His finger hurts. When he sticks his pointer finger up, and bends it in half, a little line of pain shoots from his knuckle to his fingernail. This wasn't happening before. But then again, he's never tried to bend his finger in half while staring intently at it. His digits are never this interesting, except, well, when he files his nails.
He tries the same thing with all of his fingers, holding each one up against the light and trying to bend them all in the exact same way. This produces a kind of raw ache, a dull throbbing echoing in the little joints. When he twists his wrists, they throb too. His paperwork abandoned, Wilson pulls out his keyboard and switches to computer search mode- ignoring his vast shelf of medical textbooks for the divine authority that is Google. House would laugh at him; tell him that the unreliable search results will just make him paranoid, but Wilson doesn't want to risk any more stress trying to lift the books.
'Symptomatic pain for arthritis- duration, type, intensity- are all fingers normally affected?'
Good grief, he should have just gone to Ask instead. There you can actually ask questions and they are kind of answered for you.
Wilson doesn't really know much about arthritis- but then again, no one really does. He knows the basic biology- that it's caused by the inflammation of the synovial lining between two joints, which begin to rub together. He also knows who is most susceptible to it; seniors, those recovering from a major injury, osteoporosis sufferers. But it can happen to anyone, he remembers, wincing, flashbacks of his childhood neighbour diagnosed with rheumatoid at age seven. One day she was folding her limbs, like clay, around the jungle gym, and then, all of a sudden, she wasn't, sitting on the benches instead. "It hurts too much," she would tell him.
He clicks on the first link. It describes volar tenosynovitis of the wrist in rheumatoid arthritis. He scans over the presenting symptoms but halts at number three: Progressive loss of active flexion of the fingers. Wow.
He knows that this isn't a replacement for a real consult- that an excerpt from an online article won't really give him the truth, but the fact that it fits his symptoms is worrying enough.
He sticks his head in his palms and sighs. Maybe he should book an appointment with the rheumatologist, but that would mean admitting that there is, indeed, something wrong.
Hot puffs of air, accompanied by streams of pain dancing in his forearms, are the first things he senses. It takes a minute or two to realize that the laboured breathing is his own, another to realize that he's been sleeping on his hands. The bed sheets are twisted around his torso, and there's sweat behind his knees and under his arms.
Grimacing, he lifts his back, hollowing it, and gently eases his hands out. His face feels wet and swollen, like he's been punched, even though he was never in a high-school fight. Attempts to move his body are met with protest, his stomach whirling. All he can think is I have a surgery today. I can't do this. It's with remembered obligation that he gets up.
The world whirs in Z- shapes like the wacky 80s patterns on his childhood ski jacket as he navigates around the bed, stomach taking a fist and pounding on the wall of his oesophagus. The sun is an unwelcome orange burn behind his heavy beige curtains. He nearly forgets the arm pain, until his fingers are forced to curl around the toilet bowl.
The next Monday, he steps into Cuddy's office, sure that she'll be able to at least comfort him, or recommend a good rheumatologist. She's sitting there, her palm covering her forehead, pen-bent hand scrolling over paperwork.
"Dr Cuddy?"
Her whole body jolts.
"Wilson, god."
"You didn't see me come in?"
"No, uh, I'm just working on a release form."
Wilson nods, looking downwards, in the way that suggests that he acknowledges her, but doesn't want to continue that train of conversation.
Cuddy cocks her head at him.
"What do you need?"
Wilson sighs and rubs the square toe of his shoe against the carpet.
"I think I have rheumatoid. All I did was go on Google, but the joints in my hands and wrist are stiff. I'm waking up dizzy and nauseated every morning, and holding or grasping objects hurts like hell."
She leans back in her chair.
"Have you gone in for a consult?"
" Nope." He shrugs.
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
She leans closer and grips the edge of the desktop. Bragger, Wilson thinks.
"Didn't want to believe it."
"I guess it doesn't make any sense why a perfectly healthy 39 year old man would end up with arthritis, but you're a doctor, whether or not it's your specialty. I'd think that you'd know better than to trust a source that anyone could have typed up in their basement before making any judgements. Are you sure it isn't just an infection?"
Even Cuddy knows that his one is far-fetched; Wilson can tell by the way she bites her lip.
"Believe me, I know. I tried cutting more coupons out of the paper last night, and my hands wouldn't hold the scissors for longer than 30 seconds. It seems like it's getting worse."
"Have you been resting your hands otherwise?"
She clasps her hands together and flexes them in an almost pensive way, but to Wilson, it almost seems mocking.
"Well, as much as an office job lets me. "
She blinks at him and smiles.
"All I can give you are names of rheumatologists in the area, and some time off if you need it."
He agrees to take both.
"Does House know?"
"Why would I tell him when I don't even know exactly what it is? All I'll get are several hypocritical comments about being old."
"Well, because he worries about you, in his own insular way. With any luck, he'll set up a 24-7 undercover Wilson Watch."
Wilson chuckles, but a tiny part of him loves this concept, that House would keep a vigil on his condition. The part grows bigger when he thinks about the fact that someone else is noticing this bit of House's nature, and it grows exponentially when he realizes that it would probably happen, too.
Despite the sea of nausea, a tight-lipped smile is peeking at the corner of his mouth as he leaves Cuddy's office.
House ambushes Wilson outside of the rheumatologist's office, with a loud acclaim of "I never thought I'd see you again, Grandpa!" , oblivious to the several elderly patients in the nearby waiting room.
Wilson grins a little bit in spite of himself as both he and Cuddy were right about House's reaction. It isn't so much that he's predictable, more that Wilson knows the inner workings of House's brain so well. It comforts Wilson to know that when something happens to him that isn't normal, House will abandon his latest pursuit to monitor Wilson's every daily movement, even if those movements becoming more crotchety and awkward with every passing day.
"So, what did he say?" House's voice is tight and urgent.
Wilson knows what to say, the words are still in his brain from 10 minutes ago, when he heard them from the rheumatologist. All he has to offer is the little handful of them that detail his diagnosis, and the even smaller number used to describe the treatment. They're all he can grasp of it, and that's not much.
"I have rheumatoid arthritis in my hands and forearms. It might spread to my upper arms and shoulders as well. I still have to go in for some mobility tests and X-rays of my joints, but the symptoms fit."
House is silent for a long moment.
"So no more kinky digital sex or cervical swabs?"
Wilson looks down at the milky office tile and nods.
"Probably not."
House shakes his head and snorts. "Lucky bastard. Now you can apply for one of those free Super Scooters on the infomercials. I never could, they always told me my injury didn't exist."
Wilson swallows a fizz of sobs in his throat. House hears the wobbly sigh and glances over quickly to see Wilson's hands fisted in his pockets.
"That won't help, you know," he says quietly. "Making it worse for yourself never does."
House moves around to Wilson's left side and, bracing his weight against his cane, lifts Wilson's left hand out of his pants pocket, slipping his own into the membrane between Wilson's thumb and forefinger.
Wilson bristles at the action, soft tendrils of pain licking at his hand, but House is supporting it, and he breathes out.
House ducks his head to motion that they should begin walking, and they do, past a blue-haired woman in the waiting room who is knitting a scarf.
They get into House's car, and he doesn't let go of Wilson's hand, not when they pass a school playground, where children are swinging across monkey bars, or when they're stopped at a light downtown, where the busker in the Darth Vader suit lets the pads of his gloved black fingers curl and run across the neck of his violin.
"You always kind of sucked musically," says House, without taking his eyes off the road.