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sick_wilson2014-01-26 07:23 pm
bonesmccoyguide.livejournal.com) wrote in sick_wilson2014-01-26 07:23 pm
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Fanfiction / What Lurks in Man (Chapters 1-3)
Author’s Note: When I first came upon this prompt between seasons five and six, everyone was preoccupied with House as an inpatient at Mayfield. I actually hesitated to take it for that reason – after all, no writer likes to endlessly rehash old ideas. However, when I reconsidered the notion that Wilson might be fractured enough to engineer his way into joining his friend… Well, that gave me considerable impetus. Then there was Broken, and canon threw a wrench into the story I had been carefully constructing around the framework of my necessarily original doctors, nurses, and orderlies. I’m not one to buck canon, you see, and the dreariness of starting over slowed me down; other projects intervened. Now here we are, at the end of House M.D., and as I endured the final weeks of tension leading up to the finale, this story reemerged, rearranged itself, and was finally reborn.
Title: What Lurks In Man
Author: Swiss Army Knife
Rating: worksafe
Summary: Wilson is so lonely that he fakes mental illness to get into Mayfield with House, but both men are quickly overwhelmed by the consequences.
“A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future,
the key to sanity in a totally insane world.”
-- Lois Wyse
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-9
Chapter One
The night was starless. Instead, a mist made the lights shine from below, gleaming up from the sidewalk out of the sheen of a New Jersey rain. A soft, wet static filled the otherwise soundless backdrop. From the coffee table, a digital readout burned red – 3:21 a.m.
Wilson pressed his forehead to the cool glass and exhaled so that his breath became a fading ghost against the black surface. He watched the water bead, knowing that any self-respecting person would be asleep. Yet here he was, every ligament of his body wound tight, his eyes burning, his pulse hammering far too fast – awake, just as he had been for three straight nights.
It was only one of the things in his routine that had fallen off. An abandoned dinner was wrapped up in the refrigerator, and unwashed dishes lay unattended in the sink. He blamed the change on stress, but, deep down, he knew the truth. Depression sat like an old, weary weight over his shoulders. He knew its grey pallor, its long sighs, the tightness is brought to his throat.
His eyes fell on a frame from which a blond woman smirked. Yesterday, he had found one of her socks mixed in with the laundry. Lord only knew how it had gotten there after almost a year. He’d kneaded that sock in his fingers and thought about the foot that should have filled it – pale white, slender but not petite – and wondered how it was that the fragments remained the clearest memories.
Funny that he’d thought of himself as having moved on from her. But, then, if the events of the last few weeks had proved anything, it was that no one had really moved on from Amber.
A chill of loneliness overcame Wilson, and he rubbed his arms. The flat, vacant hallways of his apartment receded, emphasizing the empty spaces. Once, he might have expected a phone call from House, who would rant loudly in his ear while he voiced sleepy complaints. There might have been the clamor of a cane against the door, or loud, uneven footsteps, or the noise of his commandeered television. Things that were impossible now.
A growing anxiety rose, and Wilson looked at the counter on which the phone rested, his fingers twitching. But, no. House wasn’t allowed visitors yet, or even a phone call. Wilson had been warned, but the impulse to find out – to know House was okay – punctured him viciously.
Wilson let himself slump into the cushions of the couch. There was a faint stain on the fabric of the armrest. House’s fault, of course, and no amount of scrubbing had been able to get it off. He remembered the struggle for the pizza slice, which a lanky arm had held stubbornly out of reach. It was a ploy, a dissimilation of affection. It was the way they worked.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked around the apartment, its quiet so profound that the sound of the clock seemed like a hammer. Unreasonable panic rose, and as he panted, trying to come back under his own control, he saw the prescription bottle. It was sitting on the table, its hood uncapped. It’s label was turned away, but Wilson saw the small pills through the amber plastic.
A half-mad thought leapt into his mind. He reached over and picked up the white cap, slid it through his fingers. Thought of Christmas, and vomit, and his best friend.
Wilson let himself wonder, what if I could –
‘House,’ he thought. For him, what if I could?
<>
Dr. Lisa Cuddy stared at her desktop computer. Had anyone been looking, they would have seen worry in the planes of her face as she leaned forward to re-read the two emails in her inbox. The first was a coolly professional notice from the Donor Committee, the other a personal note sent by a patient. Both had Dr. Wilson’s name attached to the header, which wasn’t an unusual thing, except that their contents contained something less then unconditional praise.
The first announced:
To: Lisa Cuddy M.D.
Subject: Dr. Wilson’s absence from recent committee meeting
It has come to the attention of the board that Dr. Wilson missed the last two Donor Committee meetings without notice or explanation. We’ve attempted to contact him, but he hasn’t responded. You are aware that disciplinary action would ordinarily be taken in this case, but in the light of Dr. Wilson’s excellent record, we wished to notify you first in case there are extenuating circumstances of which we are unaware. Please contact us at your earliest convenience.
Dr. John Pen M.D.
Medical Director, Orthopedics
John was a compassionate man. At the bottom of the official request, he had tagged a personal message – Lisa, this isn’t like James. What’s going on?
Cuddy wished she had an answer, because Wilson had also been conspicuously absent form the Departmental meeting the evening before. Such blatantly unprofessional behavior was completely out of character, and yet the second email she had received was even more disturbing.
She paged over.
Dr. Cuddy,
My daughter, Anne Marie, has been receiving treatment from Dr. Wilson since she was diagnosed four years ago. He’s always been a thorough and compassionate doctor, and I credit his personal warmth toward Annie as one of the biggest reasons why she isn’t afraid of coming to the hospital, even with all she’s been through.
However, at our last meeting, Dr. Wilson looked awful – very tired and pale. I got the impression he was trying to refer us to another doctor. I’m worried about him, and since it affects my daughter’s health, I feel like I have to ask. Is there a reason why we should switch to another oncologist? I don’t want to do this, but I need to know if something is seriously wrong.
The email went on for a few more lines, but Cuddy had read enough. In all her years as Dean of Medicine, Cuddy had never received a written complaint from a patient about Wilson, not even one couched – as this one was – in genuine concern. She just didn’t know what to make of it. James’ patient care record was immaculate. He would never have caused this kind of doubt in a patient under ordinary circumstances.
Though, she thought bleakly as she sank back into her chair, recent times had hardly been ordinary. House’s sudden absence had been felt all over the hospital, like the space left by a sun that had destabilized into a black hole. His listless fellows had been reassigned for the time being, and the third floor hallway outside of diagnostics had become eerily quiet without the thunk, thunk, thunk of a ball against glass.
‘Do you even understand your influence, you stubborn ass?’ Cuddy thought bitterly toward the absent House. ‘Do you even realize how many people depend on you despite everything?’
Of course, no one had been as affected as Wilson. He was taking House’s barely consensual detox extremely hard. For that reason, Cuddy was willing to give Wilson as much leeway as she would for any of her staff with serious family problems, but she couldn’t ignore the missed meetings.
Other things had come to her attention, too. His department was deeply loyal and had been trying to cover for him, but Cuddy knew that Wilson had been arriving late and leaving early. House’s fellows had all come to her at one time or another and dropped some tidbit of information on her desk – Wilson had thrown out his lunch, he had snapped at an intern, he wasn’t wearing a tie – all with accompanying flashes of concern that silently begged her to intercede somehow.
Cuddy was mildly touched, actually. House’s people had made an attempt to maintain a professional distance from Wilson, but it was apparent they saw him as more than just a bulwark of protection against House’s more volatile moods.
Ill at ease, Cuddy tapped one manicured nail against her desk in an unbroken rhythm. Finally, she picked up her office phone and dialed Wilson’s cell. No answer, not even voicemail. Cuddy sighed as she set the receiver back on its cradle. Well, she supposed it could wait until she saw him in person. A glance at the clock told her that it was still early for him to be in the hospital, so she paged Nurse Brenda and asked to be informed when Dr. Wilson made it in.
After that, a crisis in the clinic derailed her attention. She forgot she had been waiting for a call that never came.
<>
Chase had been watching Dr. Wilson’s office for half an hour. He ran his hand through his hair, which was bleached almost white from his recent honeymoon, and leaned forward, hoping to spy even a hint of movement.
Wilson went to the hospital dining room for coffee at ten-thirty everyday. In the times before House left for Mayfield, he would return with two cups and then disappear into the glass office adjoining the diagnostic conference room. Of course, Wilson didn’t do that anymore, but he could still usually be seen making his way to the cafeteria. So, on that Tuesday morning when the appointed time passed and Chase saw no movement from Wilson’s office, he was worried enough to sidle up to the nurse’s station and rest his hip against the counter, upon which Dr. Wilson’s assistant was scribbling notes into a patient file.
“Sandy, have you seen Dr. Wilson this morning? His office looks dark.”
The handsome young woman narrowed her eyes, partially in irritation and partially as a warning. He had a reputation in the hospital for being a kind of a charming slut, which his recent marriage had not yet eclipsed. Finally, though, her suspicion was beaten off by unease.
“I had to cancel two of his appointments,” she admitted. “It’s not like him. I mean, sometimes he’d get distracted –” She meant, held up by something to do with House. “But he always called ahead if he didn’t plan to be in.”
She didn’t need to say anything else; Chase understood exactly. Wilson may have been House’s partner in crime, but he was always, without exception, conscientious of his patients. He would never simply not show up. At least, he never would have before.
“Maybe I’ll go give the handle a jiggle,” he suggested, pushing away without waiting for an answer. It wasn’t impossible that Wilson had snuck in unnoticed and was hibernating under the influence of a bad migraine.
Yet there was no answer from inside when he knocked. No light seeped from beneath the door. By all indications, the office was unoccupied. However, for some reason, Chase wasn’t satisfied. He tested the doorknob and found it was locked, but he hadn’t spent years breaking into patients’ homes for nothing.
Once inside, he gazed around the shadowed space; the Hitchcock poster affixed to one wall, the towering bookshelf, the ubiquitous couch. The pale white square of the balcony door, laid over with the stripes of the long, hanging blinds. A ficus. It all seemed just as usual, except…something.
