Intersections (House/Wilson friendship/pre-slash, R for themes)

[daasgrrl]

I might leave this here for a couple of days to mature, and post to the comms on Monday - I think I’m pretty much done with it, but crit still very welcome, particularly if I’ve done anything too egregious. Although it might be entirely too long to contemplate *g*

For
nightdog_barks. I hope you like!

Title: Intersections
By:
daasgrrl
Pairing: House/Wilson friendship/pre-slash
Rating: R for themes
Word count: 10,100
Summary: As
elynittria so amusingly put it - kind of a variation on the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment, but with Wilson.
Beta: Thank you very much to
evila_elf for trusty beta, and additional thanks to
bironic and
elynittria for excellent corrections, advice, and soothing pats.

Notes: Written for
nightdog_barks, as a thank you for the lovely 2 Tbsp Elephants. Now, when I (stupidly) asked for a prompt, she gave me one which began: "As Wilson struggles to recover from a serious head injury..." When I expressed disbelief and asked for another, easier, one, I got one beginning: "Wilson almost dies (yes, I know, big surprise there) but doesn't..." I decided that as long as Wilson’s suffering was involved, it would probably be more or less acceptable. I certainly hope that that’s the case *g*

A key story idea was stolen with generous permission from
evila_elf, but whereas she envisaged it with House as the subject, I substituted Wilson, which made all the difference to writing this. Thanks sweetie!

I should also point out that I've used 'my' David from Nothing Left to Lose, who should not be confused with other Davids *g*. Also, while I’m sure medical inaccuracies abound, the alteration of the pharmaceutical trade name is deliberate.

Finally, much love to my f-list for such helpful and encouraging feedback and crit.

***

Intersections

Light. He remembers light.

There are other things he remembers, of course - the split-second terror, the rush of blood and adrenalin through his limbs, the oh, fuck that starts somewhere in his brain but never makes it out of his lips. Then a tremendous force that pushes him like the hand of a wrathful God. At first nothing but the shock of impact, and then pain, and a fragmentary moment when his brain still insists on fleeing even though the damage is already done. Then nothing.

He comes to consciousness slowly, in the darkness. He can hear the beep of the heart monitor and the quiet hiss of ventilation equipment and he knows this isn’t death, not yet. But there’s something wrong, because he can’t seem to make anything work. His eyes will not open, and his mouth will not move to form words. It’s as though all the vital connections have been broken. He quickly realizes that not only is the expected pain failing to eventuate, but he can’t feel anything - not the pillow under his head or the mattress against his back, although he knows they must be there. He’s a disembodied presence floating in infinite blackness. The only thing that keeps him from overwhelming panic is the voice in the darkness, so he struggles to calm himself - a struggle not reflected in the steady beep of the heart monitor - and listens.

It’s a woman’s voice, calling his name softly. It’s his first name, not his last, and that just adds to the wrongness of it all. It must be very bad. But at least it’s a voice he recognizes. Lisa? he asks her, meeting her first name for first name. What the hell happened? Am I going to die? And she pauses in her summoning, and for a moment he thinks she’s heard him. But then she just says his name again in that soft, urgent tone. I’m right here, he says, bewildered, but there’s only the hissing and the beeping that answer for him.

“That’s enough.” Another voice, much harsher and deeper, cuts her off, but its presence brings inexpressible relief. House will realize he’s in here; he has to. Even if no one else can tell, House will see that he’s here, he’s all right. Whatever’s the matter with him, House will figure it out. If only he could do something, use anything, to communicate, but all he can do is listen. There is a long silence, and then he hears the muffled clack of heels on linoleum, the slide of a closing door. The sound of a chair rolling on castors, coming closer, and the single thump of House’s cane on the floor. He imagines House sitting there, resting his chin on the top of the handle in his thinking pose. House? he yells. For God’s sake, do something!

“Fuck, Jimmy,” he hears House say, and only then does the panic return, but with it a thankful oblivion.

