Fanfiction / What Lurks in Man (Chapters 7-9)

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Title: What Lurks In Man (Chapters 7-9)
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.

Chapters 1-3
Chapters 4-6

Chapter Seven

Hours before, the staff had bundled Wilson up, forcing him out of bed and making sure he showered before putting his hands through the sleeves of a clean shirt. An unseeing nurse briskly put a comb through his hair and then glanced over him with a professional eye.

“There,” she said. “Much better. Mike, you can help him to the day room. Doctor Medina said he’ll buzz when he’s ready.”

Mike kept a hand on Wilson’s arm all the way down the hall. “Steady,” he said when Wilson fumbled, his feet crossing over one another awkwardly as he struggled to get his balance back.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. His mind still had fuzzy edges, but he was relatively clear headed now. It was the dread that was making him clumsy; he didn’t want to go see Medina.

Mike remained his shadow; he hovered nearby while Wilson waited nervously on the couch, and then lead him down the hall to the offices when the summon came. When they stood outside staring at the brass plate – Dr. Anthony Medina, M.D. – he even patted Wilson’s arm, a firm sign of comfort that was different from the characteristically empty gestures made by the rest of the staff. He was a good man, Mike, and suited for medicine. From behind the buttresses of Wilson’s stressed brain, a small protected inner part hoped that Mike was only doing a rotation here and would move on soon.

“You ready?” Mike asked, and Wilson fought not to actively recoil from the doorknob. It turned easily and then there was the mahogany desk, the droning of the ceiling fan, the judgmental, threatening philodendron. He was passed inside as Medina’s eyes flickered up from where he was making notations.

“You can sit down,” he said.

Wilson was forced to wait as always, and his eyes wandered over the bookshelves of journals and encyclopedia. On one wall, a large, prominent painting caught his eye. It was a print of Saturn Devouring his Son, with the hideous half-formed man tearing the bloody torso of his child in his teeth. There was an engraving fitted below it, set into the heavy frame. It read: “The man eating his child; the mind turning on itself.”

Wilson looked at it and almost cringed away from the grotesque image. Who kept something like that on their wall?

The scratching went on deliberately for another moment, until finally the pen went down and Medina took up the papers carefully and set them end to end until they matched perfectly. He lay them down and let his finger tap the surface, a severe, monotonous noise.

“Do you know what this is, James?” he asked.

Wilson fought not to squirm. When he discerned that the man would wait for an answer, he contracted his throat until it squeezed out the word, “No.”

“This is a report from the head nurse who was on duty when you had your…episode.”

Wilson felt his heart stutter. He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t feel wary, and his body was already readying itself for an attack.

Doctor Medina sighed. “Such progress, and now this. Refusing to take direction. Aggression toward the staff. You put your fingernails in Chris’s arms, did you know that? They had to sedate you to keep you from hurting anyone else. I suppose I should have predicted it. You keep it all bottled up inside, don’t you, James? Deception is your nature.”

House had said that. He said Wilson used lies like House used the truth. Maybe that was why they had connected in the beginning. People smiled at Wilson, but he never let them close. Only House hadn’t been put off, only House…

Liar. The word stuck. Wilson choked down a wounded sound. Liar.

“Don’t you have something to say about this?” Medina asked, and he was starting to sound cross. His eyes went back to reading. “I spoke to you former employer yesterday, Lisa Cuddy. ‘Private.’ That’s how she described you. ‘Easy to warm up to, but difficult to know.’ I don’t think I’d count on going back to work there, James.”

There was a hurt inside that tore open, a very old hurt that had first been inflicted at a boardroom table where a business man with a lust for power had taken Wilson’s job, and Cuddy, someone he had counted as a friend, had sat in mute supplication and let him be sacrificed to save House. That had been the first time. Wilson thought he might even have hated her more than House, if he had been capable of hating either of them. Even after Kutner she had…

‘Take care of him,’ she had said. House. Wasn’t that what he’d been trying to do?

“I’m a good doctor,” he heard himself saying. He clung to that fact like a man might hold onto his last possession after a fire. He couldn’t save many of his patients, it was true, but he tried as hard he was able. He put everything into his work. For a long time, he’d used it as a salve for other deficiencies. If that crumbled…

Doctor Medina saw the doubt in his bleak eyes but didn’t comment. His knowing was enough.

“I also spoke to your parents.”

Wilson’s heart rate picked up. “I said I didn’t want them to know,” he protested. “When I sighed the admission papers –”

Medina’s eyes were cold and completely absent of compassion. “After your relapse, I deemed it essential to your recovery. I’m trying to help you, James.”

Wilson shook his head, his eyes squeezed shut. He hadn’t wanted them to know. They couldn’t handle another failure. His father would never be able to look at him again. Wilson thought of Jennifer and her thin red scars, and his own wrists itched. He felt homeless, as homeless as Danny must have felt when his own brother put down the phone in order to cut off his needy voice. And his mother…

Cuddy would not give him his job back once House was well again. His family would avoid speaking with him. Even House, the last screwed-up relationship he had, didn’t want to see him anymore. The final words he had said echoed now: Stay away from me!

Wilson’s head sunk into his hands.

“Your parents told me some things about your childhood,” Medina went on, relentless. He read from his notes. “A compulsive crier. Alternately clingy and withdrawn. And prone to sudden, unexplained outbursts of temper.”

There were reasons for that. Wilson had never told, and wouldn’t. Not even House.

“And then suddenly you became the model boy. Helpful. Everyone’s friend. You handled your brother well.”

Wilson remembered those difficult years of strain and toil, constantly fearing that he would miss a step and become another burden for his struggling family to bear.

“Everyone thought you were going to do just fine. And then you entered medical school, got divorced, got divorced again. It can be hard keeping up appearances, can’t it, James? Even when you’re an expert liar.”

The insinuation, that he had been lying even then, cut straight down to Wilson’s heart. They were the same insecurities that House played on – you’re all persona – but here, now, he felt naked and exposed, unable to defend himself. Once again he asked himself, was it true? He tried to keep the most offensive parts of himself hidden, but did that make him deceptive? Was that the reason people left him?