Chase shook his head, thinking that the paranoia House cultivated was finally getting to him. Then he stilled. There was a neat stack of manila envelopes on the corner of Wilson’s desk, each with a crisp white sticker in each corner. Chase had seen envelopes like that once before, when Tritter’s interference had forced Wilson to refer his patients.
Feeling dread open up like a dark pit inside him, Chase walked back into to Wilson’s tidy desktop. There was another envelope, a smaller white one, propped up between the keys of the keyboard. In Wilson’s slanted scrawl, two words had been carefully written:
‘For House’
Chase was running, digging for his car keys, before he even reached the door.
<>
Wilson was amazed how little effort it had taken to convince the people he worked with that he had lost whatever competency left to him after Amber’s death and House’s subsequent, related institutionalization. In fact, it was just a little crushing, seeing what his efforts had come to – that even after years of meticulous efficiency, of holding two department’s administrative heads above water, of flawless punctuality and uncompensated overtime, and House – after all that, their confidence in him could be so easily undermined.
Perhaps they had always expected that if the head of Diagnostics or Oncology went down, the other would soon follow into the other’s ashes. He didn’t know. He just knew that dismantling his life had been easy. And that he had fewer friends than he thought.
‘You only have one friend.’ The thought crept in, even as he carefully went over the calculations in his head and counted out the pills into his hand. They were pale against his palm, and so light he could barely feel their weight.
He was going to lose his job. Unlike House, there would be no resolution that he could think of, no second chance. Cuddy would not be waiting for him with a department and a hopeful expression. Without House around, there was no longer any incentive for her to preserve his job. Yet, even knowing the risk, he couldn’t change his mind. House might not want him there, but even that heart-stopping possibility paled beside the thought of leaving his friend to face the loss of the only thing he cared about – his mind – essentially alone in the hands of clinicians and psychiatrists.
And if it meant that he didn’t have to spend one more sleepless night in his apartment with the walls leaning in like falling tiles and his lungs rigid in his chest…well. If things went wrong then it would be alright, wouldn’t it?
He flipped the prescription bottle around in his palm, thinking of House and all the years when seeing him with a bottle like this had been almost as inevitable as seeing him with his cane. At times, he had felt as trapped by the Vicodin as House had been, especially when Tritter – Wilson stymied that train of thought immediately.
Anyway, he thought, squeezing the bottle and hearing the faint rattle, these weren’t Vicodin. They were antidepressants, the same ones he’d used to ‘dose’ House’s coffee. He’d been taking them himself for more than a year. House had never attempt to conceal his contempt for a depression diagnosis, but now it was a godsend. No one would question what he was about to do.
Wilson let the pills drop – one, two, three – into his mouth, and then paused to take a methodical swallow of cheap whiskey. He smiled a sad smile as he felt them go down. It was too bad that pills were the best way to have control over this; there was just too much irony.
He raised his hand. Four, five, six.
He looked one last time at the picture frame, out of which Amber’s face smiled (knowingly, coyly, approvingly), and then he closed his eyes and the pill bottle rattled. He swallowed the pills, again and again, until a low buzzing filled up the silence of the apartment and everything went away.
<>
They found him on the floor of Amber’s apartment. Wilson thought he discerned a commanding Australian slur, and that comforted him. He had been right to count on Chase. Of all House’s fellows, he had always been the one Wilson liked best.
People were asking him things: “When? How much?”
He blinked blearily up through the frantic chaos he had created and tried to understand what they were saying, but the words spiraled away, inaccessible now. There was a smell like vomit beside his head, and he regretted that. It was going to stain the carpet, and who was going to clean it up now?
Then his body seized, and Wilson felt his eyes roll back and take him away. Everything was quiet and dark, but it wasn’t the same as the silence of his apartment. It was just the way he wanted it to be.
<>
When he woke up in the hospital, squinting under the harsh lighting, Wilson almost cried with relief. He had gotten it right.
Chapter Two
House was living in a hell of impotence.
The detox had been brutal. The sour smell of urine, the tacky feeling of sweat in every crevice, the rawness of his jangling nerves. House doubted he would ever forget them, or the cramps, or the nausea – all of which had mixed to create a lurid memory of agony. Nor would he forget how he had ultimately broken down and begged in the end, wailing for a relief that never came.
When he had finally passed out, he had awoken to find a stranger sponging his restrained and prostrate body. In that awful moment of helpless, sick and dazed with pain, his mind had strayed back to the paltry, half-assed performance he had put on for Tritter in Princeton’s rehabilitation clinic, and it amazed him that anyone had believed it.
By the time he’d finally come up from the debilitating fugue, his mouth had been one solid taste of bitterness – of vomit and vitriol. Barely able to support his own weight, he’d demanded to be discharged. They’d refused him. Instead, House had been summoned before Dr. Darryl Nolan.
House had stomped into the man’s office, ready to steamroller or do battle. In the first five seconds of their acquaintance, he managed to insult the man’s competence and his race. It would have sent most people into a tailspin of explosive anger, but Doctor Nolan had only smiled as though he’d been told a funny joke.
He’d informed House that he could check out whenever he wished; no one here could lawfully detain him. However, if that was his choice, he would return to a shadow life. Without Nolan’s signature on the right piece of paper, House would never practice medicine again. It was at that point that House had been visited by an image of Wilson, whose earnest expression begging him, just this once, to cooperate. The thought of his friend arched, but House dashed the feeling away with fury.
In the end he’d had no choice; he had to stay and play Nolan’s game. Yet if he was going to be in hell, he decided, everyone was going to be in hell with him. He’d spelled it out for Dr. Beasley that first day on the floor: there would be chaos in their precious ward, until Nolan signed the release papers just to be rid of him.
Meanwhile, he chaffed under his physical limitations without the Vicodin. He chaffed under the restriction of locked-down hallways and doors. He chaffed under all the regulations of Mayfield, and from having his decisions lorded over by bungling pacifiers who called themselves doctors.
And if the trials of the real word were not enough, there was always the siege going on in his own mind.
House kneaded his fingers through his cotton pants and bared his teeth against the sound of his roommate’s snores. In the half-light from the corridor, he could see her, perched on the end of his bed. She was always there at night, keeping him company in his troubled, waking dreams. Taunting him now that the drugs were gone from his system and could have no part in her appearance. She showed her teeth around her glossy lips, and he fought the ugly little emotions worming their way deeper inside him with every bead of sweat that trailed down his forehead.
The questions pinged, a relentless parade: ‘How badly is my mind damaged? How far am I gone?’
Amber smiled, and there was no distraction from her haunting presence. No pills, no work, no company. There was nothing at all but her and House.
<>
All morning, House felt as though he was moving through a fog. Though he had mustered the will to be combative enough to get dismissed from recreation, the truth was that he was exhausted. His long war of attrition was not going well. He had antagonized his fellow inmates, cheeked his meds, and lead a revolution over table tennis paddles. So far, though, Nolan had not cracked. Fake urine tests. Undermining his rebellion with grace.
The limited success was discouraging, and the endless gnawing in his thigh was a constant distraction. Then there were the people. The condescension of the doctors was bad enough, but the patients were worse – Alvie, dear god, what on earth had he done to deserve Alivie?
He made his way ponderously to the dining hall since his cane wasn’t allowed in the cafeteria. There were rows and rows of tables, and patients in all degrees of humor, from calm to agitated. Their faces were a blur to him, and it was only by chance that he looked up and caught a flash of brown hair, crowning a familiar profile that stood out like a Monet in a room full of finger paintings.
At first, shock prevented House’s limbs from moving, but almost before he realized what he was doing, he had pushed his way through the rows of benches and seized the seated man. House could feel his grip go all the way through the cheap cotton fabric, bearing into flesh.
In a hoarse whisper, he demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Wilson jolted violently, but when he saw House, he stilled. “House,” he said. His mouth opened like he wanted to say more, but then his dark eyes flickered to the orderlies hovering at the edges of the dining hall. One of them seemed to have noticed the iron grip House had on Wilson and had tensed almost imperceptivity, his arms uncrossing.
Reluctantly, House loosed his grip. However, by that time, he’d had time to reevaluate details, like his friend’s hospital issued clothing, his disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes. “You look like hell,” he blurted.
Wilson lips pursed automatically, his eyes creasing with faint laughter lines. “Thanks, House. You’re looking good too.”
House’s legs went out from under him. He collapsed inelegantly beside Wilson on the bench. His mind was still turning in circles, but without any traction. He wasn’t getting anywhere.
“How are you here?”
“Are you asking metaphysically or specifically?”
House growled, a response that seemed to be answer enough.
Wilson fidgeted with his utensil – a spoon, of course. “It wasn’t difficult. My family history was fairly convincing.”
“Stupidity isn’t genetic,” House spat, but Wilson remained unmoved, his wandering eyes still sliding all around the plastic benches and hunched, robe-covered backs, but never on House. He scooped a small amount of flaky mashed potatoes from his tray and spent a moment sucking on the end of his spoon. When he spoke, it was in an unconcerned, measured tone.
“Depression can be tracked through families.”
House leaned back slightly on the bench, wishing that it would give so that he could wobble as he contemplated, but the legs were bolted to the floor. Over the years, he’d made attempts to gain access to the Wilson family, but Jimmy could be like Fort Knox when he wanted to be. He’d met Wilson’s parents. They put up a good façade, all graceful smiles and plastic normalcy, but House’s career was built on seeing past the obvious. He’d wager the Wilson’s were as nutty as a box of cracker jacks. His missing brother probably only scratched the surface.
Ignoring House’s penetrating look, Wilson probed a doubtful slab of beef. It was obvious that his sensibilities as an amateur-chief were sadly disappointed. Meat byproduct was a long way from even the feeblest home cooking. “I guess you get used the quality of food here,” he said.
House snorted. “Guess again,” he answered, but there was another emotion starting to emerge now that the shock was passing. It simmered up out of his inability to decide anything for himself and mixed with the sleeplessness, the pain, and the loneliness that he would never have admitted to feeling. All of a sudden, he was angry.
“You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” he said. “Couldn’t keep your interfering mitts out of my life for even three weeks.”
“House.” Wilson’s stupid, gooey eyes were as dangerous as armed weapons, and House refused to look at them.
