Doctor Gregory House and other canon characters featured in this work of fiction belong to NBC/Universal and David Shore. Original characters are my creation. I make no money from writing these stories, it's done for pure enjoyment. All literary passages, quotes and song lyrics are used without permission; I do not own them or make money from using them.
February 15th
"Greg." The soft voice slides into his mind, draws him away from sleep. "Come on, time to wake up. Have to do inspection today."
("Greg, wake up. You mustn't keep your father waiting. He wants to talk to you before he leaves.")
He pushes deeper into the pillow. "Didn' do anything . . ."
"What didn't you do?"
He opens one eye, fully awake in an instant. "Nice try."
"Oh well," Sarah says. "I made breakfast."
He rolls on his side, rubs the deep ache in his thigh. "Pee first."
She has to keep an eye on him, he knows that, but he can't resist the chance to flash her as he pulls down his sweats. "I am married," she says, her tone dryer than the Sahara. "Am I supposed to be impressed by the sight of male equipment? Why do men think that's such a thrill for us?"
"They call you shrink for a reason," he complains, and massages his thigh with his free hand.
"Breakthrough?" Her question is a simple inquiry, nothing more. He nods and moves to the sink to wash up. After he uses the towel he drops it on the floor just to see Sarah roll her eyes. "You didn't flush," she points out. Greg gives her a hard stare.
"You'll do it later."
It's difficult to eat. His appetite seems to have taken a permanent hike, though everything tastes delicious. He manages enough coffee, toast and scrambled eggs to take his meds. He doesn't have to ask at the end of the meal, Sarah simply hands him the bottles. He gets what he needs, shows her the pills, and that's that. It's still a humiliation, but he knows she's done her best to make it as easy as possible for him, and he is grateful though he'd never say so.
He doesn't envy her the inspection today. It's been about a week since the last one, and he's let things . . . accumulate. His room is truly filthy. So is the bathroom. He has kept his side of the office neat, but that's because it's the office. He works better if it's cluttered but clean underneath.
Sarah starts the process in silence, her expression inscrutable. Greg watches as she wades through piles of dirty laundry, half her casual table service, and bed linens that haven't seen the washer in three weeks. It is under those sheets at the foot of the bed that she finds the first Atomic Fireball candy-unwrapped, of course. She removes it from its spot and looks down at it, then at him. He raises his brows but says nothing. It takes her only a second to understand the game. Her shoulders square and her green eyes brighten with the glint of challenge. He can almost hear her count three . . . two . . . one in her mind before she pops the candy into her mouth. He can't suppress a grimace—hell if he would do that!—and she grins at him. Then the cinnamon hits. He can see the flush spread over her fair skin like a stain. To his chagrin however, she doesn't spit it out. Instead she tucks the jawbreaker between her cheek and gum like a wad of chewing tobacco, gives him a mock-disdainful look, and goes back to work.
She finds all three of the Fireballs, each one hidden in a spot guaranteed to induce nausea in anyone else. By the time she has finished the office her forehead is beaded with sweat and she's had to blow her nose repeatedly, but she's eaten every single candy without comment. It is an epic win by anyone's standards. After she checks the carpet, always the last place she looks, she gives him a deep bow, flips her ponytail over her shoulder when she straightens, and walks off in smug triumph. I'll have to try something she isn't used to next time, he thinks, and heads into the kitchen to catch Sarah as she chugs a glass of milk and wipes her scarlet face with a paper towel.
"That was not funny!" she gasps when he can't help but snicker. "I'll have to douse my innards with Lysol for a week to get rid of all the cooties!"
"As long as you don't steal the wheels off my bike," he says, heavy on the snark. She wads up the paper towel, throws it at him and laughs. The musical sound eases something deep inside him, as always.
He declines lunch because he knows she has a pot roast with vegetables in the oven for tonight's dinner. Instead he goes to the office. This is when his need for new patients and differential diagnoses is most acute, during long, dreary afternoons when it's quiet and there's nothing to distract him. It is also the time when he struggles with the urge to find a way to get numb. The idea is always there, just below his thoughts; it tugs at him the way a riptide pulls an incautious swimmer out to sea.
