Read in 1/2 page width, option on top right of FF. It'll be a comfortable read that way.
A.N- Please review. Also, the advice I gave you on page width helps a lot. Reason? Well, I write in that page length. Reading in another p.w would either confuse readers, or irk them. So I'm just giving kind advice.
So just a warning- suicidal themes, dark, angsty, eventual tear jerker, progressive inner rage as you feel like you're in their shoes.
Central characters are our favorite bromantic duo, Wilson and House, or House and Wilson. The others are just there cause they should and must be.
Also, story title inspiration comes from Seven Devils by Florence & The Machine's new album Ceremonials.
Wilson had remembered the incident, down to the last detail. It was so calm, serene, it was almost comical, had it not been for the body sprawled on the floor.
Time seemed to move too slow, his legs almost as if stiff, when he paced towards the body, his eyes wide, his heart minutely stopping, chills coursing throughout his body, a gaping hole in his chest and stomach, his spine feeling as if tugged by an invisible force.
As a doctor, no matter the situation, you are taught to remain absolutely calm and professional.
That is why when it comes to family matters, you are not allowed to treat the patient unless you can prove that you're completely capable of detaching any emotions towards your actions- like not wanting to risk a certain treatment for the sake of their well being.
As a doctor, you are taught to rid yourself of irrational emotions, concerning anyone. It's a silent enforcement of detachment, because if you care too much, you might lose a patient entirely due to your failure of doing your job like a mindless drone.
Of course, this harsh lesson is difficult around the first trails. And as an oncologist, Wilson had to face many of those that have failed- because he had no way of saving them. Rather, if you could look at it from an angle and squint, he was the poetic angel of death, that lingered till your last moments. He was there to make you feel better, not cure, unless he could.
He had many patients he had become friends with, some who've walked away alive, most who've died.
Overall, it was safe to say that Wilson was a professional, because over the years, death was just something that came. He had rationalized, over the course of his career, and many lost patients ranging from childhood to the elderly, that one minute you're here, the next, you're not.
It all centered around the will to live.
But the will to live was also embodied by the state of an individual. You can cry and fight to survive after being severely injured, or sick with an incurable disease- but the struggle is futile, because in the end, the body can't withstand itself.
In the end, it must stop working. Because it can no longer function, it can no longer conserve. It's ready to decay, to slowly falter, to take you through a spiral of emotions, and a pleasant last nap before you're gone entirely.
Because in the end, the thing that saved you from continuous pain is your brain as dimethyltryptamine is released, thus causing one to basically hallucinate as they drift off to nothingness when it feels like it's about to lose the fight and panics. It saves you, because it's kind. But rarely is it understandable, because, you see, the brain is a very tricky organ.
So tricky in fact, that it is very enigmatic.
One would assume that the brain with a larger mass in a certain area then others, was capable of reasoning most things out so much more better then the general population.
To a certain degree, yes, this was true. But even most geniuses have their ignorance.
They can be sharp, and see past most everything, save for, perhaps, as an example, what the 'best-by' date on a bag of bread meant. They could solve the hardest of equations, but wouldn't know how to handle an emotional situation, how to make another feel better.
Because most genius' were sociopaths, because, as Wilson found, they had deemed most things useless compared to others.
So living as a shell of emotions, cluttered with knowledge, was the easiest way to go once you've figured why something like feeling love for another is such a pointless thing.
House, in every definition of an ignorant sociopathic genius, was, in fact, just that.
He could diagnose you to the point of making you run better at marathons, but could also forget what sympathy was.
Despite his genius brain, being capable to save lives, -not because he was emotionally attached, but deemed the situation enthralling-, he was perhaps the most ignorant in the hospital when it came to defining true friendship.
But, don't get Wilson wrong, or the many witnesses to House's life. Because House had those odd and rare moments when he was incomparably human.
What House was above all, however, is selfish. Childish in his own ways, despite his age.
He would call Wilson over the most pathetic of things, ranging low, starting from the lack of food in the fridge at two in the morning, asking if he'd just do the shopping for a crippled man, later being about the boring vicinity he was suffering at four in the morning and wanting company or someone to insult.
It was worse when they had shared a flat. Because Wilson no longer knew of mercy. House was around him at all times.
And while one would think it normal for long time friends to live in a flat together, while believing that the only thing that would darken their friendship was the occasional pathetic argument, that was hardly ever the case.
Most arguments were valid, full proof, and most of them never started because House was an ass who would toss out an insult that didn't mean to continue into a conversation of defense.
No.
Most of them started because Wilson forced it to.
And it wasn't a defensive approach. Wilson didn't stand his ground when House insulted him with petty remarks. Instead, the arguments were always, as expected, about House's well being.
About House's lack of nutrition, about House's addictions and experiments to ease the pain.
It was always about House's approach on survival, and the lack-there-of when it came to doing it.
Suicidal? If you asked Wilson if that's what he thought his friend was, the oncologist would laugh, then shake his head while ducking it in response while observing the tip of his nice dress shoes.
