Authors Notes:
This is fanfiction based on the show House MD, basically my own storyline on how I think a new season should kick off. Major spoilers for the season four finale that hasn't aired in some countries, meaning I owe everything to fox for net broadcasts :D The episodes ended the season (two parter House's Head and Wilson's Heart) and this kicks off right where those episodes left and has many flashbacks. This is written to be kind of introductual to the characters and this storyline in a sense, oh and... slight Huddy undertones, because my heart is pitter patter for Huddy :-)
Disclaimer: I don't own House MD or the characters, but I love playing with them a bit :)
Rating: PG13, but some things could affect the queasy albeit VERY queasy (since its mild) but thats beside the point.
Abbreviations: MD (Medical Doctor) Fic (Fan Fiction)
What would you think of me?
By Simone P.H
I decided to use my real name so people know its me, but you can also find my fics under these usernames: Sims, Mistress Of All Evil and HuddyBuddy
One man's curved fringe hung upon his face, his black suit bittersweet in good looks since his late girlfriend's blank sockets of eyes would be unseeing and unseen in her funeral casket.
James Wilson was in the cold confines of the morgue, sitting side saddle on an empty table and holding a transparent bag tightly. He ran his hands over the shining plastic, staring at it blankly in a trance like state and pondering the faded mightnight blue on his girlfriend's jeans
There was a hole through the thigh of her jeans where the bar of a bus's entrance had punctured through, the frayed edges stained with blood which spread down the leg. Her creme top was torn slightly from shards of glass that were in the bus's windows.. a small bit of the shirt salvaged and unstained because of the deep red scarf that had hung around her neck.
Every drop had run down to it from the almost bullet wound cut to her forehead, and Wilson could still see it in his mind as he brought his eyes to the ceiling. It was merely one of the wounds she had when he ran his hands down her face for the last time as her eyes closed. He held the bag close to his chest at the memory, his eyes tired and red from thinking of it.
Although Amber Volakis's body was not physically in the room, Wilson had to squint his eyes when he saw her blonde hair shine in the typical coldness of the morgue. When they adjusted he could see her leaning against the wall, her arms folded and the half of her face he could see smiling at him from where she was.
"Amber..." .
From what Wilson was seeing, Amber looked as if she'd never stepped on the bus- and the full creme suit she was wearing looked like it had never been worn. Her feet were bare, and although a friend, previous boss and suspected admirer of hers once named her 'Cut-Throat' She looked softer.
"What House did probably killed me, but he risked his life, why would you hate him?" The vision asked.
"He got drunk at five in the afternoon, he didn't... he didn't call.."
"I know." She said consolingly, almost reading his mind as she fell lightly into place beside him on the table. "House doesn't have anybody."
Even though it wasn't entirely true, Wilson chuckled because he had no more tears left to fall. House had him. Wilson was probably the only friend he'd had.
As his laughter died down he turned away from her, so he was looking at the blank wall at the back of the room. "Why did you have to be there with him? You could have..."
Once again his fringe shook, almost breaking down as he was forced to look down to hide it as he dreamed of a change of events. Amber's face dropped empathetically with him, trying to look around his shoulder at his face. "Circumstances changed."
Wilson turned back to her with watery eyes, his one raised eyebrow meeting both of hers. He nodded, and took in a deep breath as the image dispersed and he was left alone once again. He stood up with a different frame of mind this time, his lip subconciously drooping as the door to the morgue shut behind him.
Cheerful paintings met his eyes at the end of a bustling, glass walled corridor of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Some of them were by children with cancer that he'd met and worked with as the head of oncology, some that he knew and befriended while he treated them. His walk slowed as they caught his interest- and he managed to make it into the elevator with a smile as he saw one by a kid he knew survived his cancer.
Gregory House on the other hand had a declaration of a higher survival rate for his patients stamped across the plague on his office door. 'Gregory House. MD, infectious disease specialist, head of diagnostics.' Wilson took one glance at it, throwing the door open without hestitation as he knew full well his friend wouldn't be there. On the contrary, the room was empty of human activity except for a small tv that played host to House's favourite soap operas; a lone, chipped coffee cup lying across his desk, and an oversized gray and pink tennis ball.
