The One Where It All Ends (R)
posted to house_wilson and housefic
In March '07, thedeadparrot wrote The One Where They're Girls, inaugurating the House Genderfuck Crack!verse, in which every person at PPTH suddenly became the opposite sex. It recently invaded my dreams again, and this is the result.
Title: The One Where It All Ends
Author: Dee Laundry
Pairing: several implied (femslash, slash, and het), including House/Wilson, House/Cuddy, House/Cuddy/Wilson, Wilson/Cameron, Chase/Foreman, Brenda/Wilson's assistant
Rating: R
Words: 4980
Summary: That Strange Time At The Hospital ended with both a bang and a whimper, House is fond of saying.
Notes: In the Genderfuck crack!verse, everyone in the hospital had suddenly become the opposite sex. Many thanks to the crack!verse crew and also to perspi who provided constructive feedback (on crack; yes, it is possible). Much love to thedeadparrot for being down with this.
That Strange Time At The Hospital ended with both a bang and a whimper, House is fond of saying.
(He also likes to call that time “Pussy Paradise,” but until the trademark infringement litigation with that Tampa strip club is resolved That Strange Time At The Hospital, or TSTATH for short, will have to do.)
Foreman’s last words as a woman were purportedly, “Fuck this shit,” but Foreman claims not to remember and Chase was too distracted to pay close attention. So that tidbit has to be classified as apocryphal.
What is not in dispute is the reaction when a fully-restored-to-masculinity Eric Foreman strode, nay, swaggered through the door of the Diagnostics suite the next morning.
From his seat at the conference table, Chase rolled his eyes and crossed his legs, looking exaggeratedly unimpressed until he remembered he was supposed to be surprised by the change. His switch to exaggeratedly astonished was so amusing that House almost forgot to look down his blouse when he turned.
Cameron set her shoulders back in what was clearly an unconscious move to defend her territory from a new male presence, even as her eyes widened in shock. She reached out and touched Foreman’s forearm in disbelief, and then popped him one to the bicep when neither his form nor his grin faded.
House gave all of Foreman’s body an appraising look that Foreman found disconcerting and asked whether Cuddy had changed back yet. When Foreman replied that she hadn’t, House returned his attention to Chase’s boobs in such a way as to declare the matter closed.
Wilson freaked out.
“Erh,” was the first sound out of his slack-jawed mouth. His eyes, like Cameron’s, had widened. They were currently just about at Disney-princess proportions and would have been sexy as hell if they weren’t filled with abject horror. He drew in a long breath noisy enough to cause House to turn to him with interest, and then began to hyperventilate.
“Fix it,” he whispered in between one gasp and the next. “House, fix it.”
Cameron took a step toward him, asking, “Baby, what is it?” and he swung his terrified gaze on her.
“Stop!” he demanded, even as he scrambled backward away from her. “You touched him; stay away from me.”
Chase stood up and took a step forward as well. “Dr. Wilson?”
Wilson’s eyes were filling with tears. “House,” he whimpered. “You have to figure it out. Figure it out and fix it, please, please.”
“Baby?” Cameron questioned again. Chase and Foreman were exchanging perplexed looks; House had his eyes trained on Wilson’s face, which was crumpling even further.
With a sobbed declaration of “cleanroom,” Wilson fled out the door and down the hall. Cameron started after him but was stopped by House’s cane.
“Differential diagnosis for sudden sex reversal,” he said seriously.
Grabbing House’s cane and gripping it tightly, Cameron snarled, “James is upset; you have to let me go help him.”
House shoved her into a chair. “You’re going to help him by working through this differential with me.”
“You didn’t care when it happened before,” Foreman replied. “Why would you care now?”
House grabbed a whiteboard marker and gestured emphatically toward him. “We have to figure out why it reversed for you so we can stop it from happening to Wilson.”
“Why?” Chase and Foreman said together, as Cameron dropped her head into her hands.
“Oh God,” she groaned sadly.
House uncapped the marker and began to write. “Because he’s pregnant.”
***
The differential didn’t last too long. They’d never figured out why the switch happened in the first place, so there wasn’t much to go on about why it had begun to undo itself. It didn’t help that Cameron kept punching the table.
“Foreman was sick of being a woman,” Chase said with a shrug at one point, but that clearly had nothing to do with anything so nobody listened.
“Right,” House finally said, throwing his marker back into the whiteboard tray. “Time for tests.”
“Let me do them,” Cameron insisted. With all her anxiety, her hair was in tufts, and her sweater vest was askew. “James is my fiancé, and that’s my -” She stopped to swallow. “I should be the one to run James’ tests.”
House glared at her and tugged his skirt down. “First of all, you’ve done quite enough in the touching Wilson area, and second, I meant tests on Foreman. Urine, blood, MRI, CAT scan, spinal tap. If we don’t get anything from those, we might have to get more invasive.”
“What?” Foreman protested. “No way! And you’ve got nothing to compare results to, because I never had any tests done while I was in a woman’s body.”
House ground his cane into the carpet and stared Foreman down. “We have your results from the follow-up after you had meningoencephalitis.”
“Yes. When I was also a man.” Arms crossed, Foreman wasn’t about to back down. “So you could compare man results to man results, but that won’t tell you anything about the ‘being a woman’ part in between.”
“It’ll tell us something,” House insisted.
“What?”
All three of the fellows were staring at House, waiting for the answer.
He dug the fingertips of one hand into his forehead, then swiped the hand across his face. “I don’t know what. But something. It has to.”
Stepping closer to him, Chase asked quietly, “House, are you crying?”
“No,” House insisted even while his eyes were glistening. “I’m going to go tell Cuddy; you guys start testing. Bring me anything I can use.”
***
Foreman refused the spinal tap - “You’re shaking, Cameron, and Chase is kind of a butterfingers.” “Hey! Not when I’m sober!” - but agreed to all the other tests. Cuddy swung by during the blood draw in the lab to detail extensive hormone panels for them to run, causing some confusion until someone remembered she’d been trained as an endocrinologist.
“Then why weren’t you -” Chase began, but Cuddy just patted him on the ass, nodded to Foreman and Cameron, and stalked out. Chase looked to his teammates for support but when none was forthcoming he joined Cameron at the lab bench.
“That was patronizing,” he groused. “It sucks being the only woman in a group of men.”
Frowning, Cameron gave him a sidelong glance and then returned her attention to the microscope.
They kept paging House and Cuddy with the results - which were consistently nothing, nothing, nothing - but didn’t see either of them again for the rest of the morning.