'No,' He would answer with a stern smile, one that held humor, one that held anger, impatience, towards House despite conversing with someone else. 'No,' He would repeat, not in denial, eyes looking away, darting as they usually would when he discussed in a rather unpleasant manner. 'House is not suicidal. Not in the sense of wanting to end his life. If anything, House just loves to test the limits, while completely unaware that he's pretty close to the brink of death. House just risks his life. But despite his constant misery, that spreads like a plague, he doesn't want to end it all. House is just an idiot. An idiot with a genius mind.'
So that night, the night that started this story, the night that Wilson remembers so well, down to the color of the floor under the dim lamp light in the living room, illuminating that passing day that darkened behind closed shades, down to the color of House's skin as he lay motionless on his back, down to every last name of every alcoholic beverage and pill bottle sprawled across the messy rug, down to the last detail, that night was the night that Wilson decided to change his words, and remember them as a mantra.
No longer was the answer 'undoubtedly no'.
However, even then, as Wilson ran to his friend and shouted his name while fishing for his phone through his coat pocket, even then, as Wilson shook House furiously and slapped him around while calling for a paramedic, even then, as he told the woman -pissed beyond comforting- that she shut up and send for help because it was a severe overdose and he knew what he was saying because he was a doctor, even then, after he hung up re-checking House's vitals while cursing at him and demanding that he wake, even then Wilson hadn't realized that this was not one of House's many experiments to end the boredom or pain.
Wilson could smack himself today for failing to realize, with the frightening display in itself- the one he was so fortunate to see once he walked passed House's door and took a single step in-, that after all the mixed messages and signs he failed to take note of, he had failed to realize his friend, best friend, of so many years, was suicidal.
He had yet to receive an answer, and to this day, as typical from House, has yet to be cleared on whether it was an attempt or experiment.
But despite not being as intelligent as House, Wilson had been around for too long. Way too long, to know that this wasn't like any other failed project.
Two vodka bottles were empty, one whiskey almost gone. A bottle of Vicodin was gone, another barely reached the top with the pearl white pills.
At first, Wilson just believed that House had finished one bottle and was taking the usual dangerous amount with the next- that was until he checked the date in which House obtained the bottle, which was that same morning.
Among the mess were other prescription meds, and over the counter pain killers.
At first he thought that House was taking the over the counter pain killers prior, to excuse his need for Vicodin. He assumed that the reason why these over the counter pain killers were almost gone, was because of House's high milligram tolerance. The bottles weren't, in fact empty, just hardly full.
He then assumed that the other pills, the muscle relaxants, were a second attempt to try to ease the pain, but, after failing, House had finished what little was left from one Vicodin bottle, and started with the next.
House takes three to four pills at a time, at most, from his Vicodin. Wilson thought that perhaps there was only two pills left in the empty one.
That maybe House only took five to seven from the over the counter painkillers throughout the day with perhaps one to two Vicodin. And one to two muscle relaxants to help him calm down with ease.
He had told House that all Vicodin prescriptions had to be voice approved, meaning the pharmacy would have to call Wilson in order to approve any order.
Foreman, now dean of medicine, had told House that after any slip ups, it was back to jail.
So House had tried to cut back, follow the rules, play the game right to a certain extent, and fall back into his old, miserable life, that was, in his mind, less miserable that the current.
So Wilson denied it all with so many false assumptions that held no solid ground, just pointless and hallowed deductions.
But over time it had snapped into place.
New empty Vicodin bottle, other one missing at least four.
A receipt of two new alcohol bottles, vodka, bought the same day that the over the counter pain killers were purchased, the same day the Vicodin was taken- since Wilson had approved of the order, it had been two weeks since the last.
However, he had almost forgotten of House's stash- though he noted that the man was running short on bottles, which was probably why he mixed in more to get to a point in which turning back was an improbable chance. And downing med's with alcohol was always the worse call. Always.
It just gradually snapped together, as he paced in House's private ICU room at Princeton Plainsboro hospital, waiting for the man to make any signs of recuperation after pumping his stomach- which Chase was way too determined to take part in, looking too worried then expected.
But House slept with the calmest of expressions. So calm in fact, that if it wasn't for the machines that rhythmically beat in the heavy room, it would have been like watching him sleep.
Almost serene, that if it wasn't for the body in the hospital bed, it would have seemed almost ethereal for a man like the despised yet envied diagnostician.
And it could have almost been comical, if it wasn't House, and if the reasons behind all of this had never been true.
A.N- Please review for chapter 2. I plan to start this around this new, and possibly last (cries) season, while holding everything prior (because who doesn't do that?). Sorry for any typos. It's 5 am and I feel like I'm the one who took some Vicodin (brain emptinesssssss).
This is very general though. And it's not suicidal angst because I'm depressed or anything. It's simply because I want to take a more different approach with House M.D. Go deeper, darker, etc.
Again, please review. (dies)