Wilson glanced at him for a millisecond before looking back down to scrawl out his signature. "Shoot."
"How can," and House decided to mix preachy with sarcasm, punctuating key parts with dramatic emphasis, "someone, such as me or you, watch idly by as another fellow human being dies?"
The paperwork done, Wilson handed it to the attendant with a thank you. She looked slightly concerned for him, what with House hounding him, so he nodded reassuringly to her. "By 'hypothetical' did you mean 'you idiot, irresponsible doctor'?"
The two of them walked, in unpracticed synchronization, towards the elevator.
"Basically, yeah."
Wilson sighed. "This is about that ex-patient of yours, I assume."
House jabbed at the button to call the elevator, as if hitting that would get what he wanted. "When I let her go to pasture in the oncology department, it was with the understanding that your farmers would give her grass, water, and vaccines."
"I said we'd consider signing her up for Colbert's Phase I clinic trial. We did. It isn't the best option for her. She's not strong enough for the highly experimental procedure. Even if it did extend her life any, it'd just make her be in pain longer. It's not worth it."
"You're just going to let her die?"
From the look of it, Wilson didn't know whether to be impressed or doubtful. "Why do you even care? You usually forget about patients once you've puzzled out whatever's wrong with them."
While Wilson didn't know what to feel, House knew how he himself felt: annoyed. "When other doctors want to save lives, they're going their job. When I do, it's an anomaly."
"Well, yes, it is." They elevator, which had finally arrived, opened its doors, and they walked in. "What is this about? Why do you care?"
He armed up on the sarcasm in automatic self-defense. "I'm protective."
He got a snort for an answer. "Territorial is more like it. Greedy, even. You diagnosed her, and now you want Death to keep its grubby mitts off."
They reached their floor and it was a short walk until they had to part ways to reach their separate offices. Before they separated, though, House wanted try one last shot. "Are you or aren't you going to offer her the treatment?"
"There's not enough reason to do so."
"This isn't over," he promised. Wilson just rubbed the back of his neck.
The morgue's fluorescent lights were so strong it made him see spots behind his eyes.
By the time his pupils finished adjusting, he spotted Wilson, who was regarding him as if he were the proverbial thing the cat had dragged in. "What are you doing here?" Wilson asked warily.
"Eh." House gave a quick look and saw that, aside from the carcasses stored inside the wall-to-wall lining of metal drawers, they were alone. "I've known for a while that this is one of your secret bases. I find it mildly morbid, by the way, that corpses are your company of choice."
Wilson glanced down at the papers, presumably his, that were spread out over the table at which he was working. "It's quieter than my office. Normally."
"And you call me anti-social?"
"What do you want?"
"Love. Acceptance. Understanding. The home of my dreams. Oh, right now, you mean? I still have to manhandle you into seeing things my way, and I'm at my most annoying in person. Wouldn't be anywhere nearly as effective over the phone."
"You couldn't have called me anyway. I left my cell upstairs."
"Why?"
Wilson rolled his eyes. "So that you couldn't pester me."
"The levels your passive-aggressiveness go to astound me. But, now that I've foiled your evil plan of evasion, how about we do this in a place with fewer dead bodies? It's freezing in here."
"You wouldn't be so cold if you dressed properly." Wilson made a nod towards House's t-shirt. "You're just like my brother, thinking that you're invincible. But you're right." Wilson stood up. "Let's get out of here. If I have to hear you bitch at me, it might as well be over food."
While he started to gather up his papers, House tried calling the elevator and noticed that the arrow hadn't lit up. He pressed the button harder. That didn't work either. "Wilson, I think the elevator is broken."
"Wouldn't be the first time. Are they ever going to replace that thing? I think it's older than the hospital itself."
"Hospitals need money to do things, money comes from donors, and no donor in their right mind wants to be the one to replace the morgue elevator. Call somebody, the only other way out of here is the staircase and I'm not going up that."
Wilson patted the pockets of his pants. "Right, I left my cell phone upstairs. Where's yours?"
House pulled his out. "Um, forgot to recharge it."
" Again?"
"How am I supposed to remember?!"
"You can rattle all the bones of the human body off the top of your head but you can't remember to recharge your cell? I'll check the stairs, you look for a phone."
