FIC: Lead Me Upstairs (14/?)
Title: Lead Me Upstairs (14/?)
Author: nomad1328
Summary: Rebuilding in the rubble
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: House and associated characters belong to Shore Z, Bat Hat Harry, Heel & Toe, Fox, etc etc. I do not profit from their use in any way.
A/N: I'm late. I've been incredibly busy. This whole working 8 hours a day thing... more like 10 once you add in my other job... Plus overtime. And a gazillion soccer games. And a friend in town. Yeah. No time.
Gracias
joe_pike_junior
Previous parts are here ______________________________________________________________________________
The weather has finally turned for the better and sweat greases the inside of House’s wool coat as he makes his way towards the entrance of Boston Mercy. The handicapped ramp is fifty feet off to the side, but there are at least ten steps directly in front of him- an obstacle that he’d rather not pursue. The extra steps he has to take to the ramp are not a problem these days. The only problem lately has been his decreasing ability to pay his bills on time. He qualifies for disability, but no one ever claimed that you could live on government-provided checks alone and his savings are running low. So much for retirement. He sold his old motorcycle to pay the rent two months ago. This month's rent is already a week late, and the payments to his private health insurance have maxed out his credit twice. He finally bit the bullet and canceled it last month and since then, he's relied on medicare, but he's still got a year until the prescription drug benefit will kick into gear. He hasn't been this broke since college, and he'd forgotten what it's like to live on ramen and cheap beer. It isn't any fun. He casually asks Wilson for money here and there, claiming that he owes him from some dinner ten years ago or for some unremembered help on one of his cancer patients. Wilson never questions where the money goes and House never volunteers the information, but he’s tired of the dependency. So he’s here, at one more job interview, having promised Wilson he would do his best not to screw this one up.
He takes a breath of the warm spring air and lets it out as the automatic doors open, revealing the sterilized interior of Boston Mercy Hospital. Every time he goes to one of these, he wants his old life back even more. The hallways in Princeton didn't smell like this, did they? They smelled like him or his office or Stacy's perfume. He is no longer home. He walks across the blue and white linoleum in the way that he’s been practicing for the past three years. He catches his reflection in the set of tinted office windows to his right. He looks confident enough and his gait has steadied out- most days anyway- and he’s even gotten quick with the cane. However, without it and the pills, he’s practically a useless old cripple. There’s gray in his hair now that wasn’t there before. And maybe the beard makes him look older. Earlier that morning, he stared at himself with the razor in his hand for five minutes, debating on whether or not to do it. In the end, he simply ran out of time.
There’s a hospital greeter standing ten feet in front of the reception desk, looking eager, but professional. He’s young, probably twenty five, and House guesses he’s either in a pre-med program or nursing student aiming to get an ‘in.’ He hopes it's the former. Nursing is a cop out. And House hates the suck-ups unless they're sucking up to him.
“Can I help you find anyone, sir?”
“Dr. Vickers. I’m here for an interview.”
The kid turns on his heel and jump steps over to the reception desk, throwing the phone into his left hand with practiced ease. The kid probably weighs in at 160 and he’s spry as a motherfucker. An athlete- some team sport, soccer or hockey. Probably runs in his spare time, lifts some weights because his biceps look snug in the jacket. He casually cocks his right knee over his left as he leans over the phone and presses the numbers. House steps closer into the desk, wincing a little when he takes just a little too much weight on his leg. The kid murmurs a few sentences into the phone and hangs up. He’s midway through telling House where to go, when he suddenly looks up and starts towards the entryway, bounding in a little jump step walk while throwing up his index finger to House. The kid grabs a woman’s purse from the ground and hands it back to her right hand. A wide-eyed toddler occupies her left arm, and she smiles gratefully. As soon as the purse is picked up, the kid steps back to House and continues: “Fourth floor, turn to your right. Dr. Vickers’ office is third on the left. There’s a waiting room there. He knows you’re here.” Great. Perfect. Perfect little bastard who does his job and more.
