PATIENT - Chapter 13: Aftershocks
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.
Warnings, etc.: Generally safe, but references to torture, rape and major character death that has happened in the past. Some chapters are pretty angsty.
Disclaimers: You know the drill. Don’t own `em, never did, never will. Wish I did.
This Chapter: Wilson was staggered. House had never shared this information with him… or anyone else, to Wilson’s knowledge. Almost like finding the crucial piece of a jigsaw puzzle, everything suddenly began snapping into place.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 12
Chapter 11
Chapter 10
Chapter 9
Chapter 8
Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
_____________________________________________
Chapter 13: Aftershocks
Not surprisingly, nightmares plagued House’s sleep, torturing him with memories and dread. The dreams were hallucinatory and dark, misty and fearsome, not like his usual imaginations, so real that he’d wake up believing himself back in prison. No, these were vaguely unsettling tempests of the soul, taunting him, teasing him down dark corridors and abandoning him abruptly, friendless and soulless, with no hope and no future.
Wilson had set himself up in the recliner next to House’s bed, expecting to be awakened in the night by screaming. Instead, he slept through the worst of House’s dreams, which were punctuated only by the occasional whimper or soft cry. When Wilson woke up, he saw that House had slid down off the soft pillows into the middle of mattress, twisting himself up in the bedclothes, the comforter and sheets wrapped tight around his body. The whole bed seemed to be trembling.
“Hey, House,” whispered Wilson. The comforter shifted slightly. Wilson tried again. “Want some breakfast?” The bedclothes rocked back and forth, suggesting that no, he didn’t want breakfast. “Coffee?” This time, graying hair poked out through the top of the covers, and the head attached to it seemed to be nodding.
“Great,” said Wilson, dropping the leg rest of the recliner and scooting forward into a standing position. “I’ll go get it started. Maybe by the time you’re up, you’ll feel like having breakfast.” Carefully, he walked around the bed and bent over the tousled covers, laying his hand where he assumed House’s shoulder was. As always, there was a moment of tension before House relaxed under his hand. “I’ll go check on Rainie, okay? You just stay here as long as you want to.” The grey head bobbed again. As he crossed the room, Wilson heard a muffled whining sigh behind him as House fell back asleep.
After Wilson slipped on a plush bathrobe and a pair of warm slippers, he headed down the hall toward the living room. Passing Rainie’s room, next to House’s, he saw no one inside; she must already be awake. Sure enough, he found her in the living room, TV remote in hand, watching an old movie with the sound down low.
“Morning,” he said quietly.
Barely looking up at him, she replied, “There’s Danish on the counter. Linda picked it up yesterday morning… before all the brouhaha.”
He eased onto the couch next to her. “And how are you doing? I was concerned…” He let the thought drift off.
Shrugging slightly, she continued to stare at the television. “Okay, I guess.”
Not sure how far to push it, he said, “So that’s good…?”
Turning her head slightly toward him, she nodded. “I didn’t freak out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He waited a moment to see if she would volunteer anything else. She didn’t.
“About what you mentioned… umm… on the phone…”
She looked away, almost as if she were somehow ashamed of the research she and Evan had been doing. “I couldn’t simply do nothing,” she said, cryptically.
“Uh-huh… And what made you figure out that, well, Tritter might have been… I don’t know… up to something?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Journalist’s instincts, I guess. I’ve always been…” Pausing uncomfortably, she changed tenses. “I always… was… pretty good at figuring out people’s motivations. Somehow, I just knew in my gut that Greg hadn’t allowed that whole mess to escalate without a reason.”
Wilson felt himself flush, thinking back on how easily he had assumed that House’s drug addiction and difficult personality had been wholly responsible for the Tritter mess, never once giving his friend credit for his insistence that Tritter was harassing him.
“What… umm… what made you think so? I mean, what exactly tipped you off?” he asked, still tentative.
Now he had Rainie’s complete attention. She hit the mute button and reluctantly put down the remote, turning toward him and making brief eye contact for the first time.
“I guess I’m a little surprised Greg never told you this… or… then again… maybe I’m not.”
Wilson looked stricken.
“Told me what exactly?”
Rainie looked away, as if pondering whether or not to continue. She glanced over her shoulder toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms, then lowered her voice. “When Tritter came into the clinic that day, almost the first thing he did was harass Greg. When Greg refused to perform a useless test, the asshole tripped him-knocked his cane out from under him-it… it humiliated Greg.”
