sick_wilson | Color Vision

Title: Color Vision

Summary: Wilson has a run-in with a fortune teller and soon after discovers that he has a new “super power”/ ability. He starts to see colorful auras surrounding the injured or diseased areas of virtually everyone he passes but this is not as helpful or exciting as it may sound.

Rating: PG I guess. No swearing, no sex, no real violence.

Warnings: Very angsty, slash or pre-slash rather at the end, AU, and somewhat OOC. Also, there are some spoilers.

Spoilers: A few for season two/ Wilson’s third marriage, some for the Amber timeline, and a small spoiler for the end of season five/ beginning of season six but in an alternate universe where House’s problem wasn’t the same one that TPTB had him suffer from back then.

Challenge: For the Gather ‘Round the Campfire Challenge

Julie had always been obsessed with psychics, fortune tellers, mediums, astrologers, etc. She spent nearly all of her time—not to mention large sums of money—talking to and visiting these people. As much as it annoyed me, I almost never complained. We had more than enough money to finance her habit, and I wasn’t exactly there for her a lot. I knew she was lonely.

I could have been there more but…House needed me. Plus, when I was with Greg, I felt happy. When I was around Julie, at home, or my other my friends, it was never quite as good. In my mind, House was the most important person in the world and I think Julie—and Bonnie—knew it. So I ignored the bills and I listened to her go on and on about Venus and whatever. These people made my wife happy. Who was I to take that away from her?

There was this one woman, however, really stuck in my craw. I believed Madam Margoska to bee a scam artist, but they all were. I honestly don’t know why she bothered me so much. Maybe it was because after speaking to Margoska, Julie would always go on and on about the problems with our marriage and how I needed to be more “spiritually open” or something.

Then, one afternoon, Julie called me in tears. She said Madam Margoska had told her I was in love with someone else. I became furious. I marched down to the woman’s shop, burst into her office and started screaming. Naturally, the woman didn’t respond well to my rude behavior but I think she genuinely wanted to help me.

“You must be James,” she said. I rolled my eyes. “You wife is very concerned and I am only trying to provide her with comfort and guidance.” Unfortunately her comment only made me angrier. I flipped over her table, and shredded an ancient looking deck of tarot cards. Margoska said something strange in a foreign language and started to cackle.

It took me a few days to realize what had happened. At first the world still seemed completely normal. Patients seemed to have brightly colored spots on their clothes but I figured it was just some fashion trend. Then, I had to perform a breast exam on a patient. She had a dark purple—glowing—spot on her chest. When she took off her shirt and bra, I realized that the spot was actually a part of her body, a small aura. The purple surrounded most of her beast and underarm. Her test results confirmed my suspicions: end stage breast cancer, metastasized to the lymph nodes. She had less than a year to live.

Every patient that day had their own spot, surrounded the injured or sick area of their body but the auras had different colors depending on how serious their malady was. The milder conditions had lighter auras. Most clinic patients had yellow or orange glows. Some had red, or pink, as did a few of my regular patients. Blue and green auras surrounded moderate illnesses. Purple—I quickly learned—was reserved for only late stage cancers, and other terminal illnesses. I even saw a gunshot victim in the ER who was pronounced dead ten minutes after his aura went from purple to ashy grey.

Horrified by my new “ability” and desperate to get rid of it, I tried to call Madam Margoska from work every day for a week but her number was disconnected. I stopped by her shop the evening after my visit but it was gone. She had disappeared from the face of the Earth. When my patient’s tests results were worse than I expected, before now, I could still believe they had a chance. The stains, however, were a sure sign. Purple meant death, end of story, end of patient.

Eventually I got accustomed to my new “ability” and was often able to use it to help my patients and impress House with my “diagnostic” skills. I even taught myself to fight for the purple aura patients. However, having this “power” is 12% useful and 88% curse. Every person I pass in the hospital, on the streets, anywhere—well almost all of them—has some kind of aura and when I saw a really sick stranger I couldn’t even tell them.

I didn’t know if they were aware their condition or not. I tried once and it just scared the crap out of the mother of this little girl with what appeared to be bone cancer. I tried again—with an adult with a purple aura near his liver. He already knew he was dying and all I did was make him feel worse about it. So, I had to keep my mouth shut, even when I saw people with treatable auras.