***

There are new voices when he wakes. A woman is crying and screaming and a man is yelling at her. But what’s odd about them is how distant they sound, how some vital edge has been taken away so that the voices are flat, drained of innate emotion. It makes him worry that even his hearing is failing, but now other sounds are coming in loud and clear - beep, beep, thunk, hiss. There’s an annoying crackle by his left ear, louder than all the other sounds, even drowning out the hysteria of the screaming woman.

With a huge flood of relief, he realizes he is back in his body. He can feel it almost coalesce around him. The lights are back, so very bright, trying to burn their way through his eyelids. There’s a tube in his mouth which is scratching the back of his throat uncomfortably, and his head hurts a little. Actually, everything hurts a little, but it’s the dull, distant ache of long-term discomfort, not the sharp pain of trauma. He feels weak and nothing wants to move, but he feels there. He groans a little, or at least he tries, but no sound comes out. However, the heart monitor responds to his efforts; the beeps speed up just a little, and if he could just open his eyes he would be able to see the waves spiking closer together. He tries this, only to immediately shut them against the light.

There’s the crackling by his ear again, but this time there’s the sense of movement, of something being taken away, and then a hand touches his cheek. A facial muscle twitches in response. He feels strangely triumphant, even though it had nothing at all to do with him. And then his left eyelid is being pried open and the light, the light is too fucking bright, and he blinks and shifts away from it as best he can.

Stop that, he snaps, but the muscles merely tighten uselessly around the tube in his throat, and then a hand pries open his other eye and does the same thing. This time he manages to flail one hand weakly in protest, but as the bright circle of light moves away his eyes finally decide they can stand it after all. The first thing he manages to focus on is a rectangle of light up high in the corner with shadows on it. The shadows are moving a little, and he realizes they’re still yelling at each other.

“After this amount of time,” a voice says, and he recognizes it, and his eyes flick to the left with relief. House is looking past him, up into the corner, and there is a rustle as he puts down the penlight and picks up the chip packet again. “You’d think you could have waited for the commercial break.”

Wilson wants to smile, but the effort is too much for him and he closes his eyes again for a moment. It’s going to be all right, he thinks.

Then there’s a burst of music and the volume suddenly seems to go up a level before the whole thing is sharply muted. He opens his eyes again. House is looking at him now, but there’s something wrong with his expression. Wilson gets the feeling of being studied, like a specimen under a microscope, a curiosity. House has never looked at him like that in his life, not that he can remember, anyway. He’s well aware that House has many moods, from melancholy to playful to exasperated, but it’s like nothing he’s seen before. Wilson is being examined, and he doesn’t like it at all. What are you looking at? he wants to ask. What’s wrong? He’d have thought House could at least look a little pleased, if not exactly overwhelmed with joy. Instead there’s just his steady, inquisitive gaze.

“How nice to finally make your acquaintance,” House says conversationally, and his mild amusement is frightening. Everything’s all right now, but yet it’s all completely wrong. House is wrong. He tries to tell House to stop whatever the hell he’s playing at, right now, but the endotracheal tube completely silences him, and he’s reduced to mouthing helplessly. If House notices his agitation, he ignores it.

House pokes and prods him a little more, and then gathers the remains of his lunch and leaves the room. Within minutes two nurses rush in. One of them, a young and attractive brunette he doesn’t immediately recognize, bends over him and meets his eyes with something like awe.

“Can you hear me?” she says.

Wilson blinks, in what he hopes is a meaningful manner. Jody, he thinks, or maybe Jennifer. He can’t quite see her name tag to confirm. “Yes,” he mouths helpfully.

She turns back to the other nurse. “I think he’s really there,” she says, her voice rising in excitement.

After that there is a flurry of doctors and nurses, and he recognizes Jervis and Louise, and not long after that Foreman puts in an appearance, but everyone keeps calling him ‘sir’ and shooting him disbelieving looks even as they examine him. He keeps waiting for someone, anyone, to call him by name, to see a flicker of familiarity instead of the impersonal concern, but they just come and go and talk around and above him. There are scribbled notes on clipboards and a hundred different examinations, in which he manages to successfully prove that he is both conscious and capable of keeping his own upper airway unobstructed, even if he can’t sit up without assistance. Eventually someone is convinced enough to take the damn tube out of his throat, although they leave the ones in his nose, veins and bladder. By this time he’s exhausted, and when they’re done with the procedure he sleeps again, despite his bewilderment.

