House M.D. Fanfiction: Back Story, Ch. 23
Title: Back Story
Author: pgrabia
Disclaimer: House M.D., its character’s, locations, and storyline are the property of David Shore, Bad Hat Harry Productions and Fox Television. All Rights Reserved.
Characters/Pairing: G. House, J. Wilson, L. Cuddy, other canon characters; House/Wilson pre-slash that will eventually become slash.
Genre: angst, drama, romance, intrigue, suspense, AU.
Spoiler Alert: All seasons including all of season 7. Some are quite specific and detailed. You’ve been warned.
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 for all the smexing as well as violence and serious adult subject matter including drug and alcohol abuse, sexual and physical abuse, and suicide ideation-though not all chapters will involve explicit description of sexual activity (just most of them ;^D) or gore.
A/N: This begins the morning after the last scene in episode 7x15, “Bombshells”. While it follows the Canon timeline, this story focuses on the happenings, thoughts and feelings going on in the story we don’t have access to (or my idea of what occurred and will occur on into season 8. Of course, this will run AU because spoilers about the first episode of season 8 are already out and point out that this is definitely not the official explanation for the baffling events that occurred in season 7). More warnings in author’s note for chapter one.
Back Story
Chapter Twenty-three
Wilson was distracted during his visit with Mrs. Gentry, a seventy-one year old woman dying from uterine cancer. She was a widow whose children had abandoned her when she was told her cancer was terminal and would soon need twenty-four hour care. She was now in the palliative care department and not officially Wilson’s responsibility anymore since deciding that her latest round of treatment was her last, but he had gotten to know her quite well and had become fond of her. She was gentle and chatty and amazingly accepting of her impending death. Shortly after her two daughters had written her off she had once commented to him with a quirky smile on her face that it was somehow suiting that it was her womb that was killing her. She hadn’t sounded bitter; rather, Mrs. Gentry had appeared amused by the fact.
She wasn’t talking much anymore; Wilson doubted that she had more than a couple of weeks left to live, but her eyes were still bright and her face animated when he came to see her. Her smile almost lifted him out of the depression he was experiencing.
“Dr. Wilson,” she said, wheezing slightly as he sat down in the chair next to her bed, “long time, no see.” There was no recrimination in her voice, only curiosity.
“Clara, I told you to call me James,” he said to her with a small smile. “I’m sorry it’s been a while. Life has kept me kind of busy lately. How are you feeling today?”
“Better than you look,” she told him pointedly. “What’s wrong?”
Wilson couldn’t believe she was asking him what was wrong; she was the one dying, not him.
“What makes you think something is wrong?” he responded evasively, trying to hide it behind his smile.
“Because you look like you just lost your best friend,” she answered, insightful grey eyes staring back at him. “I appreciate you trying to act brave around me, but I’d appreciate it more if you would just be yourself. The last time we talked you and that sarcastic ass had just spent a hot and heavy weekend together, remember?”
Wilson blushed. She’d been around a long time battling her disease and was uncannily observant of what went on in the hospital she was forced to visit so often and was now forced to live in. One day during an office appointment when she’d still been undergoing treatment, she had asked him if he’d finally managed to bed House. It had caught him completely off guard-House had still been dating Cuddy at that point. After that their conversations had been quid pro quo whether Wilson had liked it or not.
“I remember,” he admitted. “You nearly outted me in front of your nurse.”
“Yes, sorry about that.” She didn’t sound at all repentant.
He shrugged, indicating that it wasn’t a big deal. She reached over and weakly grabbed one of his hands. “Tell Clara all about it.”
“The last thing you need right now is to have me whine to you about my problems.”
“Actually,” she sighed wistfully, her eyes moving to look out the window on her side of the semi-private room her health insurance afforded her, “it’s exactly what I need right now.”
Wilson didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t seen her look quite so…sad…before.
“I spend too much time in this damned bed thinking about my life,” she explained breathlessly after a few silent moments. “I think about what it would look like today if Brian hadn’t died and left me with two little girls to raise on my own. I think about what it was I did wrong in their upbringing to make them the selfish women they are today. I remember the day when they were sixteen and fourteen when I took them to the beach and we spent the entire time laughing and swimming and talking-it was the best day of my whole goddamned life after I lost my husband. Pathetic, huh? The best day.” She shook her head at herself, and then turned to look back at Wilson. “Listening to someone else’s suffering makes me feel better about my lot. Guess I’m selfish, too.”
He couldn’t help but smile. Clara may have been many things, but he highly doubted that selfish had ever been one of them. “Well, when you put it that way,” he teased before his smile faded. Wilson found himself squeezing her hand, drawing comfort from her.