I lost a little piece of myself each time I saw a purple aura on a new patient, on a stranger, or worse on someone I had been treating for a long time. It made me feel useless. Another reason I felt cursed was that I couldn’t really see auras on family members and friends unless they were horribly sick. The glow didn’t show up until it was too late to help the people I really cared about.

When we found Amber after the bus crash, she didn’t have an aura. Not purple, not anything. House, would occasionally show up with a dark green spot on his right thigh—on bad pain days. Otherwise, I never saw him look sick. At least, that’s how it was until today.

This afternoon, House marched into my office and announced that he was hallucinating. There was an aura around his head, the color of midnight sky. I almost started to sob when I saw it.

“I have a list of possible causes,” he explained, tossing a piece of paper onto my desk. Tumor wasn’t on the paper but I knew he probably had brain cancer. If a person had an aura this dark, it means they are dying. When the dark aura surrounds a person’s head it meant cancer, an oncoming stroke, or a few other things. House was hallucinating, however, which meant he had cancer.

“Well, an MRI is the least invasive test on your list, why don’t we rule out trauma first?” I suggested. Only I knew what the scan would show. “Even if you did forget about it, I think someone would have noticed if you took a blow to the head recently.” House laughed, and I pretended to chuckle.

Forty minutes later, we were back in my office. House was lying on the sofa and staring into space. He was on the verge of tears. I was in a chair, leaning over him and hugging the guy. Normally, I’d never be allowed to get this close to him. I was rattling off the names of doctors and treatment possibilities but we both knew it was too late.

“Shut up, Wilson. It’s time to throw in the towel. Besides, I would rather go camping with you and die next week than spend another two years having poison pumped into my veins, while I lie in a hospital bed feeling nothing but agonizing pain and puking my guts out.” I nodded, stroking his hair gently. “I’m trying to calculate the perfect moment at which to off myself. We have time to do some fun stuff but eventually, things are gonna get really bad. My memories, my intellect, my personality, gone. Then I won’t remember or know how to… But I wanna make sure I don’t die too soon too, because I don’t wanna miss out on anything good.” I nodded and sighed.

“If you’ll let me, I would like to be with you through this. Through everything. When the time comes, I’ll know,” I explained. I didn’t tell him about the auras. I didn’t say, ‘just before someone dies, their illness aura starts to grow.’ Eventually it covers them completely. Some people don’t live long enough to get a full body aura. It is horrible. I didn’t tell him any of these things because it wouldn’t help and he would only think I was insane. Besides, I wasn’t going to let House get that sick, anyway.

Greg grabbed onto me, pressed his face into my chest; he started to cry and said, “I love you, Jimmy.” I wrapped my arms around his body and held him as tightly and protectively as possible. “I never said anything because…” Greg sighed and lifted his head, looking me directly in they eyes. “Because I’m an idiot and I was scared you wouldn’t understand. I thought you might even stop hanging out with me.”

“But I do understand, and I feel the same way. I think I’ve always loved you. I have no idea what I’m going to do without you,” I whimper. I rubbed some tears away from my eyes and when I looked back up, the whole room was spinning, disappearing. I plunged into darkness and then…

Suddenly, I was standing in the doorway of Madam Margoska’s shop. I looked around in surprise, and terror. I had no idea what had just happened to me. Was it a dream? Did it really happen? Did I hallucinate?

“Mr. Wilson, is there anything I can do for you?” Margoska asked, smirking slightly. I stepped inside. The table I had overturned was perfectly fine. The deck of ripped up tarot cards now appeared to be intact.

“I…I came here because I thought you were taking advantage of my wife but I realize now that you really are tying to help Julie,” I said. I noticed my hand on the back of my neck, and tried to pull it away. I really wanted to leave the store. Immediately.

I was—of course—very anxious to understand what I’d seen, but I also worried that I might have a medical problem, which could have caused the bizarre vision. And last but not least, I wanted to make sure I didn’t see illness auras on every person I passed.

“Your friend is fine. What you saw was simply a version of the future. You saw what might happen if you continue down the particular road you seem to be traveling on. However, if you work hard and change your priorities and do what is right for you, everything should work out the way you want it to.” I nodded, apologized, and raced to my car. Then, I drove to House’s apartment and banged on the door.

Color Vision

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