***

He hears more sounds in his dreams, fading in as though from a great distance. He recognizes the voices of his mother and father, low and hushed at first - did they really come all the way from New England? - and all of a sudden his mother’s voice rises an octave and then she is actually keening, making long, inarticulate sounds of grief. It’s a horrible sound. He would do anything to stop her making it, but it seems his options are completely non-existent. His father’s voice murmurs in low counterpoint, and Wilson can almost see him standing there, one arm curled awkwardly around his sobbing wife.

House is there too, and Foreman. Their voices are a little further away, and eerily calm when it’s quiet enough for them to speak. They’re talking about coma scales. Wilson is an 8 out of 15 on the GCS, which means his condition is ‘severe’. Apparently, a thumb pressed firmly above the eyes will make them flicker open in response to the pain, and his body will flinch away from a pinprick in an automatic effort to protect itself. He will swallow automatically if something is placed on his tongue. Sometimes he will make small noises that mean nothing. But these things take time, Foreman continues, after the recitation of his abilities. It hasn’t been that long. There’s still hope. How long? Wilson wants to know, but no one listens to him. There is a short silence, and then his mother starts up again.

***

When he wakes, she’s sitting in a chair by his bedside. He can hear the soft tapping of her pen on the clipboard before he opens his eyes.

“Hi,” she says as he turns toward her, all professional sympathy and warmth. “I’m Doctor Cameron.”

I know that, for God’s sake, he thinks, and swallows, trying to clear his throat in preparation for speech. She helps him sit up and makes him sip water slowly from a plastic cup, then sets him back against the pillows.

“Doctor House sent me to see how you were doing,” she says, waiting for his response. He nods.

“House,” he manages to rasp out. It feels like the first thing he’s said in a very long time.

She smiles. “That’s right. He was with you when you… regained consciousness.”

“Need to talk… to him.”

Her smile fades a little, like a dying flower. “He’s a little busy at the moment, but I’ll ask him to drop by. If you wouldn’t mind answering a couple of questions?”

Wilson nods, not having the strength to argue. He feels slightly light-headed and disoriented.

“Do you remember your name?”

“James Wilson,” he says, frowning as he sees her making a note of that. “You didn’t… know that?”

She ignores him. “And what do you remember?”

“Cameron, it’s me. You work for House, along with Chase and Foreman. Your specialty is immunology and House hired you because he thought you were attractive. You were married, once. He had cancer.” It’s a lot to get out at once, and it hurts his throat, but Wilson is losing patience with this entire situation.

She looks startled, but only for a moment, and he has to admire her composure as she carefully makes another note on her clipboard.

“Well, it sounds like your awareness was just fine while you were under. You’ve really made an amazing recovery. People are calling it miraculous.”

“What’s House calling it?”

“Doctor House,” she emphasizes the first word reprovingly, “wanted me to ask you these questions.”

“I really need to see him,” Wilson says. He still clings to the ridiculous hope that House will somehow be able to come up with a plausible explanation for all this.

“I’ll let him know,” she says. “Now, do you know where you are?”

He sighs and answers all her preliminary questions easily, feeling the exhaustion creeping back.

“You seem…remarkably well informed,” she says finally, cautiously. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

He hesitates, but then describes the lights, and the push, and the pain. She nods.

“The police report says hit and run. They never found him.”

Wilson nods. “Now you tell me something. Why doesn’t anybody seem to know who I am?”

“Mr. Wilson…” she hesitates, then goes on in a rush. “You were brought here because… well, because originally you were brought into Princeton General without any ID. No one knew who you were, whether you had family, or insurance. We offered to take over your care in exchange for being able to… to let students…get an idea of…”

“Living case study,” Wilson says. She ducks her head in embarrassment. “I see.”

