bedroom eyes.
He had bedroom eyes.
That was the first thing she noticed about him, sitting in that impersonal patient's chair, listening to the silence of the world hum in her dazed, languid ear. They weren't sensual, nor were they suggestive, nor those predatory nuances that were better suited for the garish pretenses of the world. No, his held secrets…secrets he chose to whisper quietly into his bedroom door, secrets the world never wanted to hear, but ones he feared they'd listen to anyway. They were clandestine measures of his soul, and with each stolen glance she took of them, their poignant color like rich, promising earth crushed beneath the cruel shoes of fate, she began to realize they were secrets she would always like to know, but never discover.
She had always loved brown eyes. The color spoke to her of warm comfort, told stories of furtive glances and schoolgirl crushes on that enigmatic, brown-eyed bad boy who stalked the halls as if in another universe altogether. Brown meant safety, but it also meant secretive, introverted. She'd always thought her blue eyes a curse, a false façade put forth that always fooled new acquaintances. They'd expected her to be forthcoming about all her honesties, her falsehoods, just because of the stark clarity of her blue eyes. But it was not so…she was just as much a creature of the shadows as this ambiguous man before her. She could just make out the traces of his soul in his cautious, fleeting looks. But what from what little she found, she knew there was more to offer. She was dissatisfied by the color of those bursts of life, the figments of his soul.
He was an oncologist. That should have dampened her attraction straight away, just knowing the prerequisites that came with such a practice. There was only one fault that triggered the personality traits of the everyday cancer specialist, and that was needy. It was not that they, themselves, who clung to every host that would house their parasitical nature, but that they clung to the parasites themselves, like some sort of martyr complex that was programmed into their genius minds before birth. They sacrificed their own hearts, their own feelings, so that they could better the hearts and feelings of others. He was one of those men, she knew, that poured every last color of his life into someone, and then watched them walk away, vibrant and lively, while he was left only with black and white, darkness and light. There was no hope for men like him…they needed to be needed, and that was that.
And yet, she was drawn to him, feeling the little sparks of attraction that she knew was a side effect of his magnetic charisma. But they weren't mechanical whims, those robotic feelings of comfort one found in the presence of a doctor, a console within itself, knowing there was hope for cure, for new beginnings. But nor were they those intermittent pulsations of lust that consumed the victims of a lovely, and quite boyishly charming, face. Soft, thrumming myriads of colorful light swam before her eyes and filled her fingertips with the inspiration to create, to live again. This was no ordinary oncologist, and though he suffered the martyr complex, that need to be needed she found drowning aimlessly in those bedroom eyes of his, she knew there was something quite different about. If only she could dissect the enigma in his quiet eyes, separate the truth from its stoic walls of pretense so that she could better see the man behind the starched white coat.
A wisp of breath caught her attentions and reeled them back into the forceful clutches of reality, and she refocused her vision, capturing a vivid, perfect picture of the boyishly handsome Dr. James Wilson. Of course, she'd heard wonderful things about him, and took sheepish advances into the flowing, abundant river of compliments that seemed to run by her in the form of overcompensated praises. But there were oil spills in this river…black spots on a perfect reputation. Some said he was a womanizer, others referred to his pathetic martyrdom. She knew it was neither…he was just searching for a place he could call home in women that just couldn't offer such a thing.
But now, she saw a new pretense begin to shift over his mask, and it was not one that offered comfort and reassurance. This one was distant, almost cold, so unlike those warm, gentle eyes of his. She suddenly felt the chill of his uncertainty, as if he'd led her into an endless spell of winter, and had no intention of leading her back. This was reality; she already knew the words that would follow the awkward clearing of his throat, and waited patiently for him to manufacture a reality less synonymous to the caustic cruelty of what was to come in the respective months to follow. It was getting more difficult for him to keep feeding his patients false hopes, feigned oaths of life that he couldn't fulfill. He was only human, and the weight of their burdens packed upon his was only breaking him, not strengthening his character.
"It's terminal cancer," she stated for him, saving him from his fit of incompetency. "I already know. I've known for a while now."
Now, the side-stepping glances were exchanged for a conspicuous, confrontational stare. She met the full force of his lovely eyes with gluttonous exuberance, drinking them in, pouring over their soft consistency as she tried to sift through the secrets there. She envied his bedroom door…it knew all of them, and she knew nothing.
"Then why did you come to me, if you already knew the answer to your own question? Clarification? Or at least competent test results?"
"Try a different 'c'." She replied, watching him closely for any sign of surrender, any white flag in his handsome face. But there was only defiance, and she conceded her torturous interrogation…for now. Instead, she anticipated her answer, or rather, her inquiry that she was so assured would come that she had forgotten to bring him along for the ride. She looked back at him, and muted, defiant bewilderment plastered itself like a billboard upon his pretense, tarnishing the perfection of his quiet surrender to secrecy. She wanted it back. "Console." She finished, and he looked away, sheepish with the comprehension of her vague insinuation.
"If you wanted comfort, why didn't you just ask?"
"I was afraid."
"Afraid?" She watched as slow realization dawned on him. The light never touched his eyes. "Afraid of what?"
He wanted to play the game. So be it; she would capitulate to his summons, since it was she who held all the cards, and he who held all the plunder.
