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bookgodess15
Author of 44 Stories |
Author's Notes: Inspired by Betz88's GUESSWORK. This has been my baby for the last four months, and I know it's rather long... But I like it. Note that if you didn't like The Contract (DIY Sheep) you probably won't enjoy this either.
Found Myself Freedom
“When I found that I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” Harriet Tubman
“You don’t want to know how much I paid for these,” House said, his fingers spinning the fat, smoking cigar like a girl’s baton. Heavy tendrils of smoke stung Wilson’s eyes and made his throat close up for a moment, but he held his breath and turned his head so that on his next inhale, the air was clear and fresh.
“I don’t want to know how much money you’re already contributing to your bed in the cancer ward?” Wilson asked, sitting down next to House on the balcony. From far away, the sounds of the banquet drifted like a dying stereo, and Wilson felt the strange sense of being boxed in even though the walls only came up to his waist. Despite his words, he held out a hand and House responded by flicking a few burnt ashes onto his palm. “Share, you bastard.”
“I’m letting you on my balcony, aren’t I?” House said, taking another long drag. “Go back to your party if you’re not happy.”
Wilson paused, trying not to cough on the smoke this time and he waited until it had dispersed before speaking. “It’s not my party. And besides that, one of the interns spilled her glass of wine on my shirt. And I look like a vampire with my jacket buttoned.”
House rolled his eyes and finally relented, passing the cigar. While Wilson inspected the company’s name in the gold foil wrapped around the middle of the cigar, House tipped his head back to stare up at the night sky. He tried to blow a cloud of smoke, but he’d let out too much on his first sigh and it came as a scant wisp instead. “I think you just look like an ass with your jacket buttoned. Vampires are supposed to be sexy.”
“Trade shirts with me,” Wilson offered, “and I’ll leave you alone and go back to the party. Deal?”
House pretended to be scandalized. “Wilson! How cheap do you think I am?”
“Suit yourself,” Wilson shrugged. He took a small drag on the cigar, stopping before the strong smoke made him choke, and then gave it back to House. “Whatever you paid for that thing, it wasn’t worth it.”
House snorted and rolled it between his thumb and index finger. “Says you. I’ve got a spare shirt in my office, if you want. It wouldn’t match your suit.”
“Tell me it’s not the pink one,” Wilson groaned, but he already knew the answer. Why else would House offer, if it wasn’t the shirt that made Wilson look like an oompa loompa?
House grinned.
Wilson sighed and pushed himself off of the wall, unbuttoning his cummerbund with one hand as he pulled open the door to House’s office. Inside, he didn’t bother drawing the blinds shut as he shrugged off his jacket and carefully took off his stained shirt. A hunt through House’s desk, and after that washed out, a quick search of one of his bookcases finally revealed a pink button-down shirt crumpled up in one of the corners. Cringing and doing his best to smooth out the creases, Wilson shook the shirt several times before he put it on. He did up the buttons, wincing at the color and the wrinkles, and then picked up his jacket. A thumbs-up to House, who was still sitting out on the balcony, and he went back to the wine-stained shirt lay on House’s desk, forgotten and still warm, still laced with Wilson’s scent.
His eyes darted to the clock hopefully, and his stomach did a flip of excitement when he saw that another minute had passed. One minute down, one minute less that he was going to be cramped in this office. It was somewhat pathetic, really, as he had nowhere special or anything exciting to do after the day was over. But there was something to be said for the end of a workday, the knowledge that it was over and there was no one to govern your time, even if your time wasn’t really all that precious to you. He would go back his hotel room, maybe wander down to the bar and shoot a game of pool or flirt with the local honeysuckle trap and then go to bed alone and stare at the ceiling. Or the phone, hoping to hear from House even though he hadn’t in the five weeks that House had been away.
As much as House frustrated him, he was virtually without a life when he wasn’t there. House’s team was living in the same way, passing the days idly and waiting for their boss to come back and give them something to do. Wilson almost felt bad for them. Just like him, each one of them would pass by House’s office with the faint hope of seeing him sitting there, listening to his iPod or throwing his ball around, but each morning had been a waste of time—House had not returned. Even Cuddy hadn’t heard from him since he’d left. Wilson had worried originally, but after the second week of waiting for a phone call, gave it up and decided not to think about it all. It was just spent energy to worry about House when he was just fine, and hopefully, pain free.
His door swung open, and Wilson’s heart skipped a beat as he nearly jumped out of his seat. His thoughts flashed to House for a second, but it was only his secretary. Giving her a loose smile, Wilson put his pen down and waited to hear what she wanted. She wasn’t House, but it was at least a distraction from monotonous paperwork.
“Dr. Wilson, I wanted to let you know that Mrs. Hallmark has cancelled her appointment for tomorrow—I’ve rescheduled her for Thursday afternoon,” Mary said, waiting to hear approval from his end.
“That’s fine,” Wilson said, nodding. As soon as Mary shut the door, he wondered what she’d just said and why he’d nodded. Oh well. It couldn’t have been anything important. He rolled his shoulders and then told himself to focus back on the paperwork that needed attention. His mind was tired, and it took all of his concentration to read the tiny print, to hold the pen in his fingers without it trembling, to remember how to spell Plainsboro…
And when his cell phone rang, he jumped so badly that his pen went flying across the room.
Cursing, Wilson scrambled in his pockets before he realized that the phone was in his lab coat, and he grabbed it from the back of his chair and found the ringing phone almost immediately. His heart still racing from being scared so badly, Wilson almost found it difficult to speak as he pressed talk and brought it up to his ear.
“Hello?” he managed, leaning against the desk as he finally felt his heart slowing down.
“James Wilson?” an accented voice asked. It was no one that Wilson had ever heard before, but it was a very low and very Russian voice.
“Yes,” Wilson said, trying not to sound too confused. “How can I help you?”
“Your friend is waiting for you on Carnegie Drive, in front of the Curiosity Shop. He’d like to go home,” the voice said, perfectly neutral.
“My—House?” Wilson asked. “House is waiting for me? Are you from that pain clinic he went to? Why isn’t he at the airport—how did he get home?”
There was no answer, and then the hum of the dial tone told Wilson that no one was going to reply. He held the phone away from his ear, and was surprised to see that the caller ID read House. Whoever it was, they’d been using House’s cell phone—they might have even been with House. But then why hadn’t House called?
And frankly, the prospect didn’t sound too bad.
The pain in his leg was simply too much to bear anymore. What was the point in getting up? Another day, another case that he’d eventually solve, more lectures from Wilson about his drug habits, more aimless comments that Cuddy no longer scowled at… It wasn’t worth the battle. All that energy and determination into the simple task of getting up, and there was no one to applaud him for it. To everyone else it was just something that he did, and when he couldn’t do it on his own and had to resort to drugs, they called him an addict. He hated that.
He knew he was addicted, but it wasn’t to Vicodin. He was addicted to a life without pain, to those small moments where the nauseating, pulsating, sickening pain was not bursting upon his frontal lobe, obstructing all thoughts and poisoning his mind with anger. Those tiny caches of time where he didn’t have to grit his teeth or remind himself that there was a puzzle to be solved. Yes, he was an addict, and he would never get enough of it. When the ketamine treatment had worked, he’d been on a high—here was life withoutpain, without stiff mornings and sleepless nights and days spent without eating a thing. And when it had failed, the pain had been twice as unbearable. Desperate to escape it again, his mind fresh with the memories of a pain-free life, he’d come up with the brain tumor stint. His damned team had foiled that.
“House…”
Wilson was beating on the door, distantly, and House didn’t call out. He didn’t even want to look at Wilson’s face right now, because he knew what would be running through that mind if he saw House curled up in bed, vomit spewed about the sheets and slowly migrating down onto the floor. House would see it in his eyes, know those thoughts as if they were his own, and he was tired of it. He was tired of everything.
“House, please, just let me in!”
