Disclaimer: House belongs to David Shore and Fox.
Last One Standing
He was the survivor, the one left behind to tell the tale.
Only there were no tales left to tell. They had gone the route of those who were as familiar with the years of tragedies, near misses and bad decisions as he was. They were dead. All of them.
Four years ago, Cuddy became a statistic, a passenger on the United Airlines 747 that careened into the Pacific, five miles south of Oahu (and to think he had almost joined her on that flight).
Tsk, fuckin' tsk.
Two years later, at age sixty-two, Wilson keeled over from a heart attack, for which House blamed himself. Years of being best friends with a walking (limping) calamity had finally taken its toll.
The others met their fates in a variety of mundane ways.
Goodbye...and good luck.
Now there was no one left to rattle on to. Who the hell was going to listen to an old man grumble about his life and times? How mind numbingly boring was that?
Once in a while, when he found the will to drift up from his reveries, the man he used to be dropped by for a visit. A glance at a fellow bench sitter would rekindle a spark, compelling him to spice things up a bit.
I was a doctor. A famous one. I could look at you and tell you about your bad liver and the undiagnosed heart disease waiting in the wings. You don't believe me? Give me your hand, look me in the eye. No...it's alright. don't be afraid.
He had freaked out more park dwellers that way. No wonder he was almost always alone.
Sitting on this bench was a learning experience. His musings brought him to the realization that life was one long pony ride through the fun fair, barkers and skill games at every turn. Somewhere along the way, he had aced the Test Your Strength game, hitting the hammer hard enough to send the disc up, up until it clanged the bell, pronouncing him THE WINNAH!
Still standing, still grousing.
Still stagnant. He lived in the same apartment he called home back when he was that drug addled diagnostician everyone loved to hate. His pension was decent, his insurance intact, and he continued to use the cleaning service he had employed then (even Lady, the woman who had cleaned up his messes for eons, was wormfood, succumbing to a brain aneurysm eight years ago).
He was dour, pathetic, and well aware how life was wasted on him.
This is not to say he never had fun. For shits and giggles, he visited chat rooms on the internet, lurking mostly. Although if someone rankled him, he would throw out comments so scathing, he would be ostracized by the moderators and need to change his screen name to stay on the site.
He enjoyed that anonymity; it was his friend. He was like a ghost who drifted, dived and dipped, ultimately leaving the keyboard in favor of his piano and scotch to play the night out.
Why the hell are you still here?
He pulled up the collar of his jacket, blew warmth into his hands. It was late September; already the wind held a sharp chill. Winter would come early this year, which meant he would be forced to curtail his bench sitting. If he didn't need warmth for his leg, he would stay out here anyway, let the cold reach inside him, wrap its slim, icy fingers around his innards.
Squinting past the trees, he watched and waited for the sun to dip down until it was a slim fiery arc over the horizon. Twilight was here, which meant it was time for her arrival. Never one to disappoint, she lumbered through a space in the trees, past the carousel. The only human constant in this life. The days stretched on; the nights fell like prison doors to shut him in. His wakefulness bound him to his rituals of pills and piano and the old movies Wilson used to force him to sit through. Now he watched them anyway.
Those were things he could control. But not this woman.
Her cough was growing worse. It was phlegmy, brittle. She was at least one hundred yards away and he could still hear the rattle in her lungs.
She had been joining him here on this bench every day since early spring. Back then she seemed like a typical overweight forty year old. A down on her luck broad. Now she was approaching derelict status. A boozer, who smoked a pack and a half a day and lived off her Social Security checks. Her voice then had a rasp to it, now it sounded like fork tines scraping asphalt.
The bench groaned as she sat. She smelled of body odor and musty, empty rooms.
"Did you do what I asked?" He arched a brow and glared at her sideways.
"I don't get no hello? No nothing?"
"You don't do what I ask, you don't get a hello."
She huffed out a laugh and drew a bent, flaking cigarette from her coat pocket. "You never used to make deals, Greg. You used to take me as I was." After searching through her pocket and coming up empty, she scowled and breezed through a litany of expletives. "I guess you don't have a light."
With a grunt, he dipped into his jacket's inner pocket, brought out a book of matches and threw it at her.