Forty five minutes later, he’s sitting in the office waiting room, pleasantly buzzed and not particularly worried that his appointment is already thirty minutes behind. His flight back to Trenton isn’t until evening- plenty of time. He smiles a little to himself and leans into the chair. Maybe he took one too many because he’s feeling a little too good. Just one more than he normally did. That wasn’t so much, right? The damn things work so well and so predictably that he can practically count time by them. Thirty minutes after a swallow and his leg pain reduces so much that he has trouble stifling an automatic sigh of relief. Between hours one and three, he’s perfectly normal- back to his old self almost with the exception of the limp and the vaguest of aches. If he stays off his feet, it's even better and he almost forgets about it. In hour four, he has to double dose on espresso or take a nap and he starts to feel just a bit queasy and in hour five, he’s learned to dose up again because by hour six, he’ll be screwed. And the whole cycle repeats. His life, now, is dictated dose by dose. Thank you, Stacy.
“Dr. House?” A balding man in his late forties steps out of the office and holds the door and his hand. “I’m Dr. Vickers.”
House stands, awkwardly shifts the cane from right to left, and shakes Vickers’ hand. He goes through the doorway and into the bland gray office. In the middle is a rectangular table with two other men and one woman sitting on one side with their hands crossed. Vickers motions at the others and says “This is Dr. Carlisle, head of Infectious Diseases. By his right side is Dr. Kim, our senior board member, and this is Dr. Sams, Chief of Medicine.” Sams, older and somewhat grandmotherly, smiles and also holds out her hand. A firm shake, a direct look in the eye for each of them. After shaking their hands, he sits and pulls his leatherbound notebook and CV from his briefcase.
The first half hour consists of the boring standard interview questions- his experience, his expertise, his publications. Then they start in on the roast. He is strung up through the middle and slowly rotated. Each doctor has their turn.
Sams starts it: “It says here you were terminated from Princeton.”
“I was sick.”
“You were terminated for an inability to conduct your job after reasonable accommodation and you’ve been on disability since then. What have you been doing since that time?" An easy question- he's had the practice. But he has to swallow a sneer at the term: reasonable.
“I’ve kept up on the latest developments, techniques for the field. You’ll note that I’ve published two articles since my termination.”
“Are you physically able to work if reasonable accommodation is made?”
“Depends on your definition of reasonable,” is his first response. He can’t help it. It just slips out and it’s unmistakably sarcastic. He knows it, but there's no place for it here where every remark made is a strike against him. The already present frown lines on Sams’ face deepen. House wipes at his forehead once and attempts to correct. “I’ve continued doing rehab exercises on my own and I can walk 50 yards, which is substantial improvement over when I left Princeton.”
“Why don’t you go back there?” she continues.
“Ready for something new, something different.” Even if Princeton offers, he will not step so low as to ask for his old job back. He doesn’t want all the reminders of what he used to be, the stares he’ll endure. More importantly, he doesn’t want the reminder of his relationship with one of the hospital’s lawyers. Getting as far away as possible has been on his agenda for a while, but logistics were always a complication. “Dr. House, we’ve uh…” Vickers starts in. “We’ve uh, well, we’re impressed by your expertise and your publications. They were particularly insightful and you have a reputation for catching illnesses before anyone else. Your success rate is outstanding. However, we do have some concerns about your style.” Vickers twists a pen in his hand. “You’ve been arrested twice for breaking into patients’ homes and once for assault on the family member of a patient. Reprimanded twice at Princeton for similar incidents. You were fired from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit after numerous incidents. Can you explain?”
Here it comes. This is the part where he almost always loses out. It’s not that he can’t explain it, it’s that interviewers deliberately go on the attack at this point. Ever since his infarction and his last job (and the break-up) he hasn’t been able to get past it. He used to be able to schmooze it so well. Tell them he’s re-mediated, learned from his mistakes.. He has learned from his mistakes- he’s learned that he’s right more often than not and to always trust his own judgment over anyone else’s. Why should he bow to someone and tell them he’s sorry and he’ll make it right, when he’s done nothing wrong? Moreover, he's learned that people will always look out for their own self-interest- no matter the consequences to everyone else. He had allowed one person through his defenses, allowed himself to trust her implicitly, and she'd used it against him. She'd done what anyone else would've done- what they'd all told her to do- but it didn't make it right. Somewhere in the midst of all of this, he’s found that his best defense is a good offense. It won't happen again. He’s had a lot of time on his hands to work his quarterback.
“The charges were dropped. And what I do is in the best interest of my patients.”
“But assaulting a family member?” Carlisle squints, expecting an answer.
“He hit me first. It was self defense.”