Another wave of agony, and House couldn’t breathe for a minute. All thoughts flew from his head and he laid, exposed and trapped in the pain as it pierced his thigh and pinned him down to the bed like a dart nailing into a dartboard. Colors flashed before his eyes, dark purples and bright whites, and House could feel his stomach twisting and flipping. It finally eased, and House sagged. He wished that there was something he could do to get away from this, some way that he wouldn’t have to endure this. God, anything, he’d do anything…
Laying flat on his back, his head rolled to the side and his eyes close while his breathing resonated off the walls. Distantly, he could hear something buzzing but didn’t care whether or not it was a hallucination. Every breath brought the pungent scent of vomit to the very back of his throat, and every exhale made his stomach lurch. He wanted to die here in a mess of vomit and sweat and sheets, here where he was alone.
“You need to go to work—I know you’re in there!”
House’s breath hitched, and he fought dizziness as he pushed himself up. The room swirled around him and he thought that he saw the lights flicker before he realized that it was just his vision blurring. He threw off the covers, hearing rather than seeing the chunks of vomit splatter all over the floor, and shut his eyes. Counting down from three, he gripped the bedpost with one hand and gripped the solid wood like it was a lifeline, so tight that his palm hurt. Three… two… one… fuck it!
House bit back a scream as he swung his leg off the bed, the heel of his foot smashing into the hardwood floor. The pain didn’t even register next to the hot veins of agony that were shooting up and down his thigh. He nearly fell back against the bed, but an iron grip on the bedpost kept him sitting up. The harder part was coming next. He inhaled and clutched at the sheet, his hands trembling violently. His heart raced.
In a rush of nausea, House stood up and took a staggering step forwards. His leg protested violently, but now he had a goal. He had a purpose to being up, to fighting away the pain, and it drove him all the way across the bedroom. He had to get to his bookcase.
“God dammit…”
Wilson was giving up on him—like he hadn’t already —and House could barely bring himself to care. He leaned against the doorframe of his bedroom, the living room in sight. He was overtaken by a current of fatigue that nearly sent him to the ground, and he only got as far as resting his head against the wood before he caught himself. No. He couldn’t rest. Just a little further, and it would be in his hands. His throat burned and his stomach heaved, but he didn’t throw up. He gripped his hand around the fabric, letting it remind him of reality, and then took a staggering step away from the doorstep.
With a crash, House suddenly found himself completely engulfed in pain so great the he saw nothing but white for a minute. A strangled gasp came from his mouth, his ears hearing it distantly, and his lips formed words that were airless, soundless, not even words. His brain was utterly frozen.
“You know that I can pick a lock, right?”
Wilson’s words brought him back. House realized that he was laying on the floor on his stomach, where he’d fallen after trying to walk down the hallway. With this suddenly clarity, the pain in his thigh slowly began to recede and he was left shaken, the foul taste of vomit on his lips. He couldn’t stand up again.
He had to get to that bookcase.
His arms reached forward, as if he were swimming, and he pushed his palms against the floor. Dragging his body forward. Crawling. The hallway tipped violently, but House was staring down a long, dark tunnel, and all he could see was the bookcase. He had to get to it. Once he got there, this would all be over.
“You’re got until the count of three...”
House didn’t even hear him. The tunnel before his eyes was a bad television, flickering and fading out. He felt his throat tighten, but he ignored it. His arms moved automatically. Pulling himself closer to the prize, inch by precious inch. If only he could get to it, if he had it right now. The distance was impossible. His thigh was exploding and his palm was aching against the tight fabric. The harder he fought it, the more his mind seemed to shut down.
His hand reached out and found something cool, something thin and soft and he gripped at it. His vision swam and the colors around him seemed brighter than ever. He brought it back to his tried to smell it, tried to taste it with his ravaged tongue, but he couldn’t. He pressed it to the floor with his palm, feeling the tiny fibers rub against his skin and abruptly as if he were spinning too fast on a merry-go-round. His head was too light. But as his fingers worked, he found that there was substance to the world around him. There was something around him besides pain.
He shut his eyes and clutched tightly, allowing his brain a second to rest, but then continued on to get to the bookcase. He tried to open his eyes again, but an intense flash of light made him feel nauseous and the world tipped violently. Vertigo rocked him.
“That’s it, I’m coming in.”
His own breathing was the only sound he could hear. Fingers on wood, fingers gripping and pectorals straining, fingers smushing something chunky and wet, fingers pulling him closer. It was just a little farther, he knew, just a little. Soon his arms would be touching it, he would be shifting books and he would find it and take it out… And he would use it. How would it feel? Would he feel the pinch? What was the hospital like now? Where was Wilson?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore.
The sound of the door opening was the last thing that House’s mind registered as he finally lost his battle and unconsciousness took over his mind. He laid on the floor, seven feet left away from his morphine stash, Wilson’s wine-stained shirt held in one outstretched hand.
Wilson parked the car, not caring that his abysmal parallel parking skills left him two feet away from the curb, and jumped out of the car. It was the right height, but… why? It didn’t make any sense. House was supposed to have been…
“House?” he called softly, crouching down next to the shadowed form on the ground. It didn’t even occur to him what would happen if this wasn’t House and it turned out to be a crazy, paranoid homeless guy. “House, is that you?”
He gently reached and rolled the body onto its back, and then jerked his hand away at the sight of his friend’s face.
“Oh, God,” he said, not realizing that he’d said the words aloud. His brain was frozen, blank and unwilling to process what he was seeing. House’s face was hollowed and gaunt, swelled in places from cuts and bruises, and his forehead was split open in a gash that appeared to be infected. His nose looked broken and he was breathing solely through his mouth, and his skin, where it wasn’t bleeding or bruised, was a weathered brown. The purple crescents underneath his eyes were barely visible.
“House?” he whispered. Wilson squinted in the dark, and then used his hands to find House’s chest and to feel for a heartbeat—it was there, and Wilson found it easily because House appeared to have lost at least a hundred pounds. His ribs felt like a dish rack, and his stomach caved in beneath them as if someone had very simply scooped out his stomach. It felt like he was staring at a Holocaust survivor, House had been whittled away so much.
There was a sudden intake of breath from House, a shuddering gasp that ended in a choke. Wilson stared as House choked once, twice, three times before he finally coughed and exhaled. The sick sound of throwing up came a second before Wilson saw the eruption of vomit from House’s mouth and down the sides of his face. Blinking, he realized that it was not vomit, but blood.
With trembling fingers, Wilson found his cell phone and dialed 911. He held the phone in one hand and used the other to roll House onto his side before he choked.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Wilson stopped walking and turned around. House had just rounded the corner, cane in hand, and was working to catch up with him. Trying not to roll his eyes, Wilson waited for House to reach him before he started off again. They walked in step, in perfect sync with each other.
“I need you to baby-sit my kids while I’m gone,” House said promptly, ignoring the fact that Wilson had been mid-sentence when he’d spoken.
“Where are you going?” Wilson asked, frowning at his friend. This was entirely new to him.
House grinned. “Crazy,” he said, crossing his eyes and doing a loud series of war-whoops for show.
“Short trip,” Wilson muttered. “How long are you going to be gone?”
House went quiet, his hand pausing mid whoop, and his eyes became uncrossed. “Um… Six weeks, probably.”
“Six weeks!” Wilson repeated incredulously. “Where the hell are you going for six weeks?”
“Russia,” House said brightly, appearing to take pleasure in Wilson’s mouth, which was forming soundless words like a fish.
Wilson struggled to recover. “What,” he asked in a strangled voice, “is in Russia?”
“I want to go and see Lenin’s dead body—lifelong dream,” House said, causing Wilson to roll his eyes. “Communists ahoy!”
“Uh-huh,” Wilson said, nodding. “Really, why are you going?”
“I feel like my time here is ending,” House said dramatically, putting a hand over his heart. “My mind begs for me to stay, but the wilds of Russia speak to my heart in tender, loving whispers… I am powerless to resist.”
“House!” Wilson snapped, irritated and curious. “It can’t be completely ludicrous, because I’m assuming that Cuddy already gave you the time off.”
“Cuddy would give me a year off if I told her I had to go to Russia to find my inner peace. Cuddy was cake to get through,” House said breezily. “The hard part’s getting past you and your moral lectures.”
“So when you tell me where you’re going, I’m going to give you a moral lecture?” Wilson asked, now worried for his friend. Where was he going?
House shrugged. “No. More like a… What-The-Hell-Is-Going-Through-Your-Head-Are-You-Insane-That’s-Completely-Unheard-Of kind of lecture.”
“I’m scared,” Wilson said. “I don’t think I even want to know what it is you’re doing.”