The bundle of letters Sarah found still sits next to his laptop. He's set them aside for an emergency, when the need for distraction gets so bad he won't be able to push it away any longer. He's not there yet—close, but not quite. Instead he goes around to Sarah's desk. She has a somewhat smaller version of his Eames chair, a little low for his long legs, but still just as comfortable. Greg settles himself into it and checks out her latest project. There are several books stacked next to her laptop—Reading Egyptian Art, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Gardiner's Manual of Egyptian Grammar, and what appears to be a handmade journal. He flips it open and there in Sarah's neat penmanship are dozens of glyphs, all defined, annotated and indexed. He pages through it, impressed by the sheer amount of work represented here. It must have taken her years to create. But what is she doing with all this?
"It's tough to resist puzzles even if they're in another language and alphabet, isn't it?" Sarah's quiet voice holds a smile. She moves past him to pull his chair to the side of her desk and plunks down with a sigh. She looks tired.
"Checking up on me." His voice holds an edge.
"I was gonna see if Gene sent an email," she says, unruffled by his attitude.
"I take it he hasn't caught the plague yet," he says, and feels an unwelcome guilt at the flare of worry in Sarah's eyes, concealed when she looks away.
"Not yet," she says. There's a brief silence.
"You're sending the reply in hieroglyphs. A little on the labor-intensive side." He tosses the journal onto the desk.
"I'm working on a grammar exercise and there's a section that has me stuck." Sarah tips the chair back a bit. "It's tough learning a dead language."
"Disce pati," he says, just to see if she knows her Latin. She takes a moment to translate, then gives him a wry look.
"Thanks a lot."
"So . . . this fascination with impractical grammars," he says. He picks up a pen and balances it on the tips of both index fingers. "You often felt like you were speaking an unknown language during your childhood." He glances at her to see if she'll take the bait. Sarah raises her brows but says nothing. "Throw an imaginative, intelligent little girl into a family whose members were the inspiration for the original version of The Last House on the Left, and she thinks she's a changeling because she doesn't understand them at all, can't get anyone to listen to her . . ." He trails off.
"Do go on," she says, clearly amused. "This is most entertaining."
"I detect a modicum of skepticism."
"You hope I'll think you're projecting and dump all this bunk into your case notes," she says. "Then you can search the office, find my file and see what I'm thinking about you. Well, you're doomed to disappointment because I'm only recording vital stats."
("I have to keep a list for your father, dear. You must learn there are consequences for your actions.")
"Greg." Her voice is quiet, but it pulls him back into the present. "It's a timeline of progress so when the big guns need evidence for evaluation, they have it."
"Progress." He looks away. "Because suicide attempts are a great leap forward."
"Is that what it was?" It's a fair question, but he still growls in impatience.
"You had to make me vomit!"
"Not a clinical marker for suicidal intent," she says. "You're the only one who knows what you meant by that action."
"Oh, that's so clever," he says. "I ain't talkin' no more, copper. Stop shining those bright lights in my face."
"I have it down as an overdose," she says. "If it was more and you want to tell me, I'm listening."
"Not even you can spin an attempt as progress."
"Let me worry about that." He says nothing more. After a moment she opens her journal and pulls up something on her laptop. Silence falls in the office, but it's not awkward or tense. She didn't lie; she's ready to take him at his word.
"I . . . wasn't thinking," he says after a while. "It wasn't premeditated."
Sarah nods. "Okay." She glances past the monitor. "Wanna help me out here?"
"I don't know anything about Middle Egyptian," he points out.
"I need a fresh set of eyes. There's a sign that I can't quite decipher . . ."
When darkness falls they go into the kitchen for dinner. Greg takes a cold beer out of the fridge as Sarah puts the pot roast on the counter. It smells delicious, fragrant with garlic and thyme, onions and beef; he fills his plate to make the cook happy and pushes the food around, as he tries to eat.
"How bad is the nausea?" Sarah asks. He shakes his head.
"Nonexistent. Just not hungry." He spears a chunk of meat on his fork and contemplates it. "Dead cow," he says. "Kinda gross, eating something with more than one stomach and a uterus big enough to hold a Yugo."
"I had my arm inside a cow's hootch once," Sarah says. "Breech birth, and the calf wouldn't turn. I was trying to tie a rope around its legs when a contraction hit. Just about broke my shoulder."
"Cool." He twirls the fork and tries to muster up the desire to take a bite.
"If you want something else, there's other stuff in the icebox," she says. He smiles a little at the old-fashioned word, but tries again and succeeds this time. After a few moments he can keep going, if he makes it a mechanical action—pick up a mouthful, chew the food, swallow. Soon his plate is empty.
