeah,” said Chase with an idiotic grin. “’You’re all a bunch of morons.’”
------
That evening, Wilson was watching the news when House yawned. “I need a beer,” he declared, standing stiffly. He took a moment to find his balance and then grabbed a single crutch. Wilson stifled his reflexive urge to offer to get the beer for him-he had to stop treating him like an invalid, even though he was-but watched from the corner of his eye as he always did, to make sure House was okay on his feet, with just one crutch. He turned up the volume on the TV to hear it better over the noise from the dishwasher, and as he did so, he decided he would like a beer, too. What the hell, he thought, House can manage two beers as easily as one. Time to stop treating him like an invalid.
“House!” He had to yell to be heard over the background racquet. “Get me a beer.” But the moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted it. House flinched and then froze, a few inches from the refrigerator. It was the tone of voice that had done it, the shouted command, and Wilson leapt to his feet, unsure of his next move. House was standing, exactly as he had in the cafeteria that day, with his head bowed submissively, eyes on the ground. He mumbled something Wilson only partly heard.
“What did you say?” asked Wilson, sure he had misheard. “House, what did you just say?”
House raised his head and met his eye. “I said, ‘Get your own damn beer.’” And he opened the fridge, grabbed a single beer, and limped slowly back to the couch, the corners of his mouth turned up in something that just might have been a smile.
The End