“Kolsheivk больExchange Program,” House said, pronouncing the second word like ‘bowl’.
“The what?” Wilson asked, staring at him. He came to a stop, having reached his patient’s room, and House turned around so that they were facing each other.
“Russian pain clinic,” House reiterated, rolling his eyes, as he apparently was frustrated by Wilson’s lack of Russian language skills. “Had really good results. And since my cronies blew the last program that I got myself into—”
“Wait,” Wilson interrupted. “Why does it have to be in Russia? There are dozens—hundreds—of pain clinics here, in the United States. Can’t you try those first?”
“Nope,” House said, turning around and continuing on his way.
“Well, why not?” Wilson shouted at House’s retreating back, but he knew that it was useless. He was lucky enough to have gotten that information—now he’d just Google it and see what was so great about this Kolsheivk Bowl Exchange Program.
As they arrived at the hospital, Wilson let House’s hand be torn from his and sat in the ambulance, unmoving, as House was wheeled away in a flurry of technicians and yells. They disappeared inside of the doors, and Wilson found himself alone in the back of the ambulance. It was silent and dark.
He ought to be inside with House, his mind told him. It was dumb to sit here and stare at the scuffed metal floor, but he could not bring himself to look away from it. Someone… Someone had called him, told him where House was and that he needed to be picked up. Who? Why had they called him and not done it themselves? And how had they sounded so detached, like they weren’t staring a half-dead man?
Wilson stomach abruptly went cold as it occurred to him that maybe the man on the phone hadn’t been House’s rescuer. Maybe he’d been his tormentor. God…
Across from him were the defibrillators neatly attached to the wall, and Wilson’s head nearly spun with relief that they hadn’t been necessary. House was in bad condition, but there was no question as to whether or not he would die immediately. That is, if he wasn’t internally bleeding or had a raging infection… But Wilson didn’t want to think about that. House would be fine after some nutrient supplements and some bandages, maybe a cast. In a few hours House would be awake and bitching that the lights were too bright and that he wanted more morphine.
“Hey, buddy?”
Wilson jumped, his head turning so fast that his neck cracked. A man stood at the open doors of the ambulance, clearly one of the EMTs of the hospital, and he was staring at Wilson in surprise.
“Um, you gotta get out—sorry. We’ve got to answer other calls,” the EMT said with an apologetic smile.
Going slightly red, Wilson stood up. “I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately. “I just got—”
He stopped speaking as something on the floor caught his eye. It was might have once been white, but was stained and discolored… creased and ripped, the pile of fabric looked as if it had been sent through a lawnmower. But as Wilson stared at it, he realized that it was a shirt. A crumpled dress shirt that looked somewhat familiar. Wilson bent down and picked it up, fingering the fabric for a moment before the stench that was coming from it made him jerk his head back and wrinkle his nose. Holding it between two fingers, Wilson jumped out of the ambulance, nodding at the EMT, and walked up to the doors of PPTH. Cuddy had probably already been alerted that House was coming into the emergency room. What would she say?
“It worries me,” Wilson said as he leaned against the doorframe, a relatively safe distance away from House. He wasn’t about to get roped into being House’s slave. “I don’t like it.”
“Aw, it’s okay,” House said, looking at Wilson with exaggerated affection, making his blue eyes wide and sticking out his lower lip. “I’ll call you every night—promise. We can have all the phone sex you want.”
Wilson refrained from rolling his eyes. “Shut up. There’s just something about this that doesn’t feel right. Are you sure that you read it right? You didn’t mistranslate it or anything?”
“No,” House growled, scowling at Wilson. He limped back over to his closet and tore a few shirts off of their hangers, balling them up in his fist and returned to the suitcase that was open on his bed. “I’m doing this, Wilson. So stop it.”
“I typed it in on Google and there wasn’t even a website,” Wilson told him, ignoring House’s claims. “Nothing on PubMed or JAMA either. It’s not right. If it was really that successful, there would be lots of articles and studies and publicity ads—but there isn’t.”
“You probably spelled it wrong,” House said shortly, throwing more clothing down into the suitcase. Wilson wondered how he was going to fit everything if House didn’t fold anything. “Besides, any article on it would probably be in Russian. Google only finds English pages unless you switch around the settings.”
Wilson hadn’t thought of that. But he wasn’t about to let it drop so soon—House’s rationalizing didn’t make him feel the least bit better. “Well, why is it going to take six weeks? Pain treatments only take one or two weeks to implement, and you could do physical therapy here in the U.S.”
House, who had been rifling through a drawer of boxers and socks, stopped and turned around to face Wilson. His hand flexed on his cane several times before he spoke.
“The program isn’t done all at once. The first part takes a four days to prep for, and then they wait four weeks until they do the second part of it. It’s easier to stay there and recover instead of gallivanting across the world,” House said calmly, but Wilson could hear the strain in his voice. “It’s fine. Do you think that I would be doing this if it weren’t?”
“I don’t know, House, would you?” Wilson asked, the words flying out of his mouth before he could stop them.
House stared and Wilson blinked back at him, trying to ignore the rising guilt inside of him. He hadn’t meant to say it, but it was a valid question that deserved an answer, and Wilson was going to get one. Even if House stared at him all night like this.
“No,” House said finally. “I wouldn’t.”
He looked down and gently stretched it out, for it had been crumpled into a ball in his fist, and recognized it as a man’s dress shirt. Or rather, what had once been a men’s dress shirt. It was stained with dark substances and caked with dried blood, and there was something crusty and white whose origins Wilson could only guess at. One of the sleeves was missing, and there was a large tear going from the collar down to the breast pocket. And Lord, how it reeked of every awful smell ever known to mankind. There was sweat and semen and burnt rubber and garbage and urine and… God only knew what else, but Wilson stopped trying to analyze it after a second whiff. He set it down beside him and exhaled.
“Wilson?”
The familiar voice made Wilson jerk and jump off of the bench like it had caught fire.
Cameron’s heels clicked down the hallway. She wore a lab coat and held a piece of paper in one hand. As she approached, the concerned expression on her face became more and more evident. “How are you doing?” she said.
“Huh?” Wilson asked, staring at her in confusion. He felt suddenly thick and dazed, as if he hadn’t been in touch with the real world for a very long time. Why was Cameron looking at him like that?
“I heard that House came in here in an ambulance,” Cameron said slowly, and from her look, he could tell that she thought he was being purposely dense. “You’re down here waiting for him, aren’t you?”
“Wha—yes,” Wilson said, recovering quickly. “Yeah, he’s being taken care of right now. How did you hear?”
“The nurses were talking,” Cameron told him. She looked past him, frowning, and Wilson realized a second later that she was staring at the shirt he’d left on the bench.
“It’s something House had with him when…” Wilson trailed off, unsure of what to say. Cameron stared at him, her head cocked to the side slightly, waiting for him to finish. “It’s an old shirt.”
“Oh,” Cameron said. “Is it his old shirt? What he was wearing when they found him?”
Shaking his head, Wilson picked it up gingerly and let it dangle from one finger, revealing all the destruction that had been inflicted upon it. “No. It think he was just holding it or something.”
“Well, where was he? Did someone just find him?” Cameron demanded, her tone suddenly becoming so like House’s when he was on a case, that for a moment, Wilson could only stand there and blink at her. Regaining his senses as she crossed her arms over her chest, Wilson scrambled to answer.
“I did—I found him, on the ground. There was a phone call, and I—” Wilson was struggling to find a way to explain the phone call when he was distracted by one of the ICU technicians, outfitted entirely with blue scrubs and a cap and a surgical mask, who was coming his way. Suddenly forgetting Cameron, Wilson straightened in anticipation as the doctor came closer. They must have an update on House ready.
He’d probably had just thought that House would throw it out—it wasn’t as if you could wash it and get the stain out. It wouldn’t have entered Wilson’s strangest dreams that his friend had taken the shirt and smuggled it away as his own. House doubted that the shirt would last the coming weeks, but he would keep it until he was made to get rid of it.
House jumped when he realized that one of the physicians was standing in the doorway with a curious expression on his face, watching him finger the shirt. Embarrassed, House glared at him.
“Can I help you?” he demanded, the Russian sounding delightfully frightening off of his lips. When this was over, he’d have to try it on his team.