“I’m not a liar,” he said. “I just….”

“We’re in my office. I choose the words here, James.” Medina sat back and crossed his arms with all the authority of one who believed his word was unassailable.

Wilson was losing it steadily, but he wasn’t completely cowed. Shaking his head, he made his voice as firm as he could. “No.”

“I think we’re going to have to step up your program,” Medina said. “If you can’t even take responsibility for what you do, we’re never going to get to the bottom of this self-serving behavior.”

Wilson didn’t want to think about what it would mean to accelerate his program. “I was upset,” he tried to explain. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I just felt like I needed to go outside.”

“Why? Did you fight with – ” Medina glanced down, and his eyes went suddenly wide. The whites flashed in surprise as he double checked the notes. “Gregory House?”

There was no doubt he knew House; just as with Beasley, the reaction was clear. Anthony Medina clearly loathed House, and it set something burning in Wilson deeper than depression – far deeper than his own self-hatred. He didn’t trust people who hated Gregory House. Because House was an ass and disliking him wasn’t hard. But people, and especially professionals, didn’t hate House unless he had something they didn’t, and usually that something was skill.

“House is my friend,” he said, because it was true, whether or not House wanted it to be.

Medina actually laughed. “House a misanthropic, miserable, sociopathic drug addict. The closest he can get to friendship is manipulation, and I suspect even that would be hard for him to keep up for long. He isn’t capable of caring about anyone.”

“You’re wrong,” Wilson said. He had been there through enough revealing cases, had seen the deep emotional connection that House was capable of making when the conditions were right. His walls were high, but they were high to protect him. House’s fault wasn’t caring too little. Maybe it had always been that he cared too much.

Medina looked surprised at Wilson’s insistence. Hitherto, he had only seen his patient subdued, reticent. His brows knitted in anger as he observed the tight, mistrustful look on Wilson’s face. “I’m the psychiatrist, James. If your judgment was trustworthy, do you think you’d be on that side of the desk?”

Medina was capable of using words like weapons, but he had made a mistake aiming them at House. Wilson was no longer intimidated. He was mad, and that had lead to a realization so bright and clear he wondered why he had never seen it before.

“You’re just trying to hurt people,” he accused, speaking slowly. “Doctor’s don’t do that. What’s wrong with you?”

Doctor Medina stood abruptly and pressed the buzzer on his desk. He spoke into the intercom. “Please send in Mike,” he said, and glared at Wilson, who was swaying and white on the uncomfortable wooden chair. He punched it again. “And Chris and Ryan.”

<>

House wasn’t allowed to use his visitor’s pass until just before curfew. He didn’t understand why until he saw Mike the orderly. His face was set rigidly, the terseness of a young man whose sense of righteousness had been offended.

“What happened?” House demanded, but Mike’s mouth was tight and he refused to speak. Instead he merely read Nolan’s signature with hard eyes and then escorted House down the featureless hall. It had a radiator locked in a steel box and guardrails with metal casings so that there were no recesses an unmonitored patient could use to cause themselves harm. Inside the bathrooms, he knew, the stalls were plexiglass from floor to ceiling. Every fixture was sealed, every piece of furniture bolted down. On the entire floor, not one shoelace or button could be found. It was a suicide ward. House had never let that sink in.

Mike had to use his passcard to open the door. It swung open to a room where the lights were dimmed. “He’s been out of it,” Mike warned, and his words turned heavy with significance. “Since his session with Doctor Medina this afternoon.”

Tense, House nodded and stepped into the room.

“Wilson,” he announced himself. He was several steps inside when he saw his friend, and then he froze, every muscle going rigid. He moved jerkily to edge of the bed and touched the padded cuffs, swallowing against a sudden obstruction in his throat. He breathed, “Wilson.”

His friend was restrained, his hands and legs fixed at points so that his arms had the appearance of distortion. Under the sheet, he was naked. Nothing left for protection or concealment. But the worst thing – worse even than these physical and psychological structures of control – was the glazed look in Wilson’s eyes, doped to the gills yet still so pathetically glad to see him.

“House,” Wilson said, his mouth fumbling the word. “You’re here.”

House felt a wretched wrench of guilt, remembering their last conversation. He stretched his hand over the bed sheet, near enough to feel the warmth of Wilson’s shoulder but not close enough to touch. “Wilson,” he said. “What the hell happened?”

Some of the light faded then, and House was glad to see it go because it had no context here. Wilson moved his hands restlessly, shifting against the cuffs. “I got in trouble.”

“No shit. What did you do?”

A dull pain was added to the already dim reflection in Wilson’s eyes. They skipped around the planes of House’s face, struggling to make contact. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I said some bad things.”

“To Doctor Medina?” House was starting to connect the dots. Still, he hadn’t anticipated the bleakness that changed Wilson’s face, or his sudden shudder. He grasped ineffectively for House’s hand, hindered by the fetter. Then he tried to curl inward, but he couldn’t do that either.

Instead, in total failure, he snuffled loudly, his eyes becoming glassy. “I’m not very good,” he rambled. “Nobody stays.”

“I’m here, Wilson,” House bit out, fiercely, because he was so angry. Angry at his poor friend, and angry with Medina, who was supposed to be helping him. “Did Doctor Medina say that to you?”

“Doctor Medina.” Wilson sounded suddenly cross. “I told him not to talk about you. I told him.”

Well that explained something. House knew Medina from brief run-ins with him on his floor, and he had heard the condescending way the man spoke to his patients. Leave it to Wilson to sit and listen to someone run him down for weeks and then come out of his shell long enough to defend House.

“Dammit, Wilson,” he said. “You chose that moment to get a backbone?”

Wilson’s head titled back, eyes staring at the ceiling. His moment of confidence had leaked out of him, like air from a balloon. Tiredly, he said, “House. I don’t feel good.”

