Going Inside-Out

Part X

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance. Maybe slash later. If so, I'll give warning and change the rating. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn’t mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

I have no idea how the series will resolve the reasons why House had to commit himself, but this story has been my take on the possibilities. All speculations, insightful or obtuse, are mine.

XXXXXXXXXXX

The world would be less interesting without him.

-

-

"Hey!"

House turned his head listlessly to one of his three room mates. Gerald was yelling from the wrinkled mess of blankets his bed turned into each night and afternoon. Gerald never stopped moving. Though he was always planning on "settling down to sleep" and "finally relaxing", neither state ever came to pass.

When it seemed like his room mate was going to ignore him, "Hey!" Gerald grumbled again from the lumpy cotton piles. "Can't you see I'm trying to sleep!?"

House ignored him. Maybe he had been snoring, keeping Gerald up. After-lunch naps were about the only time he ever got any decent shut-eye. The nights were far too long and silent here. He was too far away from his piano, his records and order-out sweet n' sour chicken.

With a string of fancy expletives, Gerald got up and wandered away into the halls to begin his circling, looking for ever new digs to take a nap.

House turned his back on the room and his loony roomies, and closed his eyes, trying to go back to sleep.

Amber was there in the dark, the red of her clothes the shade of old blood in the dimness of his sleep-deprived mind. Here, even in the floating stupor of anti-psychotics and sleep potions, Amber didn't leave him be. Her skin glowed white like the evil ice-goddess she was.

House suddenly decided to ask her, since no one else seemed to have any answers. "Why you?" Maybe she was in a giving mood.

"How should I know?"

House hadn't expected anything else, but he was still disappointed, tired of that answer. He was weary from not knowing why. "You're part of me. Some deeply disturbed fucked-up part I didn't know was there. And I'm a smart guy. The smarts should be a part of you, too. None of this makes sense."

Amber smiled, teeth silver and sharp in the shadows of his mind and muted colors of his drugged vision. "You said it yourself - I'm part of you. All you have to figure out is which part." Her dirty cigarette glowed orange. "If you can't, then I guess we're both screwed."

Yeah.

-

-

House woke up to the rattle of his gurney and the shaking movement of its wheels over uneven tiles. A dark elevator ride took him down, and stark florescent lighting greeted him at the basement level.

"Where are we going?" He asked.

The back of the dark-haired head turned to look down at him. Wilson said evenly, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "We're going to operate on your brain."

House stared at his friend. "What the hell for?" But his mind was sluggish and his words sloppy from drugs. He turned to appeal to the masked nurse, but her gray eyes said nothing aside from cool obedience; a woman just doing her duty.

"We're going to drill into your head and remove the piece that causing so much trouble." Wilson smiled serenely, even white teeth lying to him, all the while the table was wheeled closer to the brightly lit room at the end of a long hall. It seemed he was being wheeled down the maw of a Great White shark.

House could hear the sounds of an oxygen pump and the clink of steel instruments being laid out in efficient rows. Wilson looked utterly calm. "Things will be all right now, House." He assured him. "You won't remember a thing. We'll all be all right."

House wondered which part of his brain they were going to cut into. His visual auditory center? His frontal lobe - the seat of his memory? What were they trying to fix exactly? "This doesn't make any sense." He insisted.

He was lifted and hard steel slapped tight around his wrists and ankles. The clank of hard metal on metal set up discordant notes in the room. It looked like a morgue.

"Just relax, House." Wilson purred. "You're in good hands."

"Let go of my arms." He looked at the dirty, gray walls. "This isn't an operating room."

Wilson frowned and House felt immediately ungrateful. Damn if Wilson couldn't make him feel like a shit with just a pouty look. "Now don't set up a fuss, House. We'll have to sedate you if you don't cooperate. This is for your own good."

Wilson loved those words. Wilson was the man who made sure House knew exactly what he was doing wrong all the time, and then went to great lengths to explain precisely what he ought to do make everything right so his life would flow along as smoothly as butter on the road to Wilson-esque happiness. Everything James Wilson suggested was always for his own good. House couldn't get up in the morning and pee if not for Wilson's indispensable advice.

"Like hell it is!" House said. No way, he decided. Not this time. This wasn't Wilson-like at all. This was nuts. House pulled and fought against the restraints until the sharp nylon edges of the straps cut into the tender flesh of his bony wrists. "Get these fucking things off me!"

The sour-faced nurse in the starched uniform shared an impatient look with Wilson. "He's been like this all evening." she twittered to the handsome doctor.

"Don't worry, nurse." Wilson flashed her his perfect teeth, charming the panties right off her. "He'll be put right soon enough. We can't have him going around blaming people for his own problems."

House wanted to shout that he didn't blame Wilson, but the drug-filled syringe the nurse violently thrust into his puffy vein took his voice and then his breath away.

Wilson smiled sweetly down at him as his eyes closed and numb darkness took him in. "House, stop worrying so much. When you wake up, you'll be a brand new man." Wilson winked, flirting with his patient, pouring on the charisma. "You won't even recognize yourself."

-

-

"Tritter was years ago. He's not relevant to what's happening now." House held his fingers and thumb on either side of his temples.

"Another headache?" Alissa asked. "Bad dreams again?"

House nodded. "Nothing but." He shivered at the memory of Wilson gleefully holding his detached brain in one hand, laughing as he tossed it back and forth between himself and the nurse, playing a game of Catch Him if You Can. House limped helplessly back and forth across the room, trying to snatch his brain out of the air before it was too late, and he fell down dead.

Alissa was sorry about that, but the medications were crucial. She knew House understood that, which was why, despite the nightmares and headaches, he kept taking them. He might be sick, but he wasn't stupid. "I asked you about Wilson. We've already talked about Tritter."

"Oh." House shook his head. "Wilson's about as relevant in all this as Tritter is."

"Then what is? Who is?"

"It's what - not who!"

Doctor Alissa Shane watched her charge carefully. Gregory House was a highly intelligent but slightly paranoid individual. He gave away nothing without a fight, and he fought everything. It was one of the reasons he was in here. "There are no whats in life without related who's. I don't seem to remember you saying you felt bad about the bus."

House didn't look at her. Instead he suddenly found himself back there, remembering that awful Tritter episode when he and Wilson's friendship was tested to the limit. Tritter had been on a campaign to ruin him. Wilson had done the good friend thing and tried to prevent it, or at least soften the blow, so House wouldn't lose his medical license. Instead of accepting the help, House had taken the stubborn bit in his teeth and ran with it to the end, for better or worse. Mostly it would have been worse.

House continued to avoid Alissa's eyes and tried to recall his own motivations at the time. Refusing to back down from a bully who was more of a bully than he was, had been his first mistake. Insisting he had done nothing wrong. A lie - his second mistake. He'd done nothing illegal - that was true, at least nothing that anyone had caught him doing. But later he'd had to admit to himself that he had done things wrong. Things that had eventually spun around, and bitten him hard in the ass.

But what he remembered most vividly of all, was a tall, sober-faced bully in a position of authority who was set on making him bend to his will. Bend over and give it up. All of it. Cuddy had stepped in with a lie and saved his wounded backside from certain jail.

House recalled swallowing all those pills and about a gallon of alcohol. To this day, he wasn't exactly sure why. He'd felt totally alone that night. Wilson's suggestion of Christmas dinner he'd passed on with a some sarcastic gesture or other. Third mistake. "I didn't want to go to jail."

But he hadn't. Alissa decided to take his words at face value for the moment. "Where was your friend in all of this? Where was James?"

House frowned. "Why are we always back to Wilson?" House pointed with his plastic "safety" cane out the barred window. "He's out there, patting bald-headed kids and drinking espresso's. I'm the one in here. Tritter was a petty thug. That's over. Move on."

"Yes, you are in here. Because you were hallucinating so vividly, you thought it was real. You were seeing and carrying on conversations with dead people. Part of this, Gooden and I are convinced is physical brain damage brought on by the DBES-"

House was suddenly angry at the suggestion. "-It wasn't the DBES!"

"It played a part, Doctor House, you know it did. Why would you agree to such a dangerous procedure on a virtually baseless hope?"

"It wasn't baseless." Though he knew it had been. Even though he'd first suggested it, that was when he had no working theory to what was killing Amber. Once a diagnosis had been postulated, discussed among himself, his team and Cuddy, and accepted as reasonable, there was no need. The DBES he'd done for one reason alone - Wilson had asked him to.

"You risked your life. You almost died. I've read the medical You were in a coma for four days, and when you woke up, you didn't speak for three."

"We didn't know what was wrong with her before the DBES. After, we knew. It worked."

"You knew everything you needed in order to make a reasonable diagnosis before the DBES."

"She might have died."

"She did die."

Alissa thought she understood now why Doctor House took so many risks with his life. He didn't care enough about himself not to; not when it came to those he loved. Not when it came to himself. Certainly not when it James Wilson. "You felt guilty. You thought her death was your fault. You may not have said so, you still deny it, but we both know that's true."

House's fingers were curled around the end of his cane in a death grip, the flesh bloodless with the strain. "You know fuck!" He shouted at her, an explosive boom of three words that filled the room with his fury and died away almost instantly. House was shaking.

"What happened after Wilson went away?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"He can't tell me what happened with you, he wasn't around. Besides I want to hear what you felt and took from those events."

"But I'm crazy."

"An imperfect definition and even if that's true, it wasn't always so. I want to know what you felt about it."

"Why is it important?"

"Because it happened to you."

"Nothing. I felt nothing."

An echoing hollow of a nothing. A great hard-walled cavern of it.

Alyssa thought: The shock of tearing away. The invisible bleed the sick and depressed hide from everyone. Grief comes with fanfare or deaf and mute, but it still comes.

House stared at his doctor - she was a port he floated just off from, a haven in seas that had become too rough and cold. He'd been treading water since that day. "I felt . . ." House could not articulate it. How do you define lack? ". . .snuffed."

Like a flame. Flicker, flicker - poof. A light had gone out in him. Alyssa wondered if Doctor Wilson had at any point since House's institutionalization, at all suspected how thoroughly he had finished the job that the accident, the death, the insane DBES, seizure and coma had begun. She speculated from that point on House had gone on pure intellect. Then the suicide of an employee, a blow that had landed without warning and no none but House himself knew the impact that had brought down on his already hacked-up psyche.

"You felt abandoned."

House considered it. It fit, he supposed, as well as anything else. He nodded, hoping to move on.

"And when he came back, was it different? The same? Had anything changed between you?"

"No. I don't know. Maybe. He wasn't mad at me anymore. We were back to normal I think."

Alissa was certain that, along with the anger, was self-torture and desperate denial. Gregory House didn't sacrifice himself for anyone, because if he had, the one to whom it was given would not have walked away without a word. Would not have blamed him for all his past troubles. Would not have treated his almost-death as a lame offering. James Wilson had thrown the gift of Gregory's life back in his face.

House continued to dismiss all of Wilson's unkindness as just "Jimmy was afraid", but his psyche; his Id; his already tinder-dry self-worth had been burned to the ground by it. "You did that for James Wilson and no one else, and he rewarded you by taking a walk. By breaking off the friendship, by underlining to you how little he thought of it. How little he thought of you."

"He didn't meant any of it. I know him, you don't."

Greg House had known Doctor Wilson longer than she did, had spent more hours with him, had seen him at his best and worst, but there were things about his friend Greg, though seeing, denied believing. Dismissed, forgiving them outright.

In that dominion, she thought she knew Wilson rather intimately. Wilson was a manipulative and sometimes short-sighted man. Despite those glaring flaws, Wilson also loved Gregory House. Of that she was convinced, but he did not love him more than he loved himself.

House, on the the other hand, did. As deeply as the agony of Wilson's actions had affected him, House still loved James Wilson more than his own life. There was no doubt. That's why House was denying it; actually protecting Wilson; keeping him and his heartless act, in an oddly endearing but emotionally unhealthy way, all to himself.

Now all she had to do was convince House that this man he loved so much had been wrong to ask of him what he had. Wrong and selfish, grief not-with-standing. "He used you, and then he left you." A terribly difficult thing to admit. "I think you don't want to hang your mental illness on anything or anyone," She continued, "particularly not on Doctor Wilson's actions, because you have nothing left to lose if you're right." Alissa watched him closely. "Except Wilson himself."

House stared at her from betrayed, insulted eyes. "Oh?"

He was trying to keep up the protest, trying to run from the facts. But his avenues of escape were rapidly closing off. Soon he would have nowhere to turn to but the truth he was so desperately avoiding. Love was a good thing, but focused in an unhealthy way it could also be a destructive force, tearing holes in the heart it touched.

Love did funny things to people. "I know you love him, and I really do believe he loves you. But he should have done more than not assign blame." She said quietly, trying to thwart the knee-jerk denial she knew might again erupt. "He should have thanked you and meant it." By good, loving, meaningful action.

House didn't shout this time. He rubbed fingers across his eyes and sighed. A great, deep breath of stale, hospital air that did little to alleviate his exhaustion. "Why Amber, then?"

"Why do you think you're seeing Amber?"

House chuckled - a humorless, exhausted staccato. "You psychiatrists area all the same. You rely too much on your patient for your answers."

"A physician has to rely on his patient's health and response to treatment. I don't see the difference. Answer the question."

Rubbing his forehead, "Psychologically - because I was with her when she died."

Alissa stared a little at that. According to official records, the medical examiner's report, the attendings, and doctor House himself, Amber Volakis died over a full day after the accident. Her patient knew that very well.

"You mean she died because you were in the accident together."

House paused and Alissa could see him adjusting his memory on that point. "Uh, yeah."

"You have stated that you don't blame yourself for her death."

"That's right."

"But you knew she was dead, didn't you? I mean, subconsciously, you knew right there on the bus that she was already beyond saving."

House shook his head. "No, I told you, I didn't even remember she was there until later."

"Medically, I mean, from the standpoint of a physicians reason, your mind put it together immediately. From from the amantadine, from her injuries, from the blood loss and kidney damage you rightly guessed had occurred because of the blood loss, you knew Amber Volakis was as good as dead before she was ever carried from that bus." Alissa thought they had together stumbled over another weighty, back-breaking stone on the scale of House's eventual breakdown.

"The idea terrified you. Wilson would hate you. " She suggested gently, keeping her tone even and logical to appeal to the reason she knew was being pummeled beneath a terrible, mis-placed guilt. "You were going to lose him."

Alissa sorted through it in her own mind, as she knew House would search for reasons where she must equally be wrong.

But she didn't think she was wrong. The possibility he was going to lose Wilson was why House stepped aside to Wilson's medical opinions instead of following his own more experienced ones. It was why House had allowed ill-advised treatments. It was why the DBES. It was the why for every error made over those two days. It was the why House had punished himself for over a year.

Alissa felt sorry for him. Gregory House had attached his whole perception of happiness to James Wilson. His worth was partly or mostly James Wilson, and his future, he believed, was very much tied up in his friend. Whether subconsciously or deliberate, House made all the wrong choices for Amber to appease his friend, who had stubbornly clung to the belief that she could be saved; that any action was worth the risk, if it meant it would save her.

But House had known different and had known that truth since the accident.

"You didn't ask her to come to the bar. You didn't deliberately leave your cane behind, you didn't drive the truck that hit the bus or the bus that hit the SUV. You didn't drive a steel rod through her femoral artery. You did nothing but make a phone call."

You've been punishing yourself for fifteen years because you hung up the phone.

House shuddered at the memories. The sound inside the tumbling metal monster was the sound of the world ending. The screams of fear and pain, some of them his own. The dull crack of his skull against the unforgiving glass and the black-outs. Stumbling from the vehicle, the last to emerge, the emergency crew seemed to have forgotten about him. He remembered not really understanding what had happened. Even after his memory had been nudged open, all he recalled in later days was the feeling of impending death. The nightmares had lingered for months.

"You think Amber taunts me because-"

"You loved Wilson, but after Amber's death, he hated you."

She could see her patient struggle with the emotions tumbling around in his mind. He was getting very much closer to accepting that he was in here because of nothing more complicated than guilt, loneliness and a terrible self-loathing for things he had not done. House was in a mental institute because he was suffering physical damage to his brain, and from things common to all emotional beings. Doctor Gregory House wasn't in fact a super-being in a magic suit against which all emotion bounced off. He wasn't the greatest doctor on earth who had failed miserably either. He was just human.

"Your subconscious would never have chosen Wilson as your antagonist - you love him." Very simple, really. "You said Amber hated you. The accident, her death, the DBES that should not have happened, all of it gave you reason to doubt yourself - even hate yourself. You can hide pain, refuse it place, stomp on it, deny it's there, but it shows its face eventually, either through physical disease, or mental breakdown.

"Doctor Wilson asked for your life - " The final stone. " - and then he threw it back in your face when it didn't give him what he wanted." The world saw House still standing straight and strong under that mountain, while in fact he was being ground to fragments.

Alissa realized that Wilson was hiding from things too, and had been for a long time. Two educated medical men, both in agony, in co-dependent orbit around each other's destructive forces. Sometimes all love really did was hurt.

House sagged in his chair, the Haldol and Thorazine had brought on a persistent lethargy. Alissa knew he had also been experiencing nausea, dizziness and wet-mouth, a tendency to drool House found disgusting. Most of the more unpleasant side effects decreased with regular use over time.

With an already sodden tissue, House dabbed at the persistent saliva edging his lips. "What about Cuddy?"

House was trying to see her point at least, going back over the events and sorting through the many layers of jumbled pain and bewildering emotions that had given rise to such hateful dialogues with a dead woman juxtaposed with a vivid fairy tale spent in bed with his boss.

"Cuddy was comfort. She was a friend you had once had a relationship with. Hallucination Cuddy was created by you; you trying to hide from the fact that you were sick with guilt and loneliness. You were trying to turn the confusing, hateful, misguided accusations of your own conscience against yourself into something good. Something you thought you wanted. Cuddy was..." Alissa found the simplest explanation "because you were afraid."

Alissa watched her patient work through her words. He stared out the window. "Say some of what you think might be true, why would the hallucinations appear only after Wilson came back? If I was so screwed up, why didn't Amber show her face before?"

"Because Doctor Wilson isn't the pivotal support of your world. He was not the sole measure of your worth to yourself. Other things, other events were added to that lingering pain - Doctor Kutner's suicide for starters - another event you could do nothing to fix and for which you partly blamed yourself for not seeing in time to prevent. You're not here only because of James Wilson." But he was a large part of it. He was the catalyst.

House was unable to formulate a defense; right and true facts to show her how wrong she was about all of it.

His last wall was down now, and without his defenses in place there were hard times coming. He would no longer be able to shield himself from the emotions and the pain that would accompany them.

"I think you blame yourself for the events surrounding Amber's death. Things which lead to your best friend walking away from you during one of the hardest times of your life. Without thanking you for risking your life for her; without even saying goodbye - and when he did, it was only to tell you what a burden you'd been to him; what a miserable man - what an awful friend you'd been."

Alissa had met Doctor Wilson twice now, and both times had been charmed by his quiet demeanor and obviously genuine concern over his friend. Wilson was polite, good looking, and slipped easily into conversation. In almost every way, he appeared to be a man who could pick up friends with hardly any effort, while combative, stubborn, eccentric House spurned the trappings of human relationships and, according to Wilson, had only experienced one loving, stable partnership during his entire adult life. Where Wilson acquired his friends and lovers with a wink, House fought lonely battles from fox-holes for his. Sadly and ironically, isolated, lonely House seemed to understand what bona fide love was far more clearly than his more popular friend.

"And what a nice pal he was to deign coming back despite your pathetic neediness." Alissa echoed the thoughts she surmised had gone through House's subconscious at the time. House wasn't a weak individual. No person who had gone through what he had during his life could be labeled a weakling. But no one was completely untouchable. Everyone has a breaking point. House's had been losing Wilson.

The whole dynamic between these two opposing personalities had become heavily entwined over time, and knotted with a great deal of pain. They were more a couple than just friends, and that was intriguing.

Had Wilson hated his life-long friend? Probably not. Hated Amber's death of course, hated House's failure certainly. One thing was absolute: from everything Doctor Cuddy had told her, even despite her own efforts to get her two employees to come to an agreement and start speaking like friends again instead of enemies, Wilson had run for his life from House. Had escaped. Alissa thought more that he had escaped to protect something or preserve something. To save something? Save himself from more pain?

Maybe he simply had not wanted to lose House too? Alissa thought it a strong possibility. When faced with things each could not accept, Wilson ran away, and House went crazy. Wilson ran because he was afraid, not because he hated House, but because he loved him that much. She doubted the younger man would have hung around such a hard-willed, fiery personality as Greg House for seventeen years if House had little to offer in the way of companionship. Wilson played the escape game, too.

It explained why Wilson came back. Love was a two sided coin, and these men each had a side. Together, they were head and tails.

Amber Volakis.

Alissa knew Amber had worked for House for a year. That meant she probably had a fairly good knowledge of House in the professional sense. But what about personally? No doubt Wilson had shared his own opinions of House to Amber, and over their weeks and months together, she might have gleaned more from Wilson's stories about her former boss. Yet hallucination Amber was unfailingly personal and vicious in her attacks. Was it Wilson's words (provided in fact by House), that she was speaking?

So in House's mind, Amber was who? A stand-in for Wilson? Whose opinions carried so much more weight. Hurt so much more when those opinions were unkind.

Alissa sighed. Even she had trouble sorting it all out. Human beings were complex creatures, to say the least, and her work had been cut out for her. Now all she wanted was for House to see that his friend Wilson, however much he loved him, however his many good qualities, was not a golden boy. Wilson was just as flawed as anyone, and certainly not better than House. Once he accepted that, he would have no shining Wilson standard against which to measure himself. There was no standard, there was just flawed people.

She watched House as he silently sorted through all the things he had heard. His hands, still now, not fidgeting. His eyes moving back and forth over the faded carpet, searching the past, looking for the simple, blameless truths he had assumed were no part of him.

He also appeared a little embarrassed at being caught in the same arena as weak, imperfect humanity. House was at the same time ashamed and bewildered by his friend's reaction to his potentially fatal sacrifice, that in the end had been treated as routine. Nothing special. Deserved by the receiver, but a gesture by the gifter as ultimately inadequate and lame.

How deeply it must have stung to offer up his brain, his very life, everything that contained him, only to have such a sacrifice looked upon as useless. James Wilson, understandably grieved over the death of his girlfriend of four months, had inadvertently re-affirmed in Doctor House's subconscious that nothing he did out of love or friendship was good enough. That Gregory had turned out to be everything his cruel, exacting father had predicted, and nothing he had hoped for.

House wasn't just sick to death of that wearisome old familial battle, the accident, the heart attack, the coma, had all combined to leave him ill-equipped to fight this new one.

She wanted House to understand and accept that he himself deserved the same respect and compassion as anyone who had acted as a hero ought to receive. Instead House had been treated as disposable. In Wilson's eyes, he hadn't been allowed to be imperfect. How dare he not save her? How dare he presume to suffer as she had? How dare he compare - how dare he fail?

"If that's true and I admit it, I'm supposed to be cured now, aren't I? So how do I stop the hallucinations?" He asked with some bitterness. "How do I get my life back?"

It wouldn't be easy, but she and Gooden had been discussing Doctor House's progress, and lack of progress, and were working together to facilitate just that eventuality. She wanted this man to have a life again outside these walls. He was too unique, too valuable a human being, to be stuck in Trenton, forever labeled as a mental patient - a failure - and nothing else. The world would be less interesting without him.

"We continue the medication and our discussions. Remember, much of this is a result of physical damage. You cannot stick a live electrode deep into a brain's center and not cause change. And, as you know, brain damage is permanent. The hallucinations may never disappear completely. But through medication, we can reduce their power, make them a back-ground noise instead of a guiding voice. You're strong minded, Doctor House. I'm convinced you'll be at nearly a hundred percent when you leave here."

House looked sharply at her. "When?" He asked, a little doubtful still. "Not if?"

"When." Sooner than later when.

-

-

By the time House was returned to his room, he had erupted into a screaming, angry animal, cursing her, the place, and the whole state of the world.

Alissa nodded patiently at the orderlies report of House's out-burst. She had been prepared for it. That often happened. A patient faced with the stark reality of his or her own illness found it too much to take in all at once. The anger, the fighting was a last ditch attempt to demonstrate that not only were the doctors wrong about the craziness, the patient still possessed self-will and had the right and power of autonomy - to fight against them, if for no other end. They had the right to be angry about their own sickness.

Alissa put in a call to Princeton. It was time Doctor Wilson paid his friend a visit. She believed that this time, Doctor House would talk to him. Maybe honestly for the first time since the accident. Maybe for the first time ever.

-

-

House saw the younger man approach his on-again off-again companion, Clarence. It had to be the son he so fondly spoke of.

House had borrowed a white coat from an otherwise occupied intern who'd shed it because of the heat, and waited nearby until the two men finished exchanging the father/son surface-layer pleasantries. Then he walked casually over to insert himself into their conversation. He walked straight up to Clarence, and sat down next to him. "How are you today, Clarence?"

Not bothering to extend his hand in greeting, or even introduce himself to the son, House nodded as Clarence answered with his usual monotone of nothing special.

His son, a short, slightly tubby man in his fifties with thinning black hair, wearing an expensive silk suit and hand-made leather shoes with a fresh polish, stared at House with the look of an individual who does not want to be impolite at the disruption of the impolite stranger, even if that stranger was dressed like a doctor.

"Are you my father's doctor?"

House stuck his hand out now, nodding. "House." House studied the son of Clarence. "Yes, I'm his doctor." House glanced sideways to Clarence. "Isn't that right, Clarence?"

Clarence nodded. "That's right. House is a doctor."

The son appeared a little puzzled. "I don't understand. What happened to Doctor Hodgsen?"

"Family emergency. He'll be gone for a few weeks." Absolute bullshit. House hoped like hell Hodgsen didn't walk by any time in the next few minutes. "The good news is, Doctor Hodgsen has consulted with me and we've gone over your father's original psychiatrist's notes..." House had checked, the psychiatrist was dead now. Lucky break for Clarence. "...and we feel there was a misdiagnoses back when your father was first assessed."

The son suddenly looked a little nervous. "Misdiagnoses? What kind of misdiagnoses?"

"The kind where the original diagnosis was amiss. Your father does not have schizophrenia. He originally suffered a TIA, a small stroke that was missed in his amagdalae, it caused a numbing of emotions and left him in a state of what we call "submerged consciousness."

The son was sweating.

"The next good news is, he's healthy enough to make many of his own decisions and with drug therapy and a little assistance, can probably go back to running his company. At the very least, he'll be able to go home."

"I see."

Before sonny-boy had a chance to make up a really clever excuse as to why his dad should not be released, House added, "And I've submitted my written recommendation to Trenton and your father's attorney's to that effect." He hadn't, but once he was sprung he sure as hell would figure out a way to do just that.

Sonny sputtered. "You can't do that."

House regarded him with serene curiosity. "Why would you not want your father out of here?" House chuckled as though to a fool, "I mean, other than the millions and millions of dollars pulled out from under dear ol' dad by your greedy little fingers and his multi-million dollar company under your direct control, give me one good

reason why you wouldn't want him released?"

Sonny stared daggers. "You son-of-a-bitch."

House turned to Clarence. "How about you, Clarence, would you like to go home? See a movie? Putter around in that garden of yours? Meet a nice lady at the bingo palace?" Clarence probably wouldn't be able to dip his hand into the running of his company again, but at least he could live his final years in style and comfort.

Clarence slowly cracked a smile as his mind lit up with the possibilities. "Yeah. I sure would." Clarence stood up. "Let me go pack my things. I'm gonna' go home."

House turned back to the greedy son. "Tell you what. I'll keep your little fib about conspiracy to commit your father, I'll even forget about who's name is on the company stationery. But you are going to make haste with getting Clarence home just as soon as your fat ass lifts off that chair. You are going to hire him a maid, a cook, a nurse and, if the ladies at the bingo hall aren't willing, a hooker now and then. You're going to give him the best damn retirement a millionaire's son's father ever had. Or Clarence's lawyers and I are going to have a long talk on the phone."

Sonny-boy's rage was swallowed up in his fear of losing everything. "Fine." He sucked in a calming breath. "Fine, you fucker."

House stood, saying as he walked away. "I'll be checking in on Clarence. Count on it."

-

-

"How is House?"

For the second time, James Wilson was seated opposite Alissa in her modest office. In the presence of his expensive suit and pricey hair-cut, her shabby office and simple, Walmart attire felt a little below his class. She shook off the feeling. "Doctor House is sick with guilt over Amber Volakis' death, and grieving over you."

James Wilson stared at her. "But that wasn't his fault. I told him it wasn't. He knows it wasn't. I don't think I understand - grieving-?"

"Let me be frank, Doctor Wilson. Gregory House believes that you don't really believe that it wasn't his fault. He's here partly because when he sees you look at him, he believes you don't see just him, but the man who killed your girlfriend. He thinks you still blame him for it. And he's here because you asked him to stick an electrode into his brain, which caused a seizure, a coma and short-term aphasia. And now, most recently hallucinatory-delusions that could end his career."

"That's not really correct." Wilson rubbed his forehead. "Look, we-."

"-You walked away after the DBES, a request you placed upon an already sick man who was not capable of caring for himself, never mind in a state to effect some last minute miracle to prevent a patient's death. That ill-conceived procedure was border-line malpractice against a man who was, at the time, a patient - I have the medical records. I have his chart dated two days prior to the DBES, the day of the accident, the day he was admitted. Doctor House was never actually discharged until after he awoke from his coma and was declared fit enough to go home. I can't believe that you don't see how unbelievably negligent that was. I can't believe that Doctor Cuddy, the Dean, doesn't see it, or that she signed off on that procedure, or that she allowed Doctor House to run around the hospital with a skull fracture and a brain bleed.

"I don't care that the patient was your girlfriend, or who among you thought you couldn't do without his skills. Through-out this appalling medical misconduct, House's health was disregarded and proper medical treatment dismissed. The dereliction of Hippocratic duty perpetrated by Doctor Cuddy is, in my opinion, cause for dismissal. In fact, you both should have lost your licenses."

She watched Wilson take in her words. Wondered if he or his boss had ever considered their own actions in depth, or honestly. "Instead, House just kept on risking his own health and you two just kept on shrugging your shoulders, allowing him to do it."

Wilson looked at the top of her desk and the higgledy-piggledy array of pencils, papers and personal knick-knacks. He was reminded of House's desk. "It was his choice. He suggested the DBES to begin with."

"Come on!" Alissa tossed her findings at him. Wilson caught the thick file on its way to the floor. "He was sick! His medical condition was terrible and you both knew it. Emotionally, he wasn't much better. He didn't want to lose his best friend - meaning you. So you know as well as I that he would have laid down in traffic for you."

Wilson knew he had used House's guilt over Amber to goad him into the DBES. Though a reasonable diagnosis had been reached, House had agreed with a mere seconds hesitation. Wilson recalled almost smelling the guilt wafting off House that day. He was terrified that Wilson was going to hate him.

All Wilson could think about was Amber. All House could think of was me. "I was out of my mind. Amber was dying."

Yes, the grief may have been a mitigating influence. "I want you to know that I believe Doctor House is going to get well. With proper medication and continuing therapy he could probably return to practicing medicine - with a significantly lightened work-load. But I can't guess how well he will cope once he does return. He's torturing himself through hallucinations of Amber Volakis, and then trying to comfort himself via hallucinations of living drug-free and in a relationship with his boss. Gregory's been in agony for months. I'm surprised you didn't see it."

-

-

Wilson dialed Lisa Cuddy's office from Trenton's wide echoing hall. Patient's walked back and forth at the far end, behind wire mesh too thick to cut or bend. For their safety. And his. Cuddy picked up almost immediately, giving him no time to think of the reason he was calling her in the first place. And now he couldn't think of one, but it was too late to hang up.

"Doctor Cuddy." A simple greeting from a busy woman.

"It's me."

"How's House?"

"I guess, better."

"Guess? Better how?"

"Talking. Shane's said he's angry and throwing things and . . .I guess mad as hell at me."

"Oh?" Despite the question, Cuddy sounded like she believed it.

Wilson remembered the seizure. House cut his hand open on the medical tray, thrashing all over, getting blood everywhere, and then he stopped, flopping down like a side of beef on a butcher's block. All Wilson could see, through the haze of House's still form and Chase's shouts for him to help, was Amber's bloodless face, now as good as dead.

"He still thinks I blame him for Amber."

"Don't you?"

"What?"

Wilson heard Cuddy suck in a breath. "You still love him." She said. It was not a question. "Even though he failed to die for you?" Now, questions. Long held-in sharp, hurtful questions she, out of respect for his mourning, had kept to herself until now. "Failed to trade his life for hers?"

"What the hell kind of question is that!? Of course I still love him."

"Could have fooled me."

"What does that mean?" He was beginning to regret dialing.

"House risked his life, lapsed into a coma. You,...you didn't visit him even once. You walked away. You didn't thank him. You didn't call. You let him lay there, believing that he should have saved her or at least been good enough to die in lieu. As I said, you could have fooled me."

"I was grieving!" But that excuse had long since lost its potency. Too sick with grief to make one phone call to see if House was okay just didn't wash.

"You knew House didn't wake up for four days. What you didn't know was he didn't speak for three. And when he finally remembered how, he asked where you were. You bastard - you made me lie to him for you. I lied and said you had checked on him when I knew you hadn't. I lied because I was terrified he'd forget how to speak again and be mute for the rest of his life if he didn't have anything to hope for; if he didn't have at least you. So. You. Could. Have. Fooled. Me!"

When Cuddy hung up, the feeling that the cracked, pit-holed section of road on which he had been traveling ended, and another began. This one had to go better. Had to. He would make sure.

-

-

"House."

House opened his eyes. They were crusted with gook and red from sleeplessness. He'd been strapped down and sedated after his umpteenth tantrum of the day, states of emotion Shane and Gooden insisted were a healthy sign. House had emerged from the world of the half-living into the world of the wanting-to-live-again. Anger was simply part of that. House was thoroughly pissed off at the place where life had finally thrown up its hands and dumped him.

House moved rheumy eyes around until they found Wilson's face. "Hey." House made an effort to look around the room, just having energy enough to lift his head off the pillow. "What? No porn? No hooker?" House's words were slow and slurred from the calming sedative. "What...kind of cheap hospital visit iz-'iss?"

Wilson smiled. It was a sad gesture full of regrets. Nothing changes but the future and only if you work hard. "Sorry. Hospital rules. If you're desperate, I'll kiss you."

House rolled his eyes, a sluggish half effort that almost didn't register as irritation. He was so sedated, he was drunk with it. "Were you 'ere for m' latest mel'-down?"

Wilson nodded. He hadn't seen it, but had been told. He'd been told a lot of things today. "I don't blame you for Amber, House."

House stared at him, suddenly wary-eyed and puzzled by the abrupt turn the conversation had taken. " 'know."

No, he didn't, Shane insisted. He really didn't. "I'm sorry I walked away. I guess I wanted to punish you." Punish him for not dying. Had that really been his underlying feeling? "I - god - I'm so sorry."

"You s-said you didn' blame me, but I know you din' forgive me." House had to rest for a few seconds after so many tiring words. "Still don't."

"I forgave you." Wilson said, not certain how much House would remember of their conversation. "I did. I do."

House shook his head once back and forth, and kept talking like he hadn't really heard. "Then yu' left. Tol' me I wz a mis'rable bastard you needed t'get 'way-frum." House frowned at the memory. Maybe one he didn't let himself think about too much. One he didn't like the feel of on his chest. "That r'lly hurt, y'know."

Wilson nodded. He had no excuse but grief. Not enough. Not for this.

Impulsively Wilson cupped House's left cheek in his hand and used his thumb as a balm, stroking House above his thin eyebrow, needing the physical connection with his friend in order to sooth him. And maybe to sooth himself as well.

House's eyes looked elsewhere. "'N he hasn't bin spend'g time with me." House spoke aloud but to himself. "'Guezz he dozn' wan' get that close 'gin."

Then House focused his eyes back on Wilson with a tiny start, as though Wilson had blinked out and then reappeared. "Shane says Amber'z here 'cuz I think you hate me, and I'm making her all up t' p'nish m'self. But I think Amber'z here 'cuz I kill'd her." House's eyelids began to leak water, only he didn't notice. He didn't try to lift a strapped down hand to wipe them away, or look embarrassed. It was like they weren't there at all.

He whispered so softly, it barely registered as speech. "Din' mean to. . ."

Suddenly Wilson was crying just as silently, as his friends misery stared him squarely in the face; letting him see beyond any doubt the damage, the pain, he had caused House not only physically, but mentally. Emotionally repressed House would deny it even as he punished himself. And he had been punishing himself for Amber, and over Wilson, for a long time. "It wasn't your fault, House. It was mine. I made you cool her down; move her. I made you do that fucking DBES procedure - Jesus."

Wilson wiped his own tears way with a thumb and finger, wishing, wishing, wishing he could turn back the clock and do things differently so that, though Amber might still be gone, House would be still whole. "Everything that's happening to you now, is because of me."

House rolled his eyes again at what he saw as Wilson's tendency to carry the world on his shoulders, but they were blinking closed, then open, then closed. He was was losing his battle against the tranquilizer. He'd be out in seconds now. "Yer not the pivot th' world turnz on, J'mmy." House teased. "Give't up."

Wilson didn't know how to repair the damage he'd caused. Maybe there was no repairing. Only forgiving, and moving on. "I'm sorry I went away." An apology would never be enough, but nothing really would be. There was only what he believed now. It was all he had to offer. "House. It wasn't your fault. Okay? Please believe that. For me? Believe it for me."

House was almost asleep.

"Because I still love your shine of neediness, and every other screwy part, too."

When he hunched over to give House a small hug, just his upper body pressed against House's for a second or two, all the bed rail would physically accommodate, his friend was already asleep. "I loved you the most." I took you for granted. "I was a coward." I'll never make that mistake again. "Just come home."

-

-

Doctor Alissa Shane passed to each of her visitors a copy of the forms containing her and Doctor Gooden's report and the final results of House's treatment, along with his discharge papers.

"You're sending him home?" Cuddy asked.

The gentle hope on the younger woman's face was encouraging. Alissa nodded. "He's responding to the medications, and has not had a hallucinatory incident for nine weeks. He's coping with the medication's side effects and we're confident that physically he'll adapt to the new regime of less damaging analgesics."

"So that's it?" Doctor Wilson asked. He, too, looked hopeful. Relieved. Shane hoped they had a good, long talk. House seemed much improved. Maybe they had.

Alissa sat back. "Not quite." She and Gooden had discussed what she was about to say at length and he had finally agreed to it in principle, though refused any commitment to act upon it.

"I have drafted a letter for the New Jersey Medical Liaison. Now, understand, that this letter is not being sent to anyone. It is simply my professional opinion and that of Doctor Gooden regarding the conduct of Princeton's Dean of Medicine and her Oncology Department Head during the months prior to Doctor House's admittance to Trenton for treatment."

Doctors Cuddy and Wilson now looked puzzled. "A letter to the Board, about us?" Cuddy asked. "Why-?"

"Let me finish. I have no doubt that at heart you, Doctor Cuddy, as Dean, have the best interests of your staff at heart. But having their best interests, and pursuing actions that in fact support their best interests can be two different things."

Alissa cleared her throat. She had become very protective over Doctor House and wanted to ensure he was returning to a job with people who would properly act to properly support him during the later stages of his recovery. "I have also drafted a letter to the board members of PPTH stating that it is our opinion that Doctor House is fit to return to duty on a limited basis. And by limited, I mean time restricted, not limited in scope of practice."

Cuddy held off on her questions over the first letter, which contents remained unrevealed. "I'm glad to hear it."

"You may not be so glad after you have heard all of our recommendations. Doctor House is to return, not as head of Diagnostics, but as a co-head alongside doctor Eric Foreman, and in the capacity of a on-staff diagnostic consultant."

Cuddy's mouth dropped open. "A consultant? But that will mean, that will double his salary. The hospital can't possibly afford-"

"Would you rather have a second party law suit to the tune of millions? Doctor House, or Gooden and I as his attendings, are all within rights to launch legal action."

Wilson asked. "What are talking about? What legal action?"

"Directly after the bus accident, Doctor House was admitted to Princeton Plainsboro Hospital."