“Is she special to you?” the doctor asked, nodding towards the shirt as he entered the room.
“He is very special to me,” House retorted, letting the doctor make his own assumptions about that statement. “But he isn’t part of this. Why are you here?”
“I want to ask you some questions,” he said, pulling up a chair and making himself comfortable. For the first time, House noticed a clipboard in his hands. “You are a doctor in America, no?”
“Yes,” House said, and then added without a trace of modesty, “One of the top diagnosticians in the country.”
“Before your injury, what sorts of athletic activities were you involved in?” he asked, the Russian language lacking a word for infarction.
“Er...” House had to think hard. It had been so long, so incredibly long since he’d been able to involve himself in such things. “I ran every day. The hospital held monthly basketball games, I usually entered in those. I played rugby and lacrosse for a long time, through med school and a little ways through my residency.”
The doctor nodded, scribbling something down. He looked up. “Have you ever contracted a disease through sexual intercourse?”
House fought down a scowl, reminding himself that these were legitimate questions and that these were not the people that he wanted to piss off right now. “Yes,” he said. “In college, I had...” He had no idea what the Russian word for it was, so he substituted in the Latin name, instead. “Treponema pallidum. Nothing else.”
“This was treated, and has not returned?” the doctor asked, and House nodded. He watched the other man write something down, the clipboard held stiffly in his left hand. “Have you ever had anal sex with another man?”
House stared at him. “Is that a joke?” he asked. “They’re not seriously going to make me—”
“You’ll find out,” the man said, “after you answer.”
“No,” House said, trying hard not to growl. For the first time, he had a flutter of doubt cross his mind but he waved it away as his leg gave a burst of pain that he felt even through the morphine. “Will they?”
“Most likely not,” the other man said. “They look for people with experience.”
House tried not to show too much relief at that. He did allow himself to sink back into his pillows and shut his eyes, trying to pass it off as exhaustion. “What else?”
“How many languages do you speak?”
He had to stop and think about that one for a moment. “Five... No, six.” Preempting the next question, he quickly added, “English, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, French and Arabic. Are they just going to have me—”
“Dr. House,” the doctor interrupted. “It would be better if you stopped asking questions.”
It was all he could do to not strangle the man right then and there. It washis future, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t he be allowed to know what they were going to do to him? It wasn’t fair. But then he remembered that these people had invited him to try this, he hadn’t gone looking for them, and they’d specially chosen him. They could just as easily ship him back to the United States the second he coughed in the wrong way.
This in mind, he managed to merely nod. The doctor opened his mouth to unleash another question, and House glanced down at Wilson’s shirt and reminded himself of why he was doing this.
“You heard?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly as he spoke.
“Yes,” Cuddy said quietly, her voice barely audible through the din of the ICU. She stared at him, waiting for him to say something, waiting for guidance. Her hand twisted the hem of her shirt anxiously.
“I don’t know what happened,” Wilson said, looking at the ground and saying the only thing that came to mind. “I just found him. He was supposed to be doing that—that pain clinic in Russia for the last six weeks.” Wilson looked over to her, debating whether or not to share his thoughts. Finally, seeing that Cuddy was still waiting for something, he let his hand fall to his lap and voice what had been on his mind for the last hour. “I don’t think that he ever got there. I drove him to the airport, but I couldn’t go past those security gates... He might have never even gotten on the plane.”
“You think that he was abducted?” Cuddy asked, her tone almost hopeful.
Wilson shrugged. “What else could it have been? Do you think that House went out into the wilds of Russia for six weeks, got into a fight with a bear, and then somehow magically flew back to America?”
“No,” Cuddy said with a sigh, closing her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know what to think. I still can’t believe that this happened.”
At this, Wilson stole a glance at the curtained-off bed twenty feet away. House was still sleeping, and would for several more hours thanks to a sedative, but Wilson couldn’t bring himself to come in and see House so broken. The images of House lying on the ground, of him vomiting blood all over himself, were burned into Wilson’s brain like a bas-relief. He didn’t want any more. But he still felt guilty, leaving House alone in the ICU when he was perfectly capable of keeping him company.
“They said that he’d be all right,” Cuddy said at length. She sat down on the bench next to him, seeking out his hand and holding it tightly. “He just needed some nutrients, a blood transfusion, some stitches here and there... There wasn’t any internal bleeding, and the infections in his wounds were minimal and easily wiped out. I don’t think that...”
Wilson listened to her with half an ear, having already heard this a while ago. Cuddy was trying to comfort herself by comforting him, and he could indulge that for a while. Anyway, it kept his mind off of House and what he was going to say when he woke up. Knowing him, there would probably be a series of deflective jokes, some cracks about Wilson’s choice in tie, and then he’d demand some morphine for his leg. And then, if things really went wrong, House would say he needed to sleep and ignore any attempts to start a conversation. And, when he did talk, House would be more than happy to let it slide under the rug and not contact the police, if someone really had abducted him and held him for a month.
That would be so like House. And as much as Wilson would have hated it, he would give anything to have House awake and resisting him rather than this comatose House.
The second thing that his brain found was a suspicious lack of pain. Instinctively, his mind braced itself for the wave of pain that usually came to spite him whenever he dared to think such thoughts, but it didn’t. This was such an oddity that House opened his eyes, half expecting to find himself surrounded by fluffy white clouds and blondes lazily plucking at harps. Instead, the cold grey ceiling stared down at him.
As he woke up and began to become more aware of his surroundings, he noticed a nurse standing next to his bed and a tray of breakfast food sitting on the bed table. He also noticed that he had an IV in his right arm, but there was no morphine drip anywhere. Which would mean that...
“What medication do they have me on?” House asked the nurse, who looked at him with a startled expression.
“They said that you were English,” she said, looking surprised.
“I am. I speak Russian, too,” House said irritably. “What medications do they have me on?”
“None, sir,” she said honestly, and House found himself believing her. “Are you feeling pain in your leg? You shouldn’t be. I can go fetch the doctor if you’d—”
“It’s fine, I don’t feel any pain,” House interrupted. His interest turned to the tray of food. Strangely enough, there was no bacon. “I smelled bacon before.”
Suddenly, the nurse smiled like she’d just won the lottery, and House blinked. “I fried bacon for my children this morning,” she said happily, swinging the table over the bed so that House could reach it.
As he stared at the meager, rather sad-looking food, House found himself wishing that he’d been one of her children this morning. Taking a bite of scrambled eggs, he noticed that the nurse had not left yet. “So that’s it, then?” he asked after he’d swallowed.
“You’re given three days to recover and to ensure that there is no immediate relapse,” the nurse said. “Then they... Well, you know.”
“Yeah,” House said, nodding and taking another bite of the eggs. It had suddenly become so much more real, now that the surgery was over. His mind had blocked out any flittering of happiness and relief for his leg and was racing wickedly through the pile of scenarios that could become reality in just a few days. His stomach turned with a sudden nauseating fear, and he wasn’t hungry anymore.
Not that Wilson was expecting him due to the dosage of drugs that he’d been given, but it was still somewhat disheartening to sit there and watch him sleep, unmoving. He’d moved from the bench to a chair next to House’s temporary bed in the ICU a half an hour ago after Cuddy had left to go back to work. Wilson watched as she fled to the bathrooms. He wasn’t really upset that she’d lied to him, or even that she had deserted him in favor of retaining her pride, but it bothered him to be alone with House. It was almost creepy. Wilson kept expecting House to grab his leg when he wasn’t looking, because it was something House would find hilarious, but he never did. He was entirely still.
Here, under the glare of florescent lighting, House looked fifty times worse than he had in the dark street before the Curiosity Shop. Wilson knew that the injuries on House’s face were only superficial. He knew that the cut on his forehead had been stitched and that there were an overkill of antibiotics running through his bloodstream and the IV line running to House’s wrist was going to supply a more nutritious meal than a Thanksgiving dinner. But it was ugly. Wilson thought he looked like one of his chemo patients who’d gotten into a fight with a local gang.
With a gentle hand, he touched the discolored skin of House’s cheek, let his fingers dwell in the hollows of his face, brush against the jagged cuts that were raised above the skin blackened with dried blood, and he sighed. The hospital gown House had been thrust into revealed his arms and his palms, one of which was in a plaster cast and resting over House’s chest. Wilson traced the plaster brace all the way down to where House’s bruised and weathered fingers stuck out in sharp contrast to the sterile white gauze.
