Glossary:

Akathesia – inner restlessness that manifests itself with an inability to sit still or remain motionless; may range in intensity from a mild sense of disquiet to overwhelming anxiety, malaise, and severe dysphoria or indescribable sense of terror and doom; often related as a sense of inner tension or 'chemical' torture

Benzodiazepines – drug which can be used a sedative, hypnotic, anti-anxiety, anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant and amnesic; known to worsen depressive symptoms if not closely monitored, it tends to pickle your liver.

"Doctor Wilson, are you alright?" my assistant prompted gently.

My hands felt like they were trembling and my throat felt like it was closing up. They weren't and it wasn't. The chart I was holding was perfectly still and my breathing was schooled and even. Something about my expression must have been giving me away.

Where to begin? I could have tried to explain but the words wouldn't have come out. Something had started in me but, it was faint and without substance. I felt as though I was becoming unfastened. I had spent all day half listening to patients, half hunting and circling myself trying to figure out why I suddenly felt

this way again.

Of course, I knew, physiologically what was happening. My mental health was disintegrating because I was recovering from trauma at the same time as I was undergoing withdraw from antidepressants. But, that didn't make me feel any better. I only felt myself part of the tightness in my chest and the nagging emptiness in the pit of my stomach.

"I'm fine," I lied – emphatically. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She looked at me like I was a fool.

"What?" I threw up my hands and a defensive grin.

She just shook her head with a tight lipped smile and reached up to grab the chart away from me.

I left the hospital and drove back to my new apartment in such a daze that it felt as though I had teleported from one door to the other. House had left a note for me on the refrigerator. I studied it as though the answers I looked for were between the lines that I read: 'I'll be home late tonight. Don't wait up for me.' His doctor's scrawl made it seem like another prescription. The squarish, capital letters were printed as though he knew there was something wrong and thought he could make me feel better if he wrote them boldly enough.

They didn't do the trick. I only felt lost in my own home.

"Anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain," I heard the door click shut and, far away, someone singing quietly. "Don't carry the world upon your shoulder," House? No. I decided I must have been dreaming. After all, 'Hey Jude' was an unusual and disturbingly sentimental choice of song, even for a version of House produced by my subconscious. "Well you know that its a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder." I was not dreaming. I felt the surface I was curled up on dip as he sat down just a little too close to me. I must have taken something to get to sleep and fallen asleep on the couch after having been unable to make it to my bed, "I said not to wait up for me."

He smelled like the hospital would without any patients: an odd mixture of autoclaved sharps, latex, ethyl alcohol and orange surgical scrub. He crinkled something in his hands. I didn't bother to open my eyes to see what it was. In fact, I closed them tighter. I complained incoherently and gestured at him to turn out the light. Benzodiazapines are one hell of a class of drugs. I was so relaxed that I felt like I was melting into the couch.

"Stay still," he ordered.

There was something wet at my elbow. I felt an unexpected prick. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the light. He was wearing exam gloves. I glanced down at my arm. He was holding a butterfly needle in it with one hand and a cotton ball in the other. Non-consensual blood letting, nice.

"House, what the hell?"

"Oh please, don't give me that look. It's not like we haven't both drugged one another before," he answered as though that reply would be sufficient to quell my drowsy rage before elaborating, "I figured I would do you the courtesy of running some tests before dosing you, since you just had surgery."

He was wearing his reading glasses. They somehow made him look more tired. He stared me down. I didn't move. Because I wasn't about to spill blood across my sofa not because I was afraid of him, "If you think I'm sick a good place to start would be asking if I feel alright."

"I," he rolled his eyes, slipped the needle out and pressed the cotton against my vein, "know you don't feel alright: there was that almost career ending stunt, then almost life ending stunt and now you're speaking more slowly, more softly, eating less, you aren't laughing as much. You don't care as much about your appearance – over the past week you've lost 20 minutes off of your morning preening. And in case you hadn't noticed, you're constantly holding your hands over your sternum like it aches. What is that? Akathisia?"

"Yes," If I didn't know that House is a pathologically possessive, evil genius who just happened a brilliant diagnostician I would have thought that he was in love with me, noticing things like that. I tried telling him the truth, hoping it would sound so ridiculous that he would back down, "I feel sense of imminent doom like everyone I know and love is going to die any minute and it is going to have been all my fault. I am completely irrational."

"You were still on antidepressants or something with that effect before the surgery, something that metabolizes in the liver and you stopped them cold turkey. Didn't you?" I didn't say anything because I had nothing to say. He tried to bully it out of me, "Did you tell Cuddy that you were still being treated for depression before she approved you for surgery? What else were you taking?"

"Did I ever tell you I was being treated for depression?" He studied the vial of my blood as though he could read it without any lab equipment, "I'm going to a psychiatrist. I don't need you to diagnose me."

"Most psychiatrists are mental patients themselves and psychiatry is a soft science in its infancy. What is your shrink giving you?"

His eyes flicked around the room while he wore an expression of mild disgust, probably at himself for not being able to figure out what to do in this situation. This was House worried. It made me feel bad, "Nothing."

"Are you an idiot? What did you take?"

I must have looked like an idiot, sitting there with my mouth agape and my eyebrows raised as I groped for something to say. He looked like he was angry with me. All I could come up with was, "This is none of your business. It wasn't a high dose."

"What did you take?" he sounded like he was trying to keep himself from shouting.

"A little more than a twelfth of a milligram of klonopin," I admitted, finally.

"Two and a half weeks," House's surprised face was not something I got to see often, too bad these conditions weren't right to enjoy it, "after undergoing LDLT?"

"Yes. Anyhow, 'glad to hear a drug addict is concerned about my drug use, but I have to go to bed," I announced as I got to my feet and shuffled towards my bedroom. It would have been a perfect exit had I not lost my balance and tripped over the unpacked box labeled 'kitchen.'