"Dr. Wilson?" a tentative voice asked. Wilson looked up from his stack of paperwork to see Allison Cameron standing uncomfortably in the doorway.
"Allison," he replied, voice warm despite his exhaustion. What can I do for you?"
"Are you busy?" Cameron asked, gesturing toward the door. "It can wait."
The truth was that he was quiet busy and it was getting late, but Wilson was in no particular hurry to get home to find out the subject of today's argument with his wife. "Sit down," he said, indicating the chair across from him. Cameron sat down, still looking hesitant.
"You knew House before, right?" she asked. "Before his leg, I mean."
"Yes," Wilson confirmed, resisting the urge to sigh. He could already guess where this was going, and he wasn't up for dealing with it, but he wasn't going to turn her away. He had a pretty good idea how Cameron felt about House, and if she needed help working through her feelings, he wouldn't feel right refusing her.
Wilson contemplated the question for a moment. It was getting hard to remember what House had been like back then, before the leg and the drugs and the mess with Stacy. "About the same," he said. It wasn't true, really, but he couldn't explain to Cameron, who seemed to see a House who had never really existed, what pain, betrayal and addiction had done to him.
"That's what Stacy told me," Cameron said. "But...if he was always like he is now, how could he love—" She broke off, then dropped her eyes.
How could he love Stacy? Because the House of back then had had the same biting sarcasm, the same egotism and antisocial tendencies, but without that underlying hardness that kept people who could have once been his friends away. He seemed the same on the outside, but something had definitely changed, and Wilson wasn't so sure he could love someone anymore.
Cameron was still looking at the floor, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. Wilson knew he should say something, but what could he say? Cameron wasn't, he suspected, as innocent or naïve as she appeared, but even he didn't really understand House now, and he didn't think she ever would.
"I don't know what to tell you," he said finally. He thought of all his attempts to get House to face his problems and all the times he'd had to defend House to his colleagues and wives, all the risk he'd taken to protect him. Maybe Cameron could live with that, but she didn't deserve it. She wasn't like Stacy, tough enough to deal with biting wit day in, day out and throw it back at him. To tell the truth, even Stacy might have a hard time putting up with him now. At any rate, as much as she seemed to want to be the one to fix House, Wilson didn't think Cameron could do it.
"He's not the same, exactly, but he's..." He sighed, shaking his head as he gathered his thoughts. "I'm sorry, Allison. You know I respect you, but you can't be the one to fix him. You have to let him go."
"I haven't been..." Cameron protested.
"I'm not saying that you've been doing anything you shouldn't have," Wilson clarified. "I'm just saying that it's not worth waiting for him. I'm not sure he'll ever be the kind of man you deserve, and he won't inflict himself on you otherwise."
Cameron looked for a moment like she was marshalling an argument, but then she seemed to wilt, and she stood up. "Thank you for your time, Dr. Wilson," she said politely but hurriedly before fleeing his office.
Wilson watched her go, feeling guilty but confident that he'd done the right thing. She was better off this way. And House...well, maybe there was someone out there who could make House the way he had been. He only hoped that his friend was not, as he sometimes feared, beyond saving.