"You're a fuckin' hypocrite and an enabler." She held the cigarette between her teeth and tore off a match. "Here, light it for me, hon."
Sitting with her took his mind off his self-pity party. She was a street person, millimeters away from being labeled a bum. But she was the only one he respected in his current incarnation; he took her abuse without handing her back an abundance of grief.
After touching the tip of the match to her cigarette, he shook it out. "Did you get that chest radiograph?"
"Fuck. They see me sitting in that emergency room and they suddenly get real busy."
"You went to the clinic, right? The one I told you--"
"Shut up." With two fingers, she removed the cigarette from her lips, then spat something half green, half red onto the sidewalk. "I don't want to talk about it. Always with the clinic. You and your goddamn one track mind. I go there and I leave in an hour, after a nurse with a stick up her ass tells me to wait my turn."
He grunted and rubbed his leg, which was beginning to complain. Daylight was fading quickly; he would need to head home before darkness fell. A guy his age was too easy a target in broad daylight, nevermind at night.
"They get busy; they're shorthanded. It's worse now than it used to be."
Closing her eyes, she blew out a plume of smoke, then flicked the cigarette away. "I ain't coming here no more."
He threw her a dour look. It wasn't the first time she had told him this. "Why? You win a one way trip to Tahiti?"
"You're a fuckin' laugh riot, you know that?"
"It's getting late." He dug into his back pocket and removed his wallet. "You eat?"
She held out her hand. "Give."
"Did you eat?"
"Does it matter?" She coughed, hawked up a second wad of phlegm and spit it on the grass. "I don't got much time. If you want me to eat, go buy me some food."
"Take the money; do whatever the hell you want with it." He stuffed the bill into the oversized pocket of her coat. The sky was purple and soft now. Arc lamps illuminated the pathway leading out of the park. "I'm going."
"Listen, I told you. I ain't coming back."
"Suit yourself." She'd be here tomorrow, same time. Just like every day.
"You don't believe me."
"You're getting wise in your old age."
"I got something for you." From the inside of her coat, she produced a thick manila envelope. "It's like a goodbye present."
"Some other time."
"There ain't gonna be no other time." Her voice cracked and failed.
Levering himself up on his cane, he scowled at her before taking the envelope. It was weighty; clear tape reinforced its worn edges. "What's this?"
She was breathing hard, the rattle in her chest was now a wet, grating noise. "I'm gonna tell you and then I'm gonna leave. Don't want no fuckin' questions."
"That's not fair."
"You don't like it? Give it back." Her hand trembled as she reached for it.
He held it just beyond her grasp. "Talk to me."
As she spoke, she stared at the bruise colored sky. "In your day, you liked hookers and strippers. No commitment there. There was a girl named Iris. Pretty little red haired thing. She danced in that bar near the hospital three nights a week."
It had to have been at least forty five years ago. The memory was cloudy but it was there. He recalled Iris as a spitfire, a hot little piece of ass who took him to bed, wore him out, grabbed his money and was gone.
"You remember her." The woman's eyes widened as the last remnants of daylight faded from the sky.
"So?"
With a decisive nod, she said, "Good one, Daddy," then whipped round and headed across the grass, toward the tall trees and God knew where.
For a moment he couldn't move, as if he had become one with the earth and sky. Then slowly, gradually, he found his footing and began the long walk back home.
Later, as the whiskey took him but before the pills hit his bloodstream, he sat at his desk, spreading the contents of the envelope before him. The birth certificate was frayed at the edges and stained with a variety of unidentifiable substances. Sonia Billings was her name. Sonia. He mouthed the name twice before setting the certificate aside and turned his attention to the photographs. The girl in the photos was striking, red haired like her mama. She posed proudly in front of barrooms and triple x movie theaters like this was her domain and she was damn proud of it.
Maybe she was putting him on.
Maybe she wasn't.
He took his time, arranged the photos in a rough chronology, witnessed the demise of her rough-hewn innocence. In the final photo, Sonia wore the same coat she had on today. Her mouth was twisted into something like a grin, blue eyes shining with all the secrets of the streets.
With one grand movement of his hand, he swept her gift into the trashcan. After draining his glass, he made his way haltingly to his bed.