House was terrible at comforting people. Even now, it came awkwardly. “It’s alright. You’ll feel better soon.”

A tear scrapped it’s way down the side of Wilson’s nose. “Something’s wrong with me, House.”

“Tons of things,” House retorted. Sarcasm was easier. “But I like you that way. You’re more interesting than anybody I know.”

Even as he said it, House was kicking himself inside. He was remembering the time he had slipped amphetamines into Wilson’s coffee and discovered the antidepressants. Wilson might have hidden his pain behind an impenetrable wall of service to others, but this…this had always existed. Cuddy was right; Wilson hadn’t been well for a long time, and the signs had all been there.

He had never felt so stupid.

“Tried so hard, but I messed up,” Wilson mumbled. “Like Danny. Like my mom.”

House didn’t know what he was talking about. He had met Mrs. Wilson, and his perception of her had been of a strained, bland woman who had looked through her middle son like he was transparent. Though she had touched Paul, her youngest, and hung on his arm, the only thing he could recall her saying to Wilson was to ask him to mind the roast. After that, House had dismissed her in an effort to rouse the other Wilson men into a fit of outrage. Wilson, his Wilson, had disappeared into the kitchen and House hadn’t seen him again until he helped serve everyone supper.

“I’m sorry I came, House,” Wilson broke his reverie. “It wasn’t just about you. I…I was lonely.”

It took everything in House not to roll his eyes. Only Wilson could make something like that come out sounding like both an apology and a confession. He said, “You could have waited a few damn weeks for me to get out of here, but I’m not sorry you came. I’m not mad at you.”

Wilson swallowed, his dark eyes blinking slowly. His unusually short hair was messy and untended. The dark line of his cheeks were hollow. He didn’t just look drugged. He looked physically and emotionally diminished. It was as though House could finally see the fine lines fissuring his friend’s psyche, and it was too late to do anything about it.

“You need to get out of here, Wilson,” he said. “You’re losing your mind.”

“Curfews in ten,” Mike said from where he stood at the door, his arms folded. If he was uncomfortable with what he had seen, House didn’t give a damn.

“Punishment, or revenge?” House asked as he passed Mike at the door. As a punishment, it was extreme, but if it was revenge it was nothing short of professional failure. It was abuse. House’s finger were suddenly itching for transcripts of Wilson’s sessions with Medina. He waited while Mike closed the door and locked it with a decisive click.

Like before, there was no answer. But it was a very loud silence.

<>

The office door wasn’t locked. House plunged in without invitation, heedless of the startled patient cringing against the back of a single wooden chair, or the way Dr. Medina’s eyebrows flew upwards into his hair before plunging back down in to an angry black line. He stood up and his tie swung forward on it’s clip. His pen rolled against the blotter as his hands slammed, palms down, onto the desk’s surface. He had already lost his composure.

House challenged him before he had the sense to call for assistance. “You bastard. Do you usually punish your patients for standing up to you, or do you just beat them down into a quivering mush so that they never try? Well, you underestimated Wilson. He might not fight for himself, but you made an enemy out of him by attacking someone else. You’ll never get him back under your thumb, not completely. He’ll never trust you again.”

“House,” Medina hissed. “As soon as I saw you name in the file, I should have suspected you had your fingers all over this. You just can’t help ruining everything you touch. It’s no wonder James hasn’t been improving. If I’d known, I would have separated you, for his sake.”

“But you didn’t know, and that’s just one more strike against you, you incompetent boob,” House said. “You’re a bully masquerading as someone trying to help people. You don’t deserve to be called a doctor.”

“I don’t? And what about you?” Medina had regained some balance; he wasn’t boiling over now. He actually laughed. “I remember the notes from his psychiatrist: ‘discouraged by a outside source’. Are you the one James has been hiding? Oh, I can see it now. If nothing else, you’re charismatic. And just the kind to prey on a weak, flawed person like James.”

“You’re the one whose been undermining him. He’s falling apart,” House accused.

“I’ve been helping him see the reality of his situation. To recognize how he’s at fault for what’s happened to him. People don’t take enough responsibility for their own wellbeing these days. They’re used to be pandered to. I’m changing his thinking, breaking him down. And then I’ll fix him.”

“You arrogant Nazi. That kind of thinking is for the dark ages, and terrorist cells, and cults.”

Medina looked at the wild-eyed patient staring at them both in stupefaction. “You can leave now, Mary. We’ll reschedule your appointment for later.”

The woman was no sooner gone from the room than Medina straightened, carefully folded her hands across his chest in a visible show of arrogance. “Greg,” he said.

“Doctor House,” the diagnostician snarled.

“Doctor House,” Media corrected. “You have no business being involved in the care of another patient. My sessions with James are strictly confidential, and would be even if you weren’t currently another patient at this facility.” He paused, taking time to meet House’s eyes. “I’m his doctor, and that’s all you need to know. I’m helping him.

House almost had no words for the his acute frustration he felt at this man’s blindness. Hands gripping the back of the chair, he snarled, “What you’ve been doing isn’t helping him, you arrogant, dominating, unstable –”

“Dominating? That is an interesting adjective,” Medina said. “As a matter of fact, they all are. In case you’ve forgotten, I conducted your admitting interview. Do you want to know what I wrote in my notes that day?” House made a resistant noise in his throat, but Dr. Medina ignored him. Instead, he slammed open a cabinet beside his desk and fished through the files. A sheet of paper separated from the others, and Medina recited, “Stubborn and noncompliant. Prone to fits of temper when thwarted. Physically belligerent. Intensely possessive of belongings and personal space. Posturing. Bullying, manipulation, and attempts to seize control. Overtly hostile to social norms.”

When Medina finally looked up, it was into House’s mute but angry face.

“Sound familiar?” he asked.

House said, “You can’t compare my actions to what you’re doing.”

Dr. Medina was implacable. “I’ve read your file, House. I heard you tried to kill one of your fellows, and almost killed a patient. I heard you always nearly kill your patients. That’s why you came here. Your self-destructive behavior was branching out. It was threatening your job.”