“Dr. House, if these situations were to occur again, what would your response be?” Carlisle continues. And it’s at this point- where House knows the answer that is expected of him, but can’t lie to save his own life. He should say that he’ll never do it again- that he’s learned his lesson. Be a good boy, roll with the punches, yes sir, no sir, and please sir can I have another. But those words get stuck in his throat and something else emerges:
“I’d do the same thing again,” he says, confidence apparent in the way his lips form a thin line. His brow rises in anticipation of their stares.
“You realize, Dr. House, that if we were to hire you, we’d be taking significant risks…”
“Then don’t hire me. Hire some idiot who can’t tell staph from herpes and let him muck up your stats and kill four people. Like the last guy. What was his name? Mullins. That’s right. How much did he cost you anyway? Probably better off hiring him back- better to kill people off than risk getting sued for saving lives. Hell, why don't we just take all the sickos and send them to Iraq? Double edged sword- kill them, and kill Saddam while we're at it. Less problems for everyone..."
“Dr. House…” Vickers warns.
“Yeah, way to go on nailing that city council member,” House says, directing his comments to Vickers while pushing his chair out to stand. “Heard it did wonders for the hospital’s new annex. Terrible about the marriage though…” Vickers’ face turns a shade that closely resembles the cherry lollipop House sucked on in place of lunch. The table is silent and pens are capped. “Don’t bother standing,” House says. “I’ll let myself out.”
House has his cab driver drop him on the Commons. The temperature has dropped a bit and he dons his coat again, leaving the buttons open. His briefcase is slung over his shoulder, and he’s uncomfortable because it isn't easy to walk this way, but he goes into the park and sits at the first opportunity he gets. It's at bleachers facing a scaled down baseball field crowded with eight year old boys and overeager fathers with beer bellies.
He remembers coming here with Stacy once. She’d had a conference and they’d taken a few extra days to ride up on his bike on back roads and eat lobster and look obscenely together in that way that young couples do. They weren’t as young as they believed then. He'd felt young then- better than he ever had before. Maybe it was the sex. Or the fact that they did the cheesy things that he always saw other people doing back in college or med school- walking hand in hand, leaving love notes, finding time for a quickie on a lunch break. Then, they’d walked with arms thrown about each other, always touching. Everything outside their world was just an amusement. It’d been late spring and they’d laid on the grass in the park, poking fun at the fat lady with the skinny Dachshund that wouldn’t stop digging up the freshly bloomed flowers. He'd had dates and one night stands and a few girls that he had to refer to as a "girlfriend" in front of his parents. But never anything like Stacy. He thought he'd die with her. The end came much sooner than expected and he didn't die.
The flowers there aren’t quite there today. It’s March- early yet. And Stacy- who knows? Does he care? He doesn’t. Shouldn’t. It’s been three years and eight months since she shut the door and left him for good and nothing much has happened. He’s filled his head with a few extra languages and all the latest in three separate medical specialties. But life is devoid of meaning beyond the next cup of coffee. He wakes, he reads, he plays his piano and watches General Hospital. It might as well be life in a retirement home and he hates it for its monotony. She took everything that meant anything from him and if he resented her then, he hates her now.
Even though he'd felt good then, young, he realizes now that it was all for nought. Moreover, the relationship was built around her control of him. She was needy, overprotective, conniving. Tried to change him. Tried to domesticate him. All those nights she pleaded with him to come home early, go to some symphony or play or other boring domestic event where he could pay an exorbitant amount of money to catch up on sleep. He didn’t need it then. Never needed it to begin with.
Wilson insists that it was a good thing before and tells him that this phase will pass. House will get over it and it will happen again. In the meantime, Wilson says he should just get laid. What House’s best friend doesn’t know is that he’s been there, done that- or at the very least tried. He’d taken Wilson’s advice one night and gone to the bar just around the corner from his apartment. He could even walk there. Four beers and two scotches later, he’d caught the eye of a mid-thirties divorcee and led her back to his place. He wasn’t thinking really and he’d left the lights on as he’d clambered out of his clothes. When he turned back towards her, she was naked and staring. It wasn’t the stare of a woman impressed or a woman a little bit nervous- it was pity tinged with the upper lip curl of disgust. The leg. It’s always the leg now. Even then, he’d tried to continue and she hadn’t backed down. But she’d killed his drive and she was pulling on her pants with her back to him five minutes later. It made him blame Stacy all over again. She was a first and a last for him. There was B.S. and A.S. Any future he might’ve had A.S. has been signed away, anesthetized, and carved out by the very person for which the term was named.