Wilson was staggered. House had never shared this information with him… or anyone else, to Wilson’s knowledge. Almost like finding the crucial piece of a jigsaw puzzle, everything suddenly began snapping into place. It took him a moment to realize that Rainie had continued talking while his mind had absented itself.
“…so when the ketamine treatment began to fail, and you refused to prescribe pain medication…”
“Wait a second,” Wilson interrupted. “What did you just say?” Wilson felt his face flush again. How did she know all this?
“Don’t tell me you never put it together, James,” she said softly. “Surely you realized that it was all interconnected.”
“Did House tell you this?” Not for the first time, Wilson found himself feeling vaguely jealous of the close relationship House had developed with his damaged patient. In his own ears, his question sounded petulant and accusatory.
Cocking her head, Rainie looked at him curiously. “No… not all of it. Some of it was just good old-fashioned legwork. Back when… before… when I was researching Greg for The Times, I did my homework.”
“How could you figure this out? How could you know about the ketamine? About the pain meds? And how is that related to Tritter?”
Rainie smiled sadly, not wanting to hurt the man who had been such a good friend to House, and to her. “It is-was-my job to learn the things people try to keep secret, and I was very good at my job, James,” she said, reaching her hand out to lay it gently on his forearm. “There were plenty of people who had pieces to the puzzle. I just put them together. You were probably too close to see it, that’s all. Greg was really depressed, and afraid, when the ketamine wore off. When you wouldn’t-or couldn’t-see that the pain was coming back, he forged those prescriptions. Out of fear, sheer terror that he would have to go through the returning pain with no medical relief. And psychologically, it was probably as bad-maybe even worse-for him than when his leg was injured initially. He’d had such high hopes-briefly tasting the life he might have lived-and now they were dashed. It had to have been very hard for him.”
Maybe even worse, she said. How could it have been worse than the days/weeks/months/years after House’s original leg injury? Then, Wilson had been there for his friend, patient in the face of his anger, comforting when the pain shrieked through him, supportive when his emotions were shredded. But when the ketamine wore off, Wilson hadn’t given House’s state of mind much thought, shrugging the whole thing off as a minor disappointment, willfully ignoring the signs that the pain was rushing back in to create terror and misery in its wake. Wilson swallowed and looked down toward his lap, tears stinging his eyes. He bit his lip sharply, and tried to hold in his feelings.
“Are you saying the Tritter business was… all my fault?” His voice had dropped so that it was barely audible.
Rainie paused, struggling to find a way to express herself without making Wilson feel any worse than he already did.
“No… maybe… not really. I guess what I’m saying is that you were used to him being manipulative, playing you. You were afraid he just wanted the drugs to get high. Maybe it was easier than having to admit that your friend-your dear, dear friend-was heading back into a life of excruciating pain. Yes?”
She waited until he was willing to meet her eye. His nod was so slight she might have missed it if she hadn’t already been looking for it.
“I-I guess so,” he finally admitted.
“And then, along came Tritter. He wasn’t the first clinic patient Greg had pissed off. So it was logical to think Greg was… What’s that phrase you and Lisa use? Just House being House?” She looked him directly in the eye again, and he saw what might be sympathy, or perhaps pity, cross her face before she looked down, frowning. She fidgeted a moment before saying, cautiously, “I… I don’t know quite how to say this, James… but… well, that’s kind of… patronizing, don’t you think? Shaking your head and rolling your eyes and summing up a person in that sort of… reproachful way. Anyway, that’s how I see it. I’d be… well, I’d be pretty pissed if someone I cared about referred to anything I did as ‘Rainie being Rainie,’ as if I were so simple that one non-descriptive phrase could explain everything about me.” She gave him an apologetic smile, as if telling him that he had been condescending to his best friend was actually painful to her.
There was a long pause while Wilson tore his gaze away from her, processing. He stared at the floor. This was ridiculous. Why was his heart pounding? He felt as if he couldn’t swallow, could barely breathe. Finally, everything settled down again, and he realized that he was feeling… what was it?... ashamed of himself. His glance brushed hers, and again he nodded. “You’re right,” he whispered. “It never dawned on me, but yes… you’re right.”