“I’m here because I was experiencing hallucinations and I needed to detox in a controlled environment.”

“And because you believed yourself to be a possible danger to others.”

House didn’t want to admit anything to Medina, but the current of their conversation had changed. He felt it tugging irresistibly at his feet, and heard himself saying, “Subconsciously. Maybe. Yes.”

“You were afraid of what might happen to your team, your coworkers, while you tried to figure out your own problems,” Medina pressed.

“Yes.”

“But you’re not afraid for James?” Medina lobbed at him, a blow that made House’s mouth snap shut around an angry retort. It required a few moments of slowly grinding his teeth as his mind turned over the half-inquiry.

Meanwhile, a haunting red smile spread on a face just over Doctor Medina’s shoulder. A ghost smile.

“I would never hurt Wilson,” he said finally, his voice unnaturally devoid of sarcasm.

Amber cocked her head, and it filled the room with a sound like the vibration of a tuner’s key. No, he insisted, directing his thoughts toward her. No part of him could ever bring the kind of harm on Wilson that had been perpetrated here.

“You don’t seem sure,” Doctor Medina said in response to his sudden shift in demeanor.

House felt a great weariness weighed down on his shoulders. He caressed the silvery aluminum of his cane. “I’m sure.”

“Would you like to know what I’m sure of?” Medina asked. “I’m sure your drug abuse only finished the work that nature started. It’s only a matter of time before you’re a hazard to society, and then they’ll do more than institutionalize you. I just hope you won’t have a trail of bodies behind you before they finally put you away. People like James.”

He reached over and pushed the intercom.

“Now get out. I’m sending a nurse to escort you to solitary.”

Chapter Eight

House spent eight hours in solitary before Nolan overruled Medina’s order and they came to let House out. Four hours of seething rage, one hour of denial. Three hours for doubt to seep in where the room’s white blasted corners merged with the tumult of his overstressed mind. He was haggard when he finally returned to his room, mechanically asking to use a razor.

They brought it to him with his medicine in a cup. House sneered before he realized it was just his regular tablets – ibuprofen and Nolan’s antidepressants. The antipsychotics had been absent for awhile now. Begrudgingly, he swallowed the pills and tried not to think as he laid out on the sheets of his bed.

His head was spinning. Medina’s prediction had lodged in his brain. He had said what Nolan wouldn’t, but what House had always suspected from the moment he saw Amber singing in front of that piano. That the drugs had left their mark. He wasn’t fit for medicine anymore. That it was only a matter of time before he more or less deliberately killed someone.

How had it gotten so complicated? Wilson, of course. Always Wilson. It had been Wilson since the infarction, when Stacy left and he didn’t. Wilson, who begged him with his whole body and a ruined marriage to please, please live.

‘Well, I did,’ he thought, ‘and look where it got me. I’m in pain. A pariah. And now I’m being haunted by your damned girlfriend.’

“Yes,” she said. Lovely as always, she bent over his bed and said insistently, “Yes, it’s his fault. Who’s to say it wasn’t the deep brain stimulation and not the drugs. He insisted. He would have killed you if it could have saved me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve been around a lot longer than you,” House said.

“Do you think he really wants to go back to the way it was before?” Amber asked. “He’d rather us be normal.”

“I was normal before you.”

“You were never normal. And what if you need me? What if I’ve been a part of your process all along?” Pills spilled from Amber’s hand. “Or what if the Vicodin has?”

It wasn’t the first time such a thing had occurred to him. House had been an excellent doctor in his prime, before the infarction had stripped away all the pleasures of life. However, it was only after that, with the Vicodin and all his restraints gone, that he had become the world-famous diagnostician that brought people and government organizations and criminals to his door. Would that, could that go away?

“He’s never approved,” Amber said. “It’s always Wilson, sweet Wilson, in the way.”

“You’re wrong,” House said.

“You’re wrong,” she echoed.

He snarled, “I won’t let you hurt him.”

Amber leaned over the bed until her blond hair brushed his nose. “You won’t be able to help it.”

<>

House’s eyes snapped open, and it was morning. Every muscle in his body ached. If he’d slept, it had not been well. His feet dragged on the way to the bathroom, and then he was staring into eyes so darkly ringed they might have been bruised.

“You look like crap!” Alvie exclaimed from behind him. House ignored him; by this time, he had it nearly down to an art. While his roommate rambled on gamely, he wandered up to the dispensary.

“Difficult night?” the nurse asked. She had never entirely forgiven him for his first weeks on the ward, but her eye was professional now as she glanced over his haggard posture.

“Just fine, thanks,” House minced, and snatched up his pills. Just the damn ibuprofen. He clutched at his thigh when it sent a responsive pulse of agony down his leg. He slammed the empty cup back down. “It’s not enough this time.”

The change was almost instantaneous; her face closed. She must have heard at least a dozen requests for extra meds every day. “I’ll speak to the doctor,” she said.

It required every ounce of House’s willpower not to throw his cane across the room, and that only because he knew it would be taken away and he could barely stand right now. He hobbled over to the couch and almost fell into a sitting position. His quavering muscles jumped, and he clutched them with white fingers, kneading and hunched over until the spasm passed. It did so only after ages, and afterward, he fell back against the headrest, drenched in perspiration. With trembling hands, he pressed against his forehead, wincing at the dull throb. Exhaustion sat heavily on his shoulders.

But though his body felt broken, his brain raced on, continuing to restlessly churn. The possible madness seemed very close, like a living thing, and the image of Amber was burned into his eyelids. He couldn’t remember what she’d said, but her smile loomed large in his imagination as though she was right there in front of him.

Finally, he couldn’t stay seated any longer. In spite of his protesting muscles, he struggled to his feet. But where could he go? There were no cases here to distract him. No bourbon or secret stash to numb the pain. He growled, startling a timid patient sitting near him; she scurried away while House thumped his cane on the floor. No options.