The sun in its early spring white warms the wool jacket again and he’s comfortable now that he’s draped over the better part of a wooden bench. Just for kicks (why not?) he tosses back another pill. Better than a drink; no walking or cabs required. No hangover later.
In fact, two cab rides, one flight, and five hours later, he’s still thinking all too clearly as Wilson bears down on him with hands on his hips and a frown stretching across the contours of his angular face. House is tired from the hassle at the airport and he wants to sleep, but Wilson was waiting for him when he got home. He would've been wise to booze it up at the airport bar instead of sitting on the bench in the park. No way would Wilson try to say anything if House was drunk. And even if he did, House wouldn't care.
“You look ugly like that.”
“I thought you were going to at least try…”
“I did. They were snotty. Decided the job wasn’t for me.”
“That was your fourth interview in six months, House. You need a job.” It’s his sixth, actually. But Wilson doesn’t need to know.
“I hear Starbuck’s is hiring.”
“I can’t keep lending you money.” This is new. Wilson hasn’t complained before- not overtly. It’s in the subtleties- the little sighs, the mentioning of a new opening at whatever hospital or clinic. House doesn't want whatever hospital or clinic, he wants something interesting. The only problem is that all things interesting know about him and won't hire him unless he kisses the tips of their dirty toes.
“Free coffee all day. Satisfied customers. And have you had one of those espresso brownies?”
“I talked to Cuddy yesterday.” This is the point where Wilson gets into his ‘I’m saying something important’ mode. Where he expects House to listen, pay attention, learn. And House most definitely doesn’t want to hear anything that Cuddy has said. So he does the thing least expected. He gets up and moves towards his bedroom. “House… will you listen for one….”
“No.”
Once in the comfort of his bedroom, he shucks the button up shirt and pushes his shoes off without untying the laces. The right one's a little hard to do this way now, but he manages it and stops to poke at his foot, swollen from the short flight, or maybe the walking. He sighs, pulls off his pants and tosses them to the floor. And once that happens, nothing holds him back from the comfort of the bed. He climbs under the covers and lets his head fall to the side. He hears his front door shut as Wilson leaves. The pills are good for one more thing: he sleeps without dreaming.
Author: nomad1328
Summary: Rebuilding in the rubble
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: House and associated characters belong to Shore Z, Bat Hat Harry, Heel & Toe, Fox, etc etc. I do not profit from their use in any way.
A/N: I'm late. I've been incredibly busy. This whole working 8 hours a day thing... more like 10 once you add in my other job... Plus overtime. And a gazillion soccer games. And a friend in town. Yeah. No time.
Gracias
joe_pike_junior
Previous parts are here ______________________________________________________________________________
The weather has finally turned for the better and sweat greases the inside of House’s wool coat as he makes his way towards the entrance of Boston Mercy. The handicapped ramp is fifty feet off to the side, but there are at least ten steps directly in front of him- an obstacle that he’d rather not pursue. The extra steps he has to take to the ramp are not a problem these days. The only problem lately has been his decreasing ability to pay his bills on time. He qualifies for disability, but no one ever claimed that you could live on government-provided checks alone and his savings are running low. So much for retirement. He sold his old motorcycle to pay the rent two months ago. This month's rent is already a week late, and the payments to his private health insurance have maxed out his credit twice. He finally bit the bullet and canceled it last month and since then, he's relied on medicare, but he's still got a year until the prescription drug benefit will kick into gear. He hasn't been this broke since college, and he'd forgotten what it's like to live on ramen and cheap beer. It isn't any fun. He casually asks Wilson for money here and there, claiming that he owes him from some dinner ten years ago or for some unremembered help on one of his cancer patients. Wilson never questions where the money goes and House never volunteers the information, but he’s tired of the dependency. So he’s here, at one more job interview, having promised Wilson he would do his best not to screw this one up.
He takes a breath of the warm spring air and lets it out as the automatic doors open, revealing the sterilized interior of Boston Mercy Hospital. Every time he goes to one of these, he wants his old life back even more. The hallways in Princeton didn't smell like this, did they? They smelled like him or his office or Stacy's perfume. He is no longer home. He walks across the blue and white linoleum in the way that he’s been practicing for the past three years. He catches his reflection in the set of tinted office windows to his right. He looks confident enough and his gait has steadied out- most days anyway- and he’s even gotten quick with the cane. However, without it and the pills, he’s practically a useless old cripple. There’s gray in his hair now that wasn’t there before. And maybe the beard makes him look older. Earlier that morning, he stared at himself with the razor in his hand for five minutes, debating on whether or not to do it. In the end, he simply ran out of time.