"Your wish is my command!" House yelled after Wilson, who was sprinting up the staircase.
A quick survey of the room revealed that there were no phones here. What, did the morgue not need to make calls? Meanwhile, Wilson had reached the top of the stairs and was rattling at the door. "House," he called out, "my turn for a hypothetical question."
"I'm not going to like this, am I."
"How do two doctors get themselves locked into a morgue?"
House winced. "They don't, and that's not funny."
"I'm not laughing! I think the doors lock automatically…"
If House could have, he would have gone up the stairs himself. But that would be a job of many, many days and ten times as many Vicodin pills. "Double check."
Wilson lowered the door's handle and rattled the door demonstratively. "See?"
"There has to be some other exit, a line of communication—"
Wilson was already bobbing down the steps. "I don't see any other exists besides the elevator, we're cell-phone-less, so there's only the hospital phones—"
"There aren't any."
After a quick jaw-drop, Wilson spun about in a circle, scanning all of the walls. "I don't believe this."
"Fine. Be in denial over the fact that we're stuck here."
"Don't say that! It's too ridiculous—"
"But we are."
Wilson checked his watch. "It's six thirty-five." He looked at House sourly. "Most of the staff will have gone home."
They shared a second of silent alarm.
"This isn't one of my finer moments," Wilson admitted.
"Go and pound at the door. Yell some," House suggested.
"I will not--"
"But I'm cold—"
"Settle down." Wordlessly, Wilson handed him his white lab coat and, just as wordlessly, House put it on—but not without making a face of mild disgust. For one thing, it was a doctor's coat, something to which House had an emotional allergy, and for another, he hated to admit to being weak enough to feel cold. "We'll be here thirteen hours, maxim--"
"Fuck—" House fussed again with his pant pockets and pulled out an plastic orange container. "Oh, thank god," he sighed happily. "Daddy was so scared he'd lost you forever."
Wilson rolled his eyes and sat on the third-to-last step of the staircase. "Two doctors stuck in a morgue. What's wrong with this image?"
House jabbed Wilson with his cane until he moved over, giving him enough space to sit down. Using the stair's banister as support, he lowered himself next to Wilson. House replied, "Being unable to raise the dead, we're useless here."
"I was referring to the near-decade of extra schooling we got." Wilson burrowed his hands into his hair and kept them there. He stared down at his feet glumly. "This shouldn't be happening to us."
"Learning how to dissect a heart doesn't unlock the secrets of Houdini," House pointed out.
Wilson looked up again. "Now, see, magic would be more useful than medicine. We could raise the dead. Or stop people from dying altogether."
"Magic always beats science."
"Yeah." They lapsed into silence, House distractedly fiddling with his cane and Wilson staring off into space. "Pity we're stuck with medicine," Wilson said suddenly.
"Are you making a not-so subtle point about my patient?"
"Maybe. But since you raised the subject—we can't work miracles, House. She's going to die."
House leaned his chin against the curve of his cane. "Do you know what morgues were originally for, in Germany?"
"I'm guessing that 'pre-burial corpse storage space' isn't the answer you're looking for."
"It was to make sure that the person was actually dead. They were worried about accidentally labeling live people as dead because, as you can imagine, it's upsetting to have buried and coffined folk climbing out of the earth like a bad B-rated movie. So to make absolutely sure the bodies weren't going to start clawing their way out, they kept them in the mortuary for a couple of days—just about long enough for the stench to become overwhelming."
"Why, House, I think you're the one who's making not-so-sly allusions to the patient?"
"You're writing her off as dead! She isn't!"
Wilson shook his head. "I can't believe how worked up you're getting over this."
"You know me. World's foremost mule-man." House brayed to demonstrate his point.
Getting up, Wilson walked along the wall of drawers, tracing along his hand along the cracks. With his back to House, he said, "You know, I find your concern over the patient—her name is Kendra, by the way— rich when you don't even care about your own life."
House got up to follow Wilson. "Care to translate that?"
Wilson turned around to face him, his hands on his hips. "There's no hidden meaning."
"Is this about the infarction?"
His face was blank, which meant that he was holding back a fair amount of emotion. "You were going to let yourself die."
