Author's Notes: First House story. There are some timeline changes so it's sort of AU and sort of not. More so it's just a drabble I couldn't get out of my head. I am actually quite nervous to post this, but hope everyone likes it. I based it off of my own feelings if something like the infarction happened to me and how much my life and running would be altered and how terrible that would be.
Enjoy!
Rating: G
Summary: He was born a runner.
A Runner's Dirge
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His mother liked to joke that she thought her son was going to be a soccer player because of the way he had kicked in the womb. She amended that as soon as her son was old enough to stand. Greg had wanted to move and Blythe realized her son hadn't been kicking in her stomach, but rather running.
From the moment he'd realized that his little cherubic legs could not only hold him, but also move him forward, Greg became a whirlwind. Even desperately unbalance as all toddlers were, he moved with a speed that constantly amazed his mother. As a child, he was relatively quiet except for when his little arms flayed about his sides and his legs zigzagged under him. Then Greg would release the clearest peels of laughter that Blythe had ever heard. Her child not only pushed himself physically, but even from a young age she could see the intelligence that existed behind those bright blue eyes.
As he grew, Greg moved from a lanky, wiry child to a strong, graceful teenager gifted in most anything he applied himself to. All the moving because of his father had cost Greg his ability to trust that they wouldn't be leaving again and schoolwork became one salvation that he knew would not leave him regardless of where he went thus he embraced it whole-heartedly.
The only other thing Blythe noticed her son keep with him regardless of where they went was his running.
He never took the advice of his mother to join a team, but instead, after school he would put his bag on the ground, give his mother a light peck on the cheek, and scurry upstairs. Minutes later, dressed in proper running attire, he would leave placing headphones on his ears. He would return after a time sweaty but with blue eyes sparkling in good humor.
It was only on those returns to their home that his mother ever saw her child completely happy during his turbulent high school years. Though Blythe never understood, running gave her son peace that usually evaded him during all other hours of the day. She knew that her child's life was rather lonely, and yet he found peace in a completely solitary sport. The irony of it all was never lost on her.
When she would stand out the window and watch Greg run down some random path, she always briefly wondered how often he thought of literally running away… of never making the loop around the block, but she never dared to ask afraid of the answer.
College came and went nearly as high school had. Greg's intelligence had grown and so had his speed. In college, pushed himself in school and on the pavement. He had finally found security (knowing he would be able to remain in the same place for at least four years), but also found that he wasn't sure how to handle such stability. He had worked so long without making friends, that given the opportunity to settle with a group, he hadn't been prepared. And so, Greg continued to work as hard as ever with his eyes locked towards medical school and keep his feet moving to fill the void of friendship.
And so it was completely unexpected what would come from his first meeting of James Wilson. The sandy blond haired freshman happened to be coming off the same trail the dark haired senior was just beginning. They looked at one another, startled because neither had been aware that someone else knew of the partially hidden path. Their strides slowed ever so slightly, but they did not stop. As they passed each other, the younger man said, "there's a huge puddle about three miles in at the dip. It's a lot deeper than it looks." Greg spared a glance at the younger man's clearly drenched pants, said a quick thank you and dove into the woods (three miles in he carefully avoided that deceivingly shallow looking puddle).
Two days later, the pair did their run with Greg leading. A week later, they ran it side-by-side. After that, they would meet and run different paths together as if it was the most natural thing ever.
Without even intending to, Greg had finally figured out how to slow his stride and run with another person; James was the first friend that Greg remembered having in a long, long time.
But he had been a senior with plans of medical school and so he left his running partner behind. The soon-to-be-sophomore came to graduation and gave Greg a coupon for a sport's store and a parting message to make sure he kept in shape because in three years James would be seeing him at medical school.
The older man took the gift (purchased shoes a month later) and started medical school. No longer having James around to run with had surprisingly left the Greg feeling empty like he hadn't in years. For so long he had gone without a friend and, finally having one, he felt a void left unfilled that, for the first time, he was tempted to actively fill.
Taking the step that would make his mother proud, Greg joined the rowing and lacrosse teams at school. He never did join the cross-country or track team knowing that the only person he'd ever want to share his runs with was still in undergrad. But the team sports he joined help fill vacant space until James fulfilled his promise.
The friendship that had begun on a muddy path in college, had morphed Greg's life into one now filled with constant companionship in some form or another. He was a gifted student and a gifted athlete and medical school was finally the place he had been searching for without ever realizing it.
The years passed in a kaleidoscope of long hours, stiff competition, and happiness.