After a moment, she took a breath and picked up where she left off: “Back to ‘House being House,’” she said. “Where was I? Oh, yes… the whole thing with the ketamine and then Tritter. You figured it was just Greg being affected by the drugs, wanting to get high. It was him being irascible, incorrigible, misanthropic… miserable. Never considering that maybe he was mercilessly afraid, that he reluctantly needed the drugs to combat the return of unbearable pain, or that he’d stood up to a bully who had mortified him, attacking him at his weakest point.”
She tightened her grip on his arm, her mangled fingers struggling to grasp him. “He’s a lot more sensitive than you gave him credit for,” she said softly. “I don’t know why he’s willing to show that side to me more than he does to you. Maybe because we’ve shared something… something horrific. Maybe because Jacey Liu is like a bulldog, won’t let him get away with crap, and I just happen to be there when she pries things out of him. I don’t know. Maybe he tried to let down his guard with you, and you… maybe… said the wrong thing at the wrong time and he shut back down. But I’m sure… really sure, James… that he would have told you how he felt if he hadn’t had a lifetime of protecting those tender feelings.”
Wilson could hear his own heartbeat again as he fought off tears. All he’d wanted-all he’d ever wanted-was for House to open up, to deal with his pain, both physical and emotional-and it hurt him deeply to realize that perhaps his own responses to his friend might actually have caused the opposite to happen, that his own reactions to House might have made him retreat even further into his shell. That by not acknowledging the reality of House’s sensitive side, by preaching and badgering and underestimating him, House might have become defensive, unwilling to admit that he’d had a good reason for reacting toward Tritter the way he had, even if that reaction was overblown.
“Oh, God!” he murmured.
Rainie smiled. “Hey-hey,” she said, forcing him to look up again. “Don’t get me wrong. Greg can be difficult and evasive. Even more so back then. He didn’t make it easy for you. It wasn’t just that you didn’t see it. It’s also that he hid it from you.”
After a moment, Wilson’s mind refocused and he felt a little better and remembered the point to this unexpectedly uncomfortable conversation. “But how did all of that tip you off that Tritter might pull something? Why did you and Evan do this research?”
Rainie smiled, and Wilson could see fierce intelligence in her eyes.
“Because, James dear, once a bully, always a bully. Evan and I have interviewed more than two dozen people now who ran afoul of Tritter, sometimes through incredibly minor interactions. He always turned on them, always sought retaliation, always used the power of his badge to get even. It’s human nature for people to assume everyone else is just like them. Because Tritter abused his power to get even with people, it would be natural for him to assume that Greg would, too-that he’d take advantage of Tritter’s weakened state. If Tritter even slightly suspected that Greg wanted some kind of revenge against him for the incident eight years ago, he was going to make a preemptive strike.”
Wilson nodded, suddenly seeing the big picture that Rainie had painted. “Which is what he did.”
“Of course. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that Greg isn’t like that. And more to the point, Greg doesn’t even care about Tritter. Tritter can’t begin to grasp that for Greg, Michael Tritter isn’t the center of the universe. He’s insignificant, except as a way to keep Greg’s mind occupied.” She struggled to sit up straighter against the cushions of the sofa, and abruptly changed the subject. “So… Danish? Coffee?”
Rainie Adler had a stunning way of getting right to the heart of things. An emotionally numb Wilson stood up and stumbled toward the kitchen. As an afterthought, he turned back toward Rainie, who had un-muted the television. “But this research… these interviews. You never told me exactly: Why did you do it?”
Rainie looked over at him and smiled grimly. “I just like to be prepared,” she said in a casual manner that he had come to learn was anything but casual. “I was taken off-guard once in my life, and it cost me…” She paused, and Wilson heard what sounded like a small hiccup. “…I-it cost me… everything. If I can help it, I’m never letting that happen again.”
* * * *
House slept through the morning. When he finally got out of bed, the Danish was all gone, except for one half-eaten prune pastry, and there was only about a cup’s worth left in the coffee pot. Grumbling, with the Danish gripped between his teeth and a coffee cup balanced on the armrest of his wheelchair, he made his way to the living room, where he settled himself next to Rainie, who had dozed off with the remote in her hand.
Before long, Wilson had brewed a new pot of coffee, baked some cinnamon buns and was fixing him scrambled eggs, with hash browns and bacon on the side.