House’s breathing suddenly hitched, and there was an increase in the heart monitor, and then it disappeared.
Wilson stared at him.
“House?” he whispered hesitantly, not daring to believe that House could have possibly just reacted to his touch. He was asleep—he had to be. “Are you awake?”
The monitor beeped on unwaveringly, not speeding up or slowing down again. Wilson reached out and touched House’s hand again, more roughly than before in his haste, but this time the beeping did not change, and House’s breathing was still even and deep. There was the possibility that House was now faking his sleep, but Wilson didn’t even have time to consider it.
The pungent smell of urine floated past his nose.
Wilson glanced around, and seeing no one around, peeled the blanket back from House’s body to check, and sure enough, there was a wet, yellow spot on the white hospital gown. House’s breathing did not shift.
It was a mental instinct ingrained into people when they were potty trained, to hold your bladder until you reached a toilet. It became subconscious. You would not pee until you were before a bucket, and your mind understood that even while it was asleep. People in comas, people with severe brain damage couldn’t retain that aspect of life. They had urinary catheters and diapers to make sure that there were no accidents.
Wilson felt sick as he stared at House, suddenly realizing the possibility that the man might never wake up.
“You’re going to a man called Kingface. You’re not his first and if you’re smart, you’ll make sure that you won’t be his last either. You won’t require any special trade of skill for the work you’ll be doing, just do as you’re told. Everyone else there is not going through the same program you are—almost all of them are either slaves he purchased through the black market or indentured servants from places like Sudan. His policy for escape attempts is death, so do not attempt to free any of them,” she said, pausing to take a small breath. There was an urgent quality to her voice that suggested she wasn’t exactly allowed to be saying any of this.
“Don’t worry,” House muttered in English. “I won’t.”
“There are three rules that you must know when working for Kingface,” the woman continued. “The first is that you must never speak in any language other than Russian. Even if he thinks he’s heard you mutter a curse in another language, it’s counted as broken. The second is that you will never look as his face. When he approaches you, you will keep your head down so far that your chin touches your chest and don’t let it come up until he’s gone. The third rule is that you are his, and never forget it. He owns you. Your life is in his hands, and if you fail to do as he asks he can kill you. We have no power over what he does.”
House glanced out the window, but could see nothing distinguishable. They were on a dirt road and it was night—there was no McDonalds to light up the night in the wilderness of Russia.
“If you follow those rules, everything will be fine. Your best bet is to not speak to the other slaves, don’t get involved in any of their mundane politics, do none of them favors. And remember: you are the slave. Do your job and focus on getting through the next four weeks. Then it will be over.”
“What if the treatment stops working before the end of the month?” House asked, sensing that the lecture was coming to a close soon. He wanted to keep her talking. He wasn’t sure why, but the silence of the car seemed unbearable to even think about.
“It won’t,” the woman said shortly. Her voice expressed the amount of faith that she held in the clinic.
“How long of a drive is it?” House asked, feeling like the walls of the car were beginning to close in on him. He wished for a watch, for a calendar, for a damn sundial, anything that would give him a reference point. He was going to be reduced to carving slashes in the wall like Tom Hanks had in Cast Away.
“You’d better not ask so many questions,” the woman said. “It’ll get you in trouble.”
“I’m curious by nature,” House told her, flashing a grin. He longed for someone to banter with, but the dark look he was sent told him that it would not be this woman.
“They will not let you keep that,” she said, looking as his right hand disapprovingly. “Give it to me. I will put it back with your things, for when you return.”
House looked down at his hand in which he grasped the shirt that he’d brought with him, Wilson’s shirt. It was looking a little worse for the wear, but it was an expensive shirt and wouldn’t be destroyed so easily. “I’ll keep it,” he said, clenching his fist around the fabric. “They can take it away from me, if they want.”
The woman frowned, but said nothing.
The car rode along silently. House noticed faint streaks of color in the night sky above the tree tops. They were soft and barely a shade lighter than the black of the sky itself, and if he focused on one for too long it seemed to fade away. His fingers reached up and touched the glass window, letting them make fingerprints and watching as the marks faded away. Pretending, his fingers swept the trees and smeared the dim lines of color about, as if they were wet paint strokes of a palette. The white pinpricks of stars faded while blues and purples and the darkest of pinks began to wake up, glowing and dancing around the sky. A circle of moisture appeared on the window as he breathed on it and blossoming colors of orange and gold and red shimmered before his eyes.
The sun was rising.
Wilson’s world spun and he felt lightheaded. Visions of black danced before his eyes, and he reached with numb fingers for anything, something to grasp. They clumsily closed around the handles of something cold, and he blinked multiple times to clear his vision. Chase was standing in front of him with a concerned frown on his face. Wilson opened his mouth to speak but it was clogged from sleep.
“Are you all right?” Chase asked cautiously, taking a small step backwards.
“House,” Wilson croaked, trying to make his eyes focus on the room. His whole body felt slow and stupid from sleep. “Where’s...”
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” Chase said, reading Wilson’s mind effortlessly. “I just came in here to see what he really looked like—you wouldn’t believe the fuss the morning shift nurses are making. You’d think that he’d had his hands amputated last night or something.”
Wilson finally focused on House, who was still soundly sleeping in his bed. “He wet his bed last night.”
“I saw—well, really, I smelt it—and had his sheets changed,” Chase said. “Don’t worry.”
But Wilson did. Mainly because he had slept through House’s sheet change (what would have happened if he’d slept through House flat lining?), but also because Chase didn’t seem to be considering the possibility that there was something seriously wrong with House. He gently broached the subject of brain damage, hoping that Chase just hadn’t thought of it rather than having been in straight-out denial. But Chase only shook his head.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “We see it in ICU occasionally, especially with people who were... well, held captive for a while. When there’s nothing to act as a toilet available, their mind adjusts to it and eventually just forgets all sense of holding the bladder. After so long, hygiene isn’t a top priority for the brain.”
“You think that House was held captive?” Wilson asked, surprised that someone else had jumped to the same radical conclusion that he had.
“Well...” Chase shifted uncomfortably. “It’s sort of the popular rumor. The police were interrogating people to find out if they’d seen anyone suspicious around the hospital prior to House leaving. I heard they couldn’t find a trace of the pain clinic that House was supposedly leaving for... It sounds like a set up. Get House convinced he’s going to be pain free, lure him to Russia and the job’s as good as done.”
“The police were here?” Wilson said suspiciously. His trust in cops had diminished over the years, and he wasn’t so sure if he liked the idea of the bumbling mass of blue uniforms crawling all over House’s life and poking around where they shouldn’t. The last time it had happened, they’d all nearly gone to jail.
“Yeah,” Chase said. He perched himself gingerly on the end of House’s bed, like a rabbit pausing outside of a sleeping lion’s cave, and shrugged. “Someone in ICU called it in, found it sort of suspicious. Police agreed. I heard that they were down looking at House earlier, but I don’t know why they didn’t question you, too.”
“Well, I’m not worried,” Wilson grumbled, scrubbing his face with his hand. “They’ll be sure to track me down sooner or later.”
Chase let out a small sigh as he turned to look at House. “Don’t leave him.”
Wilson nodded, feeling for a moment that he wasn’t completely alone in his vigil.
He was supposed to be hauling rocks from the mine following the morning’s round of dynamite to piles that would be transferred to dump trucks. He didn’t know where they were taken from there. It started at sun up and ended at sundown, and today was only his second day. His entire body was sticky with sweat and crusty where it had dried and dirt burned in his eyes where his hands had rubbed them out of habit. His shoulders were sunburned from yesterday’s work. But worst of all, his leg was having spasms that made it near impossible to walk.
He was pushing the wheelbarrow back to the mine, and slowed his pace so that he could comfortably drag his leg behind him. He didn’t think that anyone had noticed yet, and he’d be damned if they did. This life without pain was heaven, and anything they did to him would be well worth it afterwards. All he had to do was keep moving.
House finally arrived at the mine, stopped, and then began putting more rocks into the metal barrow. An Other nodded towards him from three feet away, grabbing his own rocks, and House quickly looked down. He’d been warned to stay away from them, and he planned on following that advice.