He lifts his left hand and examines the white plastic bracelet on it for the first time. After ‘name’ is printed: JOHN DOE (12). His date of birth is listed as UNKNOWN EST 1972.

“Nineteen-sixty-nine,” he says. “You were off by three years.”

She makes a note. “You look younger.”

“Thanks. I think. So this isn’t some kind of warped joke. You really don’t know who I am.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ll make sure the file is updated…”

“How long was I… like that?” He had been shocked by the thinness of his arms and legs when he first caught a glimpse of them, the muscles wasted. He must have been unconscious for a very long time. Maybe as long as a year.

Cameron - Doctor Cameron - places a hand on his arm. “Are you sure you want to hear it now? You were… under for a very long time.”

“I want to know,” he insists. “Tell me.” If he could have, he would have snatched the file out of her hand.

She speaks slowly, pausing to gauge the impact of her words. “It happened in 1996,” she said. “It’s been almost eleven years.”

***

When he sleeps again, the voices return. Things are quieter now, which must be an improvement. There’s still the sound of the heart monitor, but the slow hiss of the ventilator is gone.

“You can’t do that, House.” It’s Cuddy again, and her tone is so exasperated and so familiar that he wants to weep. “We have programs…”

“Which are useless,” House snaps. “Soothing music and deep massage twice a day? That would bore me into a coma. It’s nowhere near enough. The only proven success is with around-the-clock stimulation.”

“We don’t have the space.”

“Isolation has plenty of space, and all the mod-cons.”

“Except it’s supposed to be used for isolation.”

“Fine. If someone comes in with Ebola, I’ll move.”

In his mind’s eye he can almost see House’s glare, the set of his jaw. He wakes up to the sound of Cuddy’s sigh.

***

The next day, he does get to see House again, and it somehow disturbs him more than anything that has gone before. It’s still House, and yet it isn’t. This time Wilson is composed enough to notice the things he’d missed in their last encounter. The limp is still there, and House is using a cane, but he seems to lean on it less heavily than the House he’s accustomed to. This House’s posture is significantly more upright. He’s a little heavier, and the lines in his face less deeply drawn. But even more unsettlingly, this House is almost - normal.

“You wanted to see me,” he says, with a theatrical flourish. “Not getting enough attention from the other doctors?”

“So… I’m no one you know at all,” Wilson can already tell from his manner, but he needs to hear it from House himself. “To you, I’m just… coma guy.”

“Technically, not any more,” House points out. “Now you’re miracle guy. I’ve had to completely rework my lunch schedule.”

“But you’ve never actually met me. I’m just some patient to you. And yet you’re here anyway… because I wanted to see you?”

House shrugged. “According to Cameron. Although she is a known liar.”

“But you… never see patients just because they want to see you.”

“I don’t?” House considers for a moment. “Maybe that’s because none of them ever do.” He smirks a little, still looking at Wilson as though wishing he could take him apart and see how he works, but there’s something missing there, something important. Wilson can’t quite put his finger on it. “Especially not the healthy ones. It’s interesting, though. Cameron says you seem to know an awful lot for someone who’s spent the last eleven years as a cabbage. Your speed of recovery is completely unprecedented - I would have said impossible. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said you’d been faking it. For eleven years. Must have been dull.”

The conversation just keeps getting weirder. House is actually being quite pleasant, for House, and it appears to be genuine.

“Your leg,” Wilson says, and gestures accordingly. “You had an infarction, right?”

House’s eyes narrow for a moment. “I see what she means,” he says.

“But something’s… different. The myectomy wasn’t as severe, maybe?”

The question makes House look at him with suspicion, but he answers anyway. “No myectomy. They put me in a coma for the pain. Not quite as long as yours, obviously. It doesn’t work as well as it used to, but I manage.”

“You must be taking something for the pain.”

“I bulk-buy Ibuprofen.”

And then it strikes him. He does remember this House after all, but it’s been a long time.

“Stacy. You’re still with her.”