* * * *
Back at the hospital, Michael Tritter woke up feeling especially pleased with himself. He pictured House in jail, where he belonged… where he’d always belonged. As Devi slipped into his room, he eyed her expectantly, gleefully looking for telltale signs in her demeanor that she was as pleased as he was that her boss had been arrested. After a confusing moment, he realized there were none.
Trying to be the consummate professional, Devi scanned his chart, glancing only momentarily at her patient. She pursed her lips and her brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry to say, Mr. Tritter, that we still don’t know what’s making you so ill. But we are narrowing the field, and hope to have an answer shortly. As soon as Dr. House comes in, we will review your case in detail and, with any luck, we will find the answer.”
She hooked the chart back on the end of his bed, and turned to leave the room.
He sat up, and called after her, demanding her attention.
“Dr. Rajghatta! Come here!”
Halfway out the door, Devi paused. She was so angry with Tritter at this point, she had hoped to avoid talking to him at all, afraid that her ire would spill over the edge and she would do in life what she had done in her dream-tell him exactly what she thought. But she felt obliged to keep attempting to treat him as she would any other patient, if only because it seemed to matter so much to House. Taking a deep breath and holding it a moment before exhaling, she turned slightly, refusing to make eye contact. “What is it, Mr. Tritter?”
“Get back in here,” he demanded. “I want to look you in the eye when I’m talking to you!”
He saw her shoulders tense up, and then forcibly relax as she turned a little more in his direction, still not making eye contact.
“I’d rather not,” she said. “I’ve told you everything you need to know right now, and I don’t have time for this… this whatever it is-power trip, or something.”
Tritter found himself incensed. He began screaming. “Goddammit! I’m your patient. Get your ass over here!”
Devi closed her eyes a moment, and dug her fingernails into her palm to keep from yelling back. She waited a long moment before responding.
“No, Mr. Tritter. I won’t ‘get my ass’ over there. Your illness is making you upset, and it won’t do either of us any good to exchange angry words. You need to calm down, and allow me to do my job… which is to find out what’s making you sick.”
At that, she walked out into the hallway and slid the door closed behind her. Once she was out of sight of the room, she leaned against a wall, trembling with anger.
Inside the room, Tritter did more than tremble; he grabbed the pink plastic water pitcher on his bedside table and flung it ferociously across the room, where smacked into the glass wall, the lid popping off and water spattering everywhere.
Punching the buzzer on his bed rail, he was determined to make someone pay attention to him. When the door slid open and a nurse entered, he glowered at her.
“What is it, Mr. Tritter? Is everything all right?” After adjusting his IV, she headed back toward the door, looking at him over her shoulder.
“No, it’s not all right!” he yelled. “That doctor just walked out on me! Get her back here!”
The nurse, who had been front and center when House returned to the hospital yesterday, just stared at him. He couldn’t figure out why, but she seemed angry.
“I don’t think you want that, Mr. Tritter. I think you want to calm down and let the doctors do their job.”
Beyond frustrated, Tritter grabbed the closest thing to him, a cup of water, and flung it at her. She ducked as the water splashed a few feet from her face, and continued on toward the door.
“Get back in here!”
She turned to face him. “No, Mr. Tritter, I won’t. If you feel you aren’t getting the kind of treatment you want, then perhaps you need to find another doctor to treat you at a different hospital. However, I think you and I both know that Dr. House is the only one who can actually help you. So trying to interfere with him is only going to harm you in the long run.”
Tritter, now red in the face with anger and completely out of control, tried to sit up, fully intending to do as she suggested. But dizziness overtook him and he abruptly dropped his head back against the pillows as the room spun around him.
The nurse, who called out into the hall for an orderly to clean up the floor, left the room in relief, glad that she hadn’t said more. When she got back to the nurse’s station, she picked up a notepad and recorded her conversation with the patient, as instructed by Dr. Chase.
Behind her, Tritter-frustrated and defeated-closed his eyes. For just a moment, he was able to set aside his paranoia and vengeance to think rationally. Yes, he needed help. He was sick. That’s it. He was sick. Hating to admit it, even to himself, Tritter grasped the truth that House was the only one who could help. That’s what everyone kept telling him. But House… House was in jail, thanks to him. There would be no help as long as that bastard was locked up. What had he done?
Trying to shake off these unwanted thoughts, Tritter felt himself falling asleep again, unable to fight off the medication that dripped constantly into his system.
