Secondary Collapse, a house, m.d. fanfic

Secondary Collapse

by pgrabia

Characters/Pairing (s): Wilson (narrator), House, Cuddy, Foreman and a whole slew of rescue workers, injured people and hospital personnel/ House/Wilson pre-slash with mention of Wilson/Sam.

A/N and Warnings: This the last fic based on Season Six I'm writing (I'll be finishing the other ones I already started of course). About half-way through "Help Me" episode 6:22. Picks up at that point then becomes AU. After this anything new will either be a sequel or based on Season Seven. I'm crossing my fingers that there will be something Hilson half-decent enough to base fiction on. Sick!House.

Spoilers: This story contains spoilers for all of Season Six.

Word Count:

Rating: M for descriptive language concerning physical harm and danger, coarse language and sexual subject matter.

The ER was filled to overflowing with survivors of the crane collapse in Trenton, doctors and nurses tending to the wounded and family members slipping past security in a desperate hunt for their loved ones among the living. I'd already been there for hours, picking glass out of deep gauges in flesh, setting broken limbs in temporary casts and stitching more than a church-full of women at a quilting bee. The combination of smells from sweat, blood, dirt, vomit and urine hung like a miasma over the chaos, causing my stomach to roil and my eyes to burn.

I had gone out the ambulance exit to stand in the rainy night to cool down and take a few deep breaths of fresher air and clear my head a little before returning to the mayhem and tending to the seemingly endless stream of bleeding and broken people. The cold water droplets falling steadily from the sky felt good against the hot skin on my face, neck and arms. I closed my eyes against the visual assault of blood and flesh and for a short moment tried to pretend that I didn't hear the ambulance sirens, the panicked voices, the medical terminology fading in and out of earshot, the cries and moans and groans of pain. I tried to picture myself back in bed with my girlfriend sleeping in my arms and a sense of contentment pervading my entire being, but I couldn't. The phantasm of my imagination wouldn't solidify into a cogent image in my mind's eye. I sighed and opened my eyes again.

Turning to head back towards the hospital I saw Foreman approaching me quickly. He had a somber, almost distressed expression on his ebony face and in his hand he held his cell phone to his ear. It was obvious that he was heading for me. I felt a sudden shiver run down my spine, and I attributed to being wet and cold, although part of me wasn't certain that was the cause.

"Wilson," Foreman said to me as he reached my side. He sounded winded from pushing his way through the churning masses.

"Yeah, what?" I responded, expecting him to tell me that another fleet of ambulances were on their way with the next wave of patients. I had no idea where they were going to put everyone. Every viable space in the lobby and clinic was being utilized as were most private offices and meeting rooms and soon we would have no other choice but to set up outside in the parking lot.

The neurologist shut off his phone and looked at me with an expression that turned my blood cold and made every hair on my body stand on end.

"There was a secondary collapse."

He said it as if it was nothing, like crumbled buildings fell in on themselves everyday and this news wasn't nearly as horrendous as one would expect.

"How many more were wounded?" I asked, shaking my head. With all of the rescue workers, medics and doctors in the area the toll from this secondary event could be quite high. I was glad that House and Cuddy were working triage about a block away from the destruction proper.

Foreman shifted uncomfortably on his feet and his eyes danced everywhere but near meeting mine. "There was a woman trapped under the collapsed building in the underground parking garage. I guess House was the one who heard her banging on a pipe and located her. He and a rescue worker were trying to free her from rubble that crushed her leg and trapped her."

As soon as he mentioned that House was not working triage as I had been led to believe, but had apparently become involved in recovery the tendrils of anxiety began to coil themselves around my heart.

"What about it?" I demanded impatiently. "Did they manage to get her out in time?"

Shaking his head slowly, he answered. "There was a secondary collapse when they tried to pry up the structure that was pinning her. It occurred right over their location. The building fell in on the area where they were, Wilson, and the rescue workers outside have lost contact with the three of them."

Suddenly those tendrils of anxiety turned into talons of cold, hard fear. Time stopped ticking forward. All activity ground to a halt. There was no sound, no smell, no feeling whatsoever. The world stood still. In the midst of that emptiness Foreman's words finally made sense.

A secondary collapse. House was underground. The building fell in on top of him. House. The building crashing around his head and shoulders. House. Tons of concrete crumbling down.

"House." My mouth formed his name and the moment the sound of it passed my lips the world was set into motion again. As that occurred, my world began to spin around me and I feared it was about to collapse in on me, too.