Three years into school, James came as promised and without any preamble the two began their runs, never once begrudging the time they took out of an already packed schedule. It was simply a fact that they would run as they had in undergrad. Sometimes they would catch each other in the mid-afternoon, James having just gotten out of class and Greg having just been released from an internship. Both looked and felt haggard, but they would put their shoes on, run and talk about everything and nothing. Other times, Greg would be on his way home from a 3am shift, come to James's apartment to find the younger man hunched over a book. He'd pick up muddy running shoes, chuck them at his friend and they would be off in the dead of night. Generally during those times, they would say nothing, both deeply absorbed in their own thoughts and stress and using the monotony of the run to help themselves focus.
Eventually Greg left medical school and this time gave James the coupon to buy the shoes.
The adult world didn't have lacrosse or rowing as readily, but the running paths existed as they always had. Greg found that he had turned into a violent runner when James wasn't by his side helping him keep pace. He would push himself too fast and too far, more often than not coming home utterly exhausted and in pain. He ran to run away from the frustration that had become life and work. He found that the real medical community (not that of school) didn't appreciate being told they were wrong as readily as classmates did and, more often than not, he found himself on the receiving end of some disciplinary action. The runs in the beginning of his medical career were a blur of anger and bitterness, each pounding step an attempt to forget and yet to constantly remember the wrongs that, he felt, were being done to him.
He actually ran into that faithful strip club because he was late to meet his friend (who never showed coincidently). When Stacy entered his life he found that the sense of peace she brought to his personal life carried over into his running. He took his time once again and didn't push himself to exhaustion; he appreciated the grace of running once more and the release it gave him. Like having come home after far too long, Greg relished his return to the proper state of running.
He still found that without James by his side, his running had a sense of emptiness to him. Stacy claimed not to be a runner and the few times that Greg convinced her to go with him, he found that she was correct.
She never complained, but she never found a rhythm or a sense of peace from the pounding of feet on pavement. Stacy wasn't James and Greg gracefully allowed her to stop running with him, never begrudging that choice. He knew very few people truly appreciated running and so he kept that, once more, to himself.
But as fate seemed to have it in mind to keep James and Greg together, Greg was almost unsurprised when he started working at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and found a young Dr. Wilson in the oncology department. The greeting that met James in his new office was a pair of shoes with a note 'ten o'clock- track' pinned to them. At ten o'clock, the younger man, dressed in running gear, saddle his way next to Greg and the two began a jog without a word.
The pair wove their way across the Princeton campus with ease and became an almost common fixture outside. They fell into the rhythm of running like older lovers reunited and it was an odd sense of comfort for both of them.
Years passed in much this manner and Greg found his life had become the perfect balance of love, work and running. Then after a Saturday trail run, the dull ache began.
And then the balance that Greg had found so perfect was shattered.
A misdiagnosis cost Greg his life in a manner of speaking. He lost Stacy, he lost his trust in his fellow man, and he lost his ability to run.
Many would claim to never understand how that last one could be ranked up there with the other two. It was, after all, just running and he did have mobility, which was something. But those who said such things would (could) never understand how much a part of his soul the ability to run had become. Only James understood when, after only few tears for Stacy had been shed, heartbreaking sobs were torn from Greg when he happened upon an old pair of running Nikes, mud from the last run still caked on them.
The one thing that had sustained him all his life had been brutally taken from him. He no longer was able to feel the beating rhythm of the ground beneath his feet; it was no replaced with the thumping sound of a cane. He no longer felt the sweat trickle down his face only to be blown away by the breeze; he now only sweated when overcome with pain. His heart no longer raced as he pushed his way slowly up a hill only come sprinting down it on the other side. All that he had loved about the ability to run away and find freedom was taken him with and replaced by a cane and Vicodin.
James, as if trying to share in the pain of his friend, stopped running as well. Greg knew this, but never acknowledged it or told his friend to do otherwise. There was nothing that James could do to share the depth of his friend's losses, but he did what little he could. Greg was certain that somewhere deep inside of him he appreciated and loved the gesture knowing what a sacrifice it was. James had also been kind enough to remove all old running shoes (to be replaced with more running shoes, but not ones that had been worn) from Greg's apartment. Those shoes, along with James's old shoes, were held in a ratty old cardboard box in storage, the younger man being unable to throw such a reminded of a past life away. That Greg did not know about.
The only time Greg allowed himself to remember what it felt like to run was when he had no control. In his dreams, he ran. He ran as far and as fast as he once had. He would feel all the sensations he once had felt and all the exuberance of running would come back to him in the dead of night. These feelings, however, would be stolen away from him in a harsh moment when he'd jerk wrong and his damaged leg would send a shockwave a pain through him as a reminder that he was only dreaming and could never run again. When he'd wake up and feel the throbbing of his leg reminding him that it had all been a foolish dream, he would remember the stories his mother told him about how he constantly ran around the house and how she had just known from the beginning that he would always be her little runner.
He'd then reach over, grab a Vicodin and take it without pretense because he knew the true reality of his fate.
He might have been born a runner but he would die a cripple.
End.