Chapter 14...
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.
Warnings, etc.: Generally safe, but references to torture, rape and major character death that has happened in the past. Some chapters are pretty angsty.
Disclaimers: You know the drill. Don’t own `em, never did, never will. Wish I did.
This Chapter: Wilson was staggered. House had never shared this information with him… or anyone else, to Wilson’s knowledge. Almost like finding the crucial piece of a jigsaw puzzle, everything suddenly began snapping into place.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 12
Chapter 11
Chapter 10
Chapter 9
Chapter 8
Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
_____________________________________________
Chapter 13: Aftershocks
Not surprisingly, nightmares plagued House’s sleep, torturing him with memories and dread. The dreams were hallucinatory and dark, misty and fearsome, not like his usual imaginations, so real that he’d wake up believing himself back in prison. No, these were vaguely unsettling tempests of the soul, taunting him, teasing him down dark corridors and abandoning him abruptly, friendless and soulless, with no hope and no future.
Wilson had set himself up in the recliner next to House’s bed, expecting to be awakened in the night by screaming. Instead, he slept through the worst of House’s dreams, which were punctuated only by the occasional whimper or soft cry. When Wilson woke up, he saw that House had slid down off the soft pillows into the middle of mattress, twisting himself up in the bedclothes, the comforter and sheets wrapped tight around his body. The whole bed seemed to be trembling.
“Hey, House,” whispered Wilson. The comforter shifted slightly. Wilson tried again. “Want some breakfast?” The bedclothes rocked back and forth, suggesting that no, he didn’t want breakfast. “Coffee?” This time, graying hair poked out through the top of the covers, and the head attached to it seemed to be nodding.
“Great,” said Wilson, dropping the leg rest of the recliner and scooting forward into a standing position. “I’ll go get it started. Maybe by the time you’re up, you’ll feel like having breakfast.” Carefully, he walked around the bed and bent over the tousled covers, laying his hand where he assumed House’s shoulder was. As always, there was a moment of tension before House relaxed under his hand. “I’ll go check on Rainie, okay? You just stay here as long as you want to.” The grey head bobbed again. As he crossed the room, Wilson heard a muffled whining sigh behind him as House fell back asleep.
After Wilson slipped on a plush bathrobe and a pair of warm slippers, he headed down the hall toward the living room. Passing Rainie’s room, next to House’s, he saw no one inside; she must already be awake. Sure enough, he found her in the living room, TV remote in hand, watching an old movie with the sound down low.
“Morning,” he said quietly.
Barely looking up at him, she replied, “There’s Danish on the counter. Linda picked it up yesterday morning… before all the brouhaha.”
He eased onto the couch next to her. “And how are you doing? I was concerned…” He let the thought drift off.
Shrugging slightly, she continued to stare at the television. “Okay, I guess.”
Not sure how far to push it, he said, “So that’s good…?”
Turning her head slightly toward him, she nodded. “I didn’t freak out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He waited a moment to see if she would volunteer anything else. She didn’t.
“About what you mentioned… umm… on the phone…”
She looked away, almost as if she were somehow ashamed of the research she and Evan had been doing. “I couldn’t simply do nothing,” she said, cryptically.
“Uh-huh… And what made you figure out that, well, Tritter might have been… I don’t know… up to something?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Journalist’s instincts, I guess. I’ve always been…” Pausing uncomfortably, she changed tenses. “I always… was… pretty good at figuring out people’s motivations. Somehow, I just knew in my gut that Greg hadn’t allowed that whole mess to escalate without a reason.”
Wilson felt himself flush, thinking back on how easily he had assumed that House’s drug addiction and difficult personality had been wholly responsible for the Tritter mess, never once giving his friend credit for his insistence that Tritter was harassing him.
“What… umm… what made you think so? I mean, what exactly tipped you off?” he asked, still tentative.
Now he had Rainie’s complete attention. She hit the mute button and reluctantly put down the remote, turning toward him and making brief eye contact for the first time.
“I guess I’m a little surprised Greg never told you this… or… then again… maybe I’m not.”
Wilson looked stricken.
“Told me what exactly?”
Rainie looked away, as if pondering whether or not to continue. She glanced over her shoulder toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms, then lowered her voice. “When Tritter came into the clinic that day, almost the first thing he did was harass Greg. When Greg refused to perform a useless test, the asshole tripped him-knocked his cane out from under him-it… it humiliated Greg.”