Rising, he stopped for a fraction of a second to rub his thigh, hoping beyond hope that it would stop and calm down, give him just an hour’s peace. It did not. He inhaled and started wheeling the rocks over to the pile.
It was harder going back with a full load, because he couldn’t drag his leg. If he dragged his leg, then he would be unbalanced every other step and the car would tip over. And then he’d be in trouble. So he moved even more slowly as his thigh pulsated erratically, staring at the ground and taking each step doggedly. He knew the path without having to look up, he could see his footprints from where he’d been walking earlier. Who knew how many times he’d walked back and forth—counting didn’t matter. He’d tried it yesterday, tried to figure out how many trips he’d be making a day so that he could form some kind of mental countdown. It hadn’t worked. You couldn’t count for hours and hours on end. Today, he was watching the shadows. At least he knew that when he had no shadow, he would be getting lunch.
House supposed that he should have been grateful that at least he wasn’t down in the mine, and tried not to think about sun poisoning and heat stroke and what might happen if he were to let the spasms knock off his balance had have the heavy rocks fall on top of him. His orange coveralls—the required uniform of all the Others that worked for Kingface—were too big for him and it would be all too easy to trip and fall. There was no way to adjust the height because the shoulder straps were sewn into the front instead of having buttons. To avoid mutinies.
“Fuck,” he muttered as his leg gave out, the knee buckling and the ankle twisting around so that it was nearly backwards. He stared at it for a moment, wondering at the fact that his leg had finally stopped its spasms to give him a moment’s peace, when he realized that his leg was done. It wasn’t going to work for the rest of the day. “Fuck.”
Carefully, he took a step forward with his good foot, maintaining the balance of the wheelbarrow, and then dragged his foot to meet up with its counterpart. And then he did it again, taking a wider step, but he almost lost it when he was dragging his foot, so the next step was smaller.
“Hey, White Boy! Start a new pile!”
His name was White Boy. All the Others were either black or oriental, and he stuck out like a sore thumb. He looked up to see the Other pointing to an area about fifty feet back from the first pile. It’s impossible, he thought as he stared at the great distance. Every foot might have been twenty miles for all he knew, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Impossible to move that far, it was just not possible. Impossible. Not possible. Im-poss-i-ble.
No.
His hands slipped and he was thrown to the ground as the wheelbarrow fell. Rocks flew everywhere.
Pain shot up his hip and into his spine, his foot exploded in agony as though it had been crushed and something hit his head, (probably a rock, he thought dazedly) making him see black. He couldn’t see anything, but it didn’t matter. It hurt, it hurt so bad that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think through it. Everything else in the world faded away and he could hear his heart pounding and feel his head as if it were a great, heavy weight. Thoughts floated through his mind like wisps of clouds, slowly and faintly. Blinking without seeing, House realized that he was on the brink of passing out. He couldn’t pass out.
“White Boy!” someone shouted, but House couldn’t look up for some reason. He couldn’t move his head. “Get up, White Boy, get up before he sees!”
“Can’t,” House choked, barely able to breathe, and it didn’t even occur to him that he was speaking in English. “I can’t.”
“No, Russian, White Boy!” A hand pulled on his shoulder, and House only felt it distantly. Slowly, the picture of brown earth was coming into his vision as the black faded away. He was staring at the ground, and though the world around him was spinning, he couldn’t look away. His head would not move. “Get up!”
Then, abruptly, the hand left his shoulder and House heard feet smacking against the ground. The Other had run away. He wondered why they were leaving, distantly, and continued to stare at the dirt of the ground. His breathing echoed in his ears and he thought that he might throw up.
Suddenly, there was the sharp crack of a whip and his back was ripped in half.
He screamed.
“Are you not feeling well, Dr. Wilson? Do you want me to send someone over?” she asked him when he told her that he wouldn’t be coming in for work that day.
“No,” he said, shaking his head even though she couldn’t see it. “I’m not sick. I’m just where I need to be right now.”
“You’re with Dr. House,” Mary said, and he could detect a hint of exasperation in her voice. “Is he awake? I thought they said that he might not wake up anytime soon.”
Wilson caught the veiled implication, but dismissed it before his mind could start worrying over the possibilities. “No, but I need to be here with—Mary, just cancel my appointments today, okay? I’m really in no condition to talk to anyone right now,” Wilson said, catching himself before he started spilling all of his emotions to his secretary. As if there wasn’t enough gossip about him.
“But you know that you’ve got that consult with Mr. Yates today, and he was talking about donating—”
“I know,” Wilson said through gritted teeth. “Please just tell him that we have to reschedule.”
Mary didn’t say anything, and Wilson could almost hear her pinching her lips together as she tried to hold her tongue.
“What is it?” he asked impatiently, thoroughly sick of this conversation.
“It’s just—” Mary hesitated. “I think that it’s—you shouldn’t be taking a day off work just because your friend is hurt! I mean, it’s terrible and all, but he’s in the same place as you, just a few hundred feet away! What difference does it make! You can still run down there if he needs you! And... I think you should, um, not take the day... off.”
Wilson listened to her outburst, steeling the temper that flared up at her words, and tried to respond as calmly as he could. “I appreciate your thoughts,” he began stiffly, “but I don’t think it’s really any of your business. And you should also know that if you think House is nothing more than a simple friend to me, you’re wrong. He’s—it’s none of your business. Cancel my appointments.”
He hung up on her and slumped back into his chair.
“Look at you House, you’re causing commotions even when you’re unconscious,” Wilson said with a fond smile as his agitation faded away. He would have to apologize to Mary for being so short with her, but that was later. This was now, where he was still half expecting House to sit up and say, “I don’t cause commotions, I am one.” But he didn’t.
House had to stop himself from yanking it out of its socket, because the pain of amputation would surely be better than this agony and what would come when it went back in. Of course, the pain of this was not the only horrible part of it all—he had to ask for help. There was no way he would be able to pop his shoulder back into place by himself. But this led to a new problem, a rarity for him even under normal circumstances: asking for help. Who to ask?
Many of the Others would happily oblige to shove his arm back into its socket and hear him scream, he suspected. But he didn’t trust them to listen to him, to follow his instructions exactly and not get caught up in their bizarre macho games. There were only a few women in the camp, and the Others in his shack were all men. At least, that’s what he had thought until he took the time to give them all a hard look over that night. As it turned out, not all of them were men. His eyes immediately picked out a young boy who wasn’t older than thirteen or twelve, with skinny black legs and bulging black eyes. House indicated that he wanted to talk to him, and the boy came over obligingly.
“What’s your name?” he asked the boy, sitting up against the tin wall of the shack.
“Adisa,” the boy said quietly, staring at House. He’d probably never seen another white Other.
“You wanna help me?” House asked, not bothering to give the kid his own name. The boy didn’t seem to mind and shrugged cooperatively. “Good. My arm—” He pointed to his limp appendage. “Needs to be put back into place. You have to push it back in. Can you do that?”
Adisa stared at him like he wasn’t quite sure what House had said, but he nodded regardless. “How?”
Grimacing, House used his left arm to hold up his right, silently telling Adisa to take it. When he did, House grasped his shoulder. “When I tell you to, pull as hard as you can. Don’t stop, even if I scream.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Adisa asked, staring at the arm in fascination. His dark fingers touched the skin gingerly, as if it were forbidden.
“It’s...” House couldn’t think of the word for dislocated. “The shoulder, up here, came out.”
Adisa said something very quickly in another language, and then looked down at the ground.
House scowled. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Give me your rations tomorrow,” Adisa said.
“I’m not giving you my rations!” House said indignantly. “I’ll get someone else to help me.”
“No you won’t,” the boy said. “Everyone else asks for it too.”
House looked at Adisa warily, but found himself believing what the kid was saying despite himself. And if he turned the kid down then he’d have to go to one of the older men, which he didn’t want to do. A day’s rations were meager enough, and worth getting out of this agony. So he nodded.
Adisa pulled and House bit back a gasp. His vision turned white for a minute, and he couldn’t breathe for the pain that was rocketing up his arm and exploding in his shoulder. He was about to swear when it abruptly vanished, leaving only small pangs that seemed to echo distantly. It felt like nothing compared to the pain that he’d been in all day. As he opened his eyes, he found Adisa sitting in front of him on his knees.