I couldn't hear another word Foreman said to me. I had to go to the disaster sight. I had to go to House. I had to be there. That's all I knew and all I cared about. It was a primal urge, an instinctual imperative. I had no choice but to listen to it and obey.

I walked quickly past Foreman, then Taub, and a dozen other faces as I made my way back to the ambulance bay. There was an ambulance parked there, being quickly cleaned and restocked before returning to Trenton.

"I'm coming with you," I said to one of the paramedics and climbed aboard before they could stop me. Even if they had tried I wouldn't have listened. Nothing was going to stop me from getting to the place where the most important person in the world to me was trapped under tons of concrete and steel. I didn't know what I was going to do once I got there, however; I was unable to think that far ahead.

As the ambulance sped back to Trenton, I sat in the back in a state of suspended animation. All I could think about was the fact that House was possibly dead, probably dead, and buried not to be uncovered for hours, or even days. All sorts of images raced through my head. Images of House's body being uncovered, crushed nearly beyond recognition, his expression forever frozen in the horror he had experienced a split second before he died. My best friend was most likely gone, and I hadn't had a chance to say good bye. I had pushed him out of my life again so I could be with Sam, and I would never hear him tell me I was an idiot ever again. I'd never hear his sarcasm, or the sound of his laugh. Never again would I see his smirk, his frown, his intense blue eyes looking back at me when there weren't words adequate enough to express what he was thinking or feeling, knowing that I understood perfectly what they were telling me from their crystalline depths.

No! I told myself, trying to shake those morbid thoughts out of my head. Foreman hadn't said that he was dead, only that communication with the rescue worker, the trapped woman and him had been lost. House could still be alive down there, I decided. It was possible that the collapse hadn't occurred directly above them as suspected or they had managed to find a safe pocket and were waiting to be rescued. There was no reason to assume that House was dead, because I had decided that if he was, I would curl up and die with him.

Why? Why had I told him to move out of the loft so that Sam could move back in? I had bought that place for him and me. It was supposed to be our place, our home. And why had I decided that even after he stopped trying to interfere with my relationship with Sam I had to pay his team to keep him away from me? What kind of friend went to those lengths to separate himself from the person that he loved?

Loved? Yes, loved. Yes. I did love House. I always had. I still did. In fact, I loved him more now than even a year ago. We had grown so much closer over the past year, since he had returned from Mayfield and moved in with me. The intimacy of our unique friendship that had been lost after Amber's death had finally been recaptured and then some. When I had lain in that operating theater waiting for the surgery to remove a lobe of my liver for donation to begin, and saw my best friend appear at the observation room window, even though it was terribly hard for him to do so, I knew. I knew that he was more than just my best friend and more than another brother. He was something more. I hadn't had a word to describe what he was to me exactly, but I had known without a doubt that he was my House. He was my better than best friend and I loved him.

I couldn't lose him. His life meant more to me than my own, than my family's, than Sam's. I loved and valued him more than Sam. That's when it hit me, and when it did it was like a ton of bricks knocking sense back into my head after having surrendered it to the misguided notion that I was falling back in love with my first ex-wife. I wasn't falling back in love with her because I couldn't. I was already in love. My heart was already taken. For the first time, I was able to admit it to myself. I was in love with House.

It all made so much sense once I allowed myself to acknowledge my feelings for my best friend for what they were. That acknowledgement proceeded to lift an incredible weight off of my shoulders. I no longer felt burdened. I actually began to laugh, earning the uncertain looks I was getting from the paramedics. They must have thought I was insane to be laughing while riding on an ambulance on its way to a horrendous tragedy, to the place where the man I was in love with may have already died. No, no I couldn't think that. I refused to believe it. I had to believe that House was still alive if I didn't want to completely lose my mind.

As soon as we came within a block of the disaster scene the immensity of the devastation and destruction overwhelmed me both with awe and despair. While certainly nowhere near as massive in scale, the collapsed building before me reminded me of pictures of the rubble taken at Ground Zero in the days following September eleventh and for the first time since receiving the news from Foreman I realized just how unlikely it was that my House could have survived having all of that come crashing down on him in an instant. My God, I was certain that I had lost him before I could tell him how much he truly meant to me.

My chest felt like a five hundred pound weight had suddenly been dropped on it and my eyes began to burn with tears. I couldn't think—I began to work on automatic pilot because to think meant to think about him, and to think about him meant feeling the ache of the black hole where my heart had once been.