When there was nothing more to do, and Cameron had calmed down from her seventh “I got someone pregnant” freak-out, they went to find Wilson. The Oncology cleanrooms were empty (“too gloomy for a baby anyway” Chase noted, and Cameron’s jaw clenched), as were the ones by Surgery and the one in the ICU. They finally found him in one of Immunology’s cleanrooms, pacing, one hand clasped protectively over his abdomen.
House and Cuddy were together outside the room, looking in through the glass wall. House was sitting on the floor, eyes trained on Wilson as he paced. Cuddy was standing next to House, stroking his head protectively. No one seemed to notice as the fellows approached.
“We don’t think it’s airborne,” House said with the weary tone of an oft-repeated statement. “You can probably come out of there.”
“But you don’t know,” Wilson insisted and turned at the apogee of his path through the room. “I’m staying right here.”
House paused and then tried a new tack. “You’re only at six weeks. It’s not like the thing’s a -”
“Fuck you, House,” Wilson snapped, still moving, and Cameron stepped forward.
“Yeah, fuck you, House.” She drew close to the glass and pressed her right hand into it. “James, why didn’t you tell me?”
Startled by her arrival, Wilson fell out of his pacing. “Allison,” he said in greeting, and dropped onto the room’s bed. “I didn’t know until yesterday. The idea had never occurred to me, and then House said something while -”
He looked up at her sheepishly, and Cameron’s left hand clenched into a fist. “Anyway,” Wilson continued, “House did the test, and I didn’t know how to tell you, and I hadn’t decided how I felt until Foreman walked in back to normal.”
When Wilson stayed on the bed, stayed away from her, Cameron dropped her hand from the glass. “You’re sure it’s mine?” she asked roughly.
“Of course!”
Cameron looked pointedly at House, who was still watching Wilson, and Cuddy, who glared back defiantly. Chase tried to pretend he wasn’t listening; Foreman edged down the hall, clearly wanting no part in this emotional time bomb.
“It’s yours,” Wilson said quietly, and began to cry.
***
Debbie from Accounting showed up in a skirt the next day.
The word had spread through the hospital and everyone was on alert, so the news reached House (sleeping in the recliner in his office) almost the second it happened.
Debbie was a sucker for babies and thus much more amenable to the spinal tap than Foreman had been.
It didn’t show anything.
Cuddy did manage to stop House from cutting into Debbie’s brain, but it was a close thing. The half-hour they spent alone together in Cuddy’s office after that calmed House a fraction, but for her own safety Debbie was sent home.
***
The following morning, a Radiology tech, a Pediatrics nurse, and the gift shop manager had switched back.
None of them knew each other. None had been in contact with Foreman or Debbie, and the nurse had even been on vacation, and therefore out of the hospital, for the past week.
“The reversal’s not communicable,” House insisted to Wilson, who was tucked under a blanket on the cleanroom’s bed, watching an Oprah repeat.
“You don’t know that,” Wilson insisted. “I’m staying here.”
Cuddy shook her head and scratched at the stubble under her chin. She’d been at the hospital around the clock for the past two days, but that was no excuse for forgetting to shave. “You can’t spend the next seven months in this cleanroom,” she said as gently as she could. “We’ll need it at some point.”
Wilson turned toward her, and damn. She used to be totally immune to the doe-eyed thing.
“You won’t kick me out, Cuddy. You won’t.” He swallowed and his eyes grew even more earnest. If there hadn’t been a wall of glass between them, she would’ve felt compelled to take him in her arms and kiss him breathless. “You know how this feels, and you won’t.”
Damn.
***
The next day brought four more people returned to their original sexes, and a trembling, petite redhead asking for a blood test to confirm his pregnancy.
House overruled Cuddy and got Fredericks settled into the room next to Wilson’s.
***
House caught wind of OB/Gyn’s plan for a grant application on the same day Marco turned up with his dick restored. When House was done, the OB head, Chavez, grumbled that she wouldn’t need to turn back, what with House having her balls and everything, but the department dropped the idea.
Despite the warning that it was probably too early to hear anything, they tried the handheld Doppler that day. One steady gentle heartbeat, and Wilson grinned. Two steady gentle heartbeats, and Wilson burst into happy tears. House awkwardly patted him on the shoulder with a gloved hand while outside the room Cameron shared a manly, back-slapping hug with Cuddy.
From his room, Fredericks smiled, but there was something somber behind his eyes.
When Cameron came by the next morning, Fredericks’ room was empty, and Wilson was trying to keep a brave face on. She rushed past the doors, flipped the blinds shut, and spent the morning with James in her arms.
***
Wilson went back to work - as much as anyone was working at that point - later that afternoon. He’d realized that the cleanroom wasn’t protecting him, although he was still hoping for House to pull a miracle diagnosis out of his ass.
“Or my twat,” House pointed out less than helpfully. “I’ve got two awesome orifices now.”
“Three,” Cuddy countered. “Isn’t General Hospital over yet?” She sauntered out the door, giving them an excellent shot of her taut, muscular ass.
House grinned and stood to go after her, when Wilson grabbed him by the wrist. “House,” Wilson pleaded, and House felt his grin falling away.
“I’m thinking all the time,” he promised soberly, and Wilson nodded and let him go.
***
Even though he was out of the cleanroom, Wilson still refused to leave the hospital. Cuddy got tired of the complaints about him hogging the on-call beds and finally gave in and assigned him a permanent room. House scoffed about nesting; Cameron brought him quilts and books and posters for the walls, although every night she went home to her own place.
Chase had done his best not to think about Wilson’s “condition” the whole time. He researched everything House told him to, did and re-did tests until his eyes crossed, and threw himself into every differential session - but he’d managed to keep it all abstract.
Until the day Wilson walked into the conference room and shifted the patient file he’d been reading from in front of his body to under his arm. “House here?” he asked. “Because I have a few…”
But Chase wasn’t listening. He was staring at the blouse under Wilson’s lab coat, which was stretched tight around an obvious bulge in his midsection.
Oh, Chase thought.
The next day he woke up with morning wood.
***
Oncology was the last department to have no one reverted to his or her old body. Radiology was fully back to pre-TSTATH status, as was Cardiology. Pathology was almost entirely back, with just the one holdout who told everyone who’d listen that her goal was to make out in every gay bar in NYC before she reverted.
Wilson was midway through second trimester, energy at good levels, getting big but not horrendously so - no matter what House said - and the latest sonogram had been amazing. Two little people in there, healthy and growing well. Wilson couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
Then Arthur Brown walked by in a banker’s three-piece suit and wingtips, and Wilson’s heart jumped into his throat.
He made it to House’s office without breaking down. House still, after all this time as a woman, hadn’t gotten any better at the sympathy thing, but his skill at the cunnilingus thing made up for it a little.
