Sometimes he thinks he's got nothing left. The hospital is Cuddy's baby, not his; the ducklings are only few feathers short of flight – God know he wouldn't stay, if he were in their shoes. Wilson . . . well, after the incident with Vogler, his best friend has never quite looked at him the same. And now this fiasco with Tritter has just proven right all the things Wilson hates about him.
All the things House hates about himself.
He wonders why it took so long, to realize that he's been pouring narcotics into a void no medication can ever cure. The first time he'd gotten out of rehab, after the infarction and subsequent trauma, he'd hated the pills. The little brown bottle was his prison, and the white pills rattling at the bottom the keys that locked his cage. The drugs made him confess to a weakness he'd never known he could feel; he couldn't begin to count the nights he'd woken Stacy as he tried to pace off the pain, how many times she had poured the pills into his palm with tears in her eyes.
He can't remember, now, when the pills became less about her guilt and more about his own desire for oblivion.
When she left, he convinced himself it was because she couldn't stand the constant reminder of what she had done to him. No doubt she simply couldn't bear to see him in such pain, and he didn't blame her for that. Had their situations been reversed, he told himself, he could never have sat quietly by and watched her suffer. But the doctors kept telling him the limp would get better with time, with practice. He threw himself into his physical therapy with a passion previously applied only to his work – and to Stacey herself. He didn't tell Wilson he was going to get her, because he'd wanted it to be a pleasant surprise; God knows they'd all needed one.
He'd still believed in God, then.
He never told Wilson about the second car he'd found parked in Stacy's drive, or about the man who owned it – who kissed Stacy goodnight as though he owned her, too. And he never said anything about the tears he shed, watching her smile at a man who wasn't him. Who wasn't . . . broken.
After that, there wasn't much reason to get better. He could function. On good days the pain merely coasts by, no more distracting than the rattle of wheels as a patient is rushed past his office. And on the bad ones – well, who notices an extra pill here or there, or the white clench of his knuckles on the varnished surface of the cane. He stopped going to therapy, and if the pain keeps him awake more nights than not, there's no one left to bother.
He's developed ways of coping – a careless laugh as he tosses the pill in the air, catching it in his mouth in a casual display of skill that sparks a quick grin from Wilson, even as his muscles scream and spasm beneath him. That lazy pose, hip braced against the wall for support as nimble fingers twirl the cane. Every movement is calculated, perfected, because the least misstep will send him sprawling; and the only thing he's got left now is his pride.
The smooth burn of whiskey tucks him into bed at night, the prescription bottle within arm's reach on the nightstand as comforting as a child's night-light. But he still gets up and goes to work, most days. He still feuds with Cuddy, and plots with Wilson, and the interns still scatter upon sight of him. And though he will never say so, his trio of fledgling ducks has given him back some semblance of the man he used to be. They are here to learn, Foreman says, and why the hell are they even with him if not to deal with the hard cases, the challenges, the frantic race against time madness that House once made his trademark. Things had actually been going rather well, for quite some time – which should have been his first clue, in retrospect.
He first noticed the anomaly a few months ago. He'd filled his prescription for the week, courtesty of Wilson's messy scrawl (or his own, messier approximation of it) and promptly stumbled onto a case. A splendid case, a nice meaty bone for the pups to sink their fangs into – but he was mixing his metaphors.
It was nearly two weeks before he found himself stealthily slipping another bit of paper from Wilson's pad into the pocket of his blazer. It wasn't until he actually went to fetch his new script that he realized how long it had been – though it took him the better part of a day to accurately translate that look the pharmacist had given him.
The pills had lasted him a record twelve days, during most of which he'd been either at the hospital, demanding tests and browbeating their helpless patient; or struggling to fend off Cameron's adolescent crush – a puzzle in and of itself, but one for another time. The simple fact was, with the stress he'd unwittingly put on his leg, he should have been crying for vicadin sooner than usual . . . not five days later. Which begged the question: why?
Unfortunately, he thought he knew. For a little experiement he dumped the vicadin into a pile on his cofee table, got as comfortably ensconced on the couch as humanly possible, and prepared to wait it out. He winced each time he absently reached for the vial in his pocket, but kept count. He hit fourteen by the end of the weekend – and he knew himself well enough to admit that he likely would downed at least two pills each time. He knew he'd upped his dosage after Stacy left, and again as the ducklings urged him to take on more cases, but he hadn't realized just how much. With free access to the drugs and no one to question his dosage, he was popping the pills like candy, desperate to stay ahead of the pain. But then, pain had never really been the problem. He could deal with pain. It was being helpless he couldn't stand.
He'd scarcely come to terms with the notion of his addiction when Cuddy, spurred on by Wilson, had thrown down the gauntlet. House set to with a will; this was more than a bet, more than a reprieve from clinic duty. It was the uncomfortable knowledge that someone else had realized there was a problem that gave him the strength to keep going, when his leg buckled beneath him and the pain sank its claws into the savaged remains of his thigh.
Oh, he won the bet. He was too stubborn not to. But in the relative privacy of his office, he rode out the cramp and came to the bitter realization that he was never going to be able to function normally without the narcotics. He'd hoped . . . But even with the worst of the withdrawal symptoms merely an unpleasant memory, simply standing for any extended period of time was enough to make him wish, if only briefly, that he'd let them amputate the damn thing. And if he couldn't stop the drugs completely . . . why bother with any attempt to regulate the dosage? A little poison was nearly as bad as a lot, in the long run; if he had to take them, he might as well take enough to be moderately comfortable.
He disappointed Wilson, of course. The oncologist had gritted his teeth and borne the sight of House's haggard face as best he could, safe in his conviction that no less than this would convince his friend to kick the habit. House, fresh from his own bitter realization, had little patience left for Wilson's guilty conscience. Let Jimmy think he was too pig-headed to give up the pills; what did it matter? He was tired of defending his pain.
Now there's Tritter, sniffing like a bloodhound around the foundations of House's life, and his whole world is falling apart at the seams. His job is circling the drain, and when push comes to shove, he doesn't have anything else.
He's always believed suicide was an action reserved for the weak – you can't ante up, so get out of the game. Even as he pours the scotch and pops the lid off the bottle, he tells himself that it's stupid. He'll just wake up next to a puddle of his own vomit again, with a headache from hell and Cuddy's voice cursing him from the machine, the door slamming as Wilson walks out.
He reaches into his jacket, thrown carelessly over the back of the couch, for another bottle – nearly full. He isn't sure this is what he had in mind, when he filled the prescription on his way out yesterday. He isn't sure this is what he wants, as he dumps the pills into his palm and tosses them back, chasing them down with the liquor.
He presses his thumb against his throat, but he can't focus enough to count the beats. He tries to guess how many vicadin he's just taken, and can't do that either. He leans back and closes his eyes, and as he slips under he doesn't know if he's going to wake up.
He can't decide if he wants to.