Adagio e Dolce
The third day after Wilson's death, House is sitting at his piano, his fingers sliding over the air space above the keys but refusing to play. His bare feet work the pedals in perfect time to the imaginary melody he is silently composing. His eyes are tightly closed against the small bit of light that the streetlamp sheds upon the otherwise darkened room. He is playing an internal sonata, adagio e dolce, and awaiting the flash of lightening that the storm raging outside his window will eventually bestow upon the insides of his eyelids.
When the lightening finally emerges in all of its destructive glory – several times a minute at the storm's current peak - House allows his fingers to touch ivory and the piano gives forth sound to its new composition. It's a song that House's traitorous brain has dubbed "Wilson." Not "Wilson's Song" or even "Wilson's Anything." Just "Wilson."
House makes sure he does not hear the music he is creating. The thunder's roll will explode just seconds after he allows his fingers to finally grace the keys, and the storm's crescendo will drown out any sound this mere bit of wood and wire can produce.
This is exactly how House intends it to be. "Wilson" will not be heard; not by House, and certainly not by others. As illogical as he knows it is, House has decided that if there is to be no Wilson in the world to badger, lecture, and generally annoy him into what passed for happiness in his former existence, then there will be no Wilson of any kind.
As far as House is concerned, this is a rule not to be broken in any form.
His team worries that he is avoiding dealing with Wilson's death because he refused to attend the funeral, and will not be attending the upcoming hospital memorial service. Cuddy conversely cajoles and threatens him for refusing to see a grief counselor. Even his own traitorous mind points out connections to Wilson in nearly every aspect of his existence. But none of it makes any difference. He will not acknowledge his dead friend in any way. To speak of Wilson is to speak of him in the past tense, and that House cannot bear - if he cannot have him alive, he will not have him at all.
And so, when the thunder subsides, House's fingers rise back up and he returns to playing the air, and "Wilson" once again disappears from the world.
As the storm moves off into the distance, House finally rises and limps heavily towards the window. In a previous existence, he would never have allowed the cold, wet drops to fling themselves within the apartment, creating a potentially deadly mold that could feed on his beloved piano. But now the protection of his instrument seems almost as preposterous as the protection of himself. He wonders why he had ever bothered trying. Wood rots, people die, people rot too. It is inevitable, might as well accept it. Besides, to House it now seems kind of fitting for the piano to begin to rot away alongside Wilson.
On the evening of Wilson's death House had considered taking a sledge hammer to the piano. It had sat there peacefully in the corner, mocking him with the reminder that there were things he derived pleasure from that had not yet been destroyed in a tangle of metal, rubber, and asphalt. Ultimately he had decided against it, just as he had decided against taking his own life. Like Dorian Gray's portrait, the only fitting tribute to a world that inevitably sucked all joy out of its occupants, was to rot away in it, just like the piano eventually would, and just like Wilson was doing right now.
Slamming the window shut, he turns to face the darkened room. He runs a rain spattered hand over his uncombed hair and down past his dark strained eyes.
And then, like some badly written B-Grade movie, he catches the first flicker of a spectral apparition during a distant flash of lightning that briefly lights up the otherwise dark room.
It is just a momentary glimpse, but he doesn't need more than that to recognize the figure. It's Wilson.
The dark hair and dark eyes offset by pale skin, the knotted tie slightly askew, and the slightly confused – but still pleased – look is classic Wilson.
There is also the wet dress shirt which outlines his friend's sloping shoulders and the expensive wool pants caked with mud that House remembers clearly from the ambulance gurney. But it is the blood that he knows best. It runs down from Wilson's left crown, past a torn and empty eye socket, and continues southward until it stains the shirt pocket over Wilson's heart. And there it ends. Just like Wilson's heart had.
House wakes up the next morning on the floor beside his piano. The floor is still wet from the rain that had managed to sleet in at an angle through the open window during House's impromptu concert. There is blood on the floor from where House's head had hit the edge of the piano on its way down. Fumbling to his feet he notices that he had taken off both a piece of his scalp and a chunk of the piano top on his descent. He momentarily considers the irony that he and the piano almost did die violent deaths after all.
As for Wilson, House refuses to allow himself to think on his appearance at all. There was no Wilson; not now, and therefore not ever.
Five days and two late season thunderstorms later is the second time he sees Wilson.
House is watching television, his eyes transfixed by the glow of the HD screen. The sound is muted as has been his habit of late. He isn't the slightest bit interest in what he is watching – to be honest he doesn't even know what it is - he's simply looking for a visual distraction in the hope that he will grow weary enough to fall asleep for a few hours.
He is lying sideways on his sofa, his legs hung loosely over the leather arm, his head as tightly wedged between the back of the couch and the middle sofa cushion as possible. He likes the middle cushion the best because it is most comfortable. His subconscious mind comes screaming to the surface from time to time to remind him that this is where Wilson sat when he watched TV, where Wilson spilled bits of food, where Wilson peed as he slept. But that last bit would be kinda sick, and the first two kind of disturbing, and he will NOT think of Wilson. He tells his traitorous brain to shut up, and he tries to focus on the screen's flickering colors and reading the oversized lips on the sexy infomercial chick.
House scrubs his face in frustration. Sleep has always been an allusive thing in House's life, but lately it had become a nearly impossibility.
He isn't growing the least bit tired, and he is in the midst of debating the merits of a midnight motorcycle ride when Wilson suddenly appears in front of the TV. He has that same confused look on his face as House remembers from his last brief sighting. The specter looks around the apartment for a moment and then turns his head to look directly at his old friend.
In that moment, with the technicolor light of the television screen flickering throughout the room, House looks directly into Wilson's empty eye socket and finds himself filled with anger. He is angry at Wilson for dying, angry at himself for conjuring up this grotesque hallucination, angry at the world for everything that has happened.
In his growing fury he grabs one of the many empty scotch bottles that now litter the coffee table and hurls it at the apparition. Wilson flinches as it passes through him without slowing and hits the TV behind him. The force of the bottle knocks the flatscreen over and sends out a bolt of electricity that pauses midair and then vanishes. In this last bit of electric light show, Wilson gives House a surprised look, and disappears as well.
The real Wilson, reasons House, looking at the shattered remains of both bottle and TV, would have understood.
Two uneventful, if not tortuously slow weeks later, it is a Sunday morning. House decides that the self imposed mourning period is officially over and marks it with a much-needed shower. He has been working hard on ignoring one portion of his mind in favor of another, so he spends his shower time listing all known kidney disorders. When that fails to prevent him from conjuring up memories of Wilson, he turns to naming the New York Mets 1986 World Series winning baseball team in order of position. He only makes it to second base before the crushing reminder comes that he will never mock the Mets again alongside Wilson. He doubles over and is ultimately left sobbing on the shower floor, the shampoo running into his eyes, burning them with a ferocity not quite matched by the burning in his gut. Pathetic he tells himself disgustedly before climbing to his feet.
An hour later, better smelling if not quite better feeling, he is sitting on a stool in the kitchen staring into a bowl of soggy Frosted Flakes when he senses that he is not alone. He lifts his head tentatively and sure enough his dead friend is standing a few feet away, holding the palms of his hand outwards in the trademark Wilson sign of appeasement. House flinches but does not move away.
The physician in him is instead drawn to Wilson's eye socket, which is now perfectly healed and back in possession of the slightly wandering eye that had always given Wilson his endearingly dorky look. The blood on his clothes, however, remains. Those deep maroon splotches that House has been seeing everywhere lately, but especially when he closes his eyes.
Wilson waits apprehensively, but when House doesn't throw anything at him or run away, he begins to speak. He mouths, actually, but no sound comes from his lips. He repeats the last few mouth movements twice – emphatically so - before he understands that he is emitting no sound. Or at least no sound that House can hear. Just as Wilson is attempting to very slowly repeat himself a third time, he fades away.
House dumps the cereal into the sink, and has scotch for breakfast instead.
The fourth time House sees Wilson he is on the balcony outside his office, sipping a cup of coffee laced with anti-depressants in Wilson's honor. The leaves have started to turn and his mind sees grotesque connections between winter, death, leaves, and of course, Wilson. He has pretty much given up trying not to think of him. He has decided that it must be his attempt at repression that has been creating these hallucinations of his best friend. Former best friend, he reminds himself - not that he has a replacement now.
So instead he is letting his mind go where it will, but it is not going anywhere pleasant. Instead it is playing with every good memory he possesses and turning it bad. Wilson at a monster truck rally – a car jumping the rail and crushing him. Wilson laughing with him in the cafeteria – while worms weave their way through his hollow eye socket. Wilson sleeping on the couch – his blood seeping through the blankets.
Sighing, he turns to head back inside and spots Wilson in his peripheral vision. He is standing by the brick wall, on the side by his former office. In one hand he is grasping a set of papers flapping against the October breeze. His other hand is busy with the Wilson appeasement gesture.
House quickly glances around, as if there can be some rational explanation in the nearby trees or the late afternoon sky. But he finds none there, so he turns his attention back to Wilson. The younger man gives him a tiny smile and then turns his attention to grappling with his papers. He finally arranges them against his chest, one after the other, so that House can read them:
"Don't be afraid."
"I want to come back."
Some further paper shuffling and a tilt of Wilson's head.
"Do you want me to stay away?"
House is still for a moment, frozen by the sheer number of rational questions and cynical retorts that are currently fighting for notice within his brain. But finally Wilson's minutely slumping shoulders vaults House's automatic response mechanism over all his other higher brain functions. He shakes his head firmly, so as not to be misunderstood.
A flicker of a smile graces Wilson's face as he fades from Houses' view. The papers he had held moments before float down to the ground behind the wall and are blown up against the bricks. House quickly makes his way over the adjoining wall, but when he bends down to grab at the papers, all he finds are some fallen leaves. He picks a few leaves off the concrete floor and rubs his fingers over their fine veins, letting his mind replay the encounter.
He doesn't believe what he has seen, but still he cannot suppress his first smile in weeks as he recalls that this time there hadn't been any blood on Wilson's crisp white shirt.
For the next two days House finds himself looking for Wilson. He plays the piano despite his reluctance to bring music into the world; he buys a new TV and leaves it silently on at all hours; he spends an inordinate amount of time on the balcony.
This morning House sips his coffee outside on the balcony in the morning's misty rain. He knows his team is staring pitifully at the back of his head from the dry warmth of the conference room. He doesn't care though - he's long past caring about their opinion of him, if he really ever had at all.
Instead his thoughts are on Wilson. He knows logically that this is all a hallucination. A creation of his grief stricken brain that has been pickled in scotch and pockmarked from years of past vicodin abuse, but he is not sure whether or not he cares. He has lost everything else, why not his mind as well?
His perseverance is finally rewarded when Wilson returns to him, somewhat surprisingly in the third floor men's room. House hears him before he sees him which in is a positive development. His hallucination has become auditory.
The voice calling his name is soft but instantly recognizable, and when he turns from the urinal he finds Wilson standing a few feet away, his fists resting on his hips in his superman pose. He is dressed in the same clean white shirt he had been wearing on the balcony, but his shoes are inexplicably missing. Wilson follows House's line of sight down to his own stocking feet. An annoyed grunt slips from Wilson's mouth and House has to suppress a smile. He reminds himself that he must be careful not to become too amused by these hallucinations. Not to forget that they are a creation of his own mind, not of some netherworld. He reminds himself that last time he indulged a hallucination too much, Chase almost wound up dead; so he simply nods a greeting in Wilson's direction and heads out the door hoping Wilson will follow.
He hears an indignant, "You forgot to wash your hands," as the door closes behind him.
Down the hallway at the soda machine House recognizes the sound of padded feet on tiled floor behind him. He buys himself a coke and has to resist the temptation to buy two, or look over his shoulder and ask for change for a bag of chips.
"House." The voice is gentle and achingly familiar. House steels himself against it as he turns and looks Wilson in the eye. A lab coat has materialized, but still no shoes.
"What, no cue cards today? Run out of leaves?"
"Is that some sort of pun?"
House shakes his head. He runs his fingers up and down the side of the ice cold soda can to remind himself what is real and what is not. He decides to see how much control he has over the situation. If his mind is completely beyond his control, then fine. But at least he will know it.
He looks his friend squarely in the eye and says, "Go away, Wilson."
"But you said I could come back."
"I changed my mind."
Wilson's hands are back on his hips and he is shaking his head in exasperation. The hair is flopping over his yes. "You don't believe I'm real, do you?"
"What's two plus two?"
"Wha..?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were asking questions we already know the answer to."
"House, please, can we just talk? I'll be gone in a moment. I haven't figured out how to stay very long." The pleading in the apparition's tone easily makes it past House's hastily erected wall.
"Come back as a dream. We'll talk then."
"Why?"
"Because if you're a dream then I won't have to go back to Mayfield."
Wilson nods slowly. He stands there silently for a few moments longer, blocking House's escape path. He rubs his neck and looks for all the world like he is deep in thought.
House looks down the hall to see if anyone has noticed his conversation with nothingness, but when he turns his head back, Wilson is gone.