“I always knew you were an idiot, but this is a new measure of moronic, even for you.”
Wilson flexed his fingers, which trembled. “Yeah.”
For some reason, that easy answer made House even more infuriated. “Did you think I’d be helpless without you? Well, I’ve been fine. I don’t want you –”
To see me like this.
“House,” Wilson said in a wounded voice that did nothing to quell House’s torrent of emotion.
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t see you, Wilson. You can just put whatever crazy plan you have in reverse and get the hell out.” With as much indignation as he could muster, House surged out of his seat, wobbled for a moment, and then marched out of the hall, dragging his leg behind him like a crippled wing.
<>
It was later in the day, and Hal was nattering on about his endless headaches to a consolatory Beasley, but House wasn’t listening. For hours, he had been turning over Wilson’s sudden appearance, analyzing it as only he could. It had been easy to throw out hostile words when they first encountered one another. He’d been shocked; of course he had. The flush of anger had been only too real. He was angry at Wilson. He’d been furious and stupefied, but also…relieved. For the first time since he’d stepped into the building, he’d felt as though he could breathe.
Eventually, the cycle of denial tapered into acceptance. Wilson was here, and that wasn’t easily undone. Nor would it be any use ignoring Wilson. He had never succeeded before, and he certainly wouldn’t now with no other outlets. Finding out exactly what happened was his best course of action.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t his own man. The ward door was like the hanger on a river. Two sets of doors, an automated lock, and syringes at the ready to force him down.
Inwardly, House snarled. He glared at the whiteboard hanging on the wall. The condemning zero marked by his name was a reminder of where his scorched-earth policy had gotten him. Until now, he had made every attempt to provoke, to control, to subvert and sabotage. The result? He had no privileges. He was a prisoner in this damn place.
“House? Did you have anything you wanted to share today?”
Beasley was looking at him with her usual inviting expression, asking the question that he had always taken as an opening to begin his daily round of ridicule. The patients were all looking at him like docile sheep, except for Alvie, who was more like a neurotic, twitchy sheep with worms. It would be incredibly easy to pin them all down once more, to set off each and every psychosis. But… He looked up at the whiteboard again. He needed to speak with Wilson.
House opened his mouth.
<>
He found Wilson in a common room, one floor down. He was staring at a snowy television set, and for a moment he looked so much like he belonged in this place that House felt ice burning a cold path down his ribs. Just as quickly as it came, the feeling passed, and House flopped his lanky body alongside Wilson’s on the couch. With an audible groan, he stretched out, deliberately taking up far more space than necessary. He languished, squirming until he was something resembling comfortable – or as comfortable as he was liable to get these days, with his lower body one perpetual, throbbing agony. At the moment, it was spiraling down, flaring and subsiding with his new position. He waited, knuckles white, until the sheen of sweat at his temples was the only indication that anything was amiss.
When he made eye contact with Wilson, he expected to see worry, but at the moment he appeared to be more distantly concerned than fretful. That puzzled House just long enough for realization to hit him like a jolt of electricity, and then he was furiously snatching up Wilson’s wrist, seeking the languid heartbeat at the same time his own hammered with realization.
“You idiot,” he hissed, only remembering to lower his volume at the last moment. “You’re drugged.”
That it had taken House so long to realize was just another testament to his diminished abilities. Patients admitted to hospitals often spent the first few days drugged to the gills, sedated to ease the transition into inpatient care.
“Just a bit. I’ve already been here a week, and they’ve backed down on the dosage already,” Wilson reassured. His head fell to the side, his mouth twitching with chagrin. “Still a little fuzzy though.”
“You’re a moron,” House hissed. Teeth gritted, he demanded, “Do you know what kind of impact those meds can have one someone who isn’t depressed?”
Wilson responded to this tirade with a shrug. “Course I do. I’m a doctor. But it’s the same medication I was on before. Just a stronger dosage.”
“You deceptive bastard,” House accused, but even so, he couldn’t keep a note of admiration from his voice. Only when there was no sharp-witted rejoinder, but only a vacant smile, did the full nature of the situation return to him. He cleared his throat. “Why?”
“You were alone.”
House settled back with a long, drawn-out sigh, because that answer, however idiotic, it was also pathetically familiar. It was stupid, self-martyring, and possibly insane, yet it was also completely Wilson. In true St. Jimmy fashion, he was risking his health and career for the sake of their exceedingly unhealthy friendship, and if this didn’t finally prove just how screwed up it was, he didn’t know what could.
What frightened him – deep, deep down, where House was even capable of admitting to being frightened – was that he was glad. He could feel the physiological effects; some of the wiry tension that had fused his bones together and intensified the pain of every movement was fading. His body was letting itself rest.
To cover the reaction, House sneered. “At least you’re in the right place. You deserve to be here far more than me.”
Wilson responded by letting his chin drop, once again directing his gaze at the television’s endless snow. His non-answer was an answer in itself.
“You’re staying,” House queried.
“I’m here while you’re here.”
It was a promise flavored by an even sweeter one, because ‘while you’re here’ implied the possibility of going home. But to go home meant… House looked at the man next to him, looking wane and withdrawn. He had done this for House. Oh, he’d done it for Wilson-reasons too, which were only ever partially selfless, but it was still something. It reminded House that there even was a world outside for them to return to.
Suddenly, House knew he wanted to reclaim his life. He wanted to go home with Wilson, and – his jaw set – there was only one way he could do that.
Capitulate.
<>
Chapter Three
“How is your appetite, James?”
Wilson looked up and didn’t know what to say.
He was sitting awkwardly against the back of his chair in the circle assembled for group therapy. Some of the patients on his floor required assistance; there was a young man who was in casts from his pelvis down (a jumper), and Mike had to be persuaded, too restless to sit long in his designated seat. Most, though, remained meekly still, staring at their hands or the tile floor, a featureless portrait of quiet desperation.
A pretty blond doctor was in charge. Wilson knew her from admission; she had spoken to him about insurance concerns and then gently coaxed him out of his watch and shoes, neither of which were permitted during his stay. They were a suicide risk, along with zippers, drawstrings, belts, buttons, elastic bands, his own toothbrush, and any number of other things with which he could conceivably cause himself harm. He remembered watching her hands as she filled in his paperwork – long, manicured fingernails, but not as carefully cared for as hers, as Ambers. Wilson looked down at the floor.
“James?” The pretty doctor was trying to engage him again. “You’ve been here for almost a week now. How are you adjusting to the floor? Have you gotten to know anyone?”
Wilson let his eyes flow over the circle. To his right there was a girl named Jennifer, barely old enough to be considered an adult, who had small, pink hands crossed over her lap. There were raised marks on her wrists – red, erratic, puffy furrows. Wilson started at them for a moment before looking at his own unblemished wrists. He tried to imagine them with long, angry cuts. Tried to imagine the acute pain of the razor. He supposed it would have worked just as well. Still, while the knife may have been right for Jennifer, for him it could only be the pills; the orange medicine bottle and the poison tablets. The prescription bottle was such a vivid image that he just stared at it for a while, until he was jarred out of his reverie by a hand on his arm.
The doctor had a gentle voice, calm and neutral. “Did you want to talk to us about how you’re feeling today?”
Feeling? Wilson reached inside and touched the calm surface of his wellbeing. There were strong currents there, but the surface was tranquil for now. He didn’t feel much of anything. Except. He looked out across the room and could just see the television, which was turned off for group. It reminded him of the quiet conference he’d had with House last night.
Wilson managed to smile, though it barely touched the corners of his lips. “I’m okay.”
<>
House woke up the next day, downed his meds in a single gulp, and then rapped on the glass of the nurse’s station to request a session with Nolan. It must have come as a shock, since up until yesterday he had shown no willingness to engage in the healing process. Yet when he was finally admitted into Nolan’s office, the doctor appeared as unflappable as ever.
“This is a change,” he said, easing himself down into one of his leather chairs and inviting House to take the one across from him. “Every time you’ve been here before, you’ve paced the floor and made racist commentary.”
House dumped himself into the chair and spread his legs. “Well, hit the clock, Doctor, I’m ready to share my feelings.”
“Interesting,” Nolan said. He had a grin that would make any lunatic want to smack him across the face.
House fought the urge. “No, not interesting. I’m just tired of being here. I’m tired of being miserable.” Slouching even more deeply in the chair, he challenged, “So go ahead! Fix me.”
“Why the sudden motivation to confront your issues?”
“No reason.”
He thought that Nolan was going to press further, but he didn’t. Instead, he reclined and folded his hands, seemingly content to just look at his patient as though he were a specimen under glass. “Okay, then. Let’s get started. What do you want to talk about?”
“Well, Darryl,” House began. “Why don’t we start with my potty training years and work up to the disappointing loss of my virginity.”
Nolan gave a throaty chuckle. “It always amazes me what the laymen thinks psychiatric healthcare is all about.” House winced, spurred by the reference to himself as a layman, which was apparently exactly the response that Nolan wanted, judging by the gleam in his eye. He finished, “How about I give us a starting point? I don’t allow patients to use my first name, so you can call me Doctor Nolan. Alright, Gregory?”
House felt his cheek twitch, involuntarily impressed. He answered in the same spirit, “Now, that’s not fair, Doctor. After all, I’ve also earned a title, and I did it by treating actual sick people.”
The psychiatrist leaned forward, fingers twined. “Actual sick people, Doctor House? Because when someone tells me they’re experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations of a dead person –”
“Alright,” House snapped. “I get it. There’s something wrong with me. I admitted myself, didn’t I?”
Doctor Nolan nodded. “It was, in fact, a very interesting move. And one of the reasons I agreed to treat you in spite of the fact that you’re a professed user –”
“The Vicodin was for pain,” House began to snarl, but the psychiatrist just barreled over him without stopping to argue the point.
“Which is why I’m willing to consider other causes for your recent break,” he said, spreading his large hands. “Not every psychiatrist would do so. We’ll cover all the bases, and get you started on a less aggressive drug therapy at the same time in hopes that we can rule out whatever effects the Vicodin might have been having. In addition, you’ll start meeting with me for therapy, and start on a substance abuse recovery program. All this, I’m willing to do and keep you in the loop. That’s very generous.”