***
Wilson’s assistant was next. Then Brenda Previn. There was some talk of those two switches being related, but Wilson didn’t care.
Three-quarters of the hospital were now in their original bodies, and Wilson was at twenty-two weeks. Too soon. Too soon.
He didn’t know why he’d been spared; nobody knew why.
But not everybody’s reverted, he reminded himself. House, Cuddy, Allison - they hadn’t gone back.
He was brushing his teeth, thinking about breakfast, when House slammed into his room. “News!” House crowed, looming over his shoulder. He barely had time to spit before he was dragged away from the sink and pushed over to his bed.
“Careful!” he warned, worried about either or both of them overbalancing, but House was almost dancing in his excitement, and they tumbled onto the bed together.
As Wilson was spluttering and trying to get their limbs untangled, House was tangling them up more. “Sleep lab patient changed sexes last night,” House whispered in Wilson’s ear, following that with a lick so lascivious Wilson couldn’t help shuddering. “The camera malfunctioned, so it wasn’t caught on tape, but all the medical monitoring was in place.”
“Which means -”
“Data,” House breathed and twisted his fingers in an extraordinarily pleasurable way. “Cameron and Chase are doing new blood work, and Foreman’s going over the scans now.”
Sliding a hand up House’s back to flick at his bra clasp, Wilson asked, “Why aren’t you going over the scans?”
“Foreman’s the neurologist. I’m just a lowly kidney and ID guy.” House’s back arched and Wilson found himself grinning. “We’ll know something soon,” House promised and caught Wilson’s lips in a searing kiss.
Two hours later, standing in the Diagnostics suite, Wilson was ready to slap a bitch. Or Chase, or Foreman, or anyone really. “Wishing? That’s what makes it happen?”
“It’s not wishing, exactly,” Chase replied, because Foreman looked unable to come out of his wince. If he wasn’t careful, Wilson thought, his face would stick that way, and then wouldn’t he be sorry.
“We’ve always known,” Chase continued, “that the mind has a powerful effect on the body and specifically healing. It seems, from all the information we have, that the mind is the determining factor here. The intensity of the desire to revert, or to stay in the second sex, is what affects when the change occurs.”
“If I clap my hands and really, really believe, then Tinkerbell won’t die?” Wilson retorted sarcastically.
In surprise, Chase blurted, “You’re naming your baby Tinkerbell?” and it took Foreman, House, Cameron, and an orderly who’d been randomly walking by to keep Wilson from decapitating Chase.
When things settled Chase had been banished to the labs, Foreman was off recruiting more of the un-reversed for sleep tests, and Cameron and House were with Wilson in his office.
Ignoring House as he poked around through the desk, Cameron sat on the couch beside Wilson, gently rubbing his shoulders and helping him slowly to relax.
“It’ll be all right,” she said for the tenth time, in a tender, honey-filled tone. “We’ll keep your babies safe.”
He leaned back into her grip, but addressed House. “You really think this ‘intensity of desire’ theory is true?”
House had found the desk toy he’d been looking for and was twiddling with it to set it up. He nodded. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, especially coming from me, but it fits the evidence better than anything else we’ve got.”
Sighing, Wilson closed his eyes. Allison’s hands tightened nicely on his shoulders; House was humming a nameless tune.
Intensity of desire.
That he could do.
***
Wilson was disappointed when Cameron reverted, but not exactly surprised. She’d held on longer than he’d anticipated, given all the things she’d missed about being a woman.
And then Tutuine reverted, and Chang, and Ramirez, and… And.
At twenty-five weeks, there were three of them left.
Cuddy.
House.
Him.
He kept working, even though his back ached and his ankles were swollen, because it was the best thing for keeping his mind off his worries. He diagnosed, prescribed, comforted the dying, counseled med students, and did heaps and heaps of paperwork. His, and some of Cuddy’s, and some of House’s, even.
House and Chavez started bugging him to get a C-section, but he refused. It was too soon; the risk of substantial life-long problems or even mortality was too high. He could hang on; he knew he could.
Cuddy reverted on a Thursday - twenty-eight weeks and four days - and came to see him first thing. He didn’t cry, but it was close.
An hour or so later, House found Wilson huddled in his bed, eyes intent on the ceiling.
“Thirty-two,” Wilson was chanting. “Thirty-two.”
House snagged a chair, pulled it close, and plopped down. “Right. You haven’t seen thirty-two in years.”
“Thirty-two weeks. That’s how far I’m going to make it,” Wilson insisted. He was rocking slightly, just enough to be unnerving for House.
“We don’t know -”
“Thirty-two weeks. Three and a half pounds. Well developed. Usually making enough surfactant for good lung function. Far lower risk of long-term complications. I can do it. I can do it.” The rocking grew stronger.
“Wilson.”
“I can do it. Just -” Wilson turned to him, dry-eyed but desperate. “Do it with me, OK? You don’t have to do anything after; I won’t ask you to change diapers or babysit or anything. Just please. You have the strongest will of anyone I’ve ever known, and just do it with me, OK? You love being a lesbian. Don’t forget that. And I’ll, you know, make it worth your while.” He stretched out a hand to House’s face and stroked it sloppily. “Please.”
“Yeah,” House said, pulling Wilson’s hand away and holding it between both of his. “Yeah, I’ll do what I can.”
***
“You look like a whale,” House said late one Sunday evening in Wilson’s room.
“Shut up.” Wilson was on his tenth hour of TLC’s all-day A Baby Story marathon, but he was as glued to the TV screen as he’d been in the first.
“Except when you walk.” House bounced his cane on the floor and wished again that he’d thought to bring his PSP from his office. “Then you look like a duck.”
Wilson aimed a pillow at his head, but it went substantially wide. “Get me another Snickers bar and then go home,” Wilson ordered.
House thought about mentioning that it’d be Wilson’s third full-sized candy bar in an hour, but hearing a bedspring groan as Wilson moved, he thought better of it.
When House didn’t show up the next day by two, and refused to answer his phone, Wilson knew something was up. He wasn’t quite sure what - pain or pills or a new copy of Buns - but he was nervous enough to spend an hour pacing the lobby. This is stupid, he thought, I should get in my car and go over there, but he’d grown a case of agoraphobia along with the babies, and every time he envisioned stepping out of the hospital, his mind blanked.
So he paced.
Cuddy had professed ignorance, but on Wilson’s seven thousandth trip around the reception desk (approximately), she finally caved. “I talked to him,” she said, and Wilson stopped.
“He’s fine,” she reassured. “He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“What -” Wilson began, but Cuddy was paged to an emergency in the Pediatrics ward.
He could only blame baby-brain when it took him almost the full ten minutes to realize what had happened.