By chance he jammed his hand down into his pocket, a pocket he had not had a week before. That was when something crunched against the tips of his fingers.

He brought out a folded paper from a yellow memo pad, with Nolan’s name making a sloping trail along the bottom. Above it, in unspecified terms, was House’s pass to visit Wilson in his ward. Mike had forgotten to take it from him, or maybe he had chosen not to. It was not dated.

He was sweating as he made is way down the passageway and then the stairs. He had to catch his breath while the broad-shouldered nurse examined the paper. Finally, she pursed her lips and let him enter. There was a group therapy session finishing up in the main room. It took House a moment to spot Wilson among them, because he look so much like all the others.

House diagnosed them as his eyes fell: pills, pills, a cutter, a cast on the leg of one who jumped. Assisted asphyxiation. There was one man tilted back in a wheelchair, unmoving, his face and jaw all but obscured. House felt his skin crawl; revolver, no intension to survive. Yet somehow he had.

He finally caught Wilson’s eye, and the man straightened. He didn’t quite smile, but his mouth made a strained attempt to turn up at the edges, and when they dismissed he followed House down the marginally empty hall without question. He seemed tender footed, careful of the pads of his feet. “Tingly,” he said by way of explanation and offered a lopsided smile. House’s leg gave a vicious twinge.

Wilson seemed to get a good look at him then, and his face fell. “You look terrible,” he said, and for some reason the comment made House grit his teeth.

“Didn’t sleep,” he responded tersely, although he didn’t know if that was true. Part of him wanted the specter of Amber to be a dream, as much as another part wanted her to be real.

“You’re hurting a lot, too,” Wilson observed. His brow had become a long line, knitting his thick eyebrows together. “And I can’t –”

House knew what he couldn’t. Couldn’t help, couldn’t fix it. No handy prescription pad around to sooth all things between them. A curious anger he didn’t understand came over House, and every nervous glance Wilson directed at him only made his chest tighten more.

“Quit looking at me like a mooncalf, Wilson,” he finally snapped. “I’m fine.”

The man jumped, startled by the sudden attack. It was ridiculous. House felt a flare, and his hands tightened into fists.

“House, you’re acting funny,” Wilson said. “Is something wrong?”

Is – is something wrong?

He erupted, “How can you even ask that? Look around you, Wilson. We’re stuck in this hellhole of people whose usefulness to society has expired.” The failed suicide in the wheelchair flashed in his mind and he wondered if that wasn’t him – a ruined hulk beyond all recovery that should have been allowed to die. Maybe it had always been that way.

“House.” Wilson sounded pained. He dared to make contact. “That’s not true. You’re getting better. Soon we’ll be able to go home.”

House jerked free. It made him lose his balance, and he had to lurch to grab the wall to keep from falling. A screech of pain that turned off his vision for a split second lanced through his entire being. Breathlessly, he asked, “And what if I can’t go back? What if I need the pills to do my job?”

Wilson’s face was a picture of confusion. “What?”

House let the doubts spill out. “What if they’re part of how I work? What if I get out and I’m only…”

“Normal?” Wilson wondered out loud. The noise and confusion swirling and churning in House’s brain came to an abrupt stop. He looked into Wilson’s pale face.

“What did you say?”

Wilson’s lips parted; he ran his hand through his hair. “I used to justify anything you did by telling myself that the lives you saved balanced out the harm you caused. Hell, I even told Tritter that, but I realize now that the truth is…” He ducked his eyes. “The truth is, I don’t care how many lives you save, House. Even if you never diagnose anyone again, I’d still rather you be whole and alive.”

A feminine whisper from somewhere deep in House’s brain said, “See? I told you so.”

Chemical pressure built beneath the geyser of House’s composure, until finally the earth gave way and the vitriol come rising up, scalding hot and loaded with debris. He exploded. “That’s the truth, finally, isn’t it? You’re glad I’m loosing my mind.”

“What? No!”

House had a sudden vivid memory of walking into Wilson’s office, having just realized he’d lost en entire day to vivid sensory hallucinations that he, even now, could barely discern form reality. House turned his eyes away from the memory of his friend’s stricken face. He didn’t want to see it.

“I don’t believe you.”

“House,” Wilson said. “I would have done anything to help you.

“Pretty words,” House sneered. “You’re full of pretty words. Enough to make people sing your praises while you pump them full of poison.”

There was sweat dampening the edge of Wilson’s hairline. “That’s not fair. It’s my job. It makes me feel like crap, but it’s the only way to threat cancer.”

“I’d like to know how you’d feel on the other side of the IV needle. Maybe you wouldn’t even go through with it without a silver tongue to convince you to spend what remains of your life useless and puking. Well, you aren’t going to convince me. I’d rather die than for my life to be over.”

“Don’t say that,” Wilson begged.

But House couldn’t stop. All the fears that he had hoarded up for so long now spilled over, the things between them he’d never shared but always harbored. He said, “You don’t care if I lost everything. You’d love it if I turned out to be just as stupid as you.”

“No.” His friend was shaking his head. “I don’t want you to change.”

“Change! Of course you want me to change. Everybody wants me to change. You and Cuddy have been clamoring on about it for years!”

“I never wanted this.” Wilson’s entire posture was filled with grief, taking House back to that Christmas Even when everything had changed between them. When neither could deny any more that there was no going back from the damage Vicodin had done to House or to their friendship. Wilson spoke, “I’ve been scared to death for you. I’ve had nightmares about a call in the middle of the night, telling me your liver is failing. I’ve felt for your pulse after a thousand imaginary ODs. I’ve been terrified of answering the phone, thinking it might be the police, or the emergency room, or the morgue. But I’ve never wanted you here.”

“I don’t believe you,” House refused to listen, refused to hear. Instead, he accused, “Look at you. All these years, you’ve been lecturing me, and now you can barely look me in the eye.”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Wilson said.

“I want you to admit what we’re really doing here,” House said. “I want you to tell me your sorry.”

“Sorry?” Wilson sounded at a loss. “Why?”

“Because this is your fault!”