Wilson was staggered. House had never shared this information with him… or anyone else, to Wilson’s knowledge. Almost like finding the crucial piece of a jigsaw puzzle, everything suddenly began snapping into place. It took him a moment to realize that Rainie had continued talking while his mind had absented itself.
“…so when the ketamine treatment began to fail, and you refused to prescribe pain medication…”
“Wait a second,” Wilson interrupted. “What did you just say?” Wilson felt his face flush again. How did she know all this?
“Don’t tell me you never put it together, James,” she said softly. “Surely you realized that it was all interconnected.”
“Did House tell you this?” Not for the first time, Wilson found himself feeling vaguely jealous of the close relationship House had developed with his damaged patient. In his own ears, his question sounded petulant and accusatory.
Cocking her head, Rainie looked at him curiously. “No… not all of it. Some of it was just good old-fashioned legwork. Back when… before… when I was researching Greg for The Times, I did my homework.”
“How could you figure this out? How could you know about the ketamine? About the pain meds? And how is that related to Tritter?”
Rainie smiled sadly, not wanting to hurt the man who had been such a good friend to House, and to her. “It is-was-my job to learn the things people try to keep secret, and I was very good at my job, James,” she said, reaching her hand out to lay it gently on his forearm. “There were plenty of people who had pieces to the puzzle. I just put them together. You were probably too close to see it, that’s all. Greg was really depressed, and afraid, when the ketamine wore off. When you wouldn’t-or couldn’t-see that the pain was coming back, he forged those prescriptions. Out of fear, sheer terror that he would have to go through the returning pain with no medical relief. And psychologically, it was probably as bad-maybe even worse-for him than when his leg was injured initially. He’d had such high hopes-briefly tasting the life he might have lived-and now they were dashed. It had to have been very hard for him.”
Maybe even worse, she said. How could it have been worse than the days/weeks/months/years after House’s original leg injury? Then, Wilson had been there for his friend, patient in the face of his anger, comforting when the pain shrieked through him, supportive when his emotions were shredded. But when the ketamine wore off, Wilson hadn’t given House’s state of mind much thought, shrugging the whole thing off as a minor disappointment, willfully ignoring the signs that the pain was rushing back in to create terror and misery in its wake. Wilson swallowed and looked down toward his lap, tears stinging his eyes. He bit his lip sharply, and tried to hold in his feelings.
“Are you saying the Tritter business was… all my fault?” His voice had dropped so that it was barely audible.
Rainie paused, struggling to find a way to express herself without making Wilson feel any worse than he already did.
“No… maybe… not really. I guess what I’m saying is that you were used to him being manipulative, playing you. You were afraid he just wanted the drugs to get high. Maybe it was easier than having to admit that your friend-your dear, dear friend-was heading back into a life of excruciating pain. Yes?”
She waited until he was willing to meet her eye. His nod was so slight she might have missed it if she hadn’t already been looking for it.
“I-I guess so,” he finally admitted.
“And then, along came Tritter. He wasn’t the first clinic patient Greg had pissed off. So it was logical to think Greg was… What’s that phrase you and Lisa use? Just House being House?” She looked him directly in the eye again, and he saw what might be sympathy, or perhaps pity, cross her face before she looked down, frowning. She fidgeted a moment before saying, cautiously, “I… I don’t know quite how to say this, James… but… well, that’s kind of… patronizing, don’t you think? Shaking your head and rolling your eyes and summing up a person in that sort of… reproachful way. Anyway, that’s how I see it. I’d be… well, I’d be pretty pissed if someone I cared about referred to anything I did as ‘Rainie being Rainie,’ as if I were so simple that one non-descriptive phrase could explain everything about me.” She gave him an apologetic smile, as if telling him that he had been condescending to his best friend was actually painful to her.
There was a long pause while Wilson tore his gaze away from her, processing. He stared at the floor. This was ridiculous. Why was his heart pounding? He felt as if he couldn’t swallow, could barely breathe. Finally, everything settled down again, and he realized that he was feeling… what was it?... ashamed of himself. His glance brushed hers, and again he nodded. “You’re right,” he whispered. “It never dawned on me, but yes… you’re right.”