There’s a hospital greeter standing ten feet in front of the reception desk, looking eager, but professional. He’s young, probably twenty five, and House guesses he’s either in a pre-med program or nursing student aiming to get an ‘in.’ He hopes it's the former. Nursing is a cop out. And House hates the suck-ups unless they're sucking up to him.
“Can I help you find anyone, sir?”
“Dr. Vickers. I’m here for an interview.”
The kid turns on his heel and jump steps over to the reception desk, throwing the phone into his left hand with practiced ease. The kid probably weighs in at 160 and he’s spry as a motherfucker. An athlete- some team sport, soccer or hockey. Probably runs in his spare time, lifts some weights because his biceps look snug in the jacket. He casually cocks his right knee over his left as he leans over the phone and presses the numbers. House steps closer into the desk, wincing a little when he takes just a little too much weight on his leg. The kid murmurs a few sentences into the phone and hangs up. He’s midway through telling House where to go, when he suddenly looks up and starts towards the entryway, bounding in a little jump step walk while throwing up his index finger to House. The kid grabs a woman’s purse from the ground and hands it back to her right hand. A wide-eyed toddler occupies her left arm, and she smiles gratefully. As soon as the purse is picked up, the kid steps back to House and continues: “Fourth floor, turn to your right. Dr. Vickers’ office is third on the left. There’s a waiting room there. He knows you’re here.” Great. Perfect. Perfect little bastard who does his job and more.
Forty five minutes later, he’s sitting in the office waiting room, pleasantly buzzed and not particularly worried that his appointment is already thirty minutes behind. His flight back to Trenton isn’t until evening- plenty of time. He smiles a little to himself and leans into the chair. Maybe he took one too many because he’s feeling a little too good. Just one more than he normally did. That wasn’t so much, right? The damn things work so well and so predictably that he can practically count time by them. Thirty minutes after a swallow and his leg pain reduces so much that he has trouble stifling an automatic sigh of relief. Between hours one and three, he’s perfectly normal- back to his old self almost with the exception of the limp and the vaguest of aches. If he stays off his feet, it's even better and he almost forgets about it. In hour four, he has to double dose on espresso or take a nap and he starts to feel just a bit queasy and in hour five, he’s learned to dose up again because by hour six, he’ll be screwed. And the whole cycle repeats. His life, now, is dictated dose by dose. Thank you, Stacy.
“Dr. House?” A balding man in his late forties steps out of the office and holds the door and his hand. “I’m Dr. Vickers.”
House stands, awkwardly shifts the cane from right to left, and shakes Vickers’ hand. He goes through the doorway and into the bland gray office. In the middle is a rectangular table with two other men and one woman sitting on one side with their hands crossed. Vickers motions at the others and says “This is Dr. Carlisle, head of Infectious Diseases. By his right side is Dr. Kim, our senior board member, and this is Dr. Sams, Chief of Medicine.” Sams, older and somewhat grandmotherly, smiles and also holds out her hand. A firm shake, a direct look in the eye for each of them. After shaking their hands, he sits and pulls his leatherbound notebook and CV from his briefcase.
The first half hour consists of the boring standard interview questions- his experience, his expertise, his publications. Then they start in on the roast. He is strung up through the middle and slowly rotated. Each doctor has their turn.
Sams starts it: “It says here you were terminated from Princeton.”
“I was sick.”
“You were terminated for an inability to conduct your job after reasonable accommodation and you’ve been on disability since then. What have you been doing since that time?" An easy question- he's had the practice. But he has to swallow a sneer at the term: reasonable.
“I’ve kept up on the latest developments, techniques for the field. You’ll note that I’ve published two articles since my termination.”
“Are you physically able to work if reasonable accommodation is made?”
“Depends on your definition of reasonable,” is his first response. He can’t help it. It just slips out and it’s unmistakably sarcastic. He knows it, but there's no place for it here where every remark made is a strike against him. The already present frown lines on Sams’ face deepen. House wipes at his forehead once and attempts to correct. “I’ve continued doing rehab exercises on my own and I can walk 50 yards, which is substantial improvement over when I left Princeton.”