Wilson picked up the ball, rolling it along the forefinger and thumb of his hand and throwing the bag of Amber's clothes onto House's desk as he thought. That ball had housed many of House's epiphanies, it was the thing House brooded over to come up with a diagnosis for his patient, to save them. But he hadn't this time Wilson thought, clenching his teeth and throwing the ball into the corner of the room, where it landed on House's favourite recliner. He shifted the collar of his suit before leaving the room, the bag of Amber's clothes still lying on the desk. The brown, sectioned blinds covering the wide windows of House's office weren't offering much light, so the darkness, two shades lighter than black liquorice- was penetrated only breifly from the light beyond the sliding door as it closed behind him. Forever to be unnoticed by Wilson.
The thack of the door closing met a younger man's ears and that little light sweeped the room and faded away into nothing, causing Doctor Chase to look up from his cross word- instantly intrigued. His pen stayed poised in mid air with a puzzeled expression, turning left. Turning right. Searching out the source of it from yet another one of the hospitals glass walls that let him see into the office from the conference room adjacent to it. He shrugged, his mock worthy abeit admired blonde locks falling to the page. After a moment he had to throw the cross word aside, slumping back in his surgical scrubs at one of the clear conference table's chairs.
He stared at a dissying array of symptoms and possible causes on a white board used for differential diagonostis discussions, his eyes travellingd it up and down, fisting his hands and leaning forward to put his head on it. Neuro syphillus would have fit too perfectly- but it didn't matter, and never would as he stared at one circled word on the board for several minutes- and the cause of Amber's death- drugs. He had been a surgical attending to her till they concluded she wasn't going to be coming back, but he was glad he hadn't been one of the ones to work with her, like her, or diagnose her- the emminent deaths that occured as a fellow in diagnostics was the one thing Chase didn't miss since he became head of surgery.
Chase had known Amber by affiliation only, since he was fired almost a year ago from a fellowship with House. Time for a change was the official reason Chase remembered saying, and the change was evident in the room he was in. Every where, lab coats, personal items and files were strewn randomly, from the table, to the benches coffee was stored in. The most prominent change was shown clearly on the whiteboard- and it was permenant. Signs of House's new 'ducklings' or followers (or so he'd like to think) were evident, and he had tested them in every demeaning, illegal, sexist, rediculous and medicinal way to find that team for House's fellowship. Amber had come to Chase simply for a learned guide as she had been a competitor- but her personality was too much like House's for Chase's liking, it always had been. Ironic to House's pig headedness, he hadn't hired the one like him- she'd failed. She played his game best- and she'd failed. She was among the smartest, and she failed. Her ambitions were probably the most powerful of all- but she'd failed.
As a result Dr. Hadley's labcoat was hanging up on a hook in the corner, Dr. Taub's book was turned down on the table, and Dr. Kutner's coffee cup was left in a more carefully placed position then the one lying in House's office. Amber didn't like losing her place in the team to the three doctors, and she had only slightly grown on them enough to make them sympathic when she'd been fired. In light of death, that had changed- it was pity comfort, except for Kutner. Strangely enough his liking for a jerk like House passed on with Amber, the 'Cut Throat' of the competition grew on him.
Thinking of it, Chase's eyes matched the tiredness seen in Wilson's, and they were red as he placed his head in his hands exhaustedly- it would have been nice to be back in the conference room in a different context, a better opportunity, doing differentials again.
House couldn't do anything about where his previous subordinant was however, whether he was near his office or two floors down, because while the two men's eyes were too dry and red to sleep, another's were closed. A woman was curled asleep in a reclined chair next to a hospital bed with House's stirring figure lying in it, one hand hung loosely by the raven curls on her face, and the other held onto the hand House wore his medical bracelet on. His boss, seen by passing doctors that respected her, barefeet by his bedside without a care.
He already had a day's more growth of stubble since his time there, and two plasters were stuck to his forehead. One was from the bus, and the other was newer, but as he awakened for the second time after coming out of his coma, his bruised brain wasn't reacting with him and he sat quiet instead of reaching up to feel it.