“Spill,” she told him. “I have no answers or advice-just two ears.”
“House and I…it’s over,” he told her quietly, staring down at their joined hands because looking up at her was too difficult.
“How come?”
Wilson sighed, shook his head. “He’s in trouble…and he’s sick. He thinks that by pushing me away he’s doing me a favor. He thinks he’s protecting me from harm, but actually he’s doing the opposite. The further he distances himself from me, the more it hurts. Now he’s taking a drug that hasn’t even been through human trials yet, back on Vicodin-”
“I thought you said he wasn’t back on Vicodin?” she interrupted, lifting a hairless eyebrow.
“A few weeks ago he had me sample a pill to show me that it was a placebo that he was taking to fool certain people,” Wilson told her, “but yesterday I tested one of his pills when he wasn’t around and it was Vicodin. I don’t know if he was lying to me then or if he started taking the real thing sometime since.”
“Why would he want people to think that?” she asked, confused.
“It has to do with the dangerous situation he’s in-I can’t tell you any more than that-I’m sorry.”
Clara nodded. “What kind of experimental drug is he taking,” she asked, “And why?”
“It’s a compound that’s supposed to rebuild skeletal muscle mass,” Wilson explained. “So far it has had very positive results-in rats. But the protocol on rats hasn’t even finished and he’s managed to get his hands on it to use on himself. I can’t tell you how incredibly dangerous that is. Some of the side-effects on the rats have been extreme thirst and frequent urination, and agitation bordering on aggression.”
“Has House shown any of these side-effects?” Clara asked, looking fascinated but also very tired.
Wilson tilted his head slightly to one side, wondering how the conversation had so easily gone off track. “Well, one of his fellows reported that he was showing signs of thirst, but as for agitation….” His voice trailed off as his eyes widened in epiphany. “Earlier he came into my office acting like the Terminator, smashing the stuff in my office when he had to admit that I had won a bet between us and I dared to try to talk to him about it. He was obviously raging yet there was no visible sign of emotion-it wasn’t like him.”
“Sounds like my daughter’s first boyfriend in college,” Clara said, her voice getting softer. “He was a bodybuilder who abused anabolic steroids. One day out of the blue he flew into a rage where he took a baseball bat and totaled his neighbor’s car with it without any apparent provocation. An hour later the police found him playing in his parent’s backyard with their dog. He had no recollection of the event. Years later they came up with a term for it.”
“‘Roid rage,” Wilson finished for her, releasing her hand quickly and rising to his feet. “I’m sorry, Clara, I just realized that there’s something I have to attend to-”
“Go,” she told him with a knowing wink. Her eyes were nearly closed with sleep anyway. “Rescue your would-be protector. Have wild and kinky sex and tell me all about it later so I can be thrilled vicariously.”
He chuckled softly and took the time to squeeze her hand once more before leaving her room. On his way out of the hospital he placed three calls on his cellphone: one to his assistant to warn her that he was leaving for lunch before heading to his appointment at St. Sebastian’s, one for a cab to go to the bar he’d been at the night before to pick up his keys and car, and one to Thirteen to find out the name of the Princeton University scientist supervising the protocol for Compound CS-804.
__
While at the bar to pick up his car keys Wilson decided to grab some hot wings and a beer for lunch-he had no intention of doing anything more that day except a little paperwork-but kept it at one glass of draft despite craving more. He had to keep his mind sharp if he was going to figure out what was going on with House and the experimental compound he was taking, and how it all fit in to what was happening with Dominika or whoever the hell she was. It did ease the anxiety that had settled in on him, though.
He was tempted to call Special Agent Hunt about his suspicions but knew that he couldn’t-at least not yet-without betraying House’s trust in him. Wilson had learned from Amber that perhaps just as important as love in a relationship was trust, and as far as Wilson was concerned he and House were still in one. He would never give up on that; it’s what got him out of bed in the morning.
After his quick lunch he drove to his appointment with the neuropsychiatrist Cuddy had booked for him. He marveled at how that woman felt that it was her right to interfere in his private life just because she was his superior professionally. How someone like House could have put up with that as long as he did amazed Wilson. It also explained why the break-up had sent House into a tailspin; despite House’s protestations to the contrary, that’s exactly what it had done.
He managed to find a decent parking spot at St. Sebastian’s Hospital, a small general services facility that had been founded by a convent of nuns in the early nineteen hundreds. The building reminded Wilson of Mayfield with its great brick façade and gothic architecture. As he walked toward the main doors he got an unnatural chill upon seeing a stone gargoyle sitting at the end of a rain spout, staring down at him from its spot guarding the entrance from evil spirits and the like. He mentally shook his head at the pre-medieval idea.