“Amazing what people talk about when they don’t think anyone’s listening. It was Cuddy, wasn’t it? She‘s always been the jealous type.”

“But it’s true.”

“I don’t see why I bothered. The amount of gossip you were taking in, you didn’t need TV.”

“Then why do I think I know you?”

House shrugs. “We’ve been having lunch for years. You weren’t much of a conversationalist, but I always appreciated that about you.”

“Not… not like that,” Wilson struggles to explain. “I know you. You went to Johns Hopkins and then Michigan. Your parents are John and Blythe. You grew up all over, and once had a dog called Guru, because of some obscure joke in Mandarin. You TiVo New Yankee Workshop and have some weird thing against mushrooms. You either own or want to buy a motorbike even though you’re the last person who should be riding one, and you’d be willing to spend a thousand dollars on monster trucks.”

“Okay, who set me up? It was Foreman, wasn’t it? Man comes out of coma, develops ESP. I’m not signing off on his article.” He seems more amused than puzzled or annoyed, and his complete nonchalance annoys Wilson immensely.

“Fine. Ask me something none of your staff would know, something no one else would know. Not even Stacy.”

“Stacy knows everything.”

“Even about the hooker in DC? At the imaging conference?”

“Nothing happened!” House says, but he’s finally paying attention. “All right, I give up. How did you know about that?”

“You told me. Because nothing happened, but you still felt guilty about letting her in, and you didn’t want the grief from Stacy. I am - I was - your best friend. Just not… here.”

“I don’t do ‘best friends’. And if not here, then where?”

Wilson sighs. “I don’t know. Somewhere else. I know it sounds crazy. But you… he’s… still there somewhere. I’ve been having… the weirdest dreams.”

“Not a shrink. And it sounds like you need one. But really, how did you know about the conference?”

“I told you.” Wilson stares him down as much as he is able.

“ESP.”

“No. Exactly what I said. You told me.”

House frowns at him a little longer, then pushes himself out of the chair. “You know that I’m not going to start feeling all… responsible… for you just because of some cheap party trick.”

“You can ask me some other things if you want.”

“No, thanks. Next thing I know you’ll be wanting to borrow money.”

And Wilson laughs a little, because he’s not going to cry.

***

“Wilson?” There’s no mistaking the imperiousness of that tone, even in his dreams. His eyes flicker open reluctantly and automatically orient themselves towards the sound. In one startled instant he realizes that he can actually see, and it’s thrilling until he realizes he still can’t seem to move anything else. Nevertheless, it’s so much better than the endless darkness of his previous dreams.

He focuses a little better, and for a moment he thinks he’s somehow been moved into House’s office. House is standing there, with Cameron, Chase and Foreman sitting in chairs in a rough semi-circle around him. There’s a whiteboard with black marker all over it. But then he realizes House has set up camp in the other half of a hospital room. There are a couple of desks, computers, a bookshelf, a couch. The coffee machine is in its usual place next to the window. There are no potted plants, no conference table and no carpet, and it’s all gleaming silver instead of textured walls, but it does form some approximation of normal. Slowly he realizes they’re all looking at him. For some reason he particularly notices the startled look on Cameron’s face.

“That’s just creepy,” Chase says.

“It could be a coincidence,” Foreman says. “But if he’s responding to his name, it’s an improvement. We’ll see.”

“So, what do you think?” House yells at him from across the room. “Osteosarcoma?”

Wilson has no idea. He’s completely missed the beginning of the discussion. However, as he discovers, he has no way of conveying that he needs a recap. House waits for him a moment longer, and then impatiently returns everyone’s attention to the whiteboard.

***

The next few days are a blur of tests and therapy, sleeping and waking. It seems that everyone in the hospital wants to see him, to confirm the news of his ‘miraculous’ recovery. House seems to have lost interest after his initial survey - Wilson is, after all, better than he’s been for a long time and, in the absence of a relapse, has absolutely no need for his skills.

