Author's note:
If you were captivated, as I was, with KidsNurse's wonderful stories, "Devil You Say" and "Battling the Demons", as I was, then you can figure out the reason I'm writing this one. KN has now started the third story in her series, "The Devil's In the Details". Therefore, I took Dick Dickinson and his old college friend, Jim Wilson, and ran with them. So! KN writes the beautiful medical drama, and I follow along with the thoughts of James Wilson as he suffers for his friend, Gregory House, and what he's going through. I have no clue if this has ever been done before, but it is an education and a great deal of fun … and also a great deal of work for us both. I call them the "Side By Side" stories, and hope you all get some fun out of them. Perhaps you will be so kind as to let us know how we're doing …. Thanks. Bets;)
"ANALYSIS PARALYSIS"
Betz88
Chapter 1
"A Cry for Help"
It wasn't about friendship.
They hadn't seen each other for more than five years, and Jim had always kept such a tight schedule, even back then, that he hardly had time to go home to his wife at night. An oncologist's workday, unlike that of a clinical psychologist, did not end at precisely 5:00 P. M.
When the phone call came to his office that Monday morning, Margie had taken it in his outer office and called through the door for him to pick it up. It was personal; someone from New Jersey who wanted her to ask him if he remembered pulling that all-nighter in Joe Ferguson's room for their final exam in Gunderson's anatomy class.
Richard Aubrey Dickinson smiled to himself, pulled his dark-rimmed glasses off his face in amused remembrance and closed his eyes for a moment. He shook his head slightly while old memories of college days flooded back. McGill … close to fifteen years ago. Astounding! He was taking a break between clients this morning, and a chance to catch up with a former classmate would be a welcome change.
Jimmy!
Dick picked up the phone in his left hand and said: "Thanks, Marge, I've got it."
Then: "James Evan Wilson! I can't believe it's you after all these years! How in the devil are you?"
"I'm good, Dick. Really good … and you?"
The soft voice Dickinson remembered from their academic years had grown a little harder over the passage of time. "I can't complain," he said. "Even if I did, nobody would listen. What can I possibly do for you, Jim?"
"Well … actually I need a consult. It's important to a case I'm working on and I really need your input. The patient is a very close friend of mine; he won't deal with anybody else but me, and he keeps running me into a brick wall. Will you be around later today? I can drive to your place in a couple of hours if that works for you …"
"If I can be of any help, I'll clear my schedule and give you all the time you need. What time can you be here?"
"Sometime between three and three-thirty, if that's okay."
Dickinson frowned in concentration. Now that he'd listened to Wilson's voice a little more closely, he thought he detected a knife-edge of something not quite right in the well-modulated voice that he hadn't discerned before. It was not a hardness he had heard, precisely, but something more bothersome. His mild-mannered former classmate was frightened! He glanced down at his appointment book. Nothing there that couldn't wait until tomorrow. Or a week from tomorrow.
"I'll be waiting for you."
"That would be great. I'll look forward to it. See you later then."
"Fine. Drive carefully … the Pennsylvania Staties are a bunch of sneaky bastards, so keep an eye out for them. Also, while I'm thinking of it … this is Amish country … so watch out for horses and buggies too. And bikes. They love bikes! Later. Bye."
"'Bye, Dick." Wilson rang off and Dickinson sat on the edge of his desk thinking back on their short conversation. The man sounded worried, and more than a little scared. Dick's training in clinical psychology told him that this was no ordinary case.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck were coming to attention, and he found himself very interested. Jimmy Wilson, calling, out of the blue, from a hundred-or-so miles away just for a consult, was very unusual. Surely there were enough professionals in New Jersey to accommodate Wilson's case without the added bother of traveling to another state. Didn't he say he was treating a close friend? Unethical, to say the least! What wasn't Jim telling him? Dickinson was intrigued.
"Marge?" He called to his receptionist in the outer office.
"Yeah, Dick?" She answered him without hesitation. "What's up?"
"Clear my schedule for this afternoon, will you please. An old classmate of mine needs a consult on a very interesting case …"
He reached up to rub his chin with his right hand, and winced at the stab of pain that flashed through his fingers and then gone.
"Can do, Boss." Her voice floated back to him.
Dickinson rubbed at his wrist with the fingers of his left hand and rode out the jab of pain that turned his right hand into a useless club at the end of his arm. "Thanks."
He moved to his desk chair and pulled open the middle drawer of the desk. He palmed one of the small white tablets from a vial he kept there and let it melt bitterly on his tongue. Baclofen. His bitter angels!
Dammit!
OoooOoooo
In the elegant, rented Earth-tone dump that Gregory House called his "apartment", James Wilson flipped shut his cell phone and leaned a hip against the heavy butcher-block table in the center of the kitchen.
The call to Richard "Dick" Dickinson had been easier than he'd anticipated. He still felt a little crappy about sneaking behind House's back, but his stubborn, recalcitrant friend was leaving him no choice in the matter.
Wilson had never seen Greg House so ill before, either before or after the infarction, and he had to admit it had him a little rattled. Might House actually try to end his own life? Was he that close to the end of his rope, so-to-speak? Someone with his gifts and overabundant intelligence would make child's play of figuring out a way to quietly slip away even under the most diligent scrutiny if he decided to do such a thing.
Sometimes Wilson thought of his own role in this scenario as that of a Secret Service agent, charged with protecting the life of the President of the United States. If assassins were determined enough, there was not an agency on the planet capable of keeping POTUS alive. If House became despondent enough, he could easily arrange his own demise, and not a thing Wilson or anyone else on Earth could do …
… and he, as both physician and best friend, would then be inconsolable.
He bowed his head sadly, and pinched the bridge of his nose hard with the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
Christ!
When he looked up, Lisa Cuddy was standing in the doorway between kitchen and living room looking at him worriedly. "Don't let him see you like this!" She whispered.
He nodded. "I called Dickinson in Pennsylvania," he said, keeping his voice as low as hers. "He'll see me this afternoon, so I have to leave here soon. Will you be okay with him while I'm gone? It'll be awhile …"
She smiled. "I've got my whip and chair ready if he snarls …"
Wilson smiled back in spite of himself, but there was nothing behind the smile except a row of strong, white teeth.
The drive through rural Jersey was a pleasant diversion, and once he passed Trenton, it was almost a straight shot west all the way to Lancaster.
Wilson set the Volvo's cruise control for 70 mph and let the powerful car take him there. In his head, he thought about all the things he needed to tell Dick … ask Dick!
OoooOoooo
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