“My –” Wilson stammered.

“The deep brain stimulation,” House counted off. “The stress I put on my brain, because you asked me to. Because you never had the guts to really help me!”

Quiet, too quiet. For years they had bantered back and forth. For years they had played this game. Where had his fight gone now? Almost inaudibly, Wilson asked, “You really think this is my fault?”

“Of course it is,” House hissed. “Why else would I be hallucinating her.”

The pronoun rang out in the air like the crack of a firearm discharging. It filled up all the spaces, but the silence it left behind was worse. House stared across the breech between them, feeling hot, twisted agony resonating in pulses form his leg. His spiking headache made him feel nauseated and sick. Sick with anger.

He said, “Maybe next time you try to kill yourself, you should be a little more decisive than swallowing a handful of pills with a trained intensivist waiting in the wings to come to your rescue.”

Then House turned his back and stalked, limping, away.

<>

The small noises of the ward were gone. The bump of the trolley as it hit the raised thresholds of the fire doors, the frenetic murmuring of patients, the hum of the staff’s conversation. The beep of a keycard, the distant TV. Wilson didn’t hear any of it.

He didn’t feel his body either, moving without conscious decision. A nurse was in one of the rooms, busily stripping the beds. She was rushed, and she wasn’t watching the trolley.

Wilson pulled out one of the pillow cases and kept on walking. The bathroom door would be open. He could already smell the chemicals; it was cleaning day.

<>

House returned the files with a thunk onto Nolan’s desk – all of it, the therapy notes, transcripts, everything. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he began and searched for the chair to guide his way down. “About emotional range.”

Nolan sat down the patient file he had been reviewing, removed his reading glasses, and gave House his full attention. “When I said that, I told you I was relieved to see you react like a human being to your friend’s condition.”

“Yes, and then you told me that you didn’t think I damaged my brain,” House said.

Nolan didn’t speak, gauging his emotion. Finally, he said, “You’re upset.”

“Brilliant,” House snipped. “It’s like you can see into my mind.”

Nolan was beginning to look concerned. He clasped his fingers together. “What is this about, House?”

The former diagnostician rubbed his forehead, wanting to pace but knowing it would be too painful. Instead, he massaged his thigh, wishing the ache would subside long enough for him to just think. Finally, he admitted, “I haven’t stopped seeing her. Not since the detox. Not ever.”

“You mean…this woman, your former fellow –”

“Amber. Yes, I’m seeing her,” House said, scrapping his fingers through his scalp. “She talks to me when I sleep, and I see her when I’m awake. She stalks Wilson.”

“And you think it’s your subconscious, or damage from the drugs, or the electricity.”

House shook his head. “I’ve seen my brain in a dozen different scans since then. The tests are all normal.”

“What then?” Nolan asked. “What are you afraid of, House?”

The anger surged up again, but this time, instead of a friend standing there, exposed, ready to take blame, there was only this virtual stranger, this doctor. Yet, though he had Nolan had started off on such shaky ground, some kernel of mutual respect had grown up between them. Enough for House, in this moment of crisis, to finally say the words, the true words. The ones he’d been haunted by all along.

“I’ve mentally devolved. Something…something isn’t the same. A mental break. Insanity. Call it what you like, but I’m not the way I was before. Maybe it was the Vicodin. Maybe it was some bizarre chemical interaction that got rerouted. All I know is that whatever made me…me is broken now.”

“What you mean is that you’re afraid it’s broken now,” Nolan clarified. “House, as a scientist, you should know better than to adopt a theory without evidence.”

“Evidence! What kind of evidence do you need?” Furiously, House snapped into Nolan’s face. “I’m not on narcotics. I’m not drinking, or doing drugs. I’m taking your damn SSRIs. What other explanation can there be?”

“House, I need you to listen to me.”

Enervated, House turned.

Nolan said, “You’re not the first savant that has sat across from me in this room, telling me that they lost something. People with creative minds, minds whose value is imbedded in some skill so closely related to genius that even they don’t know how it works, it can create a paranoia of doing something which will take away that unknown element and leave them barren.”

“Paranoia? That’s your brilliant deduction?” House demanded.

“Do you think you’re too developed for paranoia? If history is to be believed, it’s one of the fatal flaws of many geniuses. What I still believe is that if you’re willing to accept your grief, resolve your guilt, and manage your other issues, the strain will ease, and you’ll eventually get well. You could return to your job, your home. But we can’t go any further until you accept what I’m telling you now. You’re not broken, Greg.”

As though his strings had been cut, House collapsed backward against his chair, letting the air in his lungs out with a rush. He was aching, his leg throbbing, but even more than that, he was tired. Tired of the constant battle that Mayfield had been. Tired of the war with her, for his own mind. Tired of taking it out on the only friend he had who was stupid enough and loyal enough and damaged enough to follow him into a nightmare like this one.

Still sagging, he admitted, “I fought with Wilson. I blamed him for what happened.”

Frowning, Nolan said, “That doesn’t seem very logical.”

“I was in pain,” House said, his old standby. His fingers bore down into the damaged muscle. “I was hurting, and he was right there. Like he’s always there.”

“Hm.” Again with the eloquent ‘hm’s. Nolan asked, “Have you thought about apologizing?”

House had been forced to give a lot of thought to apologies lately. Beasley had challenged them to write a letter to someone they had genuinely hurt, to rebuild a bridge he had damaged by seeking forgiveness. Wilson had flashed into his mind instantly, backlit like one of those catholic candles with an image frosted on the glass. Which was absurd. Wilson wasn’t catholic.

He’d written Beasley’s damn letter to some guy he’d known in med school instead. But he hadn’t stopped thinking about apologies since he’d seen Wilson strapped to his bed and realized how one-sided he’d let their friendship become. Things hadn’t always been like that. He wished he could go back in time.

“House?”

“Yeah, yeah,” House said. “Will you let me see him?”

“I think you need to sleep on this. We’re at a turning point, where no amount of words will do anything. From here on out, you’re going to have to want to make changes. To risk changes.”