House heard machines beeping in his ears, and a sound escaped his mouth as he slowly managed to lift up his finger, seeing the heart monitor he felt attached to it as his heart stats became less of a blur. They slowly came into focus, his hazy brain able to define the rising lines as he came back to earth.
He tried to touch the more recent plaster, a small rasp and splutter emerging from his mouth as an attempt of speech while the sound's from the monitor woke the woman at his side.
Lisa Cuddy's young face in its early forties looked stressed, events lending to the already stressful job of running the hospital as a female dean of medicine. By instinct as a good person and doctor, she pulled herself into a more dignified position and checked on him as the sounds met her ears.
She reached out to face the monitor towards her, making sure it was a positive change as House just looked to the wall with a comatose stare. Her own expression seemed undecided, questioning whether to fall into sorrow out of care or to smile in relief, so she just said the first words that came to her. "You're back."
"Again." House rasped, making her chuckle a little.
"You shouldn't talk."
"You'd like that wouldn't you?" He snarled, getting some strength in his voice back and feeling his stubble. He could tell how long he'd been there by the growth and he eyed her down with interest as she stood up and walked over to his machines, adjusting his morphine.
He kept one eye on her upping his dosage, and observed Cuddy herself, one of his gifts being that he could read people.
"Am I really that pathetic? I'm almost insulted your the only one at my bed side."
"Sorry." She mocked, tying a blood pressure pump around his wrist, barely noticed as the morphine ran through his system.
"It's okay, it's not your fault." House joked, trailing off distractedly and moving his leg slightly.
Usually his crippled leg was the first thing on his mind since he'd had an infarction in his forties, but the other pain from his head sent endorphines that was nulling it slightly. The absense of his cane that helped the mobility of it was bugging at his subconcious, and the image of it flying through the air to be destroyed in the bus crash ran through his mind in a flash. In reflex, he raised his hand slightly, staring at where it was usually held in his hands as Cuddy started to become worried at his awkward silence, turning to look at his raised hand a little strangely.
"House..." She probed, trying to spark his attention, succeeding as he slowly curled his fingers to grip a non-existant cane before letting it flop back down.
"Why'd it turn out to be you here?"
"Because i'm not petty." Cuddy defended in answer, pumping the air in and checking the stats of his blood pressure. She had caught House's interest however, and the interrogation wasn't over.
"Your not petty....Wilson isn't petty... And no one else matters." House disagreed. "Your not turning into Cameron are you?"
Lisa looked like a bomb had hit her senses, and her mouth was hanging open comically as her face whipped round like a gun shot back to him, observed and resulting in House's smug smirk. 'Doesn't say much for Cameron does it? He thought. Alison Cameron was nice enough... Pretty girl that became a doctor at a young age for the good of the world, never wanting to hurt or piss anybody off unless it was for their own good. But simply put in House's mind.... she was annoying. The attraction to neediness was a vibe he got enough from Wilson, and it was only overthrown by his good character. With Cameron, it ruled her. He hated how partial she was to caring too much, it wasn't just the jerk in him that decided it was annoying, he needed conflict, action and truth to function. Lisa Cuddy thrived on it as much as he did, and he could use any enabler he could get. Her being overprotective instead of coming out with a cutting retort was new, it needed an answer- and he always got the answer.
"Your feet are bare, you've got concealer covering the bags under your eyes and your not even dressed to be here." He observed. Lisa didn't reply, just leaned down to pull off the velcro grip off House's arm- humouring him with a simple. "Okay."
She avoided direct eye contact from his probing gaze, busying her hands to hide dry tears. House unfortunately wasn't fooled. "Were you crying?!"
This sounded absolutely rediculous to his boss, a scoffing noise clearing her throat. "When a friend dies, some decent people think it appropraite or can't help comforting..."
"It's not Wilson the dean of medicine is bending her pretty backside and bone for, your here because of me." House interrupted, deducing what he could when she didn't objectify his reasoning. "Do you like me Cuddy?"
