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Had to repost this due to a...technical glitch (of sorts). Many apologies to those of you who took the time to leave such kind reviews or who might have had this story on alert.
I had been dying to give my whole take on the Christmas Eve thing, but I was already immersed in other works. This story takes place after A Merry Little Christmas, except that House never takes the deal, never goes to rehab and Cuddy never lies for him in court.
The first chapter is a lengthy narrative that sets the stage for the rest of the story. The remaining chapters will be an as real to life as I can create glimpse at what prison life would be like for the doctor we all know and love. Because, in the real world, people don't get away with crimes as easily as they do on prime-time television.
Watch Downhill Speed
"Hi dad, I'm calling you from jail...All those years, I'm in jail now...Say hi to mom, from jail. I'm in jail, I'm gonna stay here. I like it here. I like it, yeah, throw away the key. I'm in jail. Hello dad, I'm in jail..."
Was (Not Was). "Hello, Dad...I’m in Jail." Listen Like Thieves. Polygram Records, 1992
Chapter 1
House pressed the button to end his phone call. He’d actually left a message. All by itself, that should have been a sufficient enough indicator that something was amiss. He rarely called his mother, and he actually couldn't recall the last time he'd called his father.
But it was Christmas eve. That was what normal, well adjusted people did. Let's just forget for a moment that he wasn’t normal or even remotely well adjusted. He was a forty-eight year old doctor, never married, spending his Christmas eve alone in his apartment, commiserating with his pills and booze. His mother, the human polygraph, would undoubtedly read between his words, pick up on all the little things that he’d managed not to say. Hopefully by then it wouldn't matter anymore. Her return call, if there even was one, would fall on deaf ears.
This was probably the seventh or eighth Christmas that had come and gone where House had failed to decorate. Deep down, he knew that it was more than just a lack of tinsel and candy canes. He’d erected no tree adorned with lights and ornaments. No stockings were hung. He'd received no gifts or greeting cards, and certainly no one had wished him a happy holiday -not that it would really have mattered. It wasn’t as if he needed those things, but their absence was just a reminder of how empty his life had become, and he really couldn’t remember the last time anything had seemed worth celebrating.
He tossed the phone aside and poured himself another glass of Scotch, barely tasting it as it slid down his gullet. He didn't even have to tell it where to go, since it had become well familiar with the way. Seeing as it hardly managed to intoxicate him anymore, it might as well have been water. His mouth didn't know the difference, but his liver probably did.
The bottle of oxycodone was still sitting on the table in front of him. Over the last twelve hours he’d taken thirty-two of the thirty-six pill script, and was genuinely amazed that he was still conscious. The drug was intended as palliative care for end-stage cancer patients. Most of the people who took it had long abandoned any concern they might have once had about being lucid enough to function. All they cared about was making the pain go away, so they could die in peace.
House read the label, almost managing a self-satisfied smile.
Zebalusky, Larry.
He raised his glass to the bottle, as if it were an actual person, nodding his head towards it in a gesture of thanks.
“Larry, we hardly knew ye...”
House had strolled into that patient’s room in the ICU, with no intention of leaving empty handed. Because it’s a well known fact that when you’re strung out and desperate, you’re more likely to do something stupid -like trying to pilfer a dangerous and controlled substance off of your best friend's dead cancer patient.
But House had been slow in his old age and the kindly Dr. Wilson had figured it out right away. It turns out there are some tactical advantages to not being a junkie. Wilson had pulled that bottle right from his friend’s pocket and waved it in his face. No, he couldn’t just confiscate them, he had to make sure that House new the jig was up and that he'd been caught.
Go look in the mirror, pal. That is what rock bottom looks like.
House knew that it had been a mistake to let his best friend prescribe for him, but no one else seemed to understand how bad it hurt -and it really did hurt. It hurt every day, just as bad as it had the first day, and sometimes even more than that.
House had willingly endured years worth of Wilson’s vain efforts to encourage a healthier method of pain management -something less addictive, less harmful to his body in the long term. Wilson knew that House never intended to try anything else, but he felt better believing that he’d done his part, and House felt better thinking that Wilson felt better -because a guilt-free Wilson kept on writing him scripts.
About a year ago, the time came that House always knew would eventually come. Wilson was willing to give no more. Even he had finally become convinced that his friend's pain was psychosomatic. Conversion disorder, he'd called it. House's boss, Dr. Cuddy, had even been in on the charade. She’d tricked him into going a week without the pills, and mocked him when he'd resorted to self-mutilation as a way of dealing with the withdrawal symptoms.
House had placated Wilson by admitting that he was addicted, but he'd never actually said he had a problem -because he didn't. He functioned. He did his job. So what if he didn't have any meaningful relationships? He didn't want any. Right now, Mr. Zebalusky was all he needed.
