Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, just the ideas.
"CATE: You know, I e-mailed a couple colleagues at the hospital about you.
WILSON: You're checking up on me, not House?
CATE: Yeah, well House is straightforward, brilliant, and an ass.
WILSON: Two out of three good qualities, clear majority.
CATE: Whereas you, on the other hand, have a perfect score. You are responsible, nice, human, and yet you're House's best friend.
WILSON: Hold there. Makes you think he's secretly nicer than he seems?
CATE: Makes me think that you're secretly a lot less nice than you seem. "
House MD, Frozen
James Wilson stared at a mirror.
The glass was broken, and dirty, he could barely distinguish his face from the walls of the bathroom behind him. It didn't mattered. The cheap lamps emanated a green light so weak he would not have been able to see his face even if he was staring at the metal surface of an operation table.
Besides, Wilson was not there to look at his own face.
He knew exactly what he must look like. His hair was all messed up, his face was thin and pale, his smile had been lost somewhere before he walked into that pub. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled all the way up to the elbow and the first couple of buttons were open. He had no tie on. He had one when he left the hospital, but couldn't remember what had happened to it.
He didn't look like James Wilson at all.
For a second, he thought he might throw up. He held the moldy wall with both his hands, leaning forward precariously and staring at the bottom of that dirty toilet. Nothing happened. The nausea was gone almost as soon as it came and it must have been the first lucky moment he had that night because he wouldn't have been able to wash off the taste. As it turned out, that filthy bathroom didn't have running water.
No water. Excellent, thought Wilson, wiping the mold of his hands in his pants.
He felt- unclean. It was no more than three hours ago that a patient of his had left his office. A young woman with pancreatic cancer. He had found that out too late. She was going to die.
It was not his fault. Usually pancreatic cancer didn't manifested itself before it was too late to cut it off.
It was not his fault. He didn't think it was.
Hell, he must be very drunk. He didn't seem to remember her name.
She was alone. A young woman in her twenties. She cried when he told her the bad news. And how beautiful she looked when she was crying. Many women looked sored for hours after a river of tears like that. Not her, though. She looked just as incredibly pretty as before.
That would not last. Wilson knew that only too well.
Soon it would come chemotherapy, radiation, medication. He had started her on three different drugs already. And she would not be pretty anymore. She'd be a walking corpse eaten by cancerous cells from inside out.
But now she was pretty.
A little tired perhaps, but pretty nonetheless.
The woman almost fell when she tried to stand up from her chair. Dizzy. James rushed to help her. He was still playing the part the good and caring boy-wonder oncologist. It felt like a part more often than he would care to admit.
She couldn't drive like that. He offered to help. It was late, he was going home anyway. He'd take her on her car, to make sure she was okay. He could take a cab to drive him somewhere else later.
To make sure she was okay. Who was he kidding?
She accepted his help.
As his looked at his distorted face on the mirror he wondered if he knew what was going to happen already, when he took her keys. That had happened before. But he had truly believed he was just being kind. Polite. Caring. The usual.
A smile crossed his lips.
A mean smile.
He had taken her to her apartment, he had walked her in. He offered to cook her something while she was taking a bath.
She accepted again.
He didn't even remember what he had cooked.
He remembered her, walking towards him with a white T-shirt, the towel on her wet hair.
Wilson already knew what was going to happen then.
He left the bathroom. It was hard to see anything but shadows in the stroboscopic light of the party going on. He didn't mind. He wanted something to drink, so he walked towards the bar across the people dancing, as if he was walking on an empty beach. The people moved so that he could pass, as if some sort of energy emanated from him. No one touched James Wilson.
And he didn't even seem to notice that.
He noticed other things. He noticed the syringe marks on the arm of some heroine addicted youngster. Noticed a couple of hookers on the other side of the dance floor, browsing for clients, noticed a couple of underages with green hair. He noticed a girl who stood on his way, staring at his eyes, as if she was trying to stop him from getting to the bar.
She wanted him.
Wilson looked at her. Definitely not a hooker. All the better.
Just a girl. He started to dance. She got closer.