"Were not echoes, I asked you that a year.." Cuddy answered quickly, slightly exasperated when he interrupted again.
"So answer."
This time Cuddy didn't even dignify it with a response, and it almost pleased House, a smile playing across his lips. "Your not answering your evading."
"Nobody likes you." She snarked, leaning one hand on the bed rail a crutch was hung on, and gripping his other in hers once again.
"They hate me... Wilson hates me."
Cuddy breifly caught a glimpse of his bowed head as she felt his pulse, and it looked slightly saddened until he looked up to her and rearranged his features as if it was a merely a statement.
She bit her lip, brushing the hair out of her eyes and sitting back down on the chair, curving her other hand around his, and holding it close to her chest with both of hers.
"You didn't do anything wrong.... nothing." She stressed, tears welling up a little, at which point House's slowly working brain processed that she was holding onto his hand again, looking down at it as if unsure, actually furrowing his brow when he saw her tears.
House turned away to the front of the room, facing the almost white gray curtains, a lighter shade of gray then the purplish gray on Cuddy's top, "I killed her."
Cuddy shook her head with a wry smile, squeezing his hand. "No... No you didn't."
"I was the hand on the trigger." House said, sounding almost dreamy as his face wandered a thousand miles away again.
"Is this actually helpful? Cuddy asked in disbelief. "You don't need to think that."
"I didn't need to... get drunk at five in the afternoon, I didn't need to make people miserable... rely on them."
"Its not your fault- its just a whole lot of miserable events leading to another." Cuddy joked, attempting to lighten the mood by putting a smile on her face.
"And cancer patients shouldn't have to die, they still do." House whispered, his voice becoming distanced as he drifted away slightly. Cuddy took a deep breath, turning to the monitors as they made a beep, he was just tired. "Shut up." She rasped weakly in response.
But it was his fault, he had set off the chain of events, its end had snapped, leaving him whole and relatively healthy while Amber was cut away.
Cuddy kept her eyes on him, untangling his cords and sitting back at his side. What the hell is he thinking? She thought.
House had gone to desperate measures to remember how he knew she'd been dying, the symptom, or sign he KNEW he'd seen on the bus in her before the crash. To remember what he saw he resorted to shocking his brain with five volts of electricity to bring back the memory- his face scrunched up slightly in pain when he felt it, until the memories hit him like a bullet, full and in colour.
'She..." House whispered coarsely, his speech leaving him as he tried to say more but unable to.
"Stop talking.... Please." Cuddy pleaded, but he couldn't hear her, distracted and slightly deafened from where the skull fracture reached. Her words barely met his subconcious, just lying there, blank- staring and gulping air.
She stammered, feeling it from shock.
Stay with me.. He heard in his mind again, his eyes opening and the whiteness that was his vision clearing from the nightmare as he arrived back in the world to Cuddy standing over him. "Stay with me." She said again, letting him look around.
"Don't deserve this... pity, or sympathy... You shouldn't be here." He told her.
"I should be here." She stressed.
House squeezed her hand and turned away slightly, hearing his machines beep at her touch as they were adjusted and feeling her face on his when she reached the door- looking back at him with a frown as she left the room.
Cuddy spent two days almost entirely at his beside, her time away meaning Wilson was looking out at the grounds from the open blinds in Cuddy's office while her files stacked up from the time she was taking away. The two days more of autumn leaves slowed to a stop, and where the blankets of leaves had fallen- now only flakes fell to the matted ground. He raised one eye to the sky, his face looking like a small innocent puppies as Cuddy entered her office- doing an almost double take at seeing him.
She hung up her labcoat, walking over to her desk and lifting some of the files away. "When did these get here?!"
Wilson unfolded his arms, looking at her as if she shouldn't be surprised. "They stacked up."
"Not this fast." She said almost frantically, looking down and moving them- both of them trying to keep some part of themselves busy.
Wilson put his hands in the pockets of his brown slacks. "Well maybe your working too hard..." He offered knowingly.
Cuddy gave a wry chuckle, shuffling papers and looking down at them, the top of her hair and top the only thing Wilson could see.