“I’m tired of hurting people,” House said, the weariness slipping in his voice. “At least the ones who don’t deserve it.”

“It starts with letting it be okay to show kindness to yourself,” Nolan suggested. “You’re an unforgiving taskmaster of your own mind. There’s a saying: ‘Be good to yourself. Be patient. Be kind. Be forgiving. After all, you're all you've got.’ I’ve always found a certain psychological truth there.”

“I hate platitudes,” House growled. It was another thing he had always persecuted Wilson for.

But Nolan wasn’t Wilson, and he only shrugged. “Sometimes a platitude is a truth so basic that a personal struggles to accept it.”

House picked up his cane. “Maybe.”

<>

House was deep in thought as he trudged down the corridor toward Ward Six’s day room. There was a pair of nurses standing against the guardrail talking, and House’s ears pricked up automatically when he heard the tone of gossip.

“Did you hear that code called? It was Ward Four.”

“How did it happen? The patients are supposed to be under close watch down there. I can’t see how anyone could get anything.”

“Laundry trolley left unattended. There’ll be a pink slip for somebody and a refresher training session for the rest of us after that.”

The other man groaned. “There goes my Saturday. He hang himself then?”

“If you can believe. Hardly anything to hang on down there. Guy was really clever about it. Tied a pillowcase into some kind of jam in the commode. They don’t know how long he wasn’t breathing.”

“God! No dignity in that kind of exit, poor bastard. I’ve never even heard of that one before. How did he even think of it?”

House was frozen. He couldn’t have moved if he tried.

“Jefferson said he was a doctor before. Some big shot from Princeton. A doctor would know all kinds of ways.”

“I wonder what got into his head. Poor bastard.”

House had not moved so fast since the ketamine reprieve. He didn’t even know he was still capable of moving that fast.

“Nolan!” He banged on the office door, screaming, “Nolan!”

Chapter Nine

House had one more meeting with Nolan, but not in his office. He refused to leave the infirmary, and some kind of permission must have been given because aside from a few disapproving looks from the duty nurse, no one tried to kick him out. Nolan came to see him there, carrying a pixie cup.

“There’s a two milligram tablet of Valium, if you want it,” Nolan said as House pinched the pills with his fingers, hard-eyed, evaluating each to be sure it was nothing that would allow them to take him away from Wilson.

To show Nolan what he thought of the Valium, he flicked the pill across the room with his thumb, listening for the satisfying plinking sound as it ricocheted off several surfaces. After that, he just glared.

Nolan sighed and pulled up a stool. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to join House on the edge of Wilson’s bed. House was expecting him to say something bland, like “Are you okay?”

Instead, he asked, “Are you regretting this now? All of it, admitting yourself to Mayfield, the detox?”

House almost didn’t answer. His throat felt swollen from not talking during the long vigil. Finally, he rasped. “I came here because I almost killed Chase. Subconsciously, I took an action that would have resulted in him being dead.”

Another doctor might have spoke, encouraging him for seeking help, but Nolan merely waited. House looked at Wilson and the padded cuffs around his wrists even now.

“I was angry with him. I think I’ve been angry with him since Tritter.”

Nolan knew all about Tritter and what had finally pressured Wilson into that betrayal. Betrayal. In spite of everything that had come before – the prescription pad, the bank account, the impounding, the abandonment, the theft, the punch – the sense of being betrayed had been the most powerful he had ever felt. Nobody had ever let him down like Wilson, because nobody had ever been there for him like Wilson. Not even Stacy had a record like that, or Cuddy. And though he had dismissed it, House was starting to realize he’d never really gotten over it.

“I’ve been punishing him, trying to make him sorry.”

“For hurting you?” Nolan wondered.

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been a one-way street.”

No, House could admit that now, though still not easily. He could look back and see why Tritter had called his position one of total selfishness. Yet Wilson had been messed up long before House even met him. They had built their entire friendship off of their compatible psychoses. But it had worked. For the longest time, it had worked for them.

His hand clinched around the bed sheet. “Will he be alright?”

“You’re the ‘real’ doctor, House,” Nolan said.

“Damn you. You know what I meant.”

Wilson, for the second time, had tried to take his life. Before that, he’d gotten admitted to a mental hospital because he was lonely – a move that House now realized was not just stupid, but literally insane. They had both believed Wilson came for his friend, but now it was clear that it wasn’t only House who had reached a crisis and fallen over the edge.

All these thoughts passed through House’s mind while Nolan watched Wilson, who was corpse-pale against the pillows. Except for the ligature marks. Those were black around his neck.

“Obviously, it isn’t the same thing as before,” he said. “The first attempt was passive, but this…”

House growled, but didn’t interrupt.

“He needs support,” Nolan said, “and not an uncomfortable, obligatory pat on the shoulder. He needs someone to care.”

“And then?” House asked.

“And then…you’ll have to wait and see.”

<>

House dozed off after a while, propped stiffly against the back of the medical bed. A shift of the mattress woke him, and when he blinked he saw Wilson’s head tilted back, his barely cognizant eyes skittering around House’s face.

They stilled when he moved, and Wilson whispered hoarsely. “Hey.”

“Hey.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Finally, House swallowed and said, “You swallowed pills to get here. You put them in your mouth and you swallowed them, alone in your apartment, where you and Amber used to sleep.”

Sticky tears Wilson couldn’t hide began to roll down his cheeks, not with the restraints holding him to the bed. House pulled a tissue from a Klenex box and rubbed his face dry.

House said, “It was real, wasn’t it?”

The depression, the therapy and the drugs he had mocked. It amazed him that he’d ever had any faith in the coping mechanisms of an oncologist who kept mementos of dead patients scattered all over his office. Only his dead patients.

“I kept seeing her,” Wilson said, going on despite House’s sudden, sharp look. “Socks in the laundry. That damned mug. You weren’t there. I kept thinking it was my fault. The deep brain stimulation… I hurt you, didn’t I?”

