[Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones, Wake Up Now...]

[hiheelboots]

WHO: Daisya Berry, Yu Kanda, Gregory House
WHAT: Kanda needs surgery!
WHERE: House's house... o_O
WHEN: Middle of the night

Comments

[causticguy]

"Uh-huh," returned House dryly, clearly unimpressed. He wrapped the knee as he explained to Daisya (who was apparently the only one who could be trusted to remember this conversation in the morning), "All right, here's how this works: torn ligaments usually heal well with rest. The more she tries to use it, the slower her recovery will be. Keep it wrapped and immobilized. We'll pack some ice around it for tonight. Yeah, there's an MCL tear, but she's probably also got a ruptured ACL," he traced the line where each ligament ran so that Daisya could see. "It's a fairly common injury, especially for women and athletes. We'll know more when the inflammation goes down.

"And, only because she mentioned it-we do not want to do reconstructive surgery here. Not unless we have no choice. I'd have to take a graft out of her thigh, drill into the bone to repair the damaged ligament, and even with all the toys in that charming old sanitarium that you and Schuldig played Zap the Exorcist in," he gave Daisya a baleful glare, "the facilities here suck.

"So if you'll just try to keep Little Miss Drama Queen off her feet for the next five or six weeks, I'll be a lot happier if I do not have to see her again."

He finished applying the wrap, and snatched his cane back from Daisya's hand. "Carry her into the living room," he said with a jerk of his head. "She can sleep on the couch."

[sh_hereisgone]

"Oh shit, he told you about that?" Daisya laughed nervously. "Heh, it was kind of an accident!"

He lifted Kanda into his arms and sighed, then took her into the living room and knelt next to the couch so he could put her down. He paused a moment, then took off his coat and spread it over her as a blanket.

"Thanks again," he said, standing. "I'll come back for her in the morning."

[causticguy]

It was kind of you being an idiot. But he didn't say it because he was more interested in watching Daisya's body language around the girl in his arms: his "girlfriend" quip had apparently only managed to achieve five varieties of dumbstruck-Daisy, which was significant in itself, but still left a lot of questions unanswered.

Following his patient and her human gurney into the living room with ice packs in hand, House watched the care with which Daisya laid her down and covered her. Silent confirmation: more than just friends. Or at least, that was how he felt about it. Not a huge surprise. But if Sunshine really thought he was getting out of here that easily, then he was definitely in for a surprise of his own.

"Yeah, yeah," House said impatiently, as he packed the ice in place around her knee, "spare me the martyr routine. Kitchen. Go. And take off your shirt."

[sh_hereisgone]

"Do what now?!"

When House just stared at him, Daisya sighed and walked into the kitchen. He carefully took his shirt off, wincing a bit as it stuck to the wound in his back. Though small, Daisya was in exceedingly good shape - as well-muscled as his frame would allow, slim and athletic. He sighed a bit and rolled his left shoulder, then peered at House curiously.

"You noticed... but how? My coat's black." He frowned slightly. This fell neatly into the category of things he did not want to talk about, but with House, he wasn't so sure he'd have a choice.

[causticguy]

"The fabric stuck where it was wet," said House simply, his impatience apparently gone at least for the moment. In part that was simply because he was choosing to do this exam rather than having it dropped rather desperately into his lap, but it was at least as much because it was Daisya. And yeah he still wanted answers, still intended to figure things out, but he also simply didn't like seeing people who he knew hurt. It was part of why he was so resistant to making an actual human connection with anyone: he might actually have to give a damn if they up and got them selves electrocuted or stabbed or something.

He collected some antiseptic and swabs, then pulled out a chair and spun it around, motioning for Daisya to have a seat-he could sit in it backwards and give House free access to the wound on his back. Pulling up a second chair for himself, House frowned at the way the skin had been torn: this looked like an exit wound, not a gunshot-style exit wound; it wasn't round enough for that, but it had definitely been made by something on the way out, not on the way in…. "This might sting a bit," he said as he began to wipe away the blood that had gummed the wound.

"So, you went out for a nice moonlit stroll, ran into someone who thought you owed a pound flesh?" he said almost casually. "This isn't a knife wound, not a gunshot-what did this?"

[sh_hereisgone]

Daisya hissed and gripped the back of the chair as the antiseptic came into contact with the wound. It hurt, and he still didn't want to talk about it, but it seemed like that was going to be out of the question.

"The guy who killed me is here," he finally said quietly, staring straight ahead and trying to ignore the cool liquid on his back. "We met up on the docks... and that's how Lenalee got hurt." He paused, then looked at the floor. "His power is ignorin' things around him... reachin' through 'em as though they're not there, touchin' what he wants to. He grabbed hold of my heart."

Spoken that way, it was almost like it had happened to someone else, and it was easier to tell because of that. He hated remembering. "Cross an' the others startled him, I guess, he lost control of his powers... an' he ripped through me when he pulled his hand out. Didn't get it out fast enough."

That had hurt like a bitch, but it was more knowing that the Noah had held his heart. Again. At least this time it hadn't ended as poorly as it had the first time around.

[causticguy]

A week ago, House thought, he would never have even entertained the idea of taking this answer seriously. People couldn't just choose to "ignore" matter and expect the material world to bend itself around space and time to accommodate them. Reaching into someone's chest and pulling out their still-beating heart was…just a hackneyed and really overdramatic figure of speech. And people didn't die and then turn up alive again in weird anachronistic island cities, either. They also didn't live for a hundred years without aging, heal all their wounds before you could count to thirty, read your thoughts, or selectively disregard gravity. Except that here, they kind of did.

Leaning back haphazardly in his chair and snatching his stethoscope up from the counter, House listened to the organ in question, then to Daisya's lungs, then felt along his ribs. The man looked tired, a little pale, shaken, but physically there was no trauma besides the wound in his back (which wasn't bleeding freely now, but was a good few inches deep and ragged and needed stitches).

So maybe this Noah guy, whoever he was, really had reached through Daisya's skin and ribs and grabbed hold of something inside of him-the wound was the right size, the right shape; House's own hand would have nearly fit through it, and considering Daisya's small build, that was saying something. But maybe he hadn't-shock and adrenalin could make pain sensations less than perfectly specific. Maybe Daisya didn't know exactly what he'd felt.

"Good news," he said, falsely bright, "your arch nemesis may have held your heart in the palm of his hand, but at least he didn't steal it. I'm thinking the girl on the couch is probably working on that one. You'll be fine. But this needs stitches."

He threaded a suture needle with 3-O silk as he spoke, then lay a steadying hand on Daisya's shoulder before he began. "Slow deep breaths, Sunshine. You're gonna feel a pinch." House's voice was calm, almost casual. He might have been chatting about the weather, except that House never chatted about anything as banal as the weather. "So, guy killed you. What was that like?"

[sh_hereisgone]

For his part, Daisya hardly flinched when House began stitching the wound. He sat quietly for a moment, figuring it was going to take a while anyway, and thought of the right words to say. He'd not spoken of that night to anyone - at least not beyond the "I think he killed me" part. In fact, the last thing he remembered was...

"He hung me upside down on a lamp post, crucified," Daisya said quietly, staring at the wall again. He didn't know why he was telling House this, or why he was speaking at all. House was cynical, arrogant, rude, and all the things he typically couldn't stand about people... and yet, Daisya trusted him. A lot.

"That was after the torture, of course." Dark blue eyes slid closed. "He wanted information. I wouldn't cough it up. I don't think I need to give you the specifics, but suffice it to say he beat me to within an inch of my life before hangin' me on that pole." He opened his eyes again, not even feeling the pain in his back. "I knew I was fucked, really, and knew there wasn't a damn thing I could do. He asked if I had any last words, I said somethin' smart, an' then I ended up here. Cross told me Kanda and Marie found my body at sunrise, an' my Innocence was destroyed."

That had hurt the most, probably... his best friends finding him that way. And how his Master must have felt, knowing that Daisya had died trying to protect him. He sighed and shifted a bit, then glanced over his shoulder. "That fucking hurts, by the way," he said dryly.

It didn't. He just needed a distraction.

[causticguy]

This was, reflected House as he drew another stitch through Daisya's skin, kind of what you might call surreal: talking to a guy about his own ritualized murder while you stitched up the wound in his very-much-still-alive back. Shit, he was glad that Wilson couldn't see him right now; he'd never let House hear the damn end of it, and not just because he was actually taking the story seriously. If Wilson had seen all the things that House had in the past two weeks, House knew that he'd take Daisya seriously too-would be even quicker to do so than House was, probably.

No, the thing Wilson would never let him hear the end of was what a cruel calculating heartless bastard he was. He wouldn't really have deserved to hear the end of it either, House supposed, because he knew that he should just leave it alone (it was Wilson's voice telling him, even), but as much as House liked Daisya, and as much as he knew that the guy really didn't want to go into details, he simply…couldn't.

"You're almost done." Half a reassurance at best.

"How did he kill you, exactly? Was it like this? He reach inside of you, pull something out? And then, what, everything went black until you woke up here? Don't they promise you people clouds, a pearly gate, guy with a big booming voice?" He pulled a face of mock sympathy and hurt, as though dismayed that Daisya had mentioned seeing nothing of the sort.

It wasn't Daisya's suffering that he was mocking though. It was just that House liked the guy enough to care that he was willing to very literally give his life for a belief system that would happily chew him up, spit him out, and leave him hanging crucified on a lamppost, then expect him to get up and do it again in the morning. It made him angry and bitter, and those were things he was never very good at directing.

[sh_hereisgone]

"I don't know. I came here before it happened." He frowned slightly. "I was told... electrocution, an'... missing an organ. I'll let you figure the rest out."

He rested his arms across the back of the chair and rested his chin on them. "It was... unpleasant."

Whatever House was getting at, Daisya fervently hoped he got to it soon.

[causticguy]

Give it up, House. You finally found someone who's not going to argue with you. Again the voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Wilson. House cursed at it fluently, especially because it was apparently right.

"Yeah, well, dying and torture, not really what I'd expect to be a day at the beach," he couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice even if he tried. Not even knowing it had to be completely counterproductive, not to mention downright mean. Hell, sometimes House didn't like himself even more than usual.

Taking one more stitch, he tied the suture off, snipping it close to the skin, then smoothed a thin layer of salve over the suture line. Laying a cotton pad to cover the wound, he rolled a long strip of bandage around Daisya's chest and then over his shoulder to hold it in place.

But that was the easy part, the kind of thing House was good at. The human part-the part where he actually said something decent to Daisya, something reassuring or comforting or… Well, that was the kind of thing that House was bad at, and he knew it, and generally he just didn't care.

"You didn't die, all right? You didn't die tonight and you didn't die then-okay, so then you might have come a little closer. But whatever happened to you when you came here, you didn't die, I don't care what Cross says. You're…" Shit, I really do suck at this. He rubbed his forehead.

"There are spare bedrooms upstairs. I don't get up there much, but I went to have a look. You can stay up there." He paused and then added, as if his motives necessitated some clarification, "So I don't have to deal with whatshername if she wakes up in the night."

[sh_hereisgone]

Daisya paused, then smiled faintly. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I understand what you're trying to say."

He stood carefully and looked down at the bandages - more for his collection, it seemed - then looked up at House and smiled. "I'll take her with me so you don't hafta listen to her if she does wake up."

He walked into the other room and lifted Kanda into his arms again, wrapped in his own coat, and glanced back at House. "Thanks again. Really."

[causticguy]

House followed Daisya into the living room and, leaning heavily on his cane, watched from the doorway as he lifted the girl into his arms.

He felt…well, to be honest, he wasn't sure what he felt. Anyway, they were just patients of his-he shouldn't be feeling anything. The fact that they were staying in his home overnight was just pragmatics. It's not like either one of them was a friend of his. It's not like it was his job to know what to say to Daisya to reassure or comfort him.

It was just...he was probably just homesick was all. Not like he expected to get a great rush out of stitching up some guy's shoulder and wrapping up a girl's knee, no matter what kind of a story came along with it. So he was missing his cases, the exhilaration of having a patient whose time was running out, of racing the clock, of…working with his team, of hoping over the wall between his balcony and Wilson's and bursting into his best friend's office to demand a consult.

That was it-this sort of empty feeling. He'd get over it.

House shifted, looked away, not meeting Daisya's eyes. He didn't mind gratitude when he felt like he deserved it, but tonight, well he hadn't really even done anything. "Yeah," he nodded, "sure," and then turned back to the kitchen to go clean up.