He stayed silent, putting his hand on a file to stop her. She looked up at him with a challenge in her raised eyes, but nevertheless walking round to sit back behind her neglected oak desk.
"Maybe your spending too much time helping someone?"
He was being intentionally dense, and she knew it, she also knew that it might be true as she bit her lip, still certain. "He needs it." She told him, sitting down on the chair in finality, leaning two hands on the desk. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm still at the apartment... dunno what to do with her things." Wilson said, running his hands down in his face tiredly, partly because he was tired, partly to hide that he was tearing up.
Cuddy picked up her labcoat, walking past him and squeezing his shoulder as she hung it up.
Wilson took a glance at the empathy in her eyes and nodded, walking to the door.
"Is that it?" Cuddy asked. "Your not gonna ask how House is doing? He's barely speaking."
"I don't think... I can handle that right now."
"You know how guilty he feels?" Cuddy said with another wry chuckle, a tear falling. "He sent me away because I felt for him."
"Thats natural... Its not his fault. I don't blame him for the accident. I'm just not ready." Wilson said. "So how are you?"
"He's insisted in coming back to work, I managed to talk him into coming to funeral..." Cuddy said, spinning round to her desk drawer adruptly and taking out a pager she shoved into his hands. "Talk to him."
"And... How are you?" Wilson repeated, questioning his boss further.
Lisa smirked, looking towards the opposite end of her office at her creme flowered patterned couch. "Tired, between you two, House is easier."
Wilson actually smiled, unforced for probably the first time since Amber died. Cuddy matched it, and their smiles dropped slowly. "See you at the funeral." Cuddy said softly, walking past and tapping his shoulder again in comfort as she walked back out her office again, the pile of files not dissapating any further then how high it already was as she left. Wilson glanced down at the black pager, covering it with both hands thoughtfully before deciding to pocket it, following his bosses way out.
While they moved on, House was stubbornly tying up his shoes and straightening himself out, only two days after coming out of a coma, his knack for recklessness a part of it. He saved his troubled speech when Dr. Foreman entered the room, rolling his eyes instead of voicing his annoyance.
Foreman had been part of House's older team of fellows... And although Dr. Chase and Cameron had moved on, he had stayed as a leading part of the team. He had House's respect... a hard feat- because he had the most medical knowledge, he wasn't House's lacky like the other members of the team, or a subordinant- more, an apprentice, or co-head in the team.
He was also a neurologist, and was stuck picking up House's peices when he forced his stubborness on the others and still over worked his brain after what should have been a traumatising blow of a coma.
"I'm not even gonna try to talk your daranged mind out of this." Foreman said in exasperation.
"Good." House said, and was about to sit up when he remembered something missing, noticed as soon as his foot hit the ground. "Cane..." He said roughly.
"You don't have one."
House gave him a look that had a post it note stuck over it, clear for Foreman to interpret. Why the hell not?
Foreman shrugged mockingly, stopping House when he tried to stand up and hold his leg out on his own. "Your getting a wheelchair." He decided.
"No.."
"Your not hearing properly, your speech is impaired and you can't walk... Yeah, you'd do just fine." Foreman snarked.
With the morphine that still ran in his system, House put away his pain meds for his leg he'd reached for in instinct when he realised he didn't need them, but gave in. "I'll wheel myself."
Foreman gave him a funny look, surprised that he gave in, but nevertheless pleased when House was sliding across the hospital's lino in his wheelchair a while later, heading to the conference room.
The first thing he noticed was 13's labcoat was still hung up, looking like it hadn't been touched, and she was absent from the room- a fact the group in general failed to notice as the team sat bunched around the table, Kutner slowly wiping away Amber's symptoms off the board with a sympathetic look no one could see.
House was surprised when Kutner handed him a coffee, sitting down on Taub's left. House took a moment to take it, and he looked... strange looking, and unlike him as if he was about to, or had been, crying before hooking the cup in his hands.
Taub wasn't as accomadating, but to House the file he passed on was just as needed as the coffee. He opened it up and checked over the symptoms, reading while the others talked it over and the symptoms went up.