("Finish that last bite, Greg. No whining, or I'll give you something to whine about.")
"Lima beans," Sarah says. He gives her a sharp look. "When I was bad, I got a cereal bowl full of the damn things in cold salty water. I had to sit at the table until every last one was gone. If I threw up, it meant starting all over again." She snitches a carrot from the platter and dips it in gravy. "Sometimes when my mom wanted to have some fun, she would deliberately make me barf so I had to face another batch. You will never find a single lima in my kitchen."
"Hah. Unresolved issues," he says, and sips his beer.
"I hated them before they became an object of torment," she says. "Besides, someone once told me having a neurosis or two is normal. This one works for me." That's a joke, but he can hear the truth behind the humor.
"Better be careful who you take advice from," he says, but he still feels pleased.
"I'm not worried," she says. "I trust my source." She gives him a quick smile. "How about some dessert?"
The baked apples with cream hold a little more appeal, so he takes his meds between mouthfuls. "Gonna watch some tv," he says as she cleans up.
"I was going to ask if you'd help me out," Sarah says, and rolls her eyes when he leers at her. "We're having a ceilidh on St. Pat's at the fire hall."
"Give me a good reason to care."
"I need someone to practice with. A pianist. I have the charts," she says when he is silent. "If you don't want to, that's okay. I can get—"
"What you can do is stop babbling," he snaps. "Forget it."
He sees the disappointment and worse, the hurt in her eyes, just a flash before she turns away. "Okay," she says. Her acceptance goads him more than recrimination or a reproach.
"It's a whole month away," he says, still impatient. "You're good enough to not worry until the week before."
"Thanks." When she speaks again she sounds normal, no reproach or anger at all. "Hockey's on tonight. Flyers versus Devils. There'll be high-sticking galore."
After a few moments Greg leaves the kitchen while she cleans up. When Sarah comes into the living room a short time later, the fire's built up, he's pulled two chairs around, and his keyboard is plugged in, ready to go. She stops, surprise plain in her face.
"You said you had charts," he says, and looks away.
"I'll get them," she says. As she passes by him she says quietly "Thank you, Greg."
"Hurry up," he mutters. "I'm not losing the whole game so you can worry about the chords for 'When Irish Eyes Are Smiling'."
When she puts the books on the seat next to him, he is pleased to find there's little to no Tin Pan Alley drivel. It's almost all the real deal, some of it even in Gaelic.
"My grandmother loved the old music," Sarah says. She tunes the guitar with a practiced hand. "It was about the only thing we had in common."
("Real men don't play piano all day long, Gregory. I don't care if you have a lesson later on. Go outside and finish raking the lawn. You might build a few muscles to match the ones in your fingers, you wimp.")
His hands come down on the keys in discord. "Dammit!" He sends a glare at Sarah but she says nothing, she doesn't even look at him. "At least you had that much," he sneers before he can stop himself.
"You didn't," she says softly.
"No I didn't and that's all you get! Stop prying at me, I—I don't—I can't—" He gets up, ready to flee.
"Greg." He stands there like the coward he is, unable to go, unable to stay, trapped by the voices of the past in his head. "Whoever used your love of music as a weapon to hurt you, it was wrong." The words offer a rational path, a way out of the pain. He struggles for a few moments, then gives in.
"I keep hearing their damn voices—remembering the things they said . . ." He stares at the keyboard. "Everything makes me hear them, even waking up in the morning. I can't get away from them."
"Tell me what they say." She makes it sound so sensible. He can't help a bitter laugh.
"So you can put it in your case notes."
"No," she says. "Nothing you tell me gets written down. The only thing any committee will be interested in is if you're a good risk for surgery, or you're fit to get your license back. My notes are general and indicate progress. Nothing more." She pauses. "When you've had the surgery and you're reinstated, you can burn my notebook."
"Yeah, because throwing a computer on the fire is so much fun," he says.
"I'm not keeping a digital file. It's all on paper, and it's written in Middle Egyptian." He swings his gaze over to her in astonishment. "Just a precaution," she says. A smile tugs at her lips. He stares at her. Then the humor of the situation gets to him. He sits down and fights not to laugh.
"I call you Neferhotep," she says. "It's the equivalent of Joe in that culture. I'm Seshat."
"The goddess of scribes and record keeping," he says. "And the passage of time." She nods. He draws a deep breath and closes his eyes.
"My father hated my music . . ."