Hands on his rather wide hips, he was itching to begin his tirade, but House beat him to the punch. “This is your fault,” House insisted as he hauled his six-two frame through the door. Wilson wasn’t used to tilting his head back so far to look House in the eye, but he managed it.
“My fault? My fault?”
“Your fault.” House tugged him toward the elevators. “Just before I fell asleep last night, I was thinking about how’d I never fucked a woman in her third trimester, and how hot you’d look naked on all fours, how slick and wet you’d be as I was thrusting into you…” Wilson found himself blushing, his anger turning into a fire of a different kind.
“And then I woke up like this,” House concluded. He pulled Wilson into the open elevator, pressing him into the wall as the door closed. “So it’s your fault.”
“House,” Wilson began before being cut off by a kiss that was far more gentle than anticipated.
“I’m sorry,” House whispered as he curved around Wilson’s body.
Maybe it was the hormones, but somehow that admission was enough. “It’s OK,” Wilson said, kissing House’s temple. “I can do it by myself.”
“Of course you can.” The elevator dinged, and House straightened up. “But now you’re going to do it with me.”
“What?”
“Do it. C’mon, no matter the circumstances now, you were a twelve-year-old boy at one point.”
Wilson got it now, but that didn’t mean House was going to get it. He planted his feet on the linoleum and his hands on his hips, and waited for House to realize he wasn’t following.
It took eight steps.
“Wilson!” House yelled from down the hall. “I gave up lesbian sex with Cuddy for this, so let’s go.”
Smirking, Wilson gave in.
***
Thirty-two. Thirty-two was now the meaning to Wilson’s life. Chavez had been talking stats and encouraging a C-section since before twenty-eight weeks, but Wilson was holding out for thirty-two.
He wasn’t going to push his luck any further than that, but… Thirty-two. He could do it.
At seven p.m. on day six of week thirty-one, twelve hours before the planned C-section, Wilson felt something he’d never felt before. Of course, he’d spent most of the past thirty or so weeks feeling things he’d never felt before, but this was different.
Kind of crampy.
Slightly painful.
Like something a pregnant person might need to breathe through.
He paged Chavez and Cuddy on his way to House’s office. House was packing up to go, and Wilson practically screamed at him in delight.
“I told you I’d make it! They’re coming, on their own; they know it’s time.” He couldn’t keep his hands off his belly, feeling them there, A down lower and B up high.
House’s eyes grew serious, and he clutched at Wilson’s arm to lead him from the room. “Drugs. We’re putting you on drugs, now.”
“Pitocin? But the contractions are -”
“Not pitocin. No way.” House steered them around a cluster of gabbing nurses and toward the back elevators.
“But -”
“You’ve seen childbirth, right? Without drugs it’ll hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt. And believe me, I have personal experience with this: at first you’ll hate the pain. That’ll be the target.” They stepped into the elevator, House’s hand tightening around Wilson’s bicep. “But eventually you’ll grow to hate more than that. You’ll hate your body for bringing you the pain.”
Wilson stilled and swallowed hard. Another contraction was rippling through him, more of a pressure feeling than anything else, but he suddenly imagined it turned up to eleven.
“And we are not going to mess with you hating your body,” House concluded.
Wilson nodded and stayed close to House’s side until the IV was hooked up. He didn’t relax fully, though, until the epidural needle slid into his spine.
Five hours and six centimeters later, House looked up drowsily from the chair by Wilson’s bed. “Where’s Cameron? Shouldn’t she be doing this Lamaze crap with you?”
“You’re not doing the Lamaze crap with me,” Wilson pointed out. “And Cameron decided shortly after she reverted that she’s not quite ready for parenthood and broke off our engagement. Thanks for noticing. She is going to pay child support, though, so I’m expecting you to fork over a big raise.”
“I thought you said I wouldn’t have to do anything after the rugrats are born.”
“Nothing for them. I’m still going to ask for things for me.”
House groaned and tugged the baseball cap he’d retrieved from his office down over his eyes. “Good luck with that.”
An odd, primitive sound mid-way between a growl and a scream jolted House out of sleep. In a blur, he saw a blue drape, three nurses, Chavez’s shoulders, and Wilson curled into a ball. Struggling out of his chair, he declared to the room at large, “Drugs are wearing off,” and blamed any tinge of panic on the remnants of a strange dream.
Another nurse bustled into the room and shoved him gently back into the chair. “She’s pushing, dear; she’s fine. Women have been doing this for millennia. Let us help her, and you’ll be holding your babies in no time.”
House stared at her incredulously. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“On loan from Mercer General,” she began before being drowned out by a high-pitched wail.
Wilson fell back, panting, as Chavez declared, “It’s a boy!”
“Are you sure?” House asked, following the baby as it was carted out of the room to the NICU. He didn’t even bother to hit the scab nurse when she laughed at him.
He made it back to the delivery room in time to see Wilson’s second baby being carried away. “A girl,” the nurse told him with a smile.
“Almost four pounds each,” Chavez was saying as she poked around in Wilson’s nether region. “Big for thirty-two weeks, and the one-minute Apgar was seven for both. Remarkable. You’ll be taking them home before you know it.”
Wilson was sweaty, exhausted, red-eyed, rumpled and wrinkled. He’d never looked better, and House suspected there might be a grin on his own face. He ducked his head to hide it.
“You did have a small tear,” Chavez was continuing, over a quiet whimper from Wilson, “so I’ll stitch - Or not.”
House jerked up to see an awkward, stubbled Wilson trying to pull his suddenly-too-small hospital gown tighter around him.
“I guess you didn’t want to breastfeed, then,” House noted.
“Not enough, apparently.”
One of the nurses hustled forward with a blanket, which Wilson accepted gratefully and tucked around himself. Chavez muttered something about going to get a urologist and left the room.
“Damn,” Wilson sighed. “I’m wiped out. No wonder they put women on disability leave after childbirth.” He gestured House over with a nod. “Come unlock the bed and wheel me to go see my kids.”
After a struggle with the bed and a co-opting of two beefy orderlies, they were strolling down the hall toward the NICU. House was strolling; Wilson was rolling, but otherwise it seemed almost like old times.
“You know they’re identical twins,” Wilson noted.
“Of different sexes?”
Wilson smiled: a smitten, sappy smile that House could already tell was going to get old. “Only ones in the world,” Wilson cooed.
“Did you pick names yet? I vote for Ru-Paul and Hedwig.”
“They’re Robin and Chris,” Wilson said, as they arrived at the big plate window outside the NICU. The orderlies angled the bed so Wilson had as close a view as possible of the incubator holding Wilson A and Wilson B.
House leaned over Wilson to check them out. Squally scrawny things. “Which is which?”