He didn't move. Didn't touch her. She put her hands on his chest and shoulders, and later took his hands and placed around her waist. She smiled, as if hypnotized by his emotionless face, and he doubted she would ever recognize him if someday she stepped into Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
But why would she walk into PPTH?
Maybe for an STD test. He saw the birth control mark on her. Awfully young. Most of his colon cancer patients were on birth control and thought they didn't have to worry about diseases. Some were just stupid. Some thought they could trust their partners.
That's always a mistake.
But Wilson didn't want to think of his patients right now. He had one certain patient on his mind.
Donna.
All of the sudden he could remember her name. And she had red hair. He remember taking the towel of her hair as soon as she got close enough. He remembered her hair on his chest, wetting his shirt.
Wilson didn't even say a word, he held Donna's waist and ran his fingers through her hair softly. His hand was wet now. He touched her back. Then, he placed his hand on her waist, only under the white T-Shirt, this time.
Donna didn't say a word either. He knew she was vulnerable.
It excited him.
The red-haired woman had just received a fatal diagnosis. Some part of her was still trying to find a way out. Some part of her didn't believe that diagnosis. Some part of her was in denial. This part was the voice on her mind saying insistently "I'm not gonna die".
But it was not that part of her that was with her doctor now.
It was the part of her that knew her days were counted. Some part of her knew she had not gotten married, never had kids, never written a book and now she didn't have the time to do any of this.
She had been beautiful and very soon she would not be pretty anymore.
She would be dead.
And she would die alone.
And because she knew that, she allowed herself to do things she would never have done before. Society's rules and ethics no longer mattered.
She was being irrational.
And that excited Wilson.
He too was frequently the good boy, the one anyone could count on, the one nobody bothered to offer help to. His own niceness made him sick from time to time. Which was part of the reason why he didn't even tried to resist when Donna came out of the bathroom with her wet red hair.
He was thrilled.
He felt alive.
There was the excitement over that which was forbidden. The impossible doctor-patient relationship. His career was on the line. And the risk, the possibility hat they might be discovered made that game even better.
He didn't usually crossed lines. He didn't usually did anything that was forbidden.
But breaking the rules excited him.
It was a game for him, but Donna didn't know she was playing.
And that excited him even more. Being in control. She was vulnerable and emotionally damaged. Every single decision of what was about to happen was on his hands and only on his hands. And he loved to have that power.
After all, he was a doctor.
And he would have what no one else would. Because she was dying, and very soon she'd be too tired, too sick and too drugged up to care about the things she had not experienced. This moment, this very moment on her apartment was one of the last moments she would experience the freshness of her youth. And Wilson would share that. And no one else would.
To have what no one else possibly could.
He kissed her again, cherishing that one night when she was his, and his alone.
That excited him.
He was thinking of Donna, but it was not Donna who was dancing to him now. It was that dark-haired girl he had never seen and would never see again. She had turned her back on him, but still danced, so close they touched from time to time.
Wilson turned her again and held her close. He had not been subtle. He was not even trying to be. The oncologist held her chin up and kissed her in the middle of the dance floor.
James Wilson kissed a stranger in a bar.
It was brief.
She looked like she had gone to the moon and back.
He was bored.
Finally he let the girl behind and resumed his steps towards the bar.
He asked for scotch.
Donna's kiss, oh, that had been a kiss. She kissed him passionately, angrily, violently. The kiss of a dying woman.
A kiss full of death.
Wilson loved her. He loved Donna as he had loved his ex-wives, every single one of them. And some of his ex-girlfriends. And he would love her till the day she died.
Which would be within a month or two.
Not that he was counting.
Wilson was not trying to understand his feelings anymore, nor was he trying to control them. He merely felt, with no need for explanations.
The oncologist dropped twenty dollars on the balcony. He was very drunk, and it was very late.
Wilson picked his phone and dialed. He knew the number he wanted by heart.
The phone rang three times before someone answered on the other side. Wilson had very little to say:
"House, I need you to pick me up."
Author's Note: Like that quote at the top says, Wilson's not such a good boy (his friendship with House is evidence of death)... I have a few ideas for pics that show that Wilson needs House as much as House needs him sometimes... Man... Sometimes I wish this show was still going on.
Please review... I'd like some feedback.