The ambulance had to come to a halt behind a train of other ambulances waiting to pick up more patients to transport. I jumped out and made my way by foot closer to the center of activity. I had no idea exactly where it was I was going, who I was looking for, or even why the hell I was even there in the first place; all I did know was that I had to get closer to him, dead or alive. I had to see with my own two eyes either his soul in his blue eyes or his broken shell that had every last breath of who Gregory House truly was no longer in it.

Eventually, somehow, I caught sight of Cuddy in a crowd of firefighters, EMTs and paramedics and my feet took me in her direction until I came to stand next to her, silently staring at the small opening barely big enough for an average sized man to crawl through leading down to the bowels of the earth, or so it seemed. Cuddy turned to speak to one of the firefighters and nearly stumbled over me, but I barely noticed.

"Wilson!" she gasped in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

I couldn't find my voice to answer her. I couldn't even look at her.

Cuddy seemed to understand the state I found myself in. She placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed lightly. It was meant to be comforting but it wasn't.

"He's down there somewhere," she told me. "We heard something, some kind of movement. It's unknown whether it was House moving or the rescue worker with him, but if one survived there's a good chance all three of them did. A recovery team is preparing to head down to look for them."

I barely heard her. They heard movement. What good was that? It could have been the myoclonic jerk of a limb as the last neurons still alive in House's once brilliant brain began to die off as well. When I didn't say anything she sighed and then walked away to speak to one of the firefighters. I wanted to go into that tunnel. I wanted to crawl through the rubble into the hole that held my best friend, my love, and find him and bring him out, alive or dead, but most preferably alive.

It seemed like hours had passed since I first came to stand in that spot when I began to hear shouts and commands. From out of the hole a gurney carrying a body strapped to a backboard was being pulled by a steel cable being reeled in by means of a winch. The gurney was being helped along by guiding hands. I pressed my way closer, standing on tip-toe in order to see who it was they were bringing out. I heard words floating around like, dying, crushed, won't make it, tragic. Panic rose up into my chest and throat and it threatened to escape me in the form of a grief-stricken groan. Who was it, damnit? Who?

I saw a flash of yellow, of fluorescent stripes and paint and a second later I was filled with such relief that it overflowed in the form of tears flowing from my eyes. It was the rescue worker. He was the one who had been crushed, who was dying and wouldn't make it to the hospital alive. Immediately I was struck by guilt for rejoicing over another man's death, but I was so thankful that it wasn't House that I couldn't help myself. That meant there was the possibility that he had been the one moving around. He could still be alive!

The body of the firefighter was removed from the gurney and then it was sent back down the hole. Now my stomach was churning with anxiety. Beads of sweat broke out on my brow, my upper lip; it rolled in cool droplets down my back, wetting my dress shirt and causing it to cling to my skin. I wasn't certain that I believed in God—if I did I certainly didn't believe he spent his time worrying about the trivial lives we human beings led—but I still found myself praying that my best friend would be brought up alive. The Hebrew I thought I had long forgotten was suddenly available to me, dredged from the far recesses of my mind, and I whispered my petitions out loud.

Ten minutes passed, and then fifteen and there was still no sign of House . What was the hold up? Why wasn't he being drawn up like the other man had been? I was startled by the sudden vibration that I felt coming from my waist. It was my cell phone ringing. I completely ignored it until it went off for the third time. I was so frustrated that I yanked it off my belt and turned the damned thing off without even looking at the call display. I knew that it was Sam calling, just as she had four other times that evening, checking to see when I was coming home. I had suggested to her that she could come to the hospital and pitch in , that we needed all of the doctors were could get, but she had quickly turned her nose up at that idea.

Suddenly, the reel of wire began to wind up; the gurney was coming back up. My heart froze in my chest and I stopped breathing. This was it—the moment of truth. The person being brought had to be House, because I had heard a medic telling an EMT that the woman House had been trying to save was pinned and believed to be dead, killed by debris striking her head. I felt something brush my arm and looked to see Cuddy standing next to me once again. She looked pale and worn down by fear and grief. Her grey-blue eyes looked up into mine almost pleadingly. I realized that she was as frightened as I was. She was still in love with House. We had that in common. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, needing her support as much as I knew she needed mine. Neither of could speak at all.

As soon as I saw the first bit of the red backboard appear from the hole I grabbed Cuddy's hand and led her closer to the gurney, pushing my way through the crowd that had formed around the center of attention. By the time we were at the front of the crowd the gurney was being pulled by hand the rest of the way. Lying perfectly still strapped to the backboard, his neck protected by a cervical collar and his head wrapped in bandages that were already staining through with blood was Gregory House. He was covered in grey concrete dust as well as numerous cuts and abrasions. A blanket covered him and I couldn't tell if he was breathing.

I found myself releasing Cuddy's hand and rushing to the side of the gurney, ignoring orders to back away and stand aside. I reached out to touch House's face, to feel for the warmth of life in his skin. He didn't respond to my touch but he was still a normal temperature. It wasn't enough. I had to be sure. A firefighter tried to pull me away but Cuddy told him that I was a doctor and House's best friend and the rescue worker let me be. I felt for a carotid pulse and sobbed in relief when I felt one; it was rapid but weak.

He was alive! I was lost in my joy, sobbing unashamedly, walking alongside House as he was being carried towards a waiting ambulance. From this proximity I could hear him struggling to draw in a full breath. Cuddy followed closely behind me. I grasped one of House's hands and felt him squeeze back. My eyes shot to his face and found two hooded blue eyes staring back at me. His lips were moving and I realized that he was trying to say something but I couldn't hear him. I leaned over him so that my ear was an inch from his mouth.

"Say it again, Greg," I told him, my voice quavering with emotion.

He was barely whispering when I felt his hot breath against my skin and heard him say, "My…leg."

His leg? I thought before nodding in understanding. He was telling me that his bad leg was hurting him. I didn't doubt that it was, considering what he had been through.

"I know," I told him and couldn't resist stroking his cheek tenderly with my free hand. "You'll be given something for the pain as soon as possible. It's going to be okay, Greg. You're going to be alright." I used his first name hoping that the unusualness of it would act to calm him.

He tried to shake his head but couldn't due to the collar. His lips mouthed the word 'no' and I strained to hear him over the cacophony of noises all around me.

"Wil…son. Wilson?"

"Yes?" I replied, biting the inside of my cheek to keep myself from beginning to sob again. "I'm here, Greg. I'm here."

"I…I," he stuttered, his teeth chattering and making him nearly impossible to understand. "Got to…tell you…."

"Tell me what?" I asked, and then swallowed hard and focused on not losing it right there and then.

He weakly squeezed my hand again. "I…l-love you," he breathed. "Always…always in love….you, Wilson."

His words took my breath away and I couldn't hold the sobs back any longer. Words I had never thought I would hear cross his lips had done just that and there was no way to adequately describe the adoration I felt for him at that moment. Here my best friend was struggling to tell me that he was in love with me because he thought he was dying. He wasn't going to die. I wouldn't allow him to. All this time I had thought he was in love with the woman walking behind me who was unable to hear his confession. Perhaps he had thought that too, and it had taken this life-threatening experience to make him realize how he truly felt. I knew that had been the case for me.

I turned my head so I could place my lips close enough to his ear that they brushed against him and I spoke. "I'm in love with you, too," I told him, my voice beginning to break. "I love you, too. Rest, Greg. You need to conserve your strength." I pressed a gentle kiss to his temple before straightening up again. We were at the ambulance, and the Paramedics were ready to lift him up into it. I tried to release his hand so they could do that but his grip tightened around mine with more strength than I had thought possible for him to currently possess.

"Don't!" his gasped breathlessly, his eyes filled with terror. "Don't let go!"

I couldn't have let go if I'd wanted to, he was holding on so tightly. My heart broke to see him desperate and afraid. I could only imagine the horror he'd experienced when the concrete and steel had come crashing down around him, leaving him cut off from the rest of the world, alone in the dark.

"I won't," I tried to reassure him. "I'm not going to let go!"

House's body began to relax and some of the fear left his eyes. He breathed a little easier and then closed his eyes. It was awkward but I managed to climb onto the ambulance alongside him and sat on one of the bench seats next to him, grasping his hand with both of mine. I glanced down at Cuddy where she stood on the ground at the foot of the bus, her eyes filled with fear, concern and longing. She disappeared from his view once the rear doors were slammed shut. The paramedics had to work around me in their effort to stabilize House's vitals and keep them that way for the trip.

"Which hospital?" the paramedic asked me and I was surprised that he was giving me a choice under the circumstances we found ourselves in.

"Princeton-Plainsboro," I told him weakly. He nodded and then moved up towards the cab of the vehicle to tell the driver. For the remainder of the trip House remained unconscious but I didn't release his hand. I had told him I wouldn't and I wasn't going to break my word. Besides, I couldn't bring myself to do so; I had come so close to losing him that I needed to hold onto him as a concrete reminder that he truly was still alive.

(~*~)

It had been necessary to amputate. There had been absolutely no question of whether or not his leg could be saved; unlike with the infarction, this time there hadn't been even the slightest possibility of saving it and no room for an agonizing compromise. It had been save the leg or save House. With those two options there had been only one course of action to take

His other injuries ranged from simple cuts and bruises to a several broken ribs, one of which had punctured his left lung, causing a pneumothorax, and a subdural hematoma that had required surgery to drain. I had been assured by Foreman that House was going to survive and chances looked very good that he would come out of this with minimal neurological deficiencies, if any. My relief was indescribable, but as I sat vigil over him I worried about what I was going to say to him when he regained consciousness; how was I going to tell him that the leg he had fought so hard to keep once upon a time was now gone all together. I knew how House thought; he would see this as making him subhuman, a freak, less of a man than he had been even a couple of days ago. His self-esteem would suffer a terrible blow and only time would tell whether or not he would be able to reach acceptance. The physical pain that had tortured him for years was likely over, but would the psychic pain that would undoubtedly replace it prove to be more destructive in the long run? I didn't know, but I did know that he wouldn't have to face it alone. I would be with him every step of the way whether he wanted me to be or not. I knew that he would try to push me away, but I wouldn't let him

He awoke on the second day following the removal of the drain from his skull along with the ICP probe that had been monitoring the force pressing against his swollen brain by his unmovable skull. I held his left hand in my right as I read a medical journal that was sitting on my lap and turned pages with my left. Except when I had to leave him long enough to use the men's room or freshen up I made certain to hold his hand. I didn't want him to wake up and find himself alone. I'd promised not to let go and as much as was possible I intended to keep my promise.

His beautiful cerulean eyes opened and looked around the room as he tried to ascertain where he was before coming to rest on me. He squeezed my hand to gain my attention. I looked to him and found myself captivated by his gaze. I smiled lovingly down at him and squeezed his hand back as I set the journal aside in order to give him my full and undivided attention. It felt so freeing to be able to show him physical affection after years of inhibition and self-denial.

"Hey," I said softly in greeting and caressed his stubbly cheek with my free hand. "You don't know how good it is to see you awake."

He smiled a little and found the strength and coordination to reach up and touch my face too. I felt tears of joy stinging my eyes but I blinked furiously to keep them at bay. House hated blatant displays of emotion; it made him feel ill-at-ease.

"You're here," he croaked, his larynx still a little swollen from the irritation caused by the air tube that had been in his throat up until earlier that day. He made a face of discomfort and swallowed hard.

"Where else did you think I'd be?" I asked him. "Of course I'm here—there's no other place I want to be."

He nodded and licked his chapped lips with his dry tongue. Seeing this I grabbed the glass on the table next to his bed. I carefully helped him to take a sip of water and then returned the glass to the table.

"What does Sam…think about that?" he asked hoarsely. His eyes were watching me carefully and I had the feeling I was being tested somehow. I wondered how much he remember about the secondary collapse and what was said between the two of us right after he'd been rescued from the ground.

"It doesn't matter anymore," I told him with a shake of the head. "She's gone and I doubt I'll ever see her again. You know what? I'm actually relieved. I almost made the mistake of pushing you aside because of her. It wasn't until I almost lost you that I realized just how big of an idiot I've been."

House nodded slightly and took a few deep, cleansing breaths. "You told me…that you're in love with me," he told me, answering my question. He did indeed remember what had been said.

"You told me the same thing," I reminded him with a nod. "Amazingly, I think we're finally on the same page for once." I kissed the knuckles of his long, tapered fingers. He hadn't noticed his missing limb yet, I didn't think. If he had he would have mentioned it already. It wouldn't be long before he did though. I wanted to break it to him gently before that happened and terrified him. I just didn't know how to say it. Words failed me.

To my utter surprise he saved me from having to hunt for them. "They took my leg," he told me, diverting his eyes from mine. I'd expected to hear anger or sadness in his voice, so I was stunned when there was nothing there but resignation.

"Yes," I breathed, nodding. "There was no other choice, Greg. I'm sorry."

He nodded, closing his eyes briefly and sighing. When he opened them again he was staring directly into mine. "I knew…down there. Ironic."

I was confused, not understanding what he meant by that. "Ironic? Ironic how?"

He smirked sadly and shrugged one shoulder. "I was trying," he murmured, "to save hers."

"Hers?" I echoed. "You mean, the woman you were trying to rescue?"

He nodded and sighed again, licking his lips again. Taking my cue, I helped him take another sip of water before he replied.

"Hannah's. Cuddy wanted…to amputate…right away. Hannah didn't want it to happen. Neither did I." He smirked bitterly. "Doesn't matter anymore."

Despite what he said, I knew that it did. First of all, he remembered her name. In all the years I'd worked in the same hospital as him he had never had a good record of remembering his patients' names. That was probably because he rarely made personal contact with his patients, using his team as go betweens instead. Secondly, his body language betrayed him. His breathing was much more rapid than usual, even for the condition he was currently in. He was avoiding my eyes, lying very still (House was always in perpetual motion in some way or another, usually having to do with his hands), and trembling uncontrollably from head to toe. He looked so wound up that I was actually frightened that somehow he would snap, be it physically or psychologically. It mattered to him, just as the loss of his own leg mattered to him. So far, he had behaved remarkably excepting of the amputation, but I suspected that was simply a symptom of emotional shock; it hadn't become real to him yet. Once it did, I knew it would hit him harder than the removal of damaged muscle from his thigh had following the infarction. That prospect terrified me because quite frankly I didn't know if he would be able to survive the situation with his full faculties intact.

"It matters," I stressed to him. "And it's okay that it matters. Greg, please look at me."

With great difficulty and reluctance he did so. There was such vulnerability in his eyes. He was terrified, devastated. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to lose and entire piece of one's body as he had—particularly his leg. There was no way I could know, but I wished I did. I wanted to take his pain from him and comfort him, but for once I honestly didn't have a clue how.

"Wilson," he whispered and I saw a very rare event unfold; his eyes welled up with tears and despite a valiant effort on his part not to shed them, it couldn't be done, "are you sure you want to be here with me? I'm not a real man anymore. I can't even walk. I'll understand if you'd rather be with someone who is whole."

My heart felt like it had shattered into a thousand pieces! I had just allowed myself to accept that this man, for all of his faults and weaknesses still an indomitable giant in my eyes, was the only person I had ever truly loved, and he laid there afraid that I would change my mind and desert him now that his leg was gone. He thought so lowly of himself now that he didn't even feel truly human. How could I show him convincingly enough that in my eyes he was perfect and that I didn't love him one iota less than I had before?

I rose from the chair and moved to sit next to him on the bed. With one hand I cupped his cheek and with the other I ran my fingers lovingly through his tussled short hair. I stared him deeply in the eyes and held his gaze.

"I almost lost you," I told him gently, lovingly. "For a while there, I was convinced that I had and at that point the only thing I wanted was to die too. I love you with my whole being, Gregory House. I know I've been an idiot and it took me too damned long to come to that conclusion, but now that I have I never, ever want to let you go. I can't begin to understand how you're feeling right now and I wish I could take away all of the pain. If I could, I'd return your leg to you better than before. But never, ever think for one minute that I think any less of you because it's gone because that couldn't be farther from the truth. You lost a leg, but all I care about is that I didn't lose you. You are a real man—my man—and I don't want anyone else."

"But Jimmy," House began to protest but I cut him off by leaning forward and kissing him as gently and tenderly as I knew how. When I pulled away I wiped his tears away with my hand.

"No, Greg, don't argue with me! I mean it!" I told him firmly but continued to smile. "What if I had been in that collapse? What if I had lost my leg because of it? Would you stop loving me and desert me for someone with two legs? Would you?"

He shook his head slowly. "Never," he answered intensely. "I could never…love another person the way I love you, Jimmy."

"That's exactly how I feel about you," I told him, caressing his face lovingly "and if you'll let me, I intend to spend the rest of my life proving that to you." I leaned my forehead against his. "Please let me." I begged.

He sighed and began to relax. "Okay," he agreed.

I grinned from ear to ear and kissed him again before telling him, "We'll face whatever trials that lay ahead together. Let me be here for you. Don't try to push me away under some misguided belief that I'm better off without you because without you in my life I have nothing."

I gently held him in my arms for a very long time and he clung to me desperately; I was determined that I would never, ever let go of him again.

~fin~

A/N 2: I hope it wasn't too OOC! Here's hoping we can find some good House/Wilson material in Season Seven! Talk to you at the post-Episode rumble—I mean discussion—Monday night at House_Wilson at LJ!