“Thanks,” House rasped, leaning back against the wall of the shack and falling asleep instantly.
Wilson gave her a grateful smile, opening the container and nearly fainting on the spot as the heavenly scent of spaghetti reached his nostrils. His stomach rumbled, and suddenly Wilson realized that 14 hours was a long time to go without food. He barely restrained himself from just reaching in and eating with his hands. The hell with forks and knives. But Cuddy was there, handing him a fork, and he took it and attacked the spaghetti.
It was the best thing he’d ever eaten.
“Thanks,” he said in between bites. “S’good.”
“I do try to keep my doctors from starving themselves to death occasionally,” Cuddy said dryly. “Helps the board reviews and all.”
Wilson looked up to Cuddy, ready to offer a reply, but he stopped cold when he saw two police officers approaching House’s bed. It took a moment for him to remember that he had to keep chewing, but he suddenly wasn’t so hungry anymore.
Cuddy, curious as to what Wilson had been staring at, turned around. He heard a muttered, “Oh, great,” from Cuddy, and then she turned around and gave him a sort of wry smile.
“Hello Dr. Cuddy,” one of them said as they came closer.
“Um, officers, this is Dr. Wilson,” Cuddy said, offering Wilson an apologetic smile from behind the two men.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said, rising out of his chair and offering a hand. After shaking hands with both of the police men, Wilson sat down in his chair and glanced down at the Tupperware container still full of steaming spaghetti. The thought of eating it now made his stomach twist.
“Dr. House is a good friend of yours?” one of the police officers, the shorter one, asked Wilson.
Cuddy left without offering a goodbye, disappearing into the background.
Wilson nodded, twirling his fork through the noodles. “Yeah. We met about ten years ago. I’m about his only friend, really.”
“Would you say that he confided in you?” the other officer asked.
Wilson resisted the urge to laugh. “No. House didn’t confide in anyone, except maybe Steve McQueen.” The confused looks he received immediately reminded him that he was talking to strangers, and he hurried to elaborate. “His pet rat. Named Steve Mc Queen.”
“So he didn’t tell you where he was going?” the shorter officer asked. Wilson saw the taller one pull out a notebook and start writing.
“He told me that he was going to a Russian pain clinic. The, um... Kolsheivk Bowl Exchange Program,” Wilson said, remembering it suddenly. “He said it would last six weeks. It sounded strange to me, but he said that it was a program where they did half the surgery in the first week and then had to wait a month to do the second half.”
“Was he acting suspiciously before he left?” one asked. “Did you ever wonder if he wasn’t telling the whole truth?”
“No,” Wilson said stolidly. “I believed him.”
“And you saw him get on his plane?” the other asked while the other wrote furiously in the little notebook. “You saw him leave for Russia?”
“I—” Wilson stopped. “No. I didn’t.” He saw the two officers eye him with new interest, and Wilson had the strangest sensation of being peered at through a microscope by first year med students. “Airport security only let me see him to that drop-off point. I didn’t have a ticket. But I drove him to the airport, helped him drop off his suitcase and made sure that he had his plane ticket.”
One nodded and they all waited for the police officer to stop writing. Wilson took a hasty bite of spaghetti, relishing the warmth of it now more than the actual flavor. He stole a glance at House, wondering for an instant if he was dreaming.
When the sound of the pen scratching against the paper finally stopped, Wilson braced himself for the next question.
“Does Dr. House own a pair of orange overalls?”
“Huh?” Wilson said, the word flying from his mouth before he could stop it. He flushed immediately and corrected himself. “I mean, no. I don’t think so. Why?”
“If Dr. House were to buy a pair of orange overalls, where might he go?” the taller asked, ignoring Wilson’s question.
“Uh...” Drawing a blank, Wilson shook his head. “I have no idea where you’d evenfind a pair of orange overalls. Gander Mountain, maybe? Or Dicks Sporting Goods? Why do you want to know?”
“Dr. Wilson, you were the one to discover Dr. House, correct?” the short one asked, barging on with no regard towards Wilson’s confusion. When Wilson nodded, still bewildered, the cop continued and finally offered an explanation. “Dr. House was found wearing a pair of orange overalls, and nothing else.”
“No boxers?” was the first question that came to Wilson’s mind.
“No,” was the curt reply. “You were the one to discover him, correct?”
“Yeah,” Wilson said, sitting back and running a hand through his hair as he tried to remember the previous night. “I... It was dark. I just saw his face and couldn’t think of anything else but getting him to the hospital.”
“And you received an anonymous phone call telling you where you could find Dr. House?” the taller one asked.
Wilson stopped to rummage through his pockets and finally came up with his cell phone. “Here,” he said, offering it. “You can check the records, I haven’t used it since I got the call.”
Both of them looked surprised, but accepted it gratefully. “We’ll try to get it back to you as soon as possible, Dr. Wilson, but if this goes to court then it will be considered evidence and you won’t get it back.”
“Keep it,” Wilson said, sighing. It would be a small hassle, well worth it, to have to reprint his business cards and make sure that all of his patients and their families took note of the change. But if it helped find the bastard who had done this to House, he would do it. “What else do you want to know?”
As he laid his head down on the shirt (rolled up, it made a decent pillow) and stared at the flames of the fire in the small shack he shared with twenty Others, House pondered those words. Wilson was at home right now, probably worrying about him and wondering if the surgery had been a success. He probably wondered why House hadn’t called him on his cell phone—or maybe he’d discovered that House had left his cell phone at home—and had the date of his supposed return marked on the calendar in big letters. It was probably circled, too, with that red marker he kept in his top right drawer.
The sudden ache that filled him was almost too much to bear, but it passed almost as soon as it had come. House pressed his face into the fabric hard, but the shirt had not carried Wilson’s scent since his second day here when he’d used it to treat the lashes on his back. He longed to hear Wilson’s voice again. He could only faintly remember what it sounded like, how it rang against the hard walls of a room. Wilson came up to his ears, but how round was his nose? What shade of brown were his eyes? Was the very center of his palm calloused? Was it a freckle or a mole on his left arm?
He couldn’t remember.
Wilson’s image had slipped away from his mind. He had tried so hard to stare at Wilson that last time, memorize the curve of his cheek and the way his hair fell before his ears, the way that he shifted his weight and whether he folded his hands right over left or left over right... But even his best efforts hadn’t been enough. He’d forgotten him.
House gripped the shirt harder, as if it would somehow bring him closer to Wilson. He imagined that Wilson could feel him touching it, could feel an invisible hand clamping down on his shoulder in a death grip, and imagined that they were connected for a moment. If Wilson could see him now, what would he think? Would he be ashamed, would he be pitying, would he be exasperated? What if he was angry? What if House told him what he’d done, everything that he’d done, and Wilson just lost it? He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t. He’d return home and tell Wilson he’d been running as part of his physical therapy and had fallen through some brush. None of his injuries were serious to require hospitalization, anyway. Wilson would be none the wiser and everything would work out fine.
In the background, the murmur of the Others talking amongst themselves echoed in his ears. House sat up abruptly and spread out the shirt before him, taking in its haggard appearance for the first time. It was amazing what wearing the same shirt every day would do, he thought. Maybe when he got back home, he’d take it to the lab and run some cultures on it to see what sort of diseases were running rampant on his body every day. The thought of being in a lab again, in a clean white lab coat dealing with medicine again made him grin from ear to ear. He couldn’t wait to go home.
He balled the shirt up, ready to lay it back down, but then he stopped and unfolded it. House laid it on the ground and smoothed it as best he could, and then carefully, gingerly folded it. Creasing the seams and making clean lines, he folded it until it was as it had probably come in the box. How Wilson would have folded it.
And then he laid down and went to sleep.
A broken wrist, severe bruising on the torso and the right foot, swollen right shoulder (showed signs of having been dislocated), malnutrition and dehydration, lacerations on the back that had been stitched closed, and a wide array of infections. It sounded like he’d been living in the wild on his own for the last six weeks, tussling with bears and moose.
For the millionth time, Wilson wondered what had happened to House. Would he talk when he woke up? What if he didn’t wake up? Would the police track down his kidnapper? What if House was permanently brain damaged? What if there was a long, bleeding-heart trial that shifted focus onto House’s drug habits, his drinking problems, his Tritter fiasco, while House sat propped up in a wheelchair with drool being routinely wiped off his chin?
A shudder rippled through his body, and Wilson set down the chart. His gaze was irrevocably drawn to House’s weathered face, to his sunken cheeks, to his thin body—his too-thin body... And he sighed.
“Dr. Wilson?”
Wilson jumped a mile, whirling around to find Cameron standing there, wide-eyed and apologetic. “Ah—Dr. Cameron. You startled me. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” Cameron said with a sad smile towards House. “I just wanted to see him. I didn’t know if he was awake.”
“He’s not,” Wilson said helpfully. The room suddenly felt too small with Cameron there, and he wanted to shove her through the curtain and shout at her to never come back. Instead, he forced himself to sit down in his chair and let Cameron have her free reign.
“I was just on the phone with his mother,” Cameron said offhandedly as she came around the side of the bed and began fingering House’s IV absentmindedly.
“You were what?” Wilson demanded, staring at her unbelievingly.
Cameron turned around, confused by his reaction. “I talked to his mother. She hadn’t even know that he was going to a pain clinic!”
Wilson was torn between staring at her in pure astonishment and strangling her. He opened his mouth, trying to form coherent words. “Really?” he managed in a faint tone.
“Yes,” Cameron said, looking troubled. “I filled her in, and she promised that she and her husband would be down here as soon as they could. I can’t believe that House didn’t tell her that he was leaving the country for six weeks!”
“He must not have wanted to worry her,” Wilson said with difficulty, still fighting not to openly gape at Cameron’s nosiness.
Cameron pursed her lips for a minute, furrowed her brow, and then quickly turned back to House. “Well, she knows now, and that’s what matters.”
Wilson nodded, trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Cameron had taken upon herself to call House’s parents and tell them that their son was in trouble. “Uh-huh.”
“When do you think he’ll wake up?” Cameron asked, oblivious to Wilson’s incredulity. “I know that they gave him a sedative, but surely it couldn’t have been for this long.”
“I don’t know,” Wilson said, the words beginning to flow a little easier. What was he going to say to House’s parents when they arrived? What would they say to him? He couldn’t even fathom how the encounter would go. “Should be soon, hopefully.”
Cameron suddenly wrinkled her nose. “Do you smell that? It smells like... urine.”
Wilson stared at House, quickly rising out of his chair. “Did he pee again?” he asked. He brushed past Cameron and took off House’s blanket to reveal his hospital gown, wet with yellow urine. Grimacing, he said to Cameron, “Don’t bother calling a nurse—I’ll just do it.”
He left Cameron and retrieved a new gown from a nearby supply closet. This one was a lavender striped one, and Wilson thought that it faintly smelled of corn starch. The one House was currently wearing was blue, and Wilson knew that if House woke up, he would demand the pile of sweat clothes that were stored up in his office instead of a hospital gown, no matter what color it was. Then he started as he realized that he’d just thought if, not when, and Wilson’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. He wasn’t going to give up hope so soon.
Finally returning, he saw that Cameron was still standing there.
“I don’t think that House would appreciate you seeing him like this,” Wilson said hesitantly, unsure of how to politely tell her to get the hell out. He unfolded the gown and tried to smooth out some of the creases.
Cameron rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen naked men before, Dr. Wilson. I want to help.”
“I appreciate the fact that you want to help,” Wilson began thinly, “but I really don’t think that House would want you to see him like this. He’s peculiar about people seeing him hurt.”
“Then why are you doing it?” Cameron asked, unabated. “You should have a nurse do it if he’s that defensive.”
“Because I’m his—well, I’ve seen him like this before. He trusts me,” Wilson said. “Please, Cameron.”
Cameron sent House a long, despairing look. Wilson waited, resisting the urge to start tapping his foot. “All right,” she said at length. “But let him know that I was down here. Tell him that we’re all worried about him.”
“I will,” Wilson said, taking it that ‘we’re all’ was referring to House’s team. He doubted anyone else in the hospital was worried for House, not counting Cuddy.
As Cameron finally left, he exhaled loudly into the empty space and then began changing House’s hospital gown. It was all he could do not to sit down on the floor and start crying.
His hair was longer and stubble was only kept at bay because they were given a weekly shave. He thought that Kingface saw beards as a sign of wealth and status. So funny that the ones on top feared the ones below them, that the biggest fear of those with power was to lose it. Reflecting, he found himself remembering clawing for status and prestige, for recognition throughout his life. Shoving everyone else aside. It was the way of life; you either shoved or got shoved.
His life felt segregated, and he stared through it as if he were staring through a filthy window. The hospital, Cuddy nagging him about clinic duty, working days through while struggling with a case, going to monster truck rallies and getting sick on chili dogs... He remembered it. The images, the knowledge that he had once lived that life. But he couldn’t feel it. The sound of Cuddy’s voice was silent to his ears, the exhaustion and pressure of trying to save a life was flat and distant, the feel of his cane in his hand was hollow.
Mechanically, his feet worked as he delivered his rocks from one pile to the next. It didn’t seem important anymore why he was doing it or how immoral it was that all these people would be working here until the day that they died. It barely mattered that he would be leaving, because the day that this all ended seemed so far away and unreachable. Why hope for something that wouldn’t come for ages? It would only mean that every day, he would awake with the hope that the car would come back and bring him back to the clinic, back to salvation, and then it would shattered.
No.
Not.
Never.
Focusing on the past, he could get rid of the hope. Unwrapping his first rifle as a teenager on Christmas morning, sealed the with the promise of going hunting with his father and uncle. The feel of smooth wood was something he knew—the handles of the wheelbarrow had rubbed against his palms too many times to have forgotten. He knew the smell of sulfur and the taste of bread on his lips, the feel of dirt and sweat mingling on his skin, the sound of whips cracking the air... He felt as if they would never leave him. Even when this was over, he would never escape them. He would never be clean enough, because what did clean feel like? What did the softest of beds, the warmest of comforters feel like?
He didn’t know. But he knew that he had to move the rocks.
He only loses focus for a second, it seems, and the world flickers and tilts before his eyes. He blinks and furiously uprights the world, and as he’s gathering his bearings he realizes that a pair of cerulean eyes are staring at him.
“House,” he says, but no sound leaves his throat.
House just stares at him, saying nothing, but brown eyes lock onto blue and Wilson feels as if he’s about to be violently ill but he can’t tear himself away. He tries to speak, but can’t. His hands won’t move, his brain won’t function.
Then House closes his eyes, and Wilson collapses back into his chair like he’s just been released from restraints.
Something strange leaves House’s mouth, something in a harsh and nonsensical language that Wilson doesn’t understand. He stares expectantly, as if he doesn’t realize that his tongue has made words that aren’t English.
Wilson shakes his head, trying to tell House that he doesn’t understand.
House says something again, but the sounds run together like chalk drawings in the rain to Wilson’s mind.
“I can’t understand you,” he says, shaking his head again.
House abruptly looks startled. His lips part, but no sound escapes his mouth for a suspended moment in time. Finally, he blinks. “Wilson.” His voice his hoarse and uneven.
Wilson nods. “Do you remember, House?”
“Yes,” House says. His eyes go to the right of Wilson. “You... How?”
Wilson quickly glances to his right and finds the shirt, the filthy, reeking, shredded shirt that he’d found on House only last night. “You had it with you. Here—you can have it back.” He sets it on House’s bed.
House reaches out, like he’s going to take it, but then he snatches his hand back. “No. It’s yours,” he says in a crackled voice, and his eyes go down to the blanket that covers him. Wilson notices that his hands tremble as he picks up the sheet and holds it between his fingers. Then he suddenly grasps it and twists it between his fingers, ripping it out of the corners and exposing his right foot. But House is entranced by the sheet he’s holding in his hand.
“Are you all right?” Wilson asks cautiously.
House doesn’t respond right away, but after a minute he nods.
“How’s the pain?” he continues, now feeling even more uneasy.
House doesn’t move from his position, staring down at his clenched fist. It’s shaking madly, Wilson realizes a moment later.
“House?”
“It’s gone,” House whispers. “It’s gone.” Dark splashes form on the sheet.
He’s crying.
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