“Why don’t you go back there?” she continues.
“Ready for something new, something different.” Even if Princeton offers, he will not step so low as to ask for his old job back. He doesn’t want all the reminders of what he used to be, the stares he’ll endure. More importantly, he doesn’t want the reminder of his relationship with one of the hospital’s lawyers. Getting as far away as possible has been on his agenda for a while, but logistics were always a complication. “Dr. House, we’ve uh…” Vickers starts in. “We’ve uh, well, we’re impressed by your expertise and your publications. They were particularly insightful and you have a reputation for catching illnesses before anyone else. Your success rate is outstanding. However, we do have some concerns about your style.” Vickers twists a pen in his hand. “You’ve been arrested twice for breaking into patients’ homes and once for assault on the family member of a patient. Reprimanded twice at Princeton for similar incidents. You were fired from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit after numerous incidents. Can you explain?”
Here it comes. This is the part where he almost always loses out. It’s not that he can’t explain it, it’s that interviewers deliberately go on the attack at this point. Ever since his infarction and his last job (and the break-up) he hasn’t been able to get past it. He used to be able to schmooze it so well. Tell them he’s re-mediated, learned from his mistakes.. He has learned from his mistakes- he’s learned that he’s right more often than not and to always trust his own judgment over anyone else’s. Why should he bow to someone and tell them he’s sorry and he’ll make it right, when he’s done nothing wrong? Moreover, he's learned that people will always look out for their own self-interest- no matter the consequences to everyone else. He had allowed one person through his defenses, allowed himself to trust her implicitly, and she'd used it against him. She'd done what anyone else would've done- what they'd all told her to do- but it didn't make it right. Somewhere in the midst of all of this, he’s found that his best defense is a good offense. It won't happen again. He’s had a lot of time on his hands to work his quarterback.
“The charges were dropped. And what I do is in the best interest of my patients.”
“But assaulting a family member?” Carlisle squints, expecting an answer.
“He hit me first. It was self defense.”
“Dr. House, if these situations were to occur again, what would your response be?” Carlisle continues. And it’s at this point- where House knows the answer that is expected of him, but can’t lie to save his own life. He should say that he’ll never do it again- that he’s learned his lesson. Be a good boy, roll with the punches, yes sir, no sir, and please sir can I have another. But those words get stuck in his throat and something else emerges:
“I’d do the same thing again,” he says, confidence apparent in the way his lips form a thin line. His brow rises in anticipation of their stares.
“You realize, Dr. House, that if we were to hire you, we’d be taking significant risks…”
“Then don’t hire me. Hire some idiot who can’t tell staph from herpes and let him muck up your stats and kill four people. Like the last guy. What was his name? Mullins. That’s right. How much did he cost you anyway? Probably better off hiring him back- better to kill people off than risk getting sued for saving lives. Hell, why don't we just take all the sickos and send them to Iraq? Double edged sword- kill them, and kill Saddam while we're at it. Less problems for everyone..."
“Dr. House…” Vickers warns.
“Yeah, way to go on nailing that city council member,” House says, directing his comments to Vickers while pushing his chair out to stand. “Heard it did wonders for the hospital’s new annex. Terrible about the marriage though…” Vickers’ face turns a shade that closely resembles the cherry lollipop House sucked on in place of lunch. The table is silent and pens are capped. “Don’t bother standing,” House says. “I’ll let myself out.”
House has his cab driver drop him on the Commons. The temperature has dropped a bit and he dons his coat again, leaving the buttons open. His briefcase is slung over his shoulder, and he’s uncomfortable because it isn't easy to walk this way, but he goes into the park and sits at the first opportunity he gets. It's at bleachers facing a scaled down baseball field crowded with eight year old boys and overeager fathers with beer bellies.
He remembers coming here with Stacy once. She’d had a conference and they’d taken a few extra days to ride up on his bike on back roads and eat lobster and look obscenely together in that way that young couples do. They weren’t as young as they believed then. He'd felt young then- better than he ever had before. Maybe it was the sex. Or the fact that they did the cheesy things that he always saw other people doing back in college or med school- walking hand in hand, leaving love notes, finding time for a quickie on a lunch break. Then, they’d walked with arms thrown about each other, always touching. Everything outside their world was just an amusement. It’d been late spring and they’d laid on the grass in the park, poking fun at the fat lady with the skinny Dachshund that wouldn’t stop digging up the freshly bloomed flowers. He'd had dates and one night stands and a few girls that he had to refer to as a "girlfriend" in front of his parents. But never anything like Stacy. He thought he'd die with her. The end came much sooner than expected and he didn't die.