"I'd heard rumors," she admitted. "Rumors that didn't quite sit well on my shelf of reasoning."
He was silent a moment, and she relished the tranquil shimmer that seemed to light up the room, dance across the windowpanes, and tickle her playful ear.
"Tell me, did these rumors happen to walk on a cane and spout insults as they walked through the lobby and just happen to pass you on your way here?"
It seemed the full light of morning had illuminated his understanding of her surreptitious caution when it came to shedding her own guilty sense of secrecy and allowing herself to become intimately close to this particular oncologist. Apparently, the origin of these rumors wore a proverbial face to him - and he also knew that they were not to be taken seriously.
"Perhaps they did."
"You shouldn't listen to him. He's jealous of everything that lacks his views of the world."
"I wouldn't know them. We've hardly looked at one another, let alone spoken. I'm always too focused on that cane of his…I always wonder why."
"Life gives you lemons, and you make lemonade. House just happens to prefer milking every single little ounce of pity out of his lemons, so they dried up long ago. Well, with us anyway."
"Us?"
"People who share his love for medicine, and yet not his love for conundrums. I just happen to have some sort of hidden skill - one that even I am unaware of - that allows me to function on a daily basis even while being unendingly heckled by this particular old Scrooge."
"You're friends?"
"Figuratively, yes. Hypothetically, no."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that not everything should be taken at surface value," Wilson replied, tentatively. "Some things matter more than scratches on the surface. House is difficult and caustic and is unable to take anything seriously. But, he is brilliant and will go to any lengths to find a cure for the most perplexing cases that would leave any other doctor baffled. He just does it for different reasons."
"Oh? And what reasons are those?"
"He does it for the puzzle, for the thrill. Lives are no matter to him, they're just another piece of the puzzle that he has to fill in. It's the big finish, the cure, that tickles his genius. It's all he is...without his puzzle, House is nothing but flesh and bone. He needs cases to be complete."
It was as she listened to Wilson that she began to fully understand the change of pretense that consumed his features. But it wasn't a pretense at all, not another mask to shelve his humanity upon, nor a closet to house all his secrets from the pressing, nosey obstructions of truth. This was James Wilson's true identity, and she watched with flagrant voracity as just a fragment of the man she'd hoped to unearth from the depth of the shadows began to unfurl from its dark mystery. It seemed House was a catalyst, a useful trigger, a key to unlocking the enigma of Wilson's bedroom eyes.
"Look, I'm not saying that I'm the perfect man for you here, now," Wilson began, after a few moments of amused quiet. "But in a few months, when your life is starting to fade, I just might be the perfect man for you then."
"I just need comfort. I don't care in what form it comes, perfect man or not. I'll accept whatever console you are able to give."
"Ability…what a funny word. I thought comfort was something humans were automatically programmed to give, not something that we had to learn to accumulate."
"Not all of us." She admitted.
"I suspect you're a victim of apathy, as well as cancer?"
"I don't know. I can't know…if I realized that I wasn't even human, that I couldn't feel, then I'd realize that living, for me, was just a lie."
"Living is never a lie. It's the hardest truth we've ever had to face," he mused, and she averted her eyes from their pathetic focus on the tackily carpeted blue floor to find him staring, blankly, at her test papers, those nasty little bearers of bad news. "You just need a purpose. I could be that purpose."
"I've not long to live. What could I give you, besides my own apathy?"
"It's not about you giving. It's about me giving you something to live for before you have to leave this world," Wilson assured her, and reached across the barriers that separated the platonic relationship between doctors and patients, descending into the ambiguous waters of death and comfort. "Let me be that purpose."
He was doing it again, sacrificing what he wanted for the sake of compensation, for the sake of comforting a terminal cancer patient. She could almost see the blood on his hands, the life seeping from his craven veins, remnants of the act of tearing out his heart for the sake of being alive. He was afraid of not feeling, and so he proved to himself his ability to feel by pouring his affections on the desperate. She was desperate, and so she was the perfect candidate for his ongoing endeavors of proving his existence. If he was alive, he could give life to others.
He reached across those barriers, and took her hand. It was warm, not at all like the artificial, impersonal sensation of those rubber gloves, when a doctor deemed they were as undesirable as a leper, and therefore unfit to hold real, human, warm hands. As a patient, they were denied true feeling. But today, she wasn't just a patient…she was his.
"One condition, James."
She raised her gaze to meet his, and already, there were the beginnings of truth sprouting from the earthen loveliness of his eyes. So buried the furtive masquerade, and emerged the man.
"Give me all of you, not just portions and broken fragments. I want to know that, when you put me in that coffin, you'll be burying the burden of your secrets with me."
He seemed bemused at first, but she knew it was a defense mechanism, a gesture of misplaced faith. There was no faith in him, but with such enduring, trusting eyes, she would perform a miracle - resurrect something that was never there.
But with a simple, quick nod of his head, he'd signed his life away, entrusting it to her. She would hold it dearly; it was as precious as a glass pearl, a gossamer diamond, as this meaningful silence that didn't just drag on, but thrived on, flourished and blossomed like spilled paint across a blank canvas, an accidental masterpiece.
He was her swan song.
And the silence danced on.