He had done that procedure for Wilson, so they could both have peace of mind. Funny how peace was the last thing it had brought to either of them.

“I’m…” Wilson started. “I’m so…”

House slammed his hand down over Wilsons, so hard it could never have been called gentle. He squeezed until both their knuckles went white. “Shut up, Wilson,” he said.

Wilson’s fingers moved weakly, clinging. His eyes closed. “Don’t leave me here,” he pleaded.

“I’m not leaving you,” House answered. After all they’d done, both to and for each other, they deserved this strange, screwed up thing they had between them. It was all that was left now, and House would be damned if he kept digging a grave for it.

It was time to put down the shovel.

<>

He went while Wilson was asleep, smuggled past the threat of dreams by the mercy of pharmaceutical intervention. He used the phone card privilege he had earned, and held the plastic cradle to his heavy head while his fingers punched the numbers.

“House?” Her voice was groggy, confused. It was early in the morning. She was probably hanging awkwardly off the side of her bed, wearing the ridiculously inappropriate bed clothes he knew she favored.

He didn’t waste any time, offered no explanation. “Get us out of here,” he demanded.

“House.”

“Both of us, Cuddy. This place is a hellhole.”

<>

The decision to seal Amber’s apartment hadn’t been discussed. All the photographs of Amber were gone too, systematically packed away until the memory became less damaging. Wilson had agreed they weren’t healthy to have out now, for either of them.

They found someplace neutral, someplace to find solid ground again. In the beginning, it was hard. There were words burned into House’s mind – “Maybe next time you should” – which sometimes made him struggle out of sweat-soaked sheets and limp down the hall to check that Wilson was still breathing. They had both nearly lost something of value, and the very thought of that loss still haunted them both.

The cookout had been Wilson’s idea, a farewell of sorts to the people with whom they had once worked. House wasn’t interested in something so paltry, but Wilson’s therapist was supportive, and so he went along with it. It had taken a lot of effort to find someone House had not only deemed competent but Wilson had also trusted.

Yet as he stared at the green grass and the milling people, he thought, ‘That doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

One particular voice of greeting made the feeling all the more acute: “House, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

House braced himself. “Cuddy.”

She was carrying a drink and offered a nervous smile. “You look good,” she said weakly. “You both do.”

House looked over at Wilson, greeting Chase by the tables, his thin hand extending to return a handshake with barely a hesitation. Then, as though catching his eye, Wilson turned to House and Cuddy and flashed a grin that looked as brittle as matchsticks.

House turned back to the sizzling grill, tucking in his severe frown. He knew how Wilson looked. In the weeks since they returned from Mayfield, the bruises had faded and things had gotten better, but Wilson still wasn’t himself. Perversely, House had never had such strong incentive to keep Vicodin out of the house.

“We’re better,” he answered. For him, it meant no more hallucinations. It had meant a reality check, and a change he had vowed to upkeep. Sitting beside that bed in the Mayfield clinic, he had thought about all the times he’d made Wilson sit like that, and he’d had to stagger to a bedpan.

“You know your job is waiting for you,” she said softly. “Foreman will be unhappy, but he knows it’s coming.”

House had known this. Wilson had known it, too. He’d said it to the counselor, who he’d told the story of what he’d done, of how easy it had been – and of how no one was holding open a department for him.

Angrily, House flipped one of the steaks, dislodging a piece of fat and sending up a plume of black smoke. Tersely, he said, “I’ve already told you we won’t be coming back.”

Cuddy’s fingers flexed around the plastic cup. “You did say. But what are you going to do instead?”

The doubt in her eyes was confirmation for the hours of counseling, during which he had concluded that he could not to put himself back in an environment of people who knew and expected the worst of him. He used the tongs to avoid looking at her. “We’re leaving on a road trip, soon. We have a few stops planned, but no solid destination. It’s a vacation.”

“And when you get back?”

“Research for me.” House had found what he hoped was a job with all the technical challenge he might require, and though he sometimes doubted it would be enough – sometimes so strongly he had to physically leave the apartment to avoid the temptation to return in to the cabinet one more time – he was going to make it work.

As for Wilson, he didn’t know. They’d talked about some things: long-term care, consulting, or maybe the Make a Wish Foundation, but nothing seemed right yet. It wouldn’t be cancer, at least not right now.

It was time to take a break from death.

“We’re moving on, Cuddy,” House said definitively, and he hoped that would be enough for her to get the idea so that he wouldn’t have to get ugly.

He was surprised when she smiled at him, a sad smile, but still a smile. “Okay, House. I – we just want you to know we’ll be here if you need us. You still have friends in Princeton.”

Maybe. Maybe someday. But for now… House laid out the last of the food onto a plate and hollered across the yard, “Hey, Wilson! Better come and see if these meet you immaculate standard!”

He caught Wilson’s eye, saw him raise an eyebrow, and then watched as he said something to Chase and headed over to where House waited.

House’s mother had once told him the story of a person who, having discovered a valuable pearl, sold everything he had to buy it. The moral had been that, sometimes, one precious thing could be worth everything else. At the time a young Greg had scoffed, but as he looked now at Wilson standing beside him poking dubiously at the cooked meat – fragile perhaps, like their friendship, but still alive – he did not scoff. Not anymore.

For now, there was still a foundation to build on, and neither he nor Wilson were going to take it for granted again.

<>

Author’s Note:It’s interesting to look back on the series as I come to the end of this story, which I started almost five years ago and am now finishing only after House M.D. is over. I’ve gone back and forth about how I feel about House eventually falling into bad habits again at the end of Season Six. Part of me wanted to rage at the heavens, why can’t they just be happy? The answer given by the writers, of course, was that it wouldn’t be House, and I understand that. Still, resolution is something I always wanted for this show, so as I brought What Lurks in Man to a close, I was imaging a good future. In my mind, with the camera no longer driving the need for continuing dramatic tension, House and Wilson finally find fulfillment and live out normal, content, dysfunctional lives and die from old age. So there. :)