The icing on the cake had been when House had dared to ask Cuddy for morphine. The pain had been worse than usual and he knew that the vicodin wouldn't even touch it. He needed something more, just so he could get through the day without screaming. It would have to be something intravenous. It had taken all that was left of his dignity to walk into her office and ask for her for help. She'd only added insult to injury when she'd injected him with a placebo.
Worse than that, he’d bought it -hook, line and sinker. He'd bitten his lip and stalked back to his office to mope in bitter silence. It was all he could do not to cry foul. He’d been had, and he realized then that maybe Cuddy and Wilson had never believed him, not even in the beginning, not even back when he’d had no reason to lie.
Even after that, he still managed to get his pills. He strolled right into Wilson's unlocked office and lifted his prescription pad. He'd felt just a little guilty about it, but Wilson should be helping him, and he wasn't. He figured there was no harm in it. Wilson would never have to know, and he got the drugs he needed.
He also knew that he could have just swabbed the guy’s crotch and taken a culture for infection, like he’d been asked. Except that he knew it wasn’t medically necessary. House had been practicing medicine for twenty years and knew the difference between an infection and general chafing. Older guys needed to use more lube, plain and simple -either that or cut down on the masturbation.
House knew that he could have told someone, reported the guy for kicking his cane. It was assault, plain and simple, and he'd never seen it coming. It had never occurred to him, in a million years, that a person would kick a cane right out from under a crippled man. If the door hadn’t been directly in front of him, he’d have gone face-first into the linoleum.
And the guy had smiled.
House knew that he could have let it go there, but it was the smile that had done him it. It really burned; It burned that he was being made to do something that he didn’t want to do. He didn’t want to work in the clinic in the first place, but Cuddy insisted that all her doctors do so. He didn’t want to take a culture from a patient who very obviously did not have an infection. He especially didn’t like being coerced into doing something he didn't want to do under the threat of violence.
House knew that he could have just left the room without doing anything at all. He could have just walked away. But it had been a long time since anyone had tried to screw him quite in that way. Images of playground fights and bloody noses still permeated the turbulent memories of his youth.
Yes, it was the smile that had done him in.
House had turned right around and swabbed the guy’s crotch, just as he'd requested. But he couldn't, in all good conscience, leave it at that. He honestly didn’t think he’d get away with sticking a thermometer in the guy’s rectum, but he was a doctor -and this guy obviously didn’t know much about the human body, or he wouldn’t have rubbed his dick so raw in the first place.
House knew that he could have sent the culture to the lab instead of just tossing it into the trash. He also could have removed the thermometer from the patient’s rectum before signing out for his lunch break. It was almost worth the momentary thrill, as he exited the clinic, knowing he was leaving that insufferable prick in such a compromised state. It wasn't as if a nurse hadn't been in to check on him, about fifteen minutes later. Cuddy had been pissed off, of course. But she was always pissed about something, and the guy did have it coming.
House also knew that he probably could have just apologized when Cuddy had gotten involved. It didn't have to be sincere. She’d brought the clinic patient into her office and left the two of them alone, like two kids settling a dispute over a broken toy. But the wound was still fresh, and House wasn’t about to give that kind of satisfaction to a man that would be willing to trip him and smile about it. He’d rolled his eyes and walked away with his head held high. For that one, single moment, he’d been victorious.
The night that House had been pulled over for speeding, it still hadn’t really sunk in. He’d been driving without his license, which he normally did. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d needed to pull it out for anyone. He'd long since passed the age that clerks stopped carding people for alcohol purchases. Of course he’d been holding. He was always holding. But in the real world, a world filled with people that didn’t suffer from chronic pain, that was a crime -and so he was arrested.
And of course, the guy had smiled.
When Wilson had picked him up the next morning, he’d demanded to know what had happened. Friends who show up on short notice with fifteen thousand dollars, usually prefer some sort of explanation in exchange for their trouble. House had waved it off, telling Wilson that a patient he'd maltreated in the clinic turned out to be a cop. Dr. Cuddy would undoubtedly furnish him with the appropriate paperwork, and all would be water under the bridge.
The cop, of course, wasn't nearly as stupid as House would have hoped. He didn't know much about his dick, but he knew an addict when he saw one. Cuddy faxed him the prescriptions, just as he requested. He picked up on the subtle differences between Dr. Wilson’s real signature and the one that House had forged. The cop had brought it to Wilson's attention, and of course he had lied. He didn't want to see his friend go to prison.
Wilson had confronted House about the forged prescriptions, to no avail. He'd accused House of trying to push their friendship past the breaking point. House found that odd, because he was fairly certain that their friendship was already broken. If Wilson couldn't even see how much he was hurting, how good of a friend could he really be?