He drew out his last sentence, and House was forced to admit it was true, even if that didn’t prevent him from pouting. “You don’t think that the Vicodin is what made me start seeing her.”
His mention of Her caused an immediate glint of interest to flare in Nolan’s keen eyes, but he kept his professional curiosity at bay for the moment. They were still in the negotiating phase. Dr. Nolan conceded, “I believe it contributed, but I won’t rule out anything without cause. However, I’m letting you know right now that I’m not interested in locking antlers with you. I have other patients, and many, many better things to do with my time than to allow you to waste it. Cooperation is the only thing I’m going to accept.”
House’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “That kind of deal,” he said, “goes both ways.”
“We’ll see,” said Doctor Nolan.
<>
Wilson had been admitted on a Friday. He remembered very little of the first few days, although he suspected that he spent most of it curled up in a bed, reeling from the chemicals that he had pumped into his body, the hospital had pumped out of it, and that Mayfield had pumped back in. He remembered a paper gown and an uncomfortable shower with someone watching. Remembered someone checking his mouth after he’d been given his meds. But those hours were hazy now. He’d been cleared as a severe risk for reoccurrence after the first seventy-eight hours, and after that he’d joined the ward on a mere semi-continuous watch.
The world had shrunk: common room, group, dining hall. House.
Wilson had almost forgotten that he was in the hospital for any reason other than seeing his friend. Thus, when an orderly had gently taken his arm and murmured that it was time for his appointment with Dr. Medina, Wilson had been surprised.
He was taken out of the ward and into a hallway papered in evergreen stripes. It made the hallway recede as you walked down it, stretching out longer than it actually was. At the end was a door, on which the orderly knocked, and then Wilson was ushered inside. His escort pointed out a plain wooden chair in front of the desk and gave Wilson a push in its direction.
Then he left Wilson alone.
Doctor Medina sat across the expanse of his mahogany desk, gazing at a bundle of records over the rims of his glasses, and ignored the patient who came to sit hesitantly on the edge of the straight-backed chair. Wilson had witnessed this kind of behavior in doctors before and knew that the wide space between them was carefully crafted, as was his casual reserve. All of it created the impression of Medina’s authority.
“Doctor Medina,” he began, but the man waved for quiet.
Unable to do anything but wait, Wilson’s eyes darted around the office interior. Bookshelves, a leather chair, framed certificates. There was a potted plant in the corner, and for some reason its fleshy, heart-shaped leaves waxed in Wilson’s vision until he began to shake involuntarily. ‘It’s just the medication,’ he told himself. Because sane people didn’t go into tremors because of a philodendron.
Finally, Doctor Medina raised his head. “James Evan Wilson,” he read from the leather-bound steno pad in front of him. His voice had the same quality as a prosecutor’s standing before a judge, and Wilson inwardly recoiled from the edgy feeling it gave him.
Medina obviously noted his unease, and Wilson saw a ghost of a smile pass over his lips. He continued, “Born to Leib and Judith Wilson. Two brothers, one older – previously institutionalized – and one younger, a banker in New York. Occupation: doctor.” The way Medina said it implied a coy surprise, as if he doubted that this poor specimen could really have held his self-same title. “An oncologist, in fact. That’s an interesting choice of profession. Cancer is a difficult business.”
‘So is mental illness,’ Wilson thought, but he keep it to himself. Even if he had been fully in control of his faculties, he sensed this wasn’t a man to provoke.
“I just received your medical records from your former therapist this morning.”
Wilson felt a thrill of betrayal; he hadn’t requested such a transfer, but it made sense that his therapist would send his files, even considering the ‘voluntary’ nature of his admission. ‘You swallowed a bottle of prescription pills,’ he told himself. ‘Did you think they would respect your privacy?’
“Your records indicate that you received prior treatment for depression.” Medina tapped the folder. “But you showed only an intermittent attendance, and – your former therapist postulates – probably an only partial cooperation with your drug regime as well.” He looked up inquiringly at Wilson at this time, his hazel eyes keen. “Is that right, James?”
Alarmingly, Wilson felt his gaze falter, and immediately felt humiliated. Uncertain where such an emotion had surged up from, he fought to control himself and stammered, “I took my medication regularly for a year.”
Doctor Medina leaned against his knuckles so that they bore into the planes of his fresh, young face, and though his expression seemed neutral, Wilson still felt as though he could see derision there. The man clearly did not believe him. Nonetheless, he continued reading.
“Your therapist also writes that you are compassionate but self-rationalizing, polite but self-contained. Very well socialized, but ashamed of the stress you experience in your job and personal life. She also sensed that you were embarrassed of being depressed and suspected discouragement from an outside source. Yet when confronted about this – or any insight into your relationships – you became irrationally defensive.” Medina carefully removed the eyeglasses from his face. “What do you have to be defensive about, James?”
Wilson didn’t know what to say. “I-I’m not…”
Medina didn’t pause long enough for him to respond. “At least you have sense enough to be ashamed,” he said.
There was a sudden, inexplicable sensation of being pierced. Wilson had to prevent himself from searching for a physical source for the sensation of bleeding.
“Your psych records indicate a series of traumas. Crises in your family, divorce, divorce, lost your job, divorce, lost your practice, threat of jail time. Then there’s the recent death of your girlfriend.”
The mention of Amber made Wilson’s heart stutter, and a painful blockage filled his throat. He didn’t want to talk about Amber, or the pieces of her he had left behind in her empty apartment. He especially didn’t want to talk about how he still heard her voice; coaxing him, challenging him, whispering to him –
“Three divorces, an impressive record,” Doctor Medina continued. “Especially for someone your age. You know what the divorces tell me, James? They tell me you can’t sustain meaningful relationships.”
Wilson opened his mouth to speak up for himself, but the words couldn’t make it through the fog of the medication. Doctor Medina’s presence was too big, and Wilson was too small. He felt as though all the power in his limbs had gone out.
Medina must have seen the expression on his face and known what he was thinking, but rather than offer comfort, he made his face somber and firm. “I’m here to help you fix your problems,” he said, “and that starts with accepting a realistic picture of what’s wrong with you. I don’t pussy foot around or coddle my patients, James. We’re going to be honest with one another.”
Wilson’s muscles gave an involuntary twitch. Bewildered, he hunched inward, his hands twisting together. The way Doctor Medina was looking at him suddenly dredged up a very old memory. It was of his father’s face when he had wet the bed, the night after one of his mother’s episodes.
The doctor titled his head sideways, measuring Wilson as though he were something with pale, fluttering wings that need to be pegged to cardboard. “I think we’ll start your program by getting you a haircut. And for now, I’m withdrawing your privileges to wear your own clothes. We’ll talk about restoring them when you’ve made a little progress, hm?”
Wilson felt hollow.
“We’re finished,” Doctor Medina said.
<>
Wilson shivered against the back of the couch. The gown and pants provided by the hospital were thin cotton, held up with Velcro – no buttons, no zippers, not even an elastic band. His paper slippers lay like flat chalk outlines at the base of the couch where he’d discarded them. He stared at the television screen, occasionally silhouetted by a restless patient, and tried not to think too hard.
“Wilson,” a familiar voice barked, and he looked up at the entrance in time to see House shove through it, waiting irritably while an orderly checked his pass. He looked tired; the hollows above his cheekbones more visible than usual. Yet although he moved haggardly, there was a spark of that demanding spirit behind his eyes that had been missing when Wilson first encountered him in the dining hall.
Wilson relaxed against the cushions; it meant House was glad to see him. He hadn’t been sure, even after last night.
“What are you doing on this floor?” he asked.
“Took my meds,” House grunted as he stumped nearer, his gait badly affected without his cane.
Wilson nodded complacently. A system that condoned bribery seemed very suited to House. Meanwhile, his friend was now close enough to see him clearly, and as soon as he was he had the predictable reaction.
“My god!” House exclaimed.
Self-consciously, Wilson combed his fingers through the short, strange-feeling haircut that he’d been given. After only a brisk going over with the scissors, they’d used an electric clipper. It felt strange and thick now, and it stood up in all directions, molded by his restless fingers.
House’s voice was a growl as he stepped nearer and displaced Wilson’s hand, scraping his scalp aggressively. “You don’t look anything like yourself. What were they thinking?”
Wilson knew the answer to that question, rhetorical though it was. It was a classic part of Degradation Ceremony, an initiation to the total institutionalization that was still advocated by some professionals. Because of Danny, Wilson had studied a great deal of modern psychiatric medicine. From the look he caught on House’s face when he glanced up through his eyelashes, his friend knew it, too, and it made him angry. But it was okay. Wilson knew what was happening. He could keep it from affecting him. Couldn’t he?
“Did you have a good session with Doctor Nolan?” he asked to turn the conversation away from himself.
House blew air out through his mouth. Exasperation, Wilson diagnosed, and maybe just a tinge of honest uncertainty. “Nolan is a manipulative bastard. He’s dangling my medical license over my head. Won’t sigh the right papers unless I agree to treatment.” There was a long pause in which the murmur of the ward filled up all the spaces. House confessed, “He doesn’t think the narcotics were responsible for the hallucinations, at least not completely.”
Wilson shifted, weighing the possibility along with House’s apparent confusion. Was it possible? It would mean a psychotic break, a real mental instability. Or it could mean that House’s enormous repository of repressed emotions were finally finding expression. Fear of pain, fear of death, and a huge, abiding anger at his own helplessness in the face of loss. Wilson tucked his head into his chest. Neither he nor House was any good at dealing with loss.
“You okay?”
House rarely, if ever, showed outward concern for anyone. For some reason, it made Wilson feel like crying, and as he scrubbed his eyes, he had to remind himself again that it was only the drugs making him feel this way. Mood swings would be an affect of the antidepressant he was on until they finally adjusted the dose.
“It was…a long day. I’ll be ready to sleep.”
If he could sleep, so close to his friend and yet so far away. It wasn’t possible for them to be roommates. They spent their nights on different wards. Ward Six was were House stayed. There, patients wore the label No-Harm-To-Self-Or-Others. Wilson wasn’t allowed on that floor yet. Still, they had times like this, and that would have to be enough for now.