After a moment, she took a breath and picked up where she left off: “Back to ‘House being House,’” she said. “Where was I? Oh, yes… the whole thing with the ketamine and then Tritter. You figured it was just Greg being affected by the drugs, wanting to get high. It was him being irascible, incorrigible, misanthropic… miserable. Never considering that maybe he was mercilessly afraid, that he reluctantly needed the drugs to combat the return of unbearable pain, or that he’d stood up to a bully who had mortified him, attacking him at his weakest point.”
She tightened her grip on his arm, her mangled fingers struggling to grasp him. “He’s a lot more sensitive than you gave him credit for,” she said softly. “I don’t know why he’s willing to show that side to me more than he does to you. Maybe because we’ve shared something… something horrific. Maybe because Jacey Liu is like a bulldog, won’t let him get away with crap, and I just happen to be there when she pries things out of him. I don’t know. Maybe he tried to let down his guard with you, and you… maybe… said the wrong thing at the wrong time and he shut back down. But I’m sure… really sure, James… that he would have told you how he felt if he hadn’t had a lifetime of protecting those tender feelings.”
Wilson could hear his own heartbeat again as he fought off tears. All he’d wanted-all he’d ever wanted-was for House to open up, to deal with his pain, both physical and emotional-and it hurt him deeply to realize that perhaps his own responses to his friend might actually have caused the opposite to happen, that his own reactions to House might have made him retreat even further into his shell. That by not acknowledging the reality of House’s sensitive side, by preaching and badgering and underestimating him, House might have become defensive, unwilling to admit that he’d had a good reason for reacting toward Tritter the way he had, even if that reaction was overblown.
“Oh, God!” he murmured.
Rainie smiled. “Hey-hey,” she said, forcing him to look up again. “Don’t get me wrong. Greg can be difficult and evasive. Even more so back then. He didn’t make it easy for you. It wasn’t just that you didn’t see it. It’s also that he hid it from you.”
After a moment, Wilson’s mind refocused and he felt a little better and remembered the point to this unexpectedly uncomfortable conversation. “But how did all of that tip you off that Tritter might pull something? Why did you and Evan do this research?”
Rainie smiled, and Wilson could see fierce intelligence in her eyes.
“Because, James dear, once a bully, always a bully. Evan and I have interviewed more than two dozen people now who ran afoul of Tritter, sometimes through incredibly minor interactions. He always turned on them, always sought retaliation, always used the power of his badge to get even. It’s human nature for people to assume everyone else is just like them. Because Tritter abused his power to get even with people, it would be natural for him to assume that Greg would, too-that he’d take advantage of Tritter’s weakened state. If Tritter even slightly suspected that Greg wanted some kind of revenge against him for the incident eight years ago, he was going to make a preemptive strike.”
Wilson nodded, suddenly seeing the big picture that Rainie had painted. “Which is what he did.”
“Of course. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that Greg isn’t like that. And more to the point, Greg doesn’t even care about Tritter. Tritter can’t begin to grasp that for Greg, Michael Tritter isn’t the center of the universe. He’s insignificant, except as a way to keep Greg’s mind occupied.” She struggled to sit up straighter against the cushions of the sofa, and abruptly changed the subject. “So… Danish? Coffee?”
Rainie Adler had a stunning way of getting right to the heart of things. An emotionally numb Wilson stood up and stumbled toward the kitchen. As an afterthought, he turned back toward Rainie, who had un-muted the television. “But this research… these interviews. You never told me exactly: Why did you do it?”
Rainie looked over at him and smiled grimly. “I just like to be prepared,” she said in a casual manner that he had come to learn was anything but casual. “I was taken off-guard once in my life, and it cost me…” She paused, and Wilson heard what sounded like a small hiccup. “…I-it cost me… everything. If I can help it, I’m never letting that happen again.”
* * * *
House slept through the morning. When he finally got out of bed, the Danish was all gone, except for one half-eaten prune pastry, and there was only about a cup’s worth left in the coffee pot. Grumbling, with the Danish gripped between his teeth and a coffee cup balanced on the armrest of his wheelchair, he made his way to the living room, where he settled himself next to Rainie, who had dozed off with the remote in her hand.
Before long, Wilson had brewed a new pot of coffee, baked some cinnamon buns and was fixing him scrambled eggs, with hash browns and bacon on the side.