Wilson just smiled and ran a thumb over the images through the glass.
In March '07, thedeadparrot wrote The One Where They're Girls, inaugurating the House Genderfuck Crack!verse, in which every person at PPTH suddenly became the opposite sex. It recently invaded my dreams again, and this is the result.
Title: The One Where It All Ends
Author: Dee Laundry
Pairing: several implied (femslash, slash, and het), including House/Wilson, House/Cuddy, House/Cuddy/Wilson, Wilson/Cameron, Chase/Foreman, Brenda/Wilson's assistant
Rating: R
Words: 4980
Summary: That Strange Time At The Hospital ended with both a bang and a whimper, House is fond of saying.
Notes: In the Genderfuck crack!verse, everyone in the hospital had suddenly become the opposite sex. Many thanks to the crack!verse crew and also to perspi who provided constructive feedback (on crack; yes, it is possible). Much love to thedeadparrot for being down with this.
That Strange Time At The Hospital ended with both a bang and a whimper, House is fond of saying.
(He also likes to call that time “Pussy Paradise,” but until the trademark infringement litigation with that Tampa strip club is resolved That Strange Time At The Hospital, or TSTATH for short, will have to do.)
Foreman’s last words as a woman were purportedly, “Fuck this shit,” but Foreman claims not to remember and Chase was too distracted to pay close attention. So that tidbit has to be classified as apocryphal.
What is not in dispute is the reaction when a fully-restored-to-masculinity Eric Foreman strode, nay, swaggered through the door of the Diagnostics suite the next morning.
From his seat at the conference table, Chase rolled his eyes and crossed his legs, looking exaggeratedly unimpressed until he remembered he was supposed to be surprised by the change. His switch to exaggeratedly astonished was so amusing that House almost forgot to look down his blouse when he turned.
Cameron set her shoulders back in what was clearly an unconscious move to defend her territory from a new male presence, even as her eyes widened in shock. She reached out and touched Foreman’s forearm in disbelief, and then popped him one to the bicep when neither his form nor his grin faded.
House gave all of Foreman’s body an appraising look that Foreman found disconcerting and asked whether Cuddy had changed back yet. When Foreman replied that she hadn’t, House returned his attention to Chase’s boobs in such a way as to declare the matter closed.
Wilson freaked out.
“Erh,” was the first sound out of his slack-jawed mouth. His eyes, like Cameron’s, had widened. They were currently just about at Disney-princess proportions and would have been sexy as hell if they weren’t filled with abject horror. He drew in a long breath noisy enough to cause House to turn to him with interest, and then began to hyperventilate.
“Fix it,” he whispered in between one gasp and the next. “House, fix it.”
Cameron took a step toward him, asking, “Baby, what is it?” and he swung his terrified gaze on her.
“Stop!” he demanded, even as he scrambled backward away from her. “You touched him; stay away from me.”
Chase stood up and took a step forward as well. “Dr. Wilson?”
Wilson’s eyes were filling with tears. “House,” he whimpered. “You have to figure it out. Figure it out and fix it, please, please.”
“Baby?” Cameron questioned again. Chase and Foreman were exchanging perplexed looks; House had his eyes trained on Wilson’s face, which was crumpling even further.
With a sobbed declaration of “cleanroom,” Wilson fled out the door and down the hall. Cameron started after him but was stopped by House’s cane.
“Differential diagnosis for sudden sex reversal,” he said seriously.
Grabbing House’s cane and gripping it tightly, Cameron snarled, “James is upset; you have to let me go help him.”
House shoved her into a chair. “You’re going to help him by working through this differential with me.”
“You didn’t care when it happened before,” Foreman replied. “Why would you care now?”
House grabbed a whiteboard marker and gestured emphatically toward him. “We have to figure out why it reversed for you so we can stop it from happening to Wilson.”
“Why?” Chase and Foreman said together, as Cameron dropped her head into her hands.
“Oh God,” she groaned sadly.
House uncapped the marker and began to write. “Because he’s pregnant.”
***
The differential didn’t last too long. They’d never figured out why the switch happened in the first place, so there wasn’t much to go on about why it had begun to undo itself. It didn’t help that Cameron kept punching the table.
“Foreman was sick of being a woman,” Chase said with a shrug at one point, but that clearly had nothing to do with anything so nobody listened.
“Right,” House finally said, throwing his marker back into the whiteboard tray. “Time for tests.”
“Let me do them,” Cameron insisted. With all her anxiety, her hair was in tufts, and her sweater vest was askew. “James is my fiancé, and that’s my -” She stopped to swallow. “I should be the one to run James’ tests.”
House glared at her and tugged his skirt down. “First of all, you’ve done quite enough in the touching Wilson area, and second, I meant tests on Foreman. Urine, blood, MRI, CAT scan, spinal tap. If we don’t get anything from those, we might have to get more invasive.”
“What?” Foreman protested. “No way! And you’ve got nothing to compare results to, because I never had any tests done while I was in a woman’s body.”
House ground his cane into the carpet and stared Foreman down. “We have your results from the follow-up after you had meningoencephalitis.”
“Yes. When I was also a man.” Arms crossed, Foreman wasn’t about to back down. “So you could compare man results to man results, but that won’t tell you anything about the ‘being a woman’ part in between.”
“It’ll tell us something,” House insisted.
“What?”
All three of the fellows were staring at House, waiting for the answer.
He dug the fingertips of one hand into his forehead, then swiped the hand across his face. “I don’t know what. But something. It has to.”
Stepping closer to him, Chase asked quietly, “House, are you crying?”
“No,” House insisted even while his eyes were glistening. “I’m going to go tell Cuddy; you guys start testing. Bring me anything I can use.”
***
Foreman refused the spinal tap - “You’re shaking, Cameron, and Chase is kind of a butterfingers.” “Hey! Not when I’m sober!” - but agreed to all the other tests. Cuddy swung by during the blood draw in the lab to detail extensive hormone panels for them to run, causing some confusion until someone remembered she’d been trained as an endocrinologist.
“Then why weren’t you -” Chase began, but Cuddy just patted him on the ass, nodded to Foreman and Cameron, and stalked out. Chase looked to his teammates for support but when none was forthcoming he joined Cameron at the lab bench.
“That was patronizing,” he groused. “It sucks being the only woman in a group of men.”
Frowning, Cameron gave him a sidelong glance and then returned her attention to the microscope.
They kept paging House and Cuddy with the results - which were consistently nothing, nothing, nothing - but didn’t see either of them again for the rest of the morning.
