No One Dies Forever
Dr. Gale Boetticher is the worst Dean of Medicine that Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had ever seen; that is the truth according to James Wilson, at least. He had been appointed by the board a month after Dr. Cuddy's resignation, after suffering through an interim dean who few people knew the name of and even fewer cared to know anything about.
Gale Boetticher had proudly stated his undergraduate degree in Chemistry, with an emphasis in organic, followed by a stellar med school career and a well-lauded residency. He'd failed to mention, however, that it was all based upon research. In research and science, Dr. Boetticher is the man to beat.
In dealing with people, however…
It isn't that he is antisocial exactly. Boetticher's kind, sweet… engaging and effervescent. But's was also a pushover, a man who'd generally moved around rather than up when he had a disdain for the backbiting world of office politics. So Wilson finds him a bizarre choice for a job that is 99% office politics.
Wilson doesn't spend that much time passing judgment on Boetticher, though – he spends most of it missing House. House, who's still languishing in prison, six months after his stunt with the car, but probably gearing up to be released for good behavior any day.
Boetticher thinks about House, too. He's heard the name come up more than once, and it's normally in hushed tones, as if they're speaking the name of a spirit that might appear if you repeat its name one too many times in the mirror.
He looks him up, and is impressed with what he sees, planning a meeting for when House is released from prison, a haphazard meeting to somehow, some way, lure him back.
If Boetticher had asked for advice from others, they would have told him to forget it. To run screaming, perhaps.
Boetticher doesn't run screaming. Instead, he reads every bit of information in every personnel file the hospital has on Dr. Gregory House. He finds himself drawn in, intrigued, and doesn't know quite how to react.
One day he calls in Wilson, conceivably to inquire about an upcoming staff change in Oncology; a number of the nurses have quit and are being replaced.
As Wilson turns to leave, Boetticher asks his doorknob question.
"I've heard you were Dr. House's friend."
"Friend" is a word Boetticher has never quite understood. He's never been hated, but nor has he loved or been loved. He'd spent the better part of his life listening to operas in Italian, watering his plants, and pooling over Chemistry textbooks. The concept is foreign.
"I still am," Wilson replies quietly, though he doesn't know whether that's true or not; he has visited House in prison a few times but the reality beats down on his chest when he does. He can't bear to see his friend on display, behind glass, beaten down where there is no possible way he can help or protect him.
"I've been thinking of asking him to come back to the hospital." Despite a little stammer at the beginning of the sentence – Wilson is intimidating in his own way – Boetticher cuts right to the chase. He doesn't know if advice is what he wants, or perhaps approval. Maybe he wants to be told "no". Maybe he wants to be told it's his call.
That he doesn't know which of these it is makes him an awful Dean of Medicine.
"You'd be taking on a big challenge," Wilson replies noncommittally.
"He's a world-famous diagnostician," Boetticher says, as if Wilson needs reminding of this fact.
"He's also in prison for reckless endangerment." Wilson's voice is muted, dry, and half-hearted, not wanting to hold out hope for another chance that House can mess up. "As an administrator, logically he ought to be dead to you."
"No one dies forever," Boetticher replies, but he doesn't know quite what it means. His palms are sweating now, and he sticks them in his pockets to stop Wilson from noticing.
Wilson's dark - dark-eyed and dark-haired, and intense in a way Boetticher isn't quite used to. He can't help but suck in his breath and wonder what notch more intense House must be to be the friend of such a man, as Wilson strikes him as someone who bores easily if not around someone up to his level.
"You really want to speak to him? When he gets out?" Wilson makes the offer, sure Boetticher will have thought better of it by now and rejected it. But the other man nods, and Wilson finds himself wondering yet again how such a man became the dean, a man so unable to sense trouble… or a man so desperately eager to step into it.
"Could you make the meeting for me?" Boetticher inquires; his voice is polite but the question is pleading; imploring. Like a child who wants to go to the carnival and has no money.
Wilson's pause speaks volumes. Boetticher isn't quite sure what to read in it. He's never really been good at reading people, at understanding subtext. He's never talked that talk, never learned how to wrap people around his finger and get them to do what he wants – he trails after them with a gentle-yet-embarrassing naivety that's broken his heart and glued and stitched and sutured his brain back together. Boetticher may be a genius at medicine, but he's more known for starring starry-eyed at those he considers the "real" geniuses, looking up to them with the love-struck expression of a first-time rock groupie.
"If you're sure," Wilson answers finally.
That's the end of the conversation.
Gale Boetticher thinks that Dr. House's eyes are the bluest he's ever seen. He's got a gnawing, almost creepy feeling that he's actually dreamed them once before but then forgotten, and he can't quite pinpoint the memory. It sends a shiver up his spine as neither of them speaks.
"Dr. House," he manages at last, extending his hand as he sees, but doesn't feel, as it shakes.
"Dr. Boetticher." House's hand slowly creeps out to meet his, and he shakes it awkwardly before retreating. There's something beaten in the man's eyes and Boetticher doesn't like it, it's not right. He was always the little boy who would be picked on for trying to nurse birds with broken legs back to health – so rarely succeeding and often making things worse. But he still tried.
"I ought to cut to the chase." Boetticher looks down; he can't meet House's eyes. It's as if House's intensity is radiating off of him, and that pain too; Boetticher has every prison film he's ever seen flashing through his head, like he's trapped in a Best Buy and surrounded by display TVs, each on a different picture but all of them horrific.
"You might want to tell Chase if you're planning to cut to him," House replies dryly, and it takes Boetticher a few moments to remember that House has – had – a doctor named Chase on his team. Good-looking, blonde and deadly serious. Boetticher has talked to him once or twice, and it's obvious that even though Dr. Foreman is acting head of Diagnostics – maybe there was always that plan to bring House back, given that the board never bothered to vote on making "acting" into "permanent" – Chase thinks the job ought to be his instead.
"I want you to come back." Boetticher blurts the words rather than says them, like they're a dark confession, a reveal of infidelity from wife to husband perhaps.
House looks at him.
"Why?"
Boetticher has no way to answer the question.
"It's hard to explain."
"Everything can be explained," House replies easily. "Everything is rational." Except feelings aren't; drives aren't, urges aren't. Boetticher wishes that they were. He wishes he could meet House's eyes – his so-blue eyes – yet he cannot.
"You add a lot to this hospital," he says instead. It's true, but not the truth.
Boetticher recalls that his strange burst of inspiration to become a doctor came as he was laying back in his apartment and watching a rerun of St. Elsewhere, realizing with a hysterical trill in his heart that these people, characters, had each other; knew each other well. Shortly thereafter, he'd traveled to Thailand, sang karaoke and walked away, the joy and humor in the performance fading away as he found himself wishing that someone was standing in front of him, smiling and cheering him on.
"I think this hospital needs you," he corrects. House considers the offer, and the man in front of him, who he reads easily but isn't sure entirely whether to trust. The man seems almost too nice, like it may be a front. But Gale Boetticher, on the other hand, seems utterly incapable of such a front. And an utterly incapable Dean of Medicine.
He decides to take advantage while this window lasts. He needs it.
"Would I still need to do clinic duty?" he inquires. Boetticher starts, and finally meets House's eyes.
"Why don't we talk about that when you report for work on Monday?" A smile creeps across his face and he extends his hand.
Wilson's perplexed to see House's nameplate back on this door a few days later. Things are back to normal in a way, yet so completely skewed as to be unrecognizable. He walks out on to the balcony he's neglected for a year and feels the beginnings of a sun shower spray gently on his cheeks.
And he considers that maybe he was wrong; maybe Dr. Boetticher isn't such a bad Dean of Medicine after all.