At the information desk in the lobby he obtained the number of and directions to Dr. C. Garcia’s office. Of course it had to be located in the psychiatry department instead of neurology. Wilson shied away from issues of mental illness for a good reason-his younger brother Danny’s battle with Schizophrenia. When House had suffered his breakdown and the opiate psychosis that had gone part and parcel with the illness, it had been very hard on Wilson to watch happen to his best friend, the man he loved more than anyone else. Dropping House off at Mayfield had been both painful and terrifying for the both of them.
There was also the issue of his pride, as well. He didn’t want anyone to think that he’d lost his mind and feared being seen by someone in the medical community or former or present patients and losing their respect and confidence in him. It was shallow and petty, he knew, but was the case none the less.
He found Garcia’s office easily enough by the directions he’d been given and the fading signs painted onto the sallow and chipping plaster walls. The austere and utilitarian construction, and signs of age, in and around St. Sebastian’s was a huge switch from the modern architecture and esthetics found at PPTH. Even the older wings of PPTH were more modern and pleasant in appearance than this place.
Her office was located in a larger section of the ward dedicated to offices rather than patient rooms and treatment areas. In the space between these offices was a reception booth and waiting area. On a magnetic board along the back wall of the reception booth were strips with each psychiatrist and psychologist’s name on them. One column on the board was dedicated to therapists currently on duty and another for those who were out or off-duty. There was also a spot for two psychiatrists’ names indicating who was on-call on any particular evening or weekend. He had fleetingly hoped that Garcia’s strip would be in the off-duty column but of course that wasn’t the case. Next to the magnetic board in a place of prominence was a large, gold painted crucifix that looked like it was about as old as the facility itself.
Wilson checked in at the desk reluctantly. Seeing a shrink right now was the last thing he wanted to do; he’d stopped seeing the one he’d gone to following Amber’s death after he became involved with Sam. No, instead of talking to someone about a non-existent case of alcoholism Wilson wanted to be hunting down Dr. Riggin, the scientist in charge of the drug protocols involving the potential poison House was injecting into himself (Wilson was hesitant to believe House when he said he had stopped taking the compound, not if the rats were still showing increases in muscle mass with supposedly innocuous side-effects). He wanted to see the pharmacological data on the compound including the mechanism of action and metabolism findings in theory and in observation in the rat recipients. He needed to know what the metabolites of the compound were, how they were distributed, and how they interacted with other drugs-as much information that they had derived from their studies thus far.
He knew that he would probably be told that that information was proprietary in nature and would be top secret, so he would have to find it using below-board means and could end up in serious legal trouble if caught. It didn’t matter; protecting House from harming himself with it was all that really mattered at this point.
“Have a seat and you’ll be called when Dr. Garcia is ready to see you,” one of the two receptionists told him with a polite smile. Automatically Wilson returned it and sat down in the waiting room. There was a twentyish woman sitting two chairs down from him and when he sat she got up and put another chair between them. He sighed silently, wondering what disorder she suffered from. He rubbed the back of his neck, drummed his fingers against his armrest, tapped one foot on the floor in rhythm with a song in his head and shifted uncomfortably in his chair several times before the receptionist called.
“Dr. Wilson?” she said, and it seemed like she was shouting his name on the top of her lungs; rationally Wilson realized that she wasn’t, of course. “Dr. Garcia can see you now.”
He nearly sprang from his chair to follow her down a long corridor to the office at the end. She knocked on the solid oak door with the nameplate that read Dr. Constanza Garcia. She opened the door and stuck her head in and said something Wilson couldn’t quite hear before opening the door completely and giving him a brief smile before walking back to her desk. For a spit second Wilson considered bolting but stepped inside anyway.
Dr. Garcia was on her feet and rounding her desk to greet him with an extended hand.
“Dr. Wilson, how do you do?”
“Nice to meet you,” he told her, shaking her hand briefly. He wondered if she’d noticed that he was trembling slightly and that the palms of his hands were sweating.
Garcia was right around his age, with dark brown hair, brown eyes and a nutty complexion. She was trim but not skinny, dressed professionally but femininely in a pale lavender blouse, black skirt, and plain black leather pumps. Her smile was broad and made to look even more so by her set of large, brilliantly white teeth. She had a firm, confident handshake and captured and held his gaze powerfully. In her left hand she held a file-folder and a note pad with a pen clipped to it.