As though in agreement, House flopped down on the couch with a sigh and began chatting away about all of the medical secrets of the people on the floor (the staff, of course, rather than the patients). Wilson listened with a half-smile on his face, barely aware of the strange coolness of the air through his abbreviated hair, and tried to put everything but House –
divorce, divorce, lost your job, divorce, lost your practice, threat of jail time, the recent death of your girlfriend
– far from his mind.
See also on fanfiction.net: What Lurks In Man
Title: What Lurks In Man
Author: Swiss Army Knife
Rating: worksafe
Summary: Wilson is so lonely that he fakes mental illness to get into Mayfield with House, but both men are quickly overwhelmed by the consequences.
the key to sanity in a totally insane world.”
-- Lois Wyse
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-9
The night was starless. Instead, a mist made the lights shine from below, gleaming up from the sidewalk out of the sheen of a New Jersey rain. A soft, wet static filled the otherwise soundless backdrop. From the coffee table, a digital readout burned red – 3:21 a.m.
Wilson pressed his forehead to the cool glass and exhaled so that his breath became a fading ghost against the black surface. He watched the water bead, knowing that any self-respecting person would be asleep. Yet here he was, every ligament of his body wound tight, his eyes burning, his pulse hammering far too fast – awake, just as he had been for three straight nights.
It was only one of the things in his routine that had fallen off. An abandoned dinner was wrapped up in the refrigerator, and unwashed dishes lay unattended in the sink. He blamed the change on stress, but, deep down, he knew the truth. Depression sat like an old, weary weight over his shoulders. He knew its grey pallor, its long sighs, the tightness is brought to his throat.
His eyes fell on a frame from which a blond woman smirked. Yesterday, he had found one of her socks mixed in with the laundry. Lord only knew how it had gotten there after almost a year. He’d kneaded that sock in his fingers and thought about the foot that should have filled it – pale white, slender but not petite – and wondered how it was that the fragments remained the clearest memories.
Funny that he’d thought of himself as having moved on from her. But, then, if the events of the last few weeks had proved anything, it was that no one had really moved on from Amber.
A chill of loneliness overcame Wilson, and he rubbed his arms. The flat, vacant hallways of his apartment receded, emphasizing the empty spaces. Once, he might have expected a phone call from House, who would rant loudly in his ear while he voiced sleepy complaints. There might have been the clamor of a cane against the door, or loud, uneven footsteps, or the noise of his commandeered television. Things that were impossible now.
A growing anxiety rose, and Wilson looked at the counter on which the phone rested, his fingers twitching. But, no. House wasn’t allowed visitors yet, or even a phone call. Wilson had been warned, but the impulse to find out – to know House was okay – punctured him viciously.
Wilson let himself slump into the cushions of the couch. There was a faint stain on the fabric of the armrest. House’s fault, of course, and no amount of scrubbing had been able to get it off. He remembered the struggle for the pizza slice, which a lanky arm had held stubbornly out of reach. It was a ploy, a dissimilation of affection. It was the way they worked.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked around the apartment, its quiet so profound that the sound of the clock seemed like a hammer. Unreasonable panic rose, and as he panted, trying to come back under his own control, he saw the prescription bottle. It was sitting on the table, its hood uncapped. It’s label was turned away, but Wilson saw the small pills through the amber plastic.
A half-mad thought leapt into his mind. He reached over and picked up the white cap, slid it through his fingers. Thought of Christmas, and vomit, and his best friend.
Wilson let himself wonder, what if I could –
‘House,’ he thought. For him, what if I could?
<>
Dr. Lisa Cuddy stared at her desktop computer. Had anyone been looking, they would have seen worry in the planes of her face as she leaned forward to re-read the two emails in her inbox. The first was a coolly professional notice from the Donor Committee, the other a personal note sent by a patient. Both had Dr. Wilson’s name attached to the header, which wasn’t an unusual thing, except that their contents contained something less then unconditional praise.
The first announced:
To: Lisa Cuddy M.D.
Subject: Dr. Wilson’s absence from recent committee meeting
It has come to the attention of the board that Dr. Wilson missed the last two Donor Committee meetings without notice or explanation. We’ve attempted to contact him, but he hasn’t responded. You are aware that disciplinary action would ordinarily be taken in this case, but in the light of Dr. Wilson’s excellent record, we wished to notify you first in case there are extenuating circumstances of which we are unaware. Please contact us at your earliest convenience.
Dr. John Pen M.D.
Medical Director, Orthopedics
John was a compassionate man. At the bottom of the official request, he had tagged a personal message – Lisa, this isn’t like James. What’s going on?
Cuddy wished she had an answer, because Wilson had also been conspicuously absent form the Departmental meeting the evening before. Such blatantly unprofessional behavior was completely out of character, and yet the second email she had received was even more disturbing.
She paged over.
Dr. Cuddy,
My daughter, Anne Marie, has been receiving treatment from Dr. Wilson since she was diagnosed four years ago. He’s always been a thorough and compassionate doctor, and I credit his personal warmth toward Annie as one of the biggest reasons why she isn’t afraid of coming to the hospital, even with all she’s been through.
However, at our last meeting, Dr. Wilson looked awful – very tired and pale. I got the impression he was trying to refer us to another doctor. I’m worried about him, and since it affects my daughter’s health, I feel like I have to ask. Is there a reason why we should switch to another oncologist? I don’t want to do this, but I need to know if something is seriously wrong.
The email went on for a few more lines, but Cuddy had read enough. In all her years as Dean of Medicine, Cuddy had never received a written complaint from a patient about Wilson, not even one couched – as this one was – in genuine concern. She just didn’t know what to make of it. James’ patient care record was immaculate. He would never have caused this kind of doubt in a patient under ordinary circumstances.
Though, she thought bleakly as she sank back into her chair, recent times had hardly been ordinary. House’s sudden absence had been felt all over the hospital, like the space left by a sun that had destabilized into a black hole. His listless fellows had been reassigned for the time being, and the third floor hallway outside of diagnostics had become eerily quiet without the thunk, thunk, thunk of a ball against glass.
‘Do you even understand your influence, you stubborn ass?’ Cuddy thought bitterly toward the absent House. ‘Do you even realize how many people depend on you despite everything?’
Of course, no one had been as affected as Wilson. He was taking House’s barely consensual detox extremely hard. For that reason, Cuddy was willing to give Wilson as much leeway as she would for any of her staff with serious family problems, but she couldn’t ignore the missed meetings.
Other things had come to her attention, too. His department was deeply loyal and had been trying to cover for him, but Cuddy knew that Wilson had been arriving late and leaving early. House’s fellows had all come to her at one time or another and dropped some tidbit of information on her desk – Wilson had thrown out his lunch, he had snapped at an intern, he wasn’t wearing a tie – all with accompanying flashes of concern that silently begged her to intercede somehow.
Cuddy was mildly touched, actually. House’s people had made an attempt to maintain a professional distance from Wilson, but it was apparent they saw him as more than just a bulwark of protection against House’s more volatile moods.
Ill at ease, Cuddy tapped one manicured nail against her desk in an unbroken rhythm. Finally, she picked up her office phone and dialed Wilson’s cell. No answer, not even voicemail. Cuddy sighed as she set the receiver back on its cradle. Well, she supposed it could wait until she saw him in person. A glance at the clock told her that it was still early for him to be in the hospital, so she paged Nurse Brenda and asked to be informed when Dr. Wilson made it in.
After that, a crisis in the clinic derailed her attention. She forgot she had been waiting for a call that never came.
<>
Chase had been watching Dr. Wilson’s office for half an hour. He ran his hand through his hair, which was bleached almost white from his recent honeymoon, and leaned forward, hoping to spy even a hint of movement.
Wilson went to the hospital dining room for coffee at ten-thirty everyday. In the times before House left for Mayfield, he would return with two cups and then disappear into the glass office adjoining the diagnostic conference room. Of course, Wilson didn’t do that anymore, but he could still usually be seen making his way to the cafeteria. So, on that Tuesday morning when the appointed time passed and Chase saw no movement from Wilson’s office, he was worried enough to sidle up to the nurse’s station and rest his hip against the counter, upon which Dr. Wilson’s assistant was scribbling notes into a patient file.
“Sandy, have you seen Dr. Wilson this morning? His office looks dark.”
The handsome young woman narrowed her eyes, partially in irritation and partially as a warning. He had a reputation in the hospital for being a kind of a charming slut, which his recent marriage had not yet eclipsed. Finally, though, her suspicion was beaten off by unease.
“I had to cancel two of his appointments,” she admitted. “It’s not like him. I mean, sometimes he’d get distracted –” She meant, held up by something to do with House. “But he always called ahead if he didn’t plan to be in.”
She didn’t need to say anything else; Chase understood exactly. Wilson may have been House’s partner in crime, but he was always, without exception, conscientious of his patients. He would never simply not show up. At least, he never would have before.
“Maybe I’ll go give the handle a jiggle,” he suggested, pushing away without waiting for an answer. It wasn’t impossible that Wilson had snuck in unnoticed and was hibernating under the influence of a bad migraine.
Yet there was no answer from inside when he knocked. No light seeped from beneath the door. By all indications, the office was unoccupied. However, for some reason, Chase wasn’t satisfied. He tested the doorknob and found it was locked, but he hadn’t spent years breaking into patients’ homes for nothing.
Once inside, he gazed around the shadowed space; the Hitchcock poster affixed to one wall, the towering bookshelf, the ubiquitous couch. The pale white square of the balcony door, laid over with the stripes of the long, hanging blinds. A ficus. It all seemed just as usual, except…something.
Chase shook his head, thinking that the paranoia House cultivated was finally getting to him. Then he stilled. There was a neat stack of manila envelopes on the corner of Wilson’s desk, each with a crisp white sticker in each corner. Chase had seen envelopes like that once before, when Tritter’s interference had forced Wilson to refer his patients.
Feeling dread open up like a dark pit inside him, Chase walked back into to Wilson’s tidy desktop. There was another envelope, a smaller white one, propped up between the keys of the keyboard. In Wilson’s slanted scrawl, two words had been carefully written:
‘For House’
Chase was running, digging for his car keys, before he even reached the door.