Kutner's hand wrote a multitude of symptoms on the board... inexplicable fatigue, lack of energy, weight loss, arthralia, dry eyes, blurry vision, shortness of breath, cough and skin legions, rash, jaundice.
Instantly House could tell that he wasn't the one who'd come to work too soon, since the differential kept being cut by solemn breaks in ideas. What the hell would reminders do? Distractions was what House took cases for.
"Rash could mean infection..." Kutner cut in.
"He's jaundice, it could mean Hep C."
Kutner looked to House, expecting some inexplicable epipthany in the differential, that never came. Do I have to do all the work around here? He thought.
"Could be kidney damage from any kind of infection... we should narrow it down get a blood test."
House rubbed his stubble thoughtfully through the holeless gloves he wore with his vintage top in the wheelchair, seeing if Foreman would be his salvation from the idiots.
"Your thinking Hep C, thats blood bourne... Kutners thinking some other affection damaging the guys kidneys." Foreman summarised, and House was once again cast too for back up, which he got- because he was salvation.
"And Foreman, your thinking disorder."
The tail of Kutner's lab coat flaired out, turning to him in surprise.
"Immune disorder... Sar.." House stopped himself, actually having to take a breath before he kept going. "Sarcodosis."
"It's a good fit." Kutner agreed.
House nodded, and Foreman decided to speak for him. Being a neurologist he'd noticed the temporarily striking impediment in House's speech and knew it'd happen again. "Go get Kutners blood samples.. If he has Hep and we don't treat it fast enough, he'll go into full on hemopsystis."
The team moved out... Leaving Foreman alone with House again.
"You going to Amber's funeral?" He asked.
"Why.. must everyone question me?" House shot back.
"Your traumatised."
House agreed he had been shocked into letting another hand near him through the guilt, being one of the reasons he had lay almost lifeless, but he wasn't traumatised... "No i'm not."
Foreman walked over to him, his gesture pleading with his boss. "I want you to get checked out... clear your head."
"Get out of my head don't clear it, i'm fine- my speech will be." House insisted.
Foreman rolled his eyes, knowing how his boss was as he left the room, he shoved past the door and sign to the cafeteria, pulling out a chair next to his former co-worker Cameron and placing some bagels on the table. They'd kept a routine the three older ducklings had had when they were still under House's wing... except Chase wasn't there.
"How's House?" Cameron asked instinctively.
Funny how her mind jumped to him.
"He's fine... usual except for the fact that he's nothing like himself in differentials... Passing things over, no ideas..."
"Shouldn't be there at all." Cameron retorted, raising the arm and sleeve of her purple scrubs to butter her bagel busily.
"I dunno if its mourning or his mind, but he's different."
"He'll jump back into too fast... House is House." Cameron said, holding out a buttered bagel and offering it to him. "Bagel?"
Well after Foreman and Cameron parted Cuddy found House still staring at the whiteboard, reaching out and thumping it with his fists multiple times in silence. She waited in that silence, wearing a plain, simple and average length black dress under a cardigan for the funeral and standing at his office doorway. When the sound of his fists lay mute, she took it as her cue. "We should go."
"I don't want too..." House said.
"You should, he needs you there."
House shook his head as she sat on his desk behind him, proppped up by her two hands behind her, but he didn't turn. "I can't go, because he'll hit me, he should hit me."
Cuddy made a scoffing noise, taken as disagreement not belittling on House's part. "Why? For an accident? You don't blame a friend for an accident."
"Then he's an idiot." House said, looking up with his own tear falling.
"I know your an a$$, but you should be there for her."
House almost smashed his fist through the whiteboard, turning to her again. "Right, I wanted her to die, planned it out, to a T."
Lisa scoffed, almost chuckling. "Right House, back away. Thats good for the mourning." She said, standing up again. "Was she a friend? Respected?"
"You ever hear of love hate?" House interrupted- almost in her face.
In answer Cuddy put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow, which House noticed with a weary smirk. "Nice."
"I don't wanna go... If I go... It means couldn't save her."
