Two Hours

A/N: Set during 6X10, "Wilson". Massive spoilers! What made House change his mind and attend Wilson's operation?

Many thanks to my beta Brighid45 for editing, commenting and encouraging the writing process!

He had two hours. Two hours in which to figure out where he'd gone wrong. Two hours to reconsider his diagnosis of the patient, two hours to rectify the treatment he'd prescribed, two hours to save the patient from certain death.

Normally, time limits weren't an influence other than to give him the adrenaline kick he needed to focus utterly on the problem at hand. Normally he'd be tossing ideas back and forth with his team or he'd be examining the notes on the whiteboard or he'd be playing with one of his toys, his mind turned inward, mulling over the evidence he had in order to make the vital connection that would lead to the right diagnosis, hopefully saving the patient .... Only, this wasn't 'normally'. His team wasn't there, there were no symptoms, much less diagnoses to list, and there were no facts, medical or otherwise, to sift. Because his patient wasn't a person. This case was a relationship: his friendship to Wilson. And this relationship was dying; it would draw its last breath on an operation table in PPTH within two hours, if he, House, didn't figure out soon what ailed it and how to fix it.

Could such a relationship be diagnosed? Were there facts to be written up in a patient history, symptoms that could be listed on a whiteboard? Were there tests to be performed with results that could be interpreted? Metaphorically speaking (and he was a master of metaphors, wasn't he?) all this could be done, and he knew he could do it. He'd done it before with other relationships, manipulating the people who surrounded him at his whim and pleasure.

If he were honest with himself, he'd admit that he'd already tested the strength of Wilson's commitment to their relationship. His dislike of the result didn't nullify the test: he had tried to dissuade Wilson from donating a lobe of his liver to his friend Tucker (aka the self-important jerk), and the result had been negative. 'Friendship to House not strong enough to cause deviation from chosen course despite logical argumentation and emotional blackmail.' Perhaps their friendship wasn't worth saving. But as he had pointed out to Wilson, it was all he had.

Wilson wanted him to watch as he died. How could someone, supposedly a best friend, ask this of him? The man was donating a part of his liver to an idiot who not only knew what he was asking, but who was also selfish enough not to care. Tucker wanted Wilson to risk his life so that his own might be extended for ... how long? One year? Two? Maybe five? Even if he lived to a ripe old age, did he have the right to demand this sacrifice of someone who had enabled him to live so long in the first place? Okay, so Wilson had fried the guy's liver. It happened. That's what doctors did to their patients; they saved many and killed a few. If all physicians were obliged to donate random organs to patients they had misdiagnosed or mistreated, no one would enter the profession, much less agree to take on critically ill patients. It just went to show that one should never get emotionally involved with one's cases or consider them one's friends. That was Wilson's problem: he always got involved, causing his better judgment to go overboard.

And now Wilson wanted him, House, to look on while he died on an operation table, died for an ass who didn't give a damn about him, who didn't care for him the way House did. Well, he wouldn't do it! He wouldn't watch while Wilson's heart went into arrest, while monitors started beeping and panic ensued in the operation theatre, while the surgeon got the paddles and shouted, "Clear!", while electric shock upon shock was administered until someone said in a hushed, frozen voice, "Time of death: 4:12 pm." If Wilson refused to live for his sake, then he wouldn't watch Wilson die.

At this point in his deliberations he could practically hear Dr. Nolan say, 'You can't change your situation by changing other people. You can only change yourself. Now, how could you, Greg House, change the situation?'

I tried, he thought. I tried my damned best.

And he had, the moment he'd seen where this was going very early on in the proceedings. His first moves had admittedly been classic 'House' - trying to turn the diagnosis into a game, trying to move Wilson by sheer dint of logic - but then, at that stage the situation hadn't been desperate as yet. He'd pointed out that doubling the chemo dosage was not a medically sound move. It wasn't that Wilson hadn't known: he was an oncologist, after all, and well aware what he was risking. He should have been forewarned by Wilson's willingness to take that chance: it was a clear harbinger of Wilson's emotional involvement that he'd let his need to cure his friend overrule his medical judgment. Wilson was no House; he didn't normally gamble whatever was left of his patients' lives by going for spectacularly perilous procedures, therefore he had no mechanisms for dealing with the inevitable fallout. Admittedly House hadn't helped matters. Had he been less forthright and more, well, supportive when Wilson realized that his treatment had backfired, perhaps he would not have been quite so ready to yield to his so-called friend's persuasions.