<>
Wilson was amazed how little effort it had taken to convince the people he worked with that he had lost whatever competency left to him after Amber’s death and House’s subsequent, related institutionalization. In fact, it was just a little crushing, seeing what his efforts had come to – that even after years of meticulous efficiency, of holding two department’s administrative heads above water, of flawless punctuality and uncompensated overtime, and House – after all that, their confidence in him could be so easily undermined.
Perhaps they had always expected that if the head of Diagnostics or Oncology went down, the other would soon follow into the other’s ashes. He didn’t know. He just knew that dismantling his life had been easy. And that he had fewer friends than he thought.
‘You only have one friend.’ The thought crept in, even as he carefully went over the calculations in his head and counted out the pills into his hand. They were pale against his palm, and so light he could barely feel their weight.
He was going to lose his job. Unlike House, there would be no resolution that he could think of, no second chance. Cuddy would not be waiting for him with a department and a hopeful expression. Without House around, there was no longer any incentive for her to preserve his job. Yet, even knowing the risk, he couldn’t change his mind. House might not want him there, but even that heart-stopping possibility paled beside the thought of leaving his friend to face the loss of the only thing he cared about – his mind – essentially alone in the hands of clinicians and psychiatrists.
And if it meant that he didn’t have to spend one more sleepless night in his apartment with the walls leaning in like falling tiles and his lungs rigid in his chest…well. If things went wrong then it would be alright, wouldn’t it?
He flipped the prescription bottle around in his palm, thinking of House and all the years when seeing him with a bottle like this had been almost as inevitable as seeing him with his cane. At times, he had felt as trapped by the Vicodin as House had been, especially when Tritter – Wilson stymied that train of thought immediately.
Anyway, he thought, squeezing the bottle and hearing the faint rattle, these weren’t Vicodin. They were antidepressants, the same ones he’d used to ‘dose’ House’s coffee. He’d been taking them himself for more than a year. House had never attempt to conceal his contempt for a depression diagnosis, but now it was a godsend. No one would question what he was about to do.
Wilson let the pills drop – one, two, three – into his mouth, and then paused to take a methodical swallow of cheap whiskey. He smiled a sad smile as he felt them go down. It was too bad that pills were the best way to have control over this; there was just too much irony.
He raised his hand. Four, five, six.
He looked one last time at the picture frame, out of which Amber’s face smiled (knowingly, coyly, approvingly), and then he closed his eyes and the pill bottle rattled. He swallowed the pills, again and again, until a low buzzing filled up the silence of the apartment and everything went away.
<>
They found him on the floor of Amber’s apartment. Wilson thought he discerned a commanding Australian slur, and that comforted him. He had been right to count on Chase. Of all House’s fellows, he had always been the one Wilson liked best.
People were asking him things: “When? How much?”
He blinked blearily up through the frantic chaos he had created and tried to understand what they were saying, but the words spiraled away, inaccessible now. There was a smell like vomit beside his head, and he regretted that. It was going to stain the carpet, and who was going to clean it up now?
Then his body seized, and Wilson felt his eyes roll back and take him away. Everything was quiet and dark, but it wasn’t the same as the silence of his apartment. It was just the way he wanted it to be.
<>
When he woke up in the hospital, squinting under the harsh lighting, Wilson almost cried with relief. He had gotten it right.
House was living in a hell of impotence.
The detox had been brutal. The sour smell of urine, the tacky feeling of sweat in every crevice, the rawness of his jangling nerves. House doubted he would ever forget them, or the cramps, or the nausea – all of which had mixed to create a lurid memory of agony. Nor would he forget how he had ultimately broken down and begged in the end, wailing for a relief that never came.
When he had finally passed out, he had awoken to find a stranger sponging his restrained and prostrate body. In that awful moment of helpless, sick and dazed with pain, his mind had strayed back to the paltry, half-assed performance he had put on for Tritter in Princeton’s rehabilitation clinic, and it amazed him that anyone had believed it.
By the time he’d finally come up from the debilitating fugue, his mouth had been one solid taste of bitterness – of vomit and vitriol. Barely able to support his own weight, he’d demanded to be discharged. They’d refused him. Instead, House had been summoned before Dr. Darryl Nolan.
House had stomped into the man’s office, ready to steamroller or do battle. In the first five seconds of their acquaintance, he managed to insult the man’s competence and his race. It would have sent most people into a tailspin of explosive anger, but Doctor Nolan had only smiled as though he’d been told a funny joke.
He’d informed House that he could check out whenever he wished; no one here could lawfully detain him. However, if that was his choice, he would return to a shadow life. Without Nolan’s signature on the right piece of paper, House would never practice medicine again. It was at that point that House had been visited by an image of Wilson, whose earnest expression begging him, just this once, to cooperate. The thought of his friend arched, but House dashed the feeling away with fury.
In the end he’d had no choice; he had to stay and play Nolan’s game. Yet if he was going to be in hell, he decided, everyone was going to be in hell with him. He’d spelled it out for Dr. Beasley that first day on the floor: there would be chaos in their precious ward, until Nolan signed the release papers just to be rid of him.
Meanwhile, he chaffed under his physical limitations without the Vicodin. He chaffed under the restriction of locked-down hallways and doors. He chaffed under all the regulations of Mayfield, and from having his decisions lorded over by bungling pacifiers who called themselves doctors.
And if the trials of the real word were not enough, there was always the siege going on in his own mind.
House kneaded his fingers through his cotton pants and bared his teeth against the sound of his roommate’s snores. In the half-light from the corridor, he could see her, perched on the end of his bed. She was always there at night, keeping him company in his troubled, waking dreams. Taunting him now that the drugs were gone from his system and could have no part in her appearance. She showed her teeth around her glossy lips, and he fought the ugly little emotions worming their way deeper inside him with every bead of sweat that trailed down his forehead.
The questions pinged, a relentless parade: ‘How badly is my mind damaged? How far am I gone?’
Amber smiled, and there was no distraction from her haunting presence. No pills, no work, no company. There was nothing at all but her and House.
<>
All morning, House felt as though he was moving through a fog. Though he had mustered the will to be combative enough to get dismissed from recreation, the truth was that he was exhausted. His long war of attrition was not going well. He had antagonized his fellow inmates, cheeked his meds, and lead a revolution over table tennis paddles. So far, though, Nolan had not cracked. Fake urine tests. Undermining his rebellion with grace.
The limited success was discouraging, and the endless gnawing in his thigh was a constant distraction. Then there were the people. The condescension of the doctors was bad enough, but the patients were worse – Alvie, dear god, what on earth had he done to deserve Alivie?
He made his way ponderously to the dining hall since his cane wasn’t allowed in the cafeteria. There were rows and rows of tables, and patients in all degrees of humor, from calm to agitated. Their faces were a blur to him, and it was only by chance that he looked up and caught a flash of brown hair, crowning a familiar profile that stood out like a Monet in a room full of finger paintings.
At first, shock prevented House’s limbs from moving, but almost before he realized what he was doing, he had pushed his way through the rows of benches and seized the seated man. House could feel his grip go all the way through the cheap cotton fabric, bearing into flesh.
In a hoarse whisper, he demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Wilson jolted violently, but when he saw House, he stilled. “House,” he said. His mouth opened like he wanted to say more, but then his dark eyes flickered to the orderlies hovering at the edges of the dining hall. One of them seemed to have noticed the iron grip House had on Wilson and had tensed almost imperceptivity, his arms uncrossing.
Reluctantly, House loosed his grip. However, by that time, he’d had time to reevaluate details, like his friend’s hospital issued clothing, his disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes. “You look like hell,” he blurted.
Wilson lips pursed automatically, his eyes creasing with faint laughter lines. “Thanks, House. You’re looking good too.”
House’s legs went out from under him. He collapsed inelegantly beside Wilson on the bench. His mind was still turning in circles, but without any traction. He wasn’t getting anywhere.
“How are you here?”
“Are you asking metaphysically or specifically?”
House growled, a response that seemed to be answer enough.
Wilson fidgeted with his utensil – a spoon, of course. “It wasn’t difficult. My family history was fairly convincing.”
“Stupidity isn’t genetic,” House spat, but Wilson remained unmoved, his wandering eyes still sliding all around the plastic benches and hunched, robe-covered backs, but never on House. He scooped a small amount of flaky mashed potatoes from his tray and spent a moment sucking on the end of his spoon. When he spoke, it was in an unconcerned, measured tone.
“Depression can be tracked through families.”
House leaned back slightly on the bench, wishing that it would give so that he could wobble as he contemplated, but the legs were bolted to the floor. Over the years, he’d made attempts to gain access to the Wilson family, but Jimmy could be like Fort Knox when he wanted to be. He’d met Wilson’s parents. They put up a good façade, all graceful smiles and plastic normalcy, but House’s career was built on seeing past the obvious. He’d wager the Wilson’s were as nutty as a box of cracker jacks. His missing brother probably only scratched the surface.
Ignoring House’s penetrating look, Wilson probed a doubtful slab of beef. It was obvious that his sensibilities as an amateur-chief were sadly disappointed. Meat byproduct was a long way from even the feeblest home cooking. “I guess you get used the quality of food here,” he said.
House snorted. “Guess again,” he answered, but there was another emotion starting to emerge now that the shock was passing. It simmered up out of his inability to decide anything for himself and mixed with the sleeplessness, the pain, and the loneliness that he would never have admitted to feeling. All of a sudden, he was angry.
“You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” he said. “Couldn’t keep your interfering mitts out of my life for even three weeks.”
“House.” Wilson’s stupid, gooey eyes were as dangerous as armed weapons, and House refused to look at them.
“I always knew you were an idiot, but this is a new measure of moronic, even for you.”
Wilson flexed his fingers, which trembled. “Yeah.”
For some reason, that easy answer made House even more infuriated. “Did you think I’d be helpless without you? Well, I’ve been fine. I don’t want you –”
To see me like this.
“House,” Wilson said in a wounded voice that did nothing to quell House’s torrent of emotion.
