1) The Lectures
Wilson is pissed. House can tell by the way he stands in the doorway: arms akimbo, shoulders pulled up by the tension in his neck, mouth pursed in a thin line. That won't last long, unfortunately. Soon, Wilson will start to talk and House will be forced to listen to an interminable lecture about his latest failure or transgression.
House isn't sure what he's done wrong this time. He doesn't have a patient at the moment, so he hasn't ordered any unauthorized tests, or ignored consent, or sent his minions off to break into a home or office. He even did his clinic duty for the week, albeit grudgingly, so Cuddy has no reason to send her lapdog after him.
He tunes out the words, and waits for the sound to stop. The refrain is always the same: You're miserable, you're self-destructive, you're an addict, you're an asshole. Wilson always hit at least two of those points in any lecture. After ten years, he can identify each one by tone and expression.
The tone changes. "You haven't heard a thing I've said."
That's true, but admitting it will just encourage Wilson to repeat himself. "I heard all the important parts. If I promise never to do it again, will you shut up and/or leave?"
Wilson stares at him, hurt shadowing his eyes until they're nearly black. "I was telling you that the board voted to halve the funding for hospice nurses. I should have known you wouldn't give a damn about something that doesn't actually affect you." He turns and leaves without another word.
House has his wish. And, as it turns out, Wilson doesn't even have to speak to let House know he's an asshole.
2) The Deal
Judas, House thinks, as he makes his way through the lobby in search of Cuddy, has nothing on James Wilson. Sure, he sold out the Son of God for a handful of change, but if you believe that story, he was just a poor sucker caught in a celestial set-up. Wilson was outplayed by a cop with a perverse sense of justice and more than just a thermometer up his ass.
It's pathetic, really. Under any other circumstances, House would gleefully be mocking Wilson for caving. But it's hard to summon glee when his leg is on fire and he's caught between ten years in prison and two months in hell, all because his supposed best friend can't stick to a lie. Which is a laugh, given how accomplished a liar Wilson is.
Maybe he didn't cave. Maybe this is just another move in Wilson's campaign to wean him off Vicodin, whether House wants to or not. He's been itching to get House into rehab, and what better way than a court order? But House doesn't take orders from anyone or anything, not where his leg is concerned, not where his pain is concerned. Because he's the only one who understands it; he's the only one who can control it.
And if he doesn't control it, it will consume him. Not slowly, like the Vicodin, but like wildfire laying waste to all in its path. And when that happens — and House knows it will, because the pills are only a firebreak — Wilson will be too stupid or too loyal to get out of the way, and he'll burn right along with House.
And maybe, House thinks, that's what's happening now. And he's not sure whether he hates Wilson because he's poured gasoline on the flames, or because he tried to put them out.
3) The Lie
When House leaves Wilson's office, he doesn't know whether to laugh or scream. Wilson and his little allusions to Greek mythology are absurd. The whole situation is absurd: not just ridiculous, but an existential farce. God knows, everything he learned in the past few days only confirms that life is just one big cosmic joke.
The pain is back. Not the aches and strains of middle age, but the angry, gnawing agony of ruined muscles and shredded nerves. In another day, he won't be able to walk without the cane, the two months of running and jumping at will — of freedom — just a fading, mocking memory. All he has left is his mind. That used to be enough.
If there is any meaning to life, it's in being right, in finding the answers to all the questions. House doesn't have all the answers, but he knows more than most. He has the ability to make connections where others only see random facts. That's what makes him special, not the misery or the pain.
Wilson tried to take that away from him. Cuddy might have gone along with the lie, but Wilson was the architect, the one who tried to change — to undermine — the only thing left that means anything to House. He made House believe he was wrong, rubbed his nose in his failure, and then had the nerve to say that he was only trying to protect House. Wilson probably even believes that — he's raised self-deception to an art form.
I was afraid your wings would melt. House settles on laughter. If he is Icarus, then Wilson is Daedalus, and there's a twisted poetic logic to that. Daedalus was a master artificer, and no one is better at artifice than James Wilson. House prides himself on his ability to see through people, but Wilson has always been opaque to him. He used to think that was a good thing.
But while Wilson often treats him like a child, he is nothing like House's father. For once, that isn't a compliment. John House never tried to hide or soften the truth, never tried to protect his son with lies, and House hated him for that. But not as much as he hates Wilson now.
4) The Bet
Wilson thinks he doesn't know. He probably thought House would be too eager to take the month off clinic duty, and later too blinded by pain, to analyze Cuddy's bet. But House's brain never turns off; it delivers through rain, sleet, or snow. Even the first blessed Vicodin, after seven days of abstinence, only dulled it, sent it spinning down pleasanter paths. But in the dark hours of the night, when the pain keeps him awake and he can do nothing but think, he puts the pieces together and comes up with a finished puzzle in the shape of James Wilson.