When there was nothing more to do, and Cameron had calmed down from her seventh “I got someone pregnant” freak-out, they went to find Wilson. The Oncology cleanrooms were empty (“too gloomy for a baby anyway” Chase noted, and Cameron’s jaw clenched), as were the ones by Surgery and the one in the ICU. They finally found him in one of Immunology’s cleanrooms, pacing, one hand clasped protectively over his abdomen.
House and Cuddy were together outside the room, looking in through the glass wall. House was sitting on the floor, eyes trained on Wilson as he paced. Cuddy was standing next to House, stroking his head protectively. No one seemed to notice as the fellows approached.
“We don’t think it’s airborne,” House said with the weary tone of an oft-repeated statement. “You can probably come out of there.”
“But you don’t know,” Wilson insisted and turned at the apogee of his path through the room. “I’m staying right here.”
House paused and then tried a new tack. “You’re only at six weeks. It’s not like the thing’s a -”
“Fuck you, House,” Wilson snapped, still moving, and Cameron stepped forward.
“Yeah, fuck you, House.” She drew close to the glass and pressed her right hand into it. “James, why didn’t you tell me?”
Startled by her arrival, Wilson fell out of his pacing. “Allison,” he said in greeting, and dropped onto the room’s bed. “I didn’t know until yesterday. The idea had never occurred to me, and then House said something while -”
He looked up at her sheepishly, and Cameron’s left hand clenched into a fist. “Anyway,” Wilson continued, “House did the test, and I didn’t know how to tell you, and I hadn’t decided how I felt until Foreman walked in back to normal.”
When Wilson stayed on the bed, stayed away from her, Cameron dropped her hand from the glass. “You’re sure it’s mine?” she asked roughly.
“Of course!”
Cameron looked pointedly at House, who was still watching Wilson, and Cuddy, who glared back defiantly. Chase tried to pretend he wasn’t listening; Foreman edged down the hall, clearly wanting no part in this emotional time bomb.
“It’s yours,” Wilson said quietly, and began to cry.
***
Debbie from Accounting showed up in a skirt the next day.
The word had spread through the hospital and everyone was on alert, so the news reached House (sleeping in the recliner in his office) almost the second it happened.
Debbie was a sucker for babies and thus much more amenable to the spinal tap than Foreman had been.
It didn’t show anything.
Cuddy did manage to stop House from cutting into Debbie’s brain, but it was a close thing. The half-hour they spent alone together in Cuddy’s office after that calmed House a fraction, but for her own safety Debbie was sent home.
***
The following morning, a Radiology tech, a Pediatrics nurse, and the gift shop manager had switched back.
None of them knew each other. None had been in contact with Foreman or Debbie, and the nurse had even been on vacation, and therefore out of the hospital, for the past week.
“The reversal’s not communicable,” House insisted to Wilson, who was tucked under a blanket on the cleanroom’s bed, watching an Oprah repeat.
“You don’t know that,” Wilson insisted. “I’m staying here.”
Cuddy shook her head and scratched at the stubble under her chin. She’d been at the hospital around the clock for the past two days, but that was no excuse for forgetting to shave. “You can’t spend the next seven months in this cleanroom,” she said as gently as she could. “We’ll need it at some point.”
Wilson turned toward her, and damn. She used to be totally immune to the doe-eyed thing.
“You won’t kick me out, Cuddy. You won’t.” He swallowed and his eyes grew even more earnest. If there hadn’t been a wall of glass between them, she would’ve felt compelled to take him in her arms and kiss him breathless. “You know how this feels, and you won’t.”
Damn.
***
The next day brought four more people returned to their original sexes, and a trembling, petite redhead asking for a blood test to confirm his pregnancy.
House overruled Cuddy and got Fredericks settled into the room next to Wilson’s.
***
House caught wind of OB/Gyn’s plan for a grant application on the same day Marco turned up with his dick restored. When House was done, the OB head, Chavez, grumbled that she wouldn’t need to turn back, what with House having her balls and everything, but the department dropped the idea.
Despite the warning that it was probably too early to hear anything, they tried the handheld Doppler that day. One steady gentle heartbeat, and Wilson grinned. Two steady gentle heartbeats, and Wilson burst into happy tears. House awkwardly patted him on the shoulder with a gloved hand while outside the room Cameron shared a manly, back-slapping hug with Cuddy.
From his room, Fredericks smiled, but there was something somber behind his eyes.
When Cameron came by the next morning, Fredericks’ room was empty, and Wilson was trying to keep a brave face on. She rushed past the doors, flipped the blinds shut, and spent the morning with James in her arms.
***
Wilson went back to work - as much as anyone was working at that point - later that afternoon. He’d realized that the cleanroom wasn’t protecting him, although he was still hoping for House to pull a miracle diagnosis out of his ass.
“Or my twat,” House pointed out less than helpfully. “I’ve got two awesome orifices now.”
“Three,” Cuddy countered. “Isn’t General Hospital over yet?” She sauntered out the door, giving them an excellent shot of her taut, muscular ass.
House grinned and stood to go after her, when Wilson grabbed him by the wrist. “House,” Wilson pleaded, and House felt his grin falling away.
“I’m thinking all the time,” he promised soberly, and Wilson nodded and let him go.
***
Even though he was out of the cleanroom, Wilson still refused to leave the hospital. Cuddy got tired of the complaints about him hogging the on-call beds and finally gave in and assigned him a permanent room. House scoffed about nesting; Cameron brought him quilts and books and posters for the walls, although every night she went home to her own place.
Chase had done his best not to think about Wilson’s “condition” the whole time. He researched everything House told him to, did and re-did tests until his eyes crossed, and threw himself into every differential session - but he’d managed to keep it all abstract.
Until the day Wilson walked into the conference room and shifted the patient file he’d been reading from in front of his body to under his arm. “House here?” he asked. “Because I have a few…”
But Chase wasn’t listening. He was staring at the blouse under Wilson’s lab coat, which was stretched tight around an obvious bulge in his midsection.
Oh, Chase thought.
The next day he woke up with morning wood.
***
Oncology was the last department to have no one reverted to his or her old body. Radiology was fully back to pre-TSTATH status, as was Cardiology. Pathology was almost entirely back, with just the one holdout who told everyone who’d listen that her goal was to make out in every gay bar in NYC before she reverted.
Wilson was midway through second trimester, energy at good levels, getting big but not horrendously so - no matter what House said - and the latest sonogram had been amazing. Two little people in there, healthy and growing well. Wilson couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
Then Arthur Brown walked by in a banker’s three-piece suit and wingtips, and Wilson’s heart jumped into his throat.
He made it to House’s office without breaking down. House still, after all this time as a woman, hadn’t gotten any better at the sympathy thing, but his skill at the cunnilingus thing made up for it a little.
***
Wilson’s assistant was next. Then Brenda Previn. There was some talk of those two switches being related, but Wilson didn’t care.