"Yes." Cuddy answered, her tone an impatient question.

"He wasn't discharged from the system until after Amber Volakis' death."

Slowly it began to dawn on Cuddy why Alissa was telling them this.

"Doctor House was a patient under your care, and yet instead of being made to rest and recover, he was allowed to run around with a skull fracture and brain bleed, trying to help you, Doctor Wilson, get your girlfriend back. Miss Volakis' death was a tragedy, and I respect that you were grieving at the time, but to act upon the suggestion of a deep brain electrical stimulation on a patient with a broken skull and bleeding into his brain, was nothing less than malpractice."

Alissa pushed her point. "I don't care how many letters House has after his name, once he was admitted, he was a patient under your care. He was in no position to be practicing medicine for himself, for the hospital, or for either of you."

Cuddy was silent as the realization settled in where it ought to have already been.

"House was seriously injured, he was sick. He was your patient. And he was in no state to be undergoing such a dangerous, risky procedure as a DBES while in that weakened state under your care. He wasn't tended to like a patient at all, his injuries were disregarded by you, Doctor Wilson, and by you, Doctor Cuddy."

Alissa didn't take her eyes off the pretty physician with the painted nails and designer skirt. "As Dean of Medicine, you at least should have put a stop to it."

Alissa sat back, the air out of some of her fury over the deplorable actions of House's colleagues dissipated. "It is our opinion that the DBES that you had Doctor House undergo while ill caused brain damage which, in part, caused the hallucinatory psychotic episodes he has been experiencing. And before you mention it, let me tell you that I don't care that House was the first to suggest the DBES, I don't care that he's a stubborn man or hard to handle - at the time he was a patient in your hospital. He was sick! You both ought to lose your licenses to practice medicine."

Alissa sat forward again. "Having said that, that last is merely my opinion. This first letter that I have drafted states the events as described by you and Doctor Wilson and the facts of police and medical reports thereafter, that directly resulted in the health of Doctor House being sorely compromised due to him, as a patient, being placed in a position of extreme risk. It also states the negligence and liability, particularly on your shoulders, Doctor Cuddy, and in turn the hospital's. If any one of my conditions for House's return to work are not implemented, or not followed to Doctor Gooden's and my specifications, I will send this letter to the New Jersey Board and the American Medical Association recommending an immediate inquiry into the the whole messy thing, and into the conduct of all attendings involved."

Alissa stared at Cuddy, knowing the woman was intelligent enough to recognize her words as blackmail. But also knowing Cuddy was wary enough not to doubt the anger in Shane's voice that said she would make good on her threat if Cuddy tried to do an end run-around.

"Doctor House is paying a heavy price for a serious deviation from proper care. I'd like to think that you think he's worth a few perks for me never to mention that again."

Alissa read the conditions. "Doctor House is to work no more than six hours on any given day. He is to have an assistant - a secretary - hour-long paid lunch breaks, and two twenty minute paid coffee breaks every shift. He is to work no more than five consecutive days with two days off. Or six consecutive days with three days off. His psych' med's are to be prescribed and monitored by your staff psychiatrist and no one else. His pain med's will continue to be administered by Doctor Wilson, if he is willing, providing no Vicodin or other non-approved narcotic ever been prescribed.

"Doctor Gooden or myself will make unannounced monthly visits to check in on him ourselves to ensure his medical needs are being met."

Cuddy interrupted. "you can't just barge in whenever you like, making inspections-"

"-Oh? You would rather I remove doctor House from your staff and place him elsewhere, where his medical needs will be met? Let me tell you right now, one more breakdown the likes of which House has just suffered, and there'll be no recovery. You'll lose him. I urge you to keep that in mind the next time you choose to disregard his safety whenever he suggests another risky procedure to save either of your asses or the asses of people you love.

"Now, having said that, a blind man can see that there's a history here between you three that goes beyond professional. There are obviously relationships involved and I'm trying to preserve them, Doctor Cuddy, because I can see that they're important to House. Are they important to you?"

Alissa sighed heavily. They were good people. She knew that. But even good people can get blindsided when things become personal. House was going home to people who cared. Now they understood that they needed to show it a little more clearly.

-

-

"A consultant?" House stared at her like she was the one who should have been at Trenton. "I will not be a consultant in my own office."

Wilson answered for her, seated forward, stiffly, on her leather office couch. "It's not her fault, House. And it can't be just your office any more. We have to protect the hospital and the patients in it. You are on drug therapy for psychosis."

House snapped at him. "Since when do you write policy?"

Since Shane has my balls locked in her safe. "I'm not. I'm just saying-"

Cuddy cut him off. "It's not his fault either. And I'm sorry, but this is not your call."

"I haven't had a hallucination in months. Ask Gooden. Ask Shane."

"That doesn't matter. I'm sorry."

Cuddy hated having to do it, but House could not be allowed to remain a department head. Not if she wanted to keep on Shane's good side. But what she said to House was, "You know that one hallucination that leads to the harm of a patient or harm to yourself, the license of this hospital would be up for review." You are worth millions. But you're worth your life first. "I'm sorry. The decision is final. You're going to have to learn to live with it."

"Am I?"

Oh no. She'd expected House's stubbornness to switch into hyper-drive, so she had kept the last Shane card up her sleeve just in case. "If it's any compensation, the consultant position pays double what you earned before." You're worth it.

After a year at Trenton, House would have serious doctor bills. He needed the money.

Cuddy held out the key to his office - to House and Foreman's office. House accepted it grudgingly.

Thrusting it deep in his jeans pocket, he stood and gimped toward her office doors. "Tell him to stay away from my stereo."

Cuddy watched him limp away down the hall to the elevator. A new man off to his old digs.

A fresh start. New cases, new troubles and, Cuddy was gratified to know, new House-special arguments were afoot.

Brand new day. Same old House.

Let the healing begin.

XXXXXXXXXXX

END

Goal: Next part of One Small Consequence by August 9th.