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t see you, Wilson. You can just put whatever crazy plan you have in reverse and get the hell out.” With as much indignation as he could muster, House surged out of his seat, wobbled for a moment, and then marched out of the hall, dragging his leg behind him like a crippled wing.
<>
It was later in the day, and Hal was nattering on about his endless headaches to a consolatory Beasley, but House wasn’t listening. For hours, he had been turning over Wilson’s sudden appearance, analyzing it as only he could. It had been easy to throw out hostile words when they first encountered one another. He’d been shocked; of course he had. The flush of anger had been only too real. He was angry at Wilson. He’d been furious and stupefied, but also…relieved. For the first time since he’d stepped into the building, he’d felt as though he could breathe.
Eventually, the cycle of denial tapered into acceptance. Wilson was here, and that wasn’t easily undone. Nor would it be any use ignoring Wilson. He had never succeeded before, and he certainly wouldn’t now with no other outlets. Finding out exactly what happened was his best course of action.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t his own man. The ward door was like the hanger on a river. Two sets of doors, an automated lock, and syringes at the ready to force him down.
Inwardly, House snarled. He glared at the whiteboard hanging on the wall. The condemning zero marked by his name was a reminder of where his scorched-earth policy had gotten him. Until now, he had made every attempt to provoke, to control, to subvert and sabotage. The result? He had no privileges. He was a prisoner in this damn place.
“House? Did you have anything you wanted to share today?”
Beasley was looking at him with her usual inviting expression, asking the question that he had always taken as an opening to begin his daily round of ridicule. The patients were all looking at him like docile sheep, except for Alvie, who was more like a neurotic, twitchy sheep with worms. It would be incredibly easy to pin them all down once more, to set off each and every psychosis. But… He looked up at the whiteboard again. He needed to speak with Wilson.
House opened his mouth.
<>
He found Wilson in a common room, one floor down. He was staring at a snowy television set, and for a moment he looked so much like he belonged in this place that House felt ice burning a cold path down his ribs. Just as quickly as it came, the feeling passed, and House flopped his lanky body alongside Wilson’s on the couch. With an audible groan, he stretched out, deliberately taking up far more space than necessary. He languished, squirming until he was something resembling comfortable – or as comfortable as he was liable to get these days, with his lower body one perpetual, throbbing agony. At the moment, it was spiraling down, flaring and subsiding with his new position. He waited, knuckles white, until the sheen of sweat at his temples was the only indication that anything was amiss.
When he made eye contact with Wilson, he expected to see worry, but at the moment he appeared to be more distantly concerned than fretful. That puzzled House just long enough for realization to hit him like a jolt of electricity, and then he was furiously snatching up Wilson’s wrist, seeking the languid heartbeat at the same time his own hammered with realization.
“You idiot,” he hissed, only remembering to lower his volume at the last moment. “You’re drugged.”
That it had taken House so long to realize was just another testament to his diminished abilities. Patients admitted to hospitals often spent the first few days drugged to the gills, sedated to ease the transition into inpatient care.
“Just a bit. I’ve already been here a week, and they’ve backed down on the dosage already,” Wilson reassured. His head fell to the side, his mouth twitching with chagrin. “Still a little fuzzy though.”
“You’re a moron,” House hissed. Teeth gritted, he demanded, “Do you know what kind of impact those meds can have one someone who isn’t depressed?”
Wilson responded to this tirade with a shrug. “Course I do. I’m a doctor. But it’s the same medication I was on before. Just a stronger dosage.”
“You deceptive bastard,” House accused, but even so, he couldn’t keep a note of admiration from his voice. Only when there was no sharp-witted rejoinder, but only a vacant smile, did the full nature of the situation return to him. He cleared his throat. “Why?”
“You were alone.”
House settled back with a long, drawn-out sigh, because that answer, however idiotic, it was also pathetically familiar. It was stupid, self-martyring, and possibly insane, yet it was also completely Wilson. In true St. Jimmy fashion, he was risking his health and career for the sake of their exceedingly unhealthy friendship, and if this didn’t finally prove just how screwed up it was, he didn’t know what could.
What frightened him – deep, deep down, where House was even capable of admitting to being frightened – was that he was glad. He could feel the physiological effects; some of the wiry tension that had fused his bones together and intensified the pain of every movement was fading. His body was letting itself rest.
To cover the reaction, House sneered. “At least you’re in the right place. You deserve to be here far more than me.”
Wilson responded by letting his chin drop, once again directing his gaze at the television’s endless snow. His non-answer was an answer in itself.
“You’re staying,” House queried.
“I’m here while you’re here.”
It was a promise flavored by an even sweeter one, because ‘while you’re here’ implied the possibility of going home. But to go home meant… House looked at the man next to him, looking wane and withdrawn. He had done this for House. Oh, he’d done it for Wilson-reasons too, which were only ever partially selfless, but it was still something. It reminded House that there even was a world outside for them to return to.
Suddenly, House knew he wanted to reclaim his life. He wanted to go home with Wilson, and – his jaw set – there was only one way he could do that.
Capitulate.
<>
“How is your appetite, James?”
Wilson looked up and didn’t know what to say.
He was sitting awkwardly against the back of his chair in the circle assembled for group therapy. Some of the patients on his floor required assistance; there was a young man who was in casts from his pelvis down (a jumper), and Mike had to be persuaded, too restless to sit long in his designated seat. Most, though, remained meekly still, staring at their hands or the tile floor, a featureless portrait of quiet desperation.
A pretty blond doctor was in charge. Wilson knew her from admission; she had spoken to him about insurance concerns and then gently coaxed him out of his watch and shoes, neither of which were permitted during his stay. They were a suicide risk, along with zippers, drawstrings, belts, buttons, elastic bands, his own toothbrush, and any number of other things with which he could conceivably cause himself harm. He remembered watching her hands as she filled in his paperwork – long, manicured fingernails, but not as carefully cared for as hers, as Ambers. Wilson looked down at the floor.
“James?” The pretty doctor was trying to engage him again. “You’ve been here for almost a week now. How are you adjusting to the floor? Have you gotten to know anyone?”
Wilson let his eyes flow over the circle. To his right there was a girl named Jennifer, barely old enough to be considered an adult, who had small, pink hands crossed over her lap. There were raised marks on her wrists – red, erratic, puffy furrows. Wilson started at them for a moment before looking at his own unblemished wrists. He tried to imagine them with long, angry cuts. Tried to imagine the acute pain of the razor. He supposed it would have worked just as well. Still, while the knife may have been right for Jennifer, for him it could only be the pills; the orange medicine bottle and the poison tablets. The prescription bottle was such a vivid image that he just stared at it for a while, until he was jarred out of his reverie by a hand on his arm.
The doctor had a gentle voice, calm and neutral. “Did you want to talk to us about how you’re feeling today?”
Feeling? Wilson reached inside and touched the calm surface of his wellbeing. There were strong currents there, but the surface was tranquil for now. He didn’t feel much of anything. Except. He looked out across the room and could just see the television, which was turned off for group. It reminded him of the quiet conference he’d had with House last night.
Wilson managed to smile, though it barely touched the corners of his lips. “I’m okay.”
<>
House woke up the next day, downed his meds in a single gulp, and then rapped on the glass of the nurse’s station to request a session with Nolan. It must have come as a shock, since up until yesterday he had shown no willingness to engage in the healing process. Yet when he was finally admitted into Nolan’s office, the doctor appeared as unflappable as ever.
“This is a change,” he said, easing himself down into one of his leather chairs and inviting House to take the one across from him. “Every time you’ve been here before, you’ve paced the floor and made racist commentary.”
House dumped himself into the chair and spread his legs. “Well, hit the clock, Doctor, I’m ready to share my feelings.”
“Interesting,” Nolan said. He had a grin that would make any lunatic want to smack him across the face.
House fought the urge. “No, not interesting. I’m just tired of being here. I’m tired of being miserable.” Slouching even more deeply in the chair, he challenged, “So go ahead! Fix me.”
“Why the sudden motivation to confront your issues?”
“No reason.”
He thought that Nolan was going to press further, but he didn’t. Instead, he reclined and folded his hands, seemingly content to just look at his patient as though he were a specimen under glass. “Okay, then. Let’s get started. What do you want to talk about?”
“Well, Darryl,” House began. “Why don’t we start with my potty training years and work up to the disappointing loss of my virginity.”
Nolan gave a throaty chuckle. “It always amazes me what the laymen thinks psychiatric healthcare is all about.” House winced, spurred by the reference to himself as a layman, which was apparently exactly the response that Nolan wanted, judging by the gleam in his eye. He finished, “How about I give us a starting point? I don’t allow patients to use my first name, so you can call me Doctor Nolan. Alright, Gregory?”
House felt his cheek twitch, involuntarily impressed. He answered in the same spirit, “Now, that’s not fair, Doctor. After all, I’ve also earned a title, and I did it by treating actual sick people.”
The psychiatrist leaned forward, fingers twined. “Actual sick people, Doctor House? Because when someone tells me they’re experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations of a dead person –”
“Alright,” House snapped. “I get it. There’s something wrong with me. I admitted myself, didn’t I?”
Doctor Nolan nodded. “It was, in fact, a very interesting move. And one of the reasons I agreed to treat you in spite of the fact that you’re a professed user –”
“The Vicodin was for pain,” House began to snarl, but the psychiatrist just barreled over him without stopping to argue the point.
“Which is why I’m willing to consider other causes for your recent break,” he said, spreading his large hands. “Not every psychiatrist would do so. We’ll cover all the bases, and get you started on a less aggressive drug therapy at the same time in hopes that we can rule out whatever effects the Vicodin might have been having. In addition, you’ll start meeting with me for therapy, and start on a substance abuse recovery program. All this, I’m willing to do and keep you in the loop. That’s very generous.”
He drew out his last sentence, and House was forced to admit it was true, even if that didn’t prevent him from pouting. “You don’t think that the Vicodin is what made me start seeing her.”
His mention of Her caused an immediate glint of interest to flare in Nolan’s keen eyes, but he kept his professional curiosity at bay for the moment. They were still in the negotiating phase. Dr. Nolan conceded, “I believe it contributed, but I won’t rule out anything without cause. However, I’m letting you know right now that I’m not interested in locking antlers with you. I have other patients, and many, many better things to do with my time than to allow you to waste it. Cooperation is the only thing I’m going to accept.”