She gestured to a small sitting area where a sofa and armchair rested around an oval-shaped coffee table. A vase of bright red and yellow gerbera daisies rested in the middle. She took a seat in the wing chair leaving the sofa for Wilson. He sat down slowly, feeling extremely uncomfortable.
“So,” he said with a thin smile and joked, “am I expected to lay down on the sofa or what?”
Garcia smiled. “I’d rather you sat but it’s up to you.”
“Sitting’s good,” Wilson told her with a nod. After his divorce from Julie he’d seen a counselor a couple of times who referred him to a shrink for antidepressant meds which he’d stopped taking after a few months. After Amber’s death he’d gone back for a few sessions with the same psychiatrist who had put him on a different SSRI. Though he hadn’t really noticed much of a difference on that drug, either, he’d taken them for about six months before quitting those, too, and hadn’t seen a therapist since.
With his previous experiences with mental health professionals, he couldn’t figure out why he was so nervous this time. “I, uh, have to be honest with you right off the bat that I don’t have a problem but Dr. Cuddy, um, my boss, was concerned and had overreacted a little. She meant well but I’m afraid of wasting your time.” And mine, he added under his breath.
“Well, why don’t I be the judge of whether or not this is a waste of my time, okay?” she told him pleasantly. She opened the file folder. “Dr. Cuddy mentioned that she was concerned by your frequent and excessive drinking lately. She believes that there is evidence both in your personal life as well as professionally that it has become a problem that is affecting your work and well-being. I have to tell you that when she called me she didn’t sound accusing or angry but instead I got the distinct impression that she cares about you, that you’re a good friend of hers and she’s concerned. Would you say that’s a fair assessment of her?”
Wilson paused a moment before answering. “Yes…I guess that’s true, but she’s mistak-”
“Mistaken,” Garcia said with him, nodding. She was still smiling which was actually beginning to irritate Wilson. It was almost condescending-or perhaps that was just his imagination; he wasn’t certain.
When he didn’t speak immediately to that she asked, “Dr. Wilson, may I call you James?”
He nodded, “Sure, that’s fine.”
“James,” she said, “as you can imagine, I see a great number of people walk in and out of this office and I can assure you that about ninety percent of them tell me at the very start that they don’t think they have a problem. A few of them are right-they’re not addicted, at most dependent upon the drug but it hasn’t become an actual addiction. A few of those few have no dependency either. But the vast majority do have a problem that they don’t want to admit to because of the shame, fear and stigma that comes with being addicted to something. Some are in complete denial and are completely oblivious to that which everyone around them can see as being a real problem and some are aware that it could be a problem, but they don’t have the time, need, energy or courage to do anything about it. By the time people come to see me, it is very unlikely that there is absolutely nothing wrong with them at all. Tell me, James, you carry the title of doctor and you work at PPTH so I’m assuming that you’re a medical doctor?”
“Yes,” Wilson agreed, his brain still thinking about what she’d just told him even though he didn’t want to think about it at all. “I’m chief oncologist at PPTH.”
“That must be a time consuming, stressful job,” Garcia commented mildly.
Wilson nodded before he realized that he was. “It is…but nothing I can’t handle.”
“Of course,” Garcia acknowledged with a nod. “I wasn’t implying otherwise. In fact, Dr. Cuddy told me that you have always been an exemplary employee and that’s why certain aspects of your behavior recently have stood out as being unusual and caught her attention.”
“There’s been quite a bit going on in my personal life lately,” Wilson explained, trying to sound nonchalant but he couldn’t tell by the expression on Garcia’s face whether he was succeeding or not. “Some of it Dr. Cuddy is aware of but most of it she isn’t. I admit I haven’t been performing at peak efficiency lately but that doesn’t mean that I’m an alcoholic.”
“Well, why don’t we cut right to the chase and see whether or not you fit any of the commonly observed criteria of an alcoholic, then, shall we?” she replied, pulling out a sheet of paper from her file. “I’m going to ask you simple questions that require a yes or no answer unless otherwise specified. Are you ready to begin?”
Wilson’s anxiety level was rising again. He knew he didn’t have a problem, but he also knew that tests like these could be skewed one direction or another or inaccurately reflect a person’s true state because they were black and white, not allowing for the grays that life was made up of. Still, if it would get him out of there sooner by proving to her that he didn’t have a problem, then it would be worth it.
“Sure,” Wilson told her with an air of confidence he didn’t entirely feel, “let’s do it.”
Back to Ch. 22
To Ch. 24
This entry was originally posted at http://pgrabia.dreamwidth.org/46379.html. Please comment there using OpenID.