The cop had searched his apartment and found his stash, in the excess of six-hundred vicodin. That was six hundred pills times ten milligrams each. Six thousand milligrams of vicodin was enough to treat the pain in a small, eastern European country for a year. But House wasn't worried. Dr. Cuddy had already shown proof of his prescriptions to the district attorney, and Wilson had vouched for him. The cop couldn't prove that he intended to sell or distribute those drugs, and despite how little House's staff liked him, it was unlikely that any of them would substantiate such a ridiculous theory.
Unfortunately, the cop had never bought Wilson’s lie. Slowly and carefully he began to put the pressure on, freezing Wilson's assets and impounding his car. Wilson had complained, but he'd stuck by his friend. When his DEA number was suspended, rendering him virtually unable to care for his patients, that was when he folded
It wasn’t until the day that Wilson gave him up to the cop, that House actually began to worry. It was Christmas eve and what a gift he'd been given. House knew that if even Wilson wasn’t willing to lie for him, then probably no one would. He was screwed.
And the guy had smiled.
A deal, he’d called it. Wilson had made a deal with the enemy -two months in rehab in exchange for a guilty plea. Except that rehab meant going without the drugs, and going without the drugs meant pain. And of course there was the whole factor of him not being guilty.
House had until midnight to accept that deal, and he had absolutely no intention of doing so. He’d made it out of the hospital with the false script. That was his brilliant plan, to get stoned beyond recognition, and then drown what was left of him in Scotch. In the morning, when he didn’t show up to work, they would come looking for him. They’d see what remained of him and realize that they didn’t have Gregory House’s carcass to kick around anymore.
Now, he was smiling.
He sat at the piano a while, his fingers dancing out a familiar tune while he waited for the darkness to come. At some point, the phone rang. House actually thought -admittedly hoped- that his mother might be calling him back. If he really was going to leave this world, it might actually be nice to talk to her...hear her voice one last time.
House had stood up, the piano bench falling backwards behind him. The sheet music spilled out onto the floor. Walking was hard enough on it’s own with a disability, but now his legs felt like they were wading through molasses. He never made it to the phone. He lost his balance, futilely grasping onto a floor lamp and pulling it down with him.
It seemed like he'd slept for a long time, but he didn't dream.
When Wilson had let himself into the apartment, he really hadn’t been sure what it was he was going to find. He had called three times, and couldn’t help the gnawing fear in his gut that House was in some sort of trouble. Wilson was Jewish, but it was still Christmas and he had no real family to go home to. As sad as it sounded, even after everything that had happened between them, Wilson had sort of counted on spending the evening with House.
Wilson had found him lying on his side, the evidence of his debauchery leaking from his mouth like a river of poison. God only knew how much he’d taken and of what. When Wilson lifted the empty vial from the floor and read it’s label, his heart sank.
Larry Zebalusky had died over fourteen hours ago in the ICU. House had made a last ditch effort to acquire his remaining pills by coming directly into his hospital room, while the grieving widow was still present. Wilson realized that House must have weaseled them out of the pharmacist somehow -and how he had done that, Wilson didn’t really want to know.
It sickened him, the lengths that his friend would go to, how badly he needed the high. If he was willing to steal pills from a dead man, he might really be too far gone. Maybe he didn't want to be helped. Maybe he really wanted to go to jail.
Wilson dropped the plastic vial and it bounced several times on the hard, wooden floor. House’s eyes struggled to focus. He saw the rough outline of his friend's body and the whir of amber as the empty bottle landed near his head. He wanted to call out, tell Wilson that it had all been a mistake, but the signal between his mouth and his brain was currently disconnected.
Wilson left, slamming the door behind him. He desperately wanted to go back, to lift his friend up off of the floor, to slap him or shake him or even just to hold him. Someone should clean him up, get his clothing changed, get him into bed. Wilson had done that too many times already, and never once had he been thanked -never once.
He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. His heart was still beating fast as he smacked his hands down on the steering wheel. He drove back to the hotel room, his own cell where he was currently serving a life sentence of sorts.
House's eyes were vacant. He slowly came to the realization that Wilson had come and gone. He'd actually left him there to die, and that wasn't how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to come in the morning, after he was already dead. He was supposed to be so sorry.
House tried hard to picture his friend's face, before the drugs had come into his life and turned everything good into something bad -but his mind was like mud. All he could see was the cop and his ridiculous smile. He'd smiled, knowing that he was literally ruining another man's life, just because he had the power to do so. House angrily bashed his fist against the hard, wood floor, imagining himself knocking that cop on his sorry ass. He didn't feel it now, but in the morning he definitely would.
Yes, it had been the smile that had done him in.
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