PATIENT - Chapter 1-b
Title: Patient
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: House, Wilson, Cuddy, plus the characters created for Priority’s Exigencies and zeppomarx’s A Gentle Knock at the Door.
Summary: House’s minions find a new patient, one who is reluctant to allow House to treat him. Begins three months after the opening scene of A Gentle Knock at the Door. Part of the Contract universe, which includes DIY Sheep’s intense and angsty The Contract, and Priority’s sequel Exigencies.
Thanks: To priority and houserocket7 for encouraging me to writing this side story to A Gentle Knock on the Door, and for their faithful diligence in copy editing my sloppy prose.
Disclaimers: You know the drill. Don’t own `em, never did, never will. Wish I did.
Warnings, etc.: Generally safe, but references to torture, rape and major character death that has happened in the past. Some chapters are pretty angsty.
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Chapter 1: Clinic Duty
Setting: Three months after the beginning of A Gentle Knock at the Door. It’s late summer.
(Second part of Chapter 1 picks up here, because LJ rejected the length. Urgh.)
Sixty-three minutes and three patients (all with summer colds) later, the man forgotten, she returned to the conference room. Her colleagues, Eric Foreman and Robert Chase, were already ensconced at the table, files spread out in front of them.
She looked around. The office next door sat dark and empty.
“Is he…?” she asked hesitantly as she fixed herself a cup of tea. Perhaps he wasn’t well enough to come in after all. Usually, she drank Darjeeling, but today chamomile seemed more soothing.
Chase nodded.
“He’s here. In with Cuddy. Probably filling out paperwork after being out so long.” Then, after pausing: “I’m sure he won’t be feeling any better once he gets done with that.”
Chase tended to keep his feelings to himself, especially when it came to House and what had happened, but occasionally, like now, Devi sensed an undercurrent. Maybe sadness, maybe wistfulness. Was he remembering how things used to be? Thinking, perhaps, of Cameron-her murdered predecessor?
“How does he seem… is he okay?” she asked.
His mood suddenly changing, Chase shook his head angrily before spitting out a few words.
“Of course he’s not okay. He’ll never be okay. But he’s here.” His brows were furrowed, his head jerked away, and he stared out the window.
Abruptly, Foreman spoke up, always eager to change the subject from the state of House’s health and emotional stability.
“Anything interesting in the clinic today?” he asked.
Ah. The man with the diarrhea.
“Actually, yes. Something a little bit odd.”
Chase looked up eagerly. He’d hoped that they’d land a good case the day House came back. Anything to avoid having to acknowledge the reality of their boss’s condition. But the case files in front of him revealed nothing of interest.
“What?”
“Got a guy who’s had diarrhea and cramping for at least a month. Probably more. He said he thought it was food poisoning, but of course it wasn’t. I tried to admit him, but he kind of freaked out, and left before I had a chance to get very far.”
“Freaked out?” asked Foreman, looking at her for the first time since she entered the room.
“Really?” said Chase at nearly the same instant. “Too bad. I was hoping we’d have something-something to keep us all occupied today.”
Devi glanced at him, just as he looked away again. Yes. Leave it to Chase to verbalize what we are all thinking: Anything to keep our minds occupied.
“Afraid not. He left the clinic. In quite a rush, I might add.”
“Oh, well,” said Chase, disappointed. Then, after thinking for a moment, he looked intently at Devi, picking up on Foreman’s question. “What was so odd?”
“Well, it was only when he realized he’d have to deal with our department that he got weird and left.”
This got Foreman’s attention, if only for a moment. Then he shrugged.
“Probably someone who saw House in the clinic back … well, you know, before. Or heard about him from the tabloids and didn’t want to see someone that messed up … not that House will ever go face-to-face with a patient again. But this guy probably didn’t realize that.”
Devi nodded. Just as she’d suspected.
“Too bad. He ought to get checked out. Maybe he’ll go somewhere else. Hope so.”
Foreman turned away from the table, uninterested. Of the three of them, he was the most reluctant to hear, or deal with, the reality of House’s situation, and he tended to avoid all conversations about House’s health and well-being… or, for that matter, anything even vaguely connected to his boss.
By the end of the day, the patient was long forgotten. House, moving slowly and hesitantly, had lasted barely till one before Wilson had insisted on taking him home. With nothing else to do, Foreman, Chase and Devi offered to help out in other departments-one of the advantages to the hospital of having three talented doctors who occasionally went days without much to do.
As soon as House left, Foreman practically ran out the door, leaving Diagnostics in his wake as he headed off to Neurology. Once there, though, he couldn’t concentrate. His left foot beat a pattern on the floor, and his hands twitched, fingers drumming on any nearby surface. Not being an introspective man, he couldn’t figure out why he was so agitated. He attributed it to too much coffee.
What it really came down to, what Foreman couldn’t face, was that he had hugely mixed feelings about House. Although he now knew House had used that massively annoying façade to protect himself-as well as Wilson, Cuddy, Chase, Cameron, his own parents… and Foreman-from the horror that had overwhelmed his life, Foreman could barely remember the moments when House’s brilliance has amazed him.
When the troubles began, the two had been at odds. Foreman had quite literally hated his boss, detested working for him, and had no patience for him or his methods. He wondered why once he’d seen his fellowship with House as a prize. All he could see were the games, the manipulations, the sharp meanness and emotional distance of the last few months before House was arrested for Cameron’s murder.
As soon as he could line up something better, Foreman had intended to quit. But every time he got a job interview, his prospective employers had been interested in talking to him only because he worked with the great Gregory House, not because of his own achievements, which they didn’t seem to find all that appealing. As it became obvious that each interviewer was much more concerned with finding out what he’d learned from House than in what he himself could contribute, the tide would turn. At some point during each interview, he would be unable to keep his resentment of House below a simmer. As soon as the interviewers picked up on his negative feelings, he would be ushered out the door.
Of course, after House was imprisoned, notoriety by association kicked in, and Foreman was a pariah in the medical field-unable to get a job even as an orderly. He was lucky that Cuddy had been willing to keep him on staff at PPTH, although he never really saw it that way, blaming his inability to move away on House himself, rather than on the terrible circumstances and his own resentment of how it all affected him personally.
His mind was full of conflict. Even though Foreman firmly believed House couldn’t have killed Allison Cameron-no matter how much his personality had changed before the murder, he knew in his gut that House wasn’t a killer-Foreman still didn’t actually like his former boss. It was as if his mind had two cupboards-one for House the victim, the non-murderer who had been imprisoned unjustly, and one for House the unadulterated, arrogant ass. And he was able to keep the door to the non-murderer cupboard successfully locked most of the time as he focused on the arrogant ass cupboard.
Then, the man came back a hero. And Foreman had to add another cupboard, a really large one for the man who had permitted violent maniacs to torture him nearly to death because it was the only way to secure the safety of those he cared about… including Eric Foreman. It was impossible for Foreman to reconcile the three versions of House that were rumbling around in his brain. And he especially couldn’t accept that the arrogant ass had been willing to endure nonstop anguish to ensure that he, Foreman, would remain alive. In short, he had an extreme case of cognitive dissonance.
Fractured and quivering, a good three inches shorter than he’d been, thanks to repeated bone breaks during his tortured imprisonment, House was almost unrecognizable as the towering bastard Foreman had hated so much. Although he and Chase were no longer fellows in the department, House was still their supervisor and still had the uncanny ability to find the answers no one else could, a fact that bothered Foreman almost more than anything else. Since House had come back, the two had locked horns a few times, and Foreman found that underneath the jitteriness and frailty, House’s massive intellect remain intact, as had his stubbornness.
It was painful and desperately uncomfortable to have House in the room next door, and Foreman secretly wished the man had never returned to work. It was much easier on the days when House was too ill to venture in, or on Tuesdays and Thursdays, his days off.
A few weeks after House’s initial return to work, the part of Foreman’s brain containing mixed feelings tipped over and crashed. It became harder and harder to pretend that House’s sacrifice didn’t affect him. During slow moments-and there were plenty of those-his imagination kept drifting, imagining House in prison, House being tortured, House screaming in pain, suffering the catastrophic injuries that garnished his face and hands… the injuries that confronted Foreman constantly not only every time he looked at the man but also in his dreams.
Why do I feel so guilty? Foreman wondered. I told people I knew he hadn’t killed Cameron.
But House is still an ass, and I still don’t like him
These thoughts began to duke it out with others.
He went through that agony to save your life, said a little part of him, a part that got louder and louder until it was screaming inside him. You owe him. And if he was willing to go through all that for you, then perhaps he’s not the man you think he is… perhaps you’re wrong about him... perhaps you’re wrong about a lot of things.
You’re wrong.
You’re wrong.
You’re wrong.
Finally, late in the afternoon, Foreman felt a pain in his chest. Indigestion, he thought at first, but then the pain grew and grew. Heart attack? But when it radiated throughout his chest, left and right side, he knew it wasn’t a heart attack. The pain continued to spread as his conflicting points of view about House argued in his head. And then, suddenly and dramatically, he began to quiver. Furious with himself, he struggled to shove all the unpleasant feelings back into their proper compartments. But they just refused to go back where they belonged. After a couple of hours of uncontrolled shaking, he left work and headed home.
Chapter 2A...