Three-quarters of the hospital were now in their original bodies, and Wilson was at twenty-two weeks. Too soon. Too soon.
He didn’t know why he’d been spared; nobody knew why.
But not everybody’s reverted, he reminded himself. House, Cuddy, Allison - they hadn’t gone back.
He was brushing his teeth, thinking about breakfast, when House slammed into his room. “News!” House crowed, looming over his shoulder. He barely had time to spit before he was dragged away from the sink and pushed over to his bed.
“Careful!” he warned, worried about either or both of them overbalancing, but House was almost dancing in his excitement, and they tumbled onto the bed together.
As Wilson was spluttering and trying to get their limbs untangled, House was tangling them up more. “Sleep lab patient changed sexes last night,” House whispered in Wilson’s ear, following that with a lick so lascivious Wilson couldn’t help shuddering. “The camera malfunctioned, so it wasn’t caught on tape, but all the medical monitoring was in place.”
“Which means -”
“Data,” House breathed and twisted his fingers in an extraordinarily pleasurable way. “Cameron and Chase are doing new blood work, and Foreman’s going over the scans now.”
Sliding a hand up House’s back to flick at his bra clasp, Wilson asked, “Why aren’t you going over the scans?”
“Foreman’s the neurologist. I’m just a lowly kidney and ID guy.” House’s back arched and Wilson found himself grinning. “We’ll know something soon,” House promised and caught Wilson’s lips in a searing kiss.
Two hours later, standing in the Diagnostics suite, Wilson was ready to slap a bitch. Or Chase, or Foreman, or anyone really. “Wishing? That’s what makes it happen?”
“It’s not wishing, exactly,” Chase replied, because Foreman looked unable to come out of his wince. If he wasn’t careful, Wilson thought, his face would stick that way, and then wouldn’t he be sorry.
“We’ve always known,” Chase continued, “that the mind has a powerful effect on the body and specifically healing. It seems, from all the information we have, that the mind is the determining factor here. The intensity of the desire to revert, or to stay in the second sex, is what affects when the change occurs.”
“If I clap my hands and really, really believe, then Tinkerbell won’t die?” Wilson retorted sarcastically.
In surprise, Chase blurted, “You’re naming your baby Tinkerbell?” and it took Foreman, House, Cameron, and an orderly who’d been randomly walking by to keep Wilson from decapitating Chase.
When things settled Chase had been banished to the labs, Foreman was off recruiting more of the un-reversed for sleep tests, and Cameron and House were with Wilson in his office.
Ignoring House as he poked around through the desk, Cameron sat on the couch beside Wilson, gently rubbing his shoulders and helping him slowly to relax.
“It’ll be all right,” she said for the tenth time, in a tender, honey-filled tone. “We’ll keep your babies safe.”
He leaned back into her grip, but addressed House. “You really think this ‘intensity of desire’ theory is true?”
House had found the desk toy he’d been looking for and was twiddling with it to set it up. He nodded. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, especially coming from me, but it fits the evidence better than anything else we’ve got.”
Sighing, Wilson closed his eyes. Allison’s hands tightened nicely on his shoulders; House was humming a nameless tune.
Intensity of desire.
That he could do.
***
Wilson was disappointed when Cameron reverted, but not exactly surprised. She’d held on longer than he’d anticipated, given all the things she’d missed about being a woman.
And then Tutuine reverted, and Chang, and Ramirez, and… And.
At twenty-five weeks, there were three of them left.
Cuddy.
House.
Him.
He kept working, even though his back ached and his ankles were swollen, because it was the best thing for keeping his mind off his worries. He diagnosed, prescribed, comforted the dying, counseled med students, and did heaps and heaps of paperwork. His, and some of Cuddy’s, and some of House’s, even.
House and Chavez started bugging him to get a C-section, but he refused. It was too soon; the risk of substantial life-long problems or even mortality was too high. He could hang on; he knew he could.
Cuddy reverted on a Thursday - twenty-eight weeks and four days - and came to see him first thing. He didn’t cry, but it was close.
An hour or so later, House found Wilson huddled in his bed, eyes intent on the ceiling.
“Thirty-two,” Wilson was chanting. “Thirty-two.”
House snagged a chair, pulled it close, and plopped down. “Right. You haven’t seen thirty-two in years.”
“Thirty-two weeks. That’s how far I’m going to make it,” Wilson insisted. He was rocking slightly, just enough to be unnerving for House.
“We don’t know -”
“Thirty-two weeks. Three and a half pounds. Well developed. Usually making enough surfactant for good lung function. Far lower risk of long-term complications. I can do it. I can do it.” The rocking grew stronger.
“Wilson.”
“I can do it. Just -” Wilson turned to him, dry-eyed but desperate. “Do it with me, OK? You don’t have to do anything after; I won’t ask you to change diapers or babysit or anything. Just please. You have the strongest will of anyone I’ve ever known, and just do it with me, OK? You love being a lesbian. Don’t forget that. And I’ll, you know, make it worth your while.” He stretched out a hand to House’s face and stroked it sloppily. “Please.”
“Yeah,” House said, pulling Wilson’s hand away and holding it between both of his. “Yeah, I’ll do what I can.”
***
“You look like a whale,” House said late one Sunday evening in Wilson’s room.
“Shut up.” Wilson was on his tenth hour of TLC’s all-day A Baby Story marathon, but he was as glued to the TV screen as he’d been in the first.
“Except when you walk.” House bounced his cane on the floor and wished again that he’d thought to bring his PSP from his office. “Then you look like a duck.”
Wilson aimed a pillow at his head, but it went substantially wide. “Get me another Snickers bar and then go home,” Wilson ordered.
House thought about mentioning that it’d be Wilson’s third full-sized candy bar in an hour, but hearing a bedspring groan as Wilson moved, he thought better of it.
When House didn’t show up the next day by two, and refused to answer his phone, Wilson knew something was up. He wasn’t quite sure what - pain or pills or a new copy of Buns - but he was nervous enough to spend an hour pacing the lobby. This is stupid, he thought, I should get in my car and go over there, but he’d grown a case of agoraphobia along with the babies, and every time he envisioned stepping out of the hospital, his mind blanked.
So he paced.
Cuddy had professed ignorance, but on Wilson’s seven thousandth trip around the reception desk (approximately), she finally caved. “I talked to him,” she said, and Wilson stopped.
“He’s fine,” she reassured. “He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“What -” Wilson began, but Cuddy was paged to an emergency in the Pediatrics ward.
He could only blame baby-brain when it took him almost the full ten minutes to realize what had happened.