Cuddy brushed her hair out of her eyes again, getting fully in his face in retaliation. "You gave them time to say goodbye, its your time to say goodbye."
"Gotta go." House deflected, stepping forward and stopping suddenly in his tracks, a frown on his face. Cuddy noticed and hurried forward, expecting him to grip his leg, but it was his head he clutched.
She almost pulled on his arm to get him back down on his wheelchair. "Don't hold me butterfingers." He snarked, settling down into the leather anyway.
"I'm raising your morphine, your heads still in pain" She said concernedly, purposefully walking past his wheelchair. Like House would let me wheel him. She thought.
"No it isn't, and no you aint."
She made it to the door, turning back as his wheelchair stayed in place. "You coming?"
"Can't Cuddy..." He whispered.
Cuddy rolled her eyes God she thought. "Say goodbye... Mourn... Or i'm wheeling you."
She held the door open and House pushed hard on the wheels of the wheelchair, brushing past her and heading out of the hospital at her side.
The service was open casket, and because Wilson's family was practically and in cases of siblings- literally non-existant, the only family figure was Cuddy, a sister he was leaning on throughout the service as she comfortingly pat his shoulder.
Cameron on the other hand had someone to search out as she walked down the rows, wearing a feminine black suit with her blonde hair down from its normal bun. She sought out House, who wore his usual vintage tee, his compromise being a black suit shirt. "Hey." She said, sitting down next to him.
House didn't answer her or acknowledge her except for a glance over, looking forward to the casket again. "Why aren't you with Wilson?"
"He's already got a shoulder to lean on, you?" House snarked.
"Don't be a baby."
As the service went on, House kept sweeping glances at the reactions of the people around him, his own restraining. Lisa looked like she was taking herself out to comfort Wilson instead of showing much of her own emotions, his team were simply solemn, and odd tear falling... and Cameron, she had cried a fair share- Dr. Chase standing to the side of vast gardens near grave stones watching House and his fiancee Cameron in well deserved suspicion.
It was either because of her annoying neediness to symthasise, or the fact that she'd lost a loved one too. Because she'd been Amber's 'allie'... Ammusing to House since she was probably the least cunniving person he'd ever met... not exactly a good thing to the diabolical part of his mind.
When the funeral survice ended, House suddenly (albeit stubborning) stood up, physically holding his leg to walk to the casket.
Cuddy almost stood up again to stand by him and hold him up again, but when she felt Wilson bury his face in her raven hair again, she stayed seated.
As other's passed him, House leaned over and put two hands on the casket... "I hate to say... I'm sorry." He said with finality. He walked back over to Cuddy and Wilson and Wilson gave him an almost pleading look, earning a nod from his friend as decided to sit next to Cuddy again, on her left.
She squeezed his hand once, and he squeezed back rather awkwardly, unsure as he took his seat, meeting her eyes before looking forward again.. waiting... breathing... waiting and breathing for the end. He put foot to ground and limped heavily to his wheelchair, oddly shifting himself into the car and heading to his office at the hospital.
Thirty minutes after the service, Wilson came to find him in the room, creepily enough wearing the same thing he'd worn at the morgue the day he went to pick up her clothes. House looked up and stopped twirling his tennis ball, a question in his eyes as Wilson took a seat.
It was probably one of the only times House would ever be the one to 'end' the silence, and it was too ask a question that was even more odd of him. "How you doing?"
"As well as can be expected." He answered, slightly surprised.
House gave a forced smile. "Wheres your family?"
"Mum and Dad died... My brother..." Wilson began with a teary chuckle... "He's unaccounted for."
House ran the ball along his desk for a few minutes, neither talking until he reached an unexplained compromise. "Wanna go on a trip?"
Wilson looked up adruptly at that, catching the tissue House threw at him when he saw them. Looking at him in extreme surprise That's.... unexpected. "Where... Too?" He asked suspiciously, beginning anew with House's greatest grief tactic... running away, always running, from pain.