* * * *
Back at the hospital, Michael Tritter woke up feeling especially pleased with himself. He pictured House in jail, where he belonged… where he’d always belonged. As Devi slipped into his room, he eyed her expectantly, gleefully looking for telltale signs in her demeanor that she was as pleased as he was that her boss had been arrested. After a confusing moment, he realized there were none.
Trying to be the consummate professional, Devi scanned his chart, glancing only momentarily at her patient. She pursed her lips and her brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry to say, Mr. Tritter, that we still don’t know what’s making you so ill. But we are narrowing the field, and hope to have an answer shortly. As soon as Dr. House comes in, we will review your case in detail and, with any luck, we will find the answer.”
She hooked the chart back on the end of his bed, and turned to leave the room.
He sat up, and called after her, demanding her attention.
“Dr. Rajghatta! Come here!”
Halfway out the door, Devi paused. She was so angry with Tritter at this point, she had hoped to avoid talking to him at all, afraid that her ire would spill over the edge and she would do in life what she had done in her dream-tell him exactly what she thought. But she felt obliged to keep attempting to treat him as she would any other patient, if only because it seemed to matter so much to House. Taking a deep breath and holding it a moment before exhaling, she turned slightly, refusing to make eye contact. “What is it, Mr. Tritter?”
“Get back in here,” he demanded. “I want to look you in the eye when I’m talking to you!”
He saw her shoulders tense up, and then forcibly relax as she turned a little more in his direction, still not making eye contact.
“I’d rather not,” she said. “I’ve told you everything you need to know right now, and I don’t have time for this… this whatever it is-power trip, or something.”
Tritter found himself incensed. He began screaming. “Goddammit! I’m your patient. Get your ass over here!”
Devi closed her eyes a moment, and dug her fingernails into her palm to keep from yelling back. She waited a long moment before responding.
“No, Mr. Tritter. I won’t ‘get my ass’ over there. Your illness is making you upset, and it won’t do either of us any good to exchange angry words. You need to calm down, and allow me to do my job… which is to find out what’s making you sick.”
At that, she walked out into the hallway and slid the door closed behind her. Once she was out of sight of the room, she leaned against a wall, trembling with anger.
Inside the room, Tritter did more than tremble; he grabbed the pink plastic water pitcher on his bedside table and flung it ferociously across the room, where smacked into the glass wall, the lid popping off and water spattering everywhere.
Punching the buzzer on his bed rail, he was determined to make someone pay attention to him. When the door slid open and a nurse entered, he glowered at her.
“What is it, Mr. Tritter? Is everything all right?” After adjusting his IV, she headed back toward the door, looking at him over her shoulder.
“No, it’s not all right!” he yelled. “That doctor just walked out on me! Get her back here!”
The nurse, who had been front and center when House returned to the hospital yesterday, just stared at him. He couldn’t figure out why, but she seemed angry.
“I don’t think you want that, Mr. Tritter. I think you want to calm down and let the doctors do their job.”
Beyond frustrated, Tritter grabbed the closest thing to him, a cup of water, and flung it at her. She ducked as the water splashed a few feet from her face, and continued on toward the door.
“Get back in here!”
She turned to face him. “No, Mr. Tritter, I won’t. If you feel you aren’t getting the kind of treatment you want, then perhaps you need to find another doctor to treat you at a different hospital. However, I think you and I both know that Dr. House is the only one who can actually help you. So trying to interfere with him is only going to harm you in the long run.”
Tritter, now red in the face with anger and completely out of control, tried to sit up, fully intending to do as she suggested. But dizziness overtook him and he abruptly dropped his head back against the pillows as the room spun around him.
The nurse, who called out into the hall for an orderly to clean up the floor, left the room in relief, glad that she hadn’t said more. When she got back to the nurse’s station, she picked up a notepad and recorded her conversation with the patient, as instructed by Dr. Chase.
Behind her, Tritter-frustrated and defeated-closed his eyes. For just a moment, he was able to set aside his paranoia and vengeance to think rationally. Yes, he needed help. He was sick. That’s it. He was sick. Hating to admit it, even to himself, Tritter grasped the truth that House was the only one who could help. That’s what everyone kept telling him. But House… House was in jail, thanks to him. There would be no help as long as that bastard was locked up. What had he done?
Trying to shake off these unwanted thoughts, Tritter felt himself falling asleep again, unable to fight off the medication that dripped constantly into his system.
Chapter 14...