Wilson is a crafty bastard. It's why House keeps him around, but he can't always be counted on to use his powers for good — or at least not against House.
Part of him, the part that will do anything to solve the puzzle, admires Wilson's resourcefulness. Wilson has his answer now to the question that has been worrying at his conscience for months, if not years. House is an addict. He admits it freely, without shame. He needs the pills, not just for the pain, but to deal with a world full of idiots, some of whom misdiagnosed him, crippled him, and left him in so much agony that he needs the pills just to get through the day. It's a vicious, screwed-up circle, and House would love to break it, but this past week gave House some answers as well as a month free of purgatory. He can't function without the Vicodin, he can't think, and that's more important than Wilson's guilt, or Cuddy's concerns, or the slow destruction of his liver. So to hell with Wilson and his subtle little lessons.
He should be furious. He is furious. But it's hard to be angry when hydrocodone is flowing sweetly through his veins; hard to be angry when Wilson's look of resignation is still fresh in his memory. He's furious with Wilson, but he doesn't know if it's because Wilson tried, or because he gave up.
5) The Infarction
House wakes from the bypass surgery to pain, unrelenting pain, pain so far beyond bone-deep, it's soul-deep. It hurts so much he can't think, he can't breathe; he can only endure and he's not sure how much longer he can do that.
Stacy is no good to him. She is afraid of the pain; she knows it's stronger than she is. She can't take the burden from him. He needs someone who won't flinch from suffering.
"Wilson," he tries to say, though his throat is so dry, even two small syllables can't slide through. It doesn't matter. Wilson is in London. Wilson is over sea, under stone, and he isn't going to magically appear at his bedside. But Wilson should know. Wilson always knows when something is wrong. He's always there when House needs him.
House needs him now, but Wilson is in England, having tea and crumpets and screwing some hot oncologist, because sex at conferences doesn't count, it's practically written into the agenda. Wilson doesn't even confess those affairs.
House understands why Wilson's first wife left him, why Bonnie is going to leave him. Wilson is a fraud. He pretends to be the perfect friend, the perfect companion, and just when you trust him, when you think you can count on him for anything, he skips off to a conference while the muscle in your leg dies, and you wish you could die along with it.
He feels a cool cloth on his forehead and leans toward the touch. Wilson. But it can't be Wilson. Wilson never touches him. Not like this. The casual brush of a hand when passing over a file, bumping shoulders while walking down the hall, slapping his hand away from the last chip. But not deliberately.
But Wilson did touch him once, when House fell hard in a lacrosse game and dislocated his shoulder. And, oh god, the pain. Nothing like now, but enough that he curled in a ball and screamed at anybody who tried to touch him. But then Wilson was there, breathing heavily from his sprint across the field, and hands, the only hands he trusted, were straightening him out, holding him steady, and then pulling and turning, and the pain was gone. And Wilson's hands lingered on his shoulder, and there was magic in his fingertips, because they brushed away even the memory of pain, and he needs that now.
He needs Wilson and he isn't here and House is never going to forgive him.
1) Everything Else
House expects to see nothing when he sticks the knife in the socket. People see their lives flash before their eyes because that's all there is. The visions, the hallucinations, are just the last gasp of a dying brain, consciousness winding down like the final credits in a movie. Sometimes there are bloopers or out-takes at the end, but eventually the screen fades to black.
House doesn't need to risk electrocution to know that's true, but Wilson practically dared him to prove it. Wilson won't see it that way, though. In fact, Wilson is going to be seriously pissed.
He nearly smiles at the thought. Wilson will be pissed, and Wilson will lecture him until he needs morphine for the headache it gives him, but Wilson will be there, waiting for House to wake up so that he can kill him. There's something infinitely comforting in knowing that when he does something stupid, Wilson will care enough to kick his ass. Wilson, the king of inconstancy — at least in his marriages — is the one constant House can count on. House can replace guitars, canes, even fellows, but Wilson is indispensable.
House hates the lectures, the lies, the subtle — and not so subtle — manipulations. He hates being treated like a child and expected to act according to Wilson's ideas of propriety and professionalism. But everything worthwhile comes with a price and House values Wilson's friendship more than he'll ever admit. No one else, not even Cuddy, would put up with the interruptions and invasions, the demands and disparagements, the outright abuse, and expect nothing in return.
House doesn't need a near-death experience to know how the last part of his life would play on the internal big screen. He's the leading man, but there's a co-star who abandons his wife at a word from the hero, who waits quietly with him while a patient dies, who sees the sublime in a monster truck rally and the ridiculous in a sensitivity training seminar.
House expects to see nothing when his heart stops. But he knows what he will find when it starts again.
"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." Thornton Wilder,The Bridge of San Luis Rey