The flowers there aren’t quite there today. It’s March- early yet. And Stacy- who knows? Does he care? He doesn’t. Shouldn’t. It’s been three years and eight months since she shut the door and left him for good and nothing much has happened. He’s filled his head with a few extra languages and all the latest in three separate medical specialties. But life is devoid of meaning beyond the next cup of coffee. He wakes, he reads, he plays his piano and watches General Hospital. It might as well be life in a retirement home and he hates it for its monotony. She took everything that meant anything from him and if he resented her then, he hates her now.
Even though he'd felt good then, young, he realizes now that it was all for nought. Moreover, the relationship was built around her control of him. She was needy, overprotective, conniving. Tried to change him. Tried to domesticate him. All those nights she pleaded with him to come home early, go to some symphony or play or other boring domestic event where he could pay an exorbitant amount of money to catch up on sleep. He didn’t need it then. Never needed it to begin with.
Wilson insists that it was a good thing before and tells him that this phase will pass. House will get over it and it will happen again. In the meantime, Wilson says he should just get laid. What House’s best friend doesn’t know is that he’s been there, done that- or at the very least tried. He’d taken Wilson’s advice one night and gone to the bar just around the corner from his apartment. He could even walk there. Four beers and two scotches later, he’d caught the eye of a mid-thirties divorcee and led her back to his place. He wasn’t thinking really and he’d left the lights on as he’d clambered out of his clothes. When he turned back towards her, she was naked and staring. It wasn’t the stare of a woman impressed or a woman a little bit nervous- it was pity tinged with the upper lip curl of disgust. The leg. It’s always the leg now. Even then, he’d tried to continue and she hadn’t backed down. But she’d killed his drive and she was pulling on her pants with her back to him five minutes later. It made him blame Stacy all over again. She was a first and a last for him. There was B.S. and A.S. Any future he might’ve had A.S. has been signed away, anesthetized, and carved out by the very person for which the term was named.
The sun in its early spring white warms the wool jacket again and he’s comfortable now that he’s draped over the better part of a wooden bench. Just for kicks (why not?) he tosses back another pill. Better than a drink; no walking or cabs required. No hangover later.
In fact, two cab rides, one flight, and five hours later, he’s still thinking all too clearly as Wilson bears down on him with hands on his hips and a frown stretching across the contours of his angular face. House is tired from the hassle at the airport and he wants to sleep, but Wilson was waiting for him when he got home. He would've been wise to booze it up at the airport bar instead of sitting on the bench in the park. No way would Wilson try to say anything if House was drunk. And even if he did, House wouldn't care.
“You look ugly like that.”
“I thought you were going to at least try…”
“I did. They were snotty. Decided the job wasn’t for me.”
“That was your fourth interview in six months, House. You need a job.” It’s his sixth, actually. But Wilson doesn’t need to know.
“I hear Starbuck’s is hiring.”
“I can’t keep lending you money.” This is new. Wilson hasn’t complained before- not overtly. It’s in the subtleties- the little sighs, the mentioning of a new opening at whatever hospital or clinic. House doesn't want whatever hospital or clinic, he wants something interesting. The only problem is that all things interesting know about him and won't hire him unless he kisses the tips of their dirty toes.
“Free coffee all day. Satisfied customers. And have you had one of those espresso brownies?”
“I talked to Cuddy yesterday.” This is the point where Wilson gets into his ‘I’m saying something important’ mode. Where he expects House to listen, pay attention, learn. And House most definitely doesn’t want to hear anything that Cuddy has said. So he does the thing least expected. He gets up and moves towards his bedroom. “House… will you listen for one….”
“No.”
Once in the comfort of his bedroom, he shucks the button up shirt and pushes his shoes off without untying the laces. The right one's a little hard to do this way now, but he manages it and stops to poke at his foot, swollen from the short flight, or maybe the walking. He sighs, pulls off his pants and tosses them to the floor. And once that happens, nothing holds him back from the comfort of the bed. He climbs under the covers and lets his head fall to the side. He hears his front door shut as Wilson leaves. The pills are good for one more thing: he sleeps without dreaming.