Author's Note: A topic I was musing about today and thought that it was very relevant to a certain doctor. Just some random musings and mumblings from yours truly.
Self-destruction. It had been on his mind all day.
Wilson had brought the topic up first. They had been discussing fire and for some reason the phoenix, the mythical bird, popped up in the conversation. The phoenix, the beautiful bird, would, when it declined into a state of pure and utter despair, send itself up into flames. It would destroy itself and be born anew, to start again, clean slate and all.
He had seen patients—like Carly the CEO for example—who had come in because of their own self-destructive nature and left whole again after the miracles of transplants had saved their lives. Like the phoenix, they had risen from the ashes with the aid of medical technology and someone else's heart, liver, or kidney, but they were alive again and had a second shot many people would never see.
He could not same the same thing for himself, though. He had been addicted to his painkillers for so long now that he could not wean himself off them. He tried, he honestly did. Wilson tried, Cuddy tried, and Cameron had tried. He had turned them all away more than once. It had hurt them each individually, but Cameron the most.
He wondered about Cameron. He knew that every human being seemed to be built with a "self-destruct" button. He had hit that button more times than he could count. He, with all of his practice, could see Cameron doing the same thing. She had her hand firmly pressed on the red button labeled "HIT ONLY IN EMERGENCIES: SELF-DESTRUCT." She was in love with him—a very dangerous, self-destructing thing.
"Do we choose to destroy ourselves?" He mused aloud to a very empty room. Always empty—
Self-destruction, that was the reason his soul was emptier than his room and his body needed a crutch. He pushed people away—Stacy, Wilson, Cuddy, Cameron, and all the rest. He did it because he knew, no matter how hard he tried, he would always be self-destructive. It was his nature. He had destroyed himself over and over again, and, like a phoenix, been made whole again. Well, that's what he told himself when he was lying to keep himself happy.
When he was honest to himself (a rare occasion that was), he knew that every time he destroyed himself, he did not reemerge whole. He shattered into a million pieces and he picked himself up like a child with crazy glue trying to fix his mother's shattered heirloom vase. There were cracks and holes, and pieces missing. There was that one place where Stacy belonged, and his mother, and Cameron, of course. Holes that one-day would eat him whole.
He didn't do humility very well, and he was sure that was part of his problem. He resorted to self-destruction because he figured that rather than being humble and meek and weak did no one any good. If he was going to do something, he was going to do it boldly and brashly. Forget Vogler and his billions—House matched every cent with his amazing displays of self-implosion.
To be honest, he knew he didn't do it on a terribly grand scale. His destructiveness was slow, painstaking, and hurt more people than just he. He took out his lovers, friends, and superiors as he went. Maybe it shouldn't be called self-destruction. He could coin a new phrase: let me destroy myself and then, what the hell? I'll just wipe out everyone else as I go.
Maybe Cameron was a kindred spirit. She loved him enough to leave and destroy herself. But what happens when two self-destructive people love one another and come together? Is it like genetics? Two recessives come together and destroy each other? Destroy their children? He didn't know, a rare admission from him. There wouldn't be any children, any relationship…
He knew he'd destroy himself before that.