Hands on his rather wide hips, he was itching to begin his tirade, but House beat him to the punch. “This is your fault,” House insisted as he hauled his six-two frame through the door. Wilson wasn’t used to tilting his head back so far to look House in the eye, but he managed it.
“My fault? My fault?”
“Your fault.” House tugged him toward the elevators. “Just before I fell asleep last night, I was thinking about how’d I never fucked a woman in her third trimester, and how hot you’d look naked on all fours, how slick and wet you’d be as I was thrusting into you…” Wilson found himself blushing, his anger turning into a fire of a different kind.
“And then I woke up like this,” House concluded. He pulled Wilson into the open elevator, pressing him into the wall as the door closed. “So it’s your fault.”
“House,” Wilson began before being cut off by a kiss that was far more gentle than anticipated.
“I’m sorry,” House whispered as he curved around Wilson’s body.
Maybe it was the hormones, but somehow that admission was enough. “It’s OK,” Wilson said, kissing House’s temple. “I can do it by myself.”
“Of course you can.” The elevator dinged, and House straightened up. “But now you’re going to do it with me.”
“What?”
“Do it. C’mon, no matter the circumstances now, you were a twelve-year-old boy at one point.”
Wilson got it now, but that didn’t mean House was going to get it. He planted his feet on the linoleum and his hands on his hips, and waited for House to realize he wasn’t following.
It took eight steps.
“Wilson!” House yelled from down the hall. “I gave up lesbian sex with Cuddy for this, so let’s go.”
Smirking, Wilson gave in.
***
Thirty-two. Thirty-two was now the meaning to Wilson’s life. Chavez had been talking stats and encouraging a C-section since before twenty-eight weeks, but Wilson was holding out for thirty-two.
He wasn’t going to push his luck any further than that, but… Thirty-two. He could do it.
At seven p.m. on day six of week thirty-one, twelve hours before the planned C-section, Wilson felt something he’d never felt before. Of course, he’d spent most of the past thirty or so weeks feeling things he’d never felt before, but this was different.
Kind of crampy.
Slightly painful.
Like something a pregnant person might need to breathe through.
He paged Chavez and Cuddy on his way to House’s office. House was packing up to go, and Wilson practically screamed at him in delight.
“I told you I’d make it! They’re coming, on their own; they know it’s time.” He couldn’t keep his hands off his belly, feeling them there, A down lower and B up high.
House’s eyes grew serious, and he clutched at Wilson’s arm to lead him from the room. “Drugs. We’re putting you on drugs, now.”
“Pitocin? But the contractions are -”
“Not pitocin. No way.” House steered them around a cluster of gabbing nurses and toward the back elevators.
“But -”
“You’ve seen childbirth, right? Without drugs it’ll hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt. And believe me, I have personal experience with this: at first you’ll hate the pain. That’ll be the target.” They stepped into the elevator, House’s hand tightening around Wilson’s bicep. “But eventually you’ll grow to hate more than that. You’ll hate your body for bringing you the pain.”
Wilson stilled and swallowed hard. Another contraction was rippling through him, more of a pressure feeling than anything else, but he suddenly imagined it turned up to eleven.
“And we are not going to mess with you hating your body,” House concluded.
Wilson nodded and stayed close to House’s side until the IV was hooked up. He didn’t relax fully, though, until the epidural needle slid into his spine.
Five hours and six centimeters later, House looked up drowsily from the chair by Wilson’s bed. “Where’s Cameron? Shouldn’t she be doing this Lamaze crap with you?”
“You’re not doing the Lamaze crap with me,” Wilson pointed out. “And Cameron decided shortly after she reverted that she’s not quite ready for parenthood and broke off our engagement. Thanks for noticing. She is going to pay child support, though, so I’m expecting you to fork over a big raise.”
“I thought you said I wouldn’t have to do anything after the rugrats are born.”
“Nothing for them. I’m still going to ask for things for me.”
House groaned and tugged the baseball cap he’d retrieved from his office down over his eyes. “Good luck with that.”
An odd, primitive sound mid-way between a growl and a scream jolted House out of sleep. In a blur, he saw a blue drape, three nurses, Chavez’s shoulders, and Wilson curled into a ball. Struggling out of his chair, he declared to the room at large, “Drugs are wearing off,” and blamed any tinge of panic on the remnants of a strange dream.
Another nurse bustled into the room and shoved him gently back into the chair. “She’s pushing, dear; she’s fine. Women have been doing this for millennia. Let us help her, and you’ll be holding your babies in no time.”
House stared at her incredulously. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“On loan from Mercer General,” she began before being drowned out by a high-pitched wail.
Wilson fell back, panting, as Chavez declared, “It’s a boy!”
“Are you sure?” House asked, following the baby as it was carted out of the room to the NICU. He didn’t even bother to hit the scab nurse when she laughed at him.
He made it back to the delivery room in time to see Wilson’s second baby being carried away. “A girl,” the nurse told him with a smile.
“Almost four pounds each,” Chavez was saying as she poked around in Wilson’s nether region. “Big for thirty-two weeks, and the one-minute Apgar was seven for both. Remarkable. You’ll be taking them home before you know it.”
Wilson was sweaty, exhausted, red-eyed, rumpled and wrinkled. He’d never looked better, and House suspected there might be a grin on his own face. He ducked his head to hide it.
“You did have a small tear,” Chavez was continuing, over a quiet whimper from Wilson, “so I’ll stitch - Or not.”
House jerked up to see an awkward, stubbled Wilson trying to pull his suddenly-too-small hospital gown tighter around him.
“I guess you didn’t want to breastfeed, then,” House noted.
“Not enough, apparently.”
One of the nurses hustled forward with a blanket, which Wilson accepted gratefully and tucked around himself. Chavez muttered something about going to get a urologist and left the room.
“Damn,” Wilson sighed. “I’m wiped out. No wonder they put women on disability leave after childbirth.” He gestured House over with a nod. “Come unlock the bed and wheel me to go see my kids.”
After a struggle with the bed and a co-opting of two beefy orderlies, they were strolling down the hall toward the NICU. House was strolling; Wilson was rolling, but otherwise it seemed almost like old times.
“You know they’re identical twins,” Wilson noted.
“Of different sexes?”
Wilson smiled: a smitten, sappy smile that House could already tell was going to get old. “Only ones in the world,” Wilson cooed.
“Did you pick names yet? I vote for Ru-Paul and Hedwig.”
“They’re Robin and Chris,” Wilson said, as they arrived at the big plate window outside the NICU. The orderlies angled the bed so Wilson had as close a view as possible of the incubator holding Wilson A and Wilson B.
House leaned over Wilson to check them out. Squally scrawny things. “Which is which?”
Wilson just smiled and ran a thumb over the images through the glass.