Instead, his supervising physician Jenkins administers an unending barrage of tests that fill his every waking moment and, he suspects, some of his sleeping ones too. Therapists come in to help him gain enough strength to actually make it out of the bed. Students come in groups to marvel and take notes. One of the cleaning ladies creeps in late at night, wanting to touch his face, asking him to hold some kind of gold medallion in his hand for a moment, something with the face of Jesus. He does so, and then she thanks him profusely and leaves. It leaves him feeling somehow ashamed. Random staff members are constantly peering at him through the glass walls until he begs someone to draw the blinds. But there’s no sign of House, and he can’t quite bring himself to ask for him again. There’s even a short visit from Cuddy - Doctor Cuddy, he self-corrects - who smiles at him and asks how he’s doing. He wants desperately to tell her exactly how he’s doing, but doesn’t. There are people who want to do a story on him for the local news. He refuses, but they run one anyway, only without revealing his name.

It takes a week before they get around to sending him a ‘counselor’ - not quite a psychologist, but more of a hospital liaison. He still hasn’t told anyone about the dreams, and he’s not going to. Patricia looks to be in her late 40s, with dark shoulder-length hair, glasses, and sensible shoes. She seems genuinely caring - the first person who doesn’t care so much about where he’s been as much as where he’s going.

The first thing she asks is about his family, whether he has any, whether he wants to try contacting them. The hospital will cover his phone bills, and supervise his recovery, but if he really does get better, he’s got to think about his future. He blinks. Considering the reactions of all the people he thought he knew, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might have family somewhere who weren’t wailing over his barely alive body. Even if they did exist here, something tells him that calling his parents would be a very bad idea. If he really has been gone for eleven years, his sudden reappearance is going to shock them badly. Rafe will probably be in London, if the patterns are similar, no way except to go through his parents for information on his whereabouts, and of course, David is… his eyes widen and he almost swears as the thought descends on him. The counselor looks at him curiously over her glasses. He doesn’t want to discuss it, but she promises him phone books.

In due course they arrive. He wishes he had internet access, but the old-fashioned ways should still work. By now he can sit up in bed unassisted, and he starts to leaf through the pages. The last job he remembers David holding was with Anderson and Fowler, a firm specializing in corporate law. They’re still in business, conveniently close to the front of the volume. He takes down the number, his hand shaking slightly from the effort, marring the shapes of the blue figures on the page. Somehow he knows, deep in his gut - it wasn’t David who disappeared eleven years ago. It was him. Therefore, David is just fine. He must be. It makes a strange kind of innate sense. If he has ended up here, then maybe, just maybe, David has taken his place. The universe abhors a vacuum. He can imagine House saying that, and chooses not to think about that right now.

David no longer works for Anderson and Fowler, but at least they have him in their records. Wilson explains and pleads and charms as best he can, and eventually someone digs up the name of another law firm. He calls them and has to go through the whole process again. The third firm puts him through without a struggle, but he has to negotiate David’s secretary, who is plainly unaware that Wilson exists, and he has to explain all over again, glossing over the facts a little, before she transfers the call with reluctance. There is a long pause while she does so, and Wilson tries to steel himself as much as he can.

“Who is this, really?” and it is him, and Wilson doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s almost worth it, all of it, that he gets to hear David’s voice again, even if it sounds faintly annoyed.

“David. It’s me. Jimmy,” Wilson says, using his childhood name. There is another silence, so long that Wilson rushes to fill it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to call, and…”

“This had better not be some kind of a joke,” David says, and Wilson can hear the shakiness in his voice.

“It’s not… I can explain…”

“Where the hell have you been?” David has apparently already settled on the side of belief. “Fuck, Jimmy, do you know what you did to Ma? Everyone thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. Are you going to call them? Where are you? Are you all right? Do you need help?”

Wilson sighs with relief. He even manages to be mildly amused at how quickly David has managed to segue from irritation to concern. He’s got his story prepared, which will not resemble the truth in any way - a combination of concussion and temporary amnesia and homelessness and shame and a lucky break. He doesn’t want David to know he’s actually gone completely out of his mind.

“Everything’s fine,” he says, and continues with his careful, caring lies.

***

(Part 2)