Jimmy Eat World,
Hear You, Me
Hope you like it :-) please read and review when you can
PS- sorry, suck at differential diagnosis scenes :P and when i'm on a roll.. it comes late at night, so sorry if theres mistakes thanks for not having a read through. And thanks for reading guys :-)
What would you think of me now?
So lucky, So strong, So proud,
Never said thank you for that,
Now i'll never have a chance,
Let angels... lead you in...
------------------------------------
Being one of thirty people to fly into scraps of metal and exploding bus wasn't her death sentence, when she'd gently tapped out one pill and downed the Amantadene, it was poison the moment she experienced that shock.
Her kidneys were killed as her body was flung, and the drug spread through her system because without her kidneys, her body couldn't filter it. It stuck to her proteins like glue- so that dialysis couldn't filter it out of her blood without killing her proteins to live, there was nothing they could do.
He called her name, and she turned to him in her seat, so the back of her head was facing the window when a truck rolled past. It smashed into the window, the impact behind her head propelling her off her seat and staining her blonde hair with a wound. Grasping anything she could, she was thrown wildly around till she hit the entrance steps, her hand bag flying. House had held onto his bar tightly, his cane pulled out of his grip when he lost his touch. The rolling bus thrust him into it's side, effective pinning him there away from Amber. He reached out for her hand, both of them trying to see the other but their eyes forced shut as he tried to stop himself being rolled with the bus. Her face looked like it was lost in wind, but it was glass whipping past her. She tried to keep her eyes open as her face was whipped around, to see House, trying to grasp his hand- and touching breifly- unable to keep contact as the bus came to a crashing stop.
When he opened his eyes, Amber was shaking from shock, lying in the debri and making short gasping breaths when she saw the pole she had been grasping had gone right through her leg. House blinked, things barely becoming clearer, crawling over to her as she watched helplessly, 'I'm cold.'
He remembered it as if he was still on his seat on the bus, watching helpless for a sign in Amber while it just rolled on. In reality, Chase, the surgeon sending the electric pulses, and a frantic Wilson watched on as House's face scrunched up in mortified fear, his eyes wide when Amber sneezed and reached for a small pill bottle in her pocket. House remembered answering her request for a tissue jokingly- holding up an arm. 'I've got a sleeve, two actually.'
But when the electricity to his brain started to kill his speech and his face stayed wrought by fear, Wilson had to ask. 'What's wrong?'
He didn't answer, just watched in his mind's eye as Amber popped the lid of a pill bottle open slowly, and House saw what it was on the small label, speaking more to himself than to the other doctors in the room helplessly. 'Don't do it.' But she did, she downed a flu pill, her sneeze gone as she calmly looked out the window, blissfully oblivious to the finality of the action.
He'd been drinking when he called her to pick him up from a bar, clinking glasses, babble of the crowd and background music he couldn't even get his head around in the background. His voice was slurred and his eyes were rolling almost their own accord when he saw Amber walk through the door instead of finding Wilson like he'd asked. She was there to valiantly suffer the indignity of being seen at House's side on her boyfriend's behalf.
House knew how bitter he'd been, refusing the hand she used to drape his arms over her shoulder in support, out of pure stubborness. She helped him stumble till he was near the door, looking as if it was a twisted dance they had together until he managed to pull away. He'd been an idiot to refuse her drive home, sneaking out the door with his hand slapping against the burgendy wall of the bar on his unsteady way out.
Amber made to follow him, but the bartender called back to one of the pair to pay for House's drinks. House didn't turn around, but she turned back and hurried forward, fumbling with her handbag to pay for it herself as she saw him sneaking out.
She found his cane left by his stool, a cunning smile turning up the dimples of her mouth as she hooked her hand around the handle, juggling it between her hands as she hurried out to catch him up.
He was annoyed when he saw her standing over him in the bus he caught, holding out his cane with a triumphant look so he'd take it. She grasped the bar of a seat and twirled smoothly into it, sitting down in an isle seat across from him.
House was almost happy when she told him she wasn't doing it for him, she was doing it Wilson- it was impressive, because it was like him- she WAS him, in a skirt. Being who he was, he told her that was impressive, a smug and admiring smirk written all over his face when she couldn't see.