House took in a deep breath. Truth be told, he was tired of this fight. He had had it many times and with more than one person. "That was years ago—"
"Nothing's changed." Wilson's tone grew harsher. "Your pain management is going to shred your liver to nothing, you ride your motorcycle over the speed limit, and you subsist on two, three groups of the food pyramid—you're not aiming for the long term." He noticed that House was shivering. "Are you still cold? Here, take my jacket—"
"I don't need it." Actually, he did need it, since he I was /I cold, but he didn't want Wilson's charity. "Stop being such a drama queen. I bet you don't think about yourself kicking the bucket—what, with your perfect health, obnoxiously attractive boyish looks—"
"I'm waiting for the day I get cancer," Wilson said, deadpan.
"Being the firm believer of irony that you are."
"Got my will written up and everything."
House snorted. "You would." But he paused; thought about it. "No, wait. That's not a joke, is it."
"Actually, it was, but yes, I do have a will."
"Jesus, Wilson! So who gets the goods-- Family? Friends?"
Wilson made a non-committal type noise.
House could tell he was trying to hide something. "Family is a matter of course, but—please don't tell me that I'm on it."
"You might be."
"You can't possibly think you're going to go before I do. You were whining just a second ago that I'm doing myself in!"
Wilson shrugged. "You never know. Anyway, if my long-lost brother ever shows up again, he'll get the lion's share."
"Is that denial or are you trying to manipulate reality through sheer will?"
"It's more wishful thinking than anything else."
By now they'd gone around the room several times over, just circling aimlessly, a hand's breadth away from the wall and the hidden corpses. Wilson picked a place at random and slid down the metal and ended up sitting down on the floor with his legs pulled to his chest.
Shifting his weight back and forth from one leg to the cane, House asked, "You'll put me in your will as some sort of voodoo magic to keep me alive but you won't give your patient access to medicine?"
Wilson opened his mouth, as if to say something, but nothing came out. A moment later he tried again, and, this time, it worked. "That's-- okay. Fine. We'll reconsider. We'll talk it over with Colbert and whatever other doctors stand in our way even though the most it'll do is make Kendra's last months hellish. Happy?"
House ungracefully let himself fall next to Wilson. "As a clam." He pointed at Wilson, who somehow understood what he meant. He pulled off his jacket and handed it to House. As he put on the jacket over the lab coat Wilson had already given him, House asked, "I don't see why you're such a pessimist."
"We're just doctors, House. We can only do so much. And we ought to recognize that."
House made a sound that could have been a grunt or a clearing of his throat. "I'm not going to die, Wilson."
Wilson rubbed his eyes. "Yes, you will."
"All right, I'm going to die. What of it?"
Wilson looked away. "I didn't want it to happen. That's all."
"Given everything, I think I'll go first no matter what you want."
"This isn't about taking turns."
House breathed in. "And it's not about choice."
"I'm cold," Wilson muttered.
"Too bad, you gave me your jacket fair and square."
"You could give me back my lab coat. Anyway, you look perfectly silly, with the jacket over the coat."
"Who cares if I look silly? And you're the one who wanted me to live—hey, what are you doing?" House objected when Wilson inched over to him and came so close that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, leg to leg. He nearly swatted him away.
"Shared body warmth. Don't complain, it'll benefit you too."
"Hmph."
They lapsed into silence again. Wilson's breath was becoming slower and slower, and just when House thought he'd fallen asleep—
"I think he's dead, House."
"Who?"
"My brother."
Sighing, House lifted his arm and laid it across Wilson's shoulders and bent it so that he could stroke his hair. He didn't say anything trite like 'he's okay,' or 'don't worry,' because the words were precisely that: trite.
"I think of all the things the homeless can catch, and—he couldn't have survived ten years of that." Wilson's voice was low and his words slurred, as though he were talking in his sleep, and House had to strain to make out what he was saying. "There's no reason to think he's been homeless all this time, but—even a year would have been enough. I could have helped him, if he'd let me, but he didn't, and he must be dead by now."
"Go to sleep, Wilson." He said awkwardly. There were things he could do, including diagnose diseases and cure some of his patients. But he was no good at comforting, and he could not make empty promises that death was avoidable. "Go to sleep."
When, a few hours later, an intern came in through the staircase, she found the two of them sleeping, House's arm still around Wilson's and Wilson's head lying against House's shoulder.