House’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “That kind of deal,” he said, “goes both ways.”
“We’ll see,” said Doctor Nolan.
<>
Wilson had been admitted on a Friday. He remembered very little of the first few days, although he suspected that he spent most of it curled up in a bed, reeling from the chemicals that he had pumped into his body, the hospital had pumped out of it, and that Mayfield had pumped back in. He remembered a paper gown and an uncomfortable shower with someone watching. Remembered someone checking his mouth after he’d been given his meds. But those hours were hazy now. He’d been cleared as a severe risk for reoccurrence after the first seventy-eight hours, and after that he’d joined the ward on a mere semi-continuous watch.
The world had shrunk: common room, group, dining hall. House.
Wilson had almost forgotten that he was in the hospital for any reason other than seeing his friend. Thus, when an orderly had gently taken his arm and murmured that it was time for his appointment with Dr. Medina, Wilson had been surprised.
He was taken out of the ward and into a hallway papered in evergreen stripes. It made the hallway recede as you walked down it, stretching out longer than it actually was. At the end was a door, on which the orderly knocked, and then Wilson was ushered inside. His escort pointed out a plain wooden chair in front of the desk and gave Wilson a push in its direction.
Then he left Wilson alone.
Doctor Medina sat across the expanse of his mahogany desk, gazing at a bundle of records over the rims of his glasses, and ignored the patient who came to sit hesitantly on the edge of the straight-backed chair. Wilson had witnessed this kind of behavior in doctors before and knew that the wide space between them was carefully crafted, as was his casual reserve. All of it created the impression of Medina’s authority.
“Doctor Medina,” he began, but the man waved for quiet.
Unable to do anything but wait, Wilson’s eyes darted around the office interior. Bookshelves, a leather chair, framed certificates. There was a potted plant in the corner, and for some reason its fleshy, heart-shaped leaves waxed in Wilson’s vision until he began to shake involuntarily. ‘It’s just the medication,’ he told himself. Because sane people didn’t go into tremors because of a philodendron.
Finally, Doctor Medina raised his head. “James Evan Wilson,” he read from the leather-bound steno pad in front of him. His voice had the same quality as a prosecutor’s standing before a judge, and Wilson inwardly recoiled from the edgy feeling it gave him.
Medina obviously noted his unease, and Wilson saw a ghost of a smile pass over his lips. He continued, “Born to Leib and Judith Wilson. Two brothers, one older – previously institutionalized – and one younger, a banker in New York. Occupation: doctor.” The way Medina said it implied a coy surprise, as if he doubted that this poor specimen could really have held his self-same title. “An oncologist, in fact. That’s an interesting choice of profession. Cancer is a difficult business.”
‘So is mental illness,’ Wilson thought, but he keep it to himself. Even if he had been fully in control of his faculties, he sensed this wasn’t a man to provoke.
“I just received your medical records from your former therapist this morning.”
Wilson felt a thrill of betrayal; he hadn’t requested such a transfer, but it made sense that his therapist would send his files, even considering the ‘voluntary’ nature of his admission. ‘You swallowed a bottle of prescription pills,’ he told himself. ‘Did you think they would respect your privacy?’
“Your records indicate that you received prior treatment for depression.” Medina tapped the folder. “But you showed only an intermittent attendance, and – your former therapist postulates – probably an only partial cooperation with your drug regime as well.” He looked up inquiringly at Wilson at this time, his hazel eyes keen. “Is that right, James?”
Alarmingly, Wilson felt his gaze falter, and immediately felt humiliated. Uncertain where such an emotion had surged up from, he fought to control himself and stammered, “I took my medication regularly for a year.”
Doctor Medina leaned against his knuckles so that they bore into the planes of his fresh, young face, and though his expression seemed neutral, Wilson still felt as though he could see derision there. The man clearly did not believe him. Nonetheless, he continued reading.
“Your therapist also writes that you are compassionate but self-rationalizing, polite but self-contained. Very well socialized, but ashamed of the stress you experience in your job and personal life. She also sensed that you were embarrassed of being depressed and suspected discouragement from an outside source. Yet when confronted about this – or any insight into your relationships – you became irrationally defensive.” Medina carefully removed the eyeglasses from his face. “What do you have to be defensive about, James?”
Wilson didn’t know what to say. “I-I’m not…”
Medina didn’t pause long enough for him to respond. “At least you have sense enough to be ashamed,” he said.
There was a sudden, inexplicable sensation of being pierced. Wilson had to prevent himself from searching for a physical source for the sensation of bleeding.
“Your psych records indicate a series of traumas. Crises in your family, divorce, divorce, lost your job, divorce, lost your practice, threat of jail time. Then there’s the recent death of your girlfriend.”
The mention of Amber made Wilson’s heart stutter, and a painful blockage filled his throat. He didn’t want to talk about Amber, or the pieces of her he had left behind in her empty apartment. He especially didn’t want to talk about how he still heard her voice; coaxing him, challenging him, whispering to him –
“Three divorces, an impressive record,” Doctor Medina continued. “Especially for someone your age. You know what the divorces tell me, James? They tell me you can’t sustain meaningful relationships.”
Wilson opened his mouth to speak up for himself, but the words couldn’t make it through the fog of the medication. Doctor Medina’s presence was too big, and Wilson was too small. He felt as though all the power in his limbs had gone out.
Medina must have seen the expression on his face and known what he was thinking, but rather than offer comfort, he made his face somber and firm. “I’m here to help you fix your problems,” he said, “and that starts with accepting a realistic picture of what’s wrong with you. I don’t pussy foot around or coddle my patients, James. We’re going to be honest with one another.”
Wilson’s muscles gave an involuntary twitch. Bewildered, he hunched inward, his hands twisting together. The way Doctor Medina was looking at him suddenly dredged up a very old memory. It was of his father’s face when he had wet the bed, the night after one of his mother’s episodes.
The doctor titled his head sideways, measuring Wilson as though he were something with pale, fluttering wings that need to be pegged to cardboard. “I think we’ll start your program by getting you a haircut. And for now, I’m withdrawing your privileges to wear your own clothes. We’ll talk about restoring them when you’ve made a little progress, hm?”
Wilson felt hollow.
“We’re finished,” Doctor Medina said.
<>
Wilson shivered against the back of the couch. The gown and pants provided by the hospital were thin cotton, held up with Velcro – no buttons, no zippers, not even an elastic band. His paper slippers lay like flat chalk outlines at the base of the couch where he’d discarded them. He stared at the television screen, occasionally silhouetted by a restless patient, and tried not to think too hard.
“Wilson,” a familiar voice barked, and he looked up at the entrance in time to see House shove through it, waiting irritably while an orderly checked his pass. He looked tired; the hollows above his cheekbones more visible than usual. Yet although he moved haggardly, there was a spark of that demanding spirit behind his eyes that had been missing when Wilson first encountered him in the dining hall.
Wilson relaxed against the cushions; it meant House was glad to see him. He hadn’t been sure, even after last night.
“What are you doing on this floor?” he asked.
“Took my meds,” House grunted as he stumped nearer, his gait badly affected without his cane.
Wilson nodded complacently. A system that condoned bribery seemed very suited to House. Meanwhile, his friend was now close enough to see him clearly, and as soon as he was he had the predictable reaction.
“My god!” House exclaimed.
Self-consciously, Wilson combed his fingers through the short, strange-feeling haircut that he’d been given. After only a brisk going over with the scissors, they’d used an electric clipper. It felt strange and thick now, and it stood up in all directions, molded by his restless fingers.
House’s voice was a growl as he stepped nearer and displaced Wilson’s hand, scraping his scalp aggressively. “You don’t look anything like yourself. What were they thinking?”
Wilson knew the answer to that question, rhetorical though it was. It was a classic part of Degradation Ceremony, an initiation to the total institutionalization that was still advocated by some professionals. Because of Danny, Wilson had studied a great deal of modern psychiatric medicine. From the look he caught on House’s face when he glanced up through his eyelashes, his friend knew it, too, and it made him angry. But it was okay. Wilson knew what was happening. He could keep it from affecting him. Couldn’t he?
“Did you have a good session with Doctor Nolan?” he asked to turn the conversation away from himself.
House blew air out through his mouth. Exasperation, Wilson diagnosed, and maybe just a tinge of honest uncertainty. “Nolan is a manipulative bastard. He’s dangling my medical license over my head. Won’t sigh the right papers unless I agree to treatment.” There was a long pause in which the murmur of the ward filled up all the spaces. House confessed, “He doesn’t think the narcotics were responsible for the hallucinations, at least not completely.”
Wilson shifted, weighing the possibility along with House’s apparent confusion. Was it possible? It would mean a psychotic break, a real mental instability. Or it could mean that House’s enormous repository of repressed emotions were finally finding expression. Fear of pain, fear of death, and a huge, abiding anger at his own helplessness in the face of loss. Wilson tucked his head into his chest. Neither he nor House was any good at dealing with loss.
“You okay?”
House rarely, if ever, showed outward concern for anyone. For some reason, it made Wilson feel like crying, and as he scrubbed his eyes, he had to remind himself again that it was only the drugs making him feel this way. Mood swings would be an affect of the antidepressant he was on until they finally adjusted the dose.
“It was…a long day. I’ll be ready to sleep.”
If he could sleep, so close to his friend and yet so far away. It wasn’t possible for them to be roommates. They spent their nights on different wards. Ward Six was were House stayed. There, patients wore the label No-Harm-To-Self-Or-Others. Wilson wasn’t allowed on that floor yet. Still, they had times like this, and that would have to be enough for now.
As though in agreement, House flopped down on the couch with a sigh and began chatting away about all of the medical secrets of the people on the floor (the staff, of course, rather than the patients). Wilson listened with a half-smile on his face, barely aware of the strange coolness of the air through his abbreviated hair, and tried to put everything but House –
divorce, divorce, lost your job, divorce, lost your practice, threat of jail time, the recent death of your girlfriend
– far from his mind.
See also on fanfiction.net: What Lurks In Man
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Hope you enjoy the rest of the story.