He'd honestly tried to help Wilson after that, to do for Wilson's patient what he'd do for his own, although it had taken some exertion to get himself to bother. He felt a sense of obligation to get his own cases out of the hospital through the front door, preferably on their own two feet, and not out the back door in a wooden casket, but that was an obligation he owed more to himself than to anyone else. If he took on a case he gave his best, not because it benefitted the patient – although that was a side-effect he didn't object to – but because of the satisfaction it gave him to do what no other could: to solve the puzzle, thus saving a life. And yes, he lied and coerced his way to donor organs when necessary, but that wasn't because he felt any strong empathy towards the recipients. He felt a sense of responsibility for whomsoever he was treating and a healthy disregard for the normal bureaucratic workings of the hospital, so if it took lies and manipulation to get him the donor organs he needed, then those were his methods of choice. If other doctors chose not to avail themselves of the same methods because of moral scruples, well, too bad for them and worse for their patients. Death knew no moral scruples, so why should he?

Finding donor organs for Wilson's patient, however, was an entirely different cup of tea. He, House, hadn't fried that liver; there was no medical mystery to solve and hence no incentive for him to swing into action. Had Wilson been one of his team, he'd have told him, 'You made a mistake - now live with the consequences!' But Wilson wasn't a fellow, he was a friend, so House had gone out of his way for him. Contrary to his custom, his deep-rooted habits and his own convictions, he'd exerted himself out of sheer altruism – he'd wanted to help Wilson assuage his conscience. He'd found a donor liver. So what if it hadn't worked out in the end and the damn organ had deteriorated too fast to be of use? Surely his good intentions counted - Wilson must have seen those!

But clearly it hadn't been enough, and Wilson had opted to risk his life for that self-important moron instead of preserving it for him, his 'bestest' friend.

There was still one road he could go down to stop this madness. It galled him to have to do it, but he didn't have a choice. He limped to the elevator and pressed the button to the first floor. It took all the impetus of his indignation at Wilson's betrayal to propel him into Cuddy's office and up to her desk.

"You have to stop him!"

Cuddy knew at once what he was talking about. "I can't."

"You're dean of medicine. Of course you can!"

"House, Wilson is choosing to donate a portion of his liver as a friend of Tucker's, not as his attending. I may not like what he's doing, but I have no right to stop him as a private donor from doing what he considers right."

"Tucker isn't a friend. He's a jerk who drops in once a year to waste Wilson's time. It's your job as dean of medicine to stop your employees from committing suicide at a patient's whim."

"You consented to deep brain stimulation at the whim of a patient's family and nearly killed yourself in the process."

"That was different," he muttered. "That was for Wilson ..."

"It isn't my call to judge whether Don Tucker, or anyone else for that matter, is worthy of Wilson's friendship or not." She leaned back, mustering him. "It's Wilson's friend's job to make him reconsider whether this sacrifice is called for or not. Have you talked to him?"

"Yes. He wouldn't listen."

"When I say 'talked', I mean 'talked'. Not 'doused in sarcasm' or 'jerked around verbally'."

He got up and limped out so that she wouldn't see the hurt and disappointment in his eyes. What did she know? He had talked; he'd conquered his own demons and bared his soul to Wilson:

"Because if you die, I'm alone."

He'd read that every act of communication had subtexts that revealed something about the sender's emotional status, about the relationship between sender and receiver of the communication and about the sender's appeal to the receiver. That one would have been an easy one to analyse, especially for hobby psychologist Wilson, had he chosen to do so.

There was the factual content: You are my only friend. If you are gone, I'll have no one left.
His own emotional status: I'm scared shitty that you might die.
The connotations on their relationship: You are the most important person in my little universe.
And finally, his appeal to Wilson: Please, please don't leave me! Don't bloody die now!

He had presented his feelings and his fears to Wilson on a silver platter, but Wilson, after a short glance, had rejected his offering. Was that how Cain had felt when God refused his sacrifice? Wilson had sized him up, had found him wanting and had rejected him in favour of someone else. Wilson had betrayed their friendship.

He'd had a multitude of sessions with Nolan on his relationships and his sense of betrayal. Nolan had said that when he felt someone wasn't living up to his expectations within a relationship he punished them, much as his father had punished him. He had denied that aggressively.

"I don't ever get physical!"

"No, you don't. But you push the other person away. You pushed your father away by telling him he wasn't your father and you pushed Stacy away by withdrawing from her completely. You were punishing them."

"Are you trying to say that's as bad as taking it out on them physically?" he'd asked incredulously. He'd sworn never to be like his father, abusing people who were weaker than him. Was that what Nolan was insinuating, that he was as much of an abuser as his father?

"I'm not judging your behaviour. I'm trying to make you see its effects on yourself. You punished people by withdrawing from them, but did that make you happy?"

"It usually wasn't a situation that made for 'happy' either way."

"You're evading my question. But you've made a good point. There was a 'situation' in your relationships that needed addressing. You didn't address the situation – you contented yourself with dealing with the person, instead of resolving the underlying conflict. It's a lot easier, just withdrawing from the conflict and abandoning the relationship. Working out major issues, especially such complex ones as you had with your father, is hard, hