happy birthday to me
House could remember his twenty-fifth birthday very well. Or at least, the earlier part of the evening - it started to get a little fuzzy past the part where he'd done a line of coke off of an exotic dancer's stomach. He'd had some good friends in med school, the kinds of friends that take you to strip clubs on your birthday and slip a couple of the girls enough cash to convince them to come by for more partying after work. He'd woken up the next morning with the hangover from hell and somehow still feeling like a million bucks.
Now, twenty-five years later, he was sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a cramped kitchen in what felt like a military bunker, eating a sandwich made with some unidentifiable meat, while the remnants of a goddamn blizzard melted on a tropical island that he'd been shackled to for nearly four years. Whatever was the complete opposite of a million bucks, he felt like that.
He'd vaguely considered going to Catscratch tonight, but what for? To celebrate? Making it fifty years without dying, hardy-har-har. Not to mention that he'd been trying to stay away from alcohol since he'd kicked the drugs, though his birthday was making it awfully hard to remember why he'd made that particular resolution.
On the bright side, the list of people who knew when his birthday was was a pretty damn short one, and the list of people who would give a crap was even shorter. At least here his fiftieth birthday could possibly pass quietly into the night in a haze of depression. Back home he probably would have ended up with someone bedazzling OVER THE HILL on his cane.
Now, twenty-five years later, he was sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a cramped kitchen in what felt like a military bunker, eating a sandwich made with some unidentifiable meat, while the remnants of a goddamn blizzard melted on a tropical island that he'd been shackled to for nearly four years. Whatever was the complete opposite of a million bucks, he felt like that.
He'd vaguely considered going to Catscratch tonight, but what for? To celebrate? Making it fifty years without dying, hardy-har-har. Not to mention that he'd been trying to stay away from alcohol since he'd kicked the drugs, though his birthday was making it awfully hard to remember why he'd made that particular resolution.
On the bright side, the list of people who knew when his birthday was was a pretty damn short one, and the list of people who would give a crap was even shorter. At least here his fiftieth birthday could possibly pass quietly into the night in a haze of depression. Back home he probably would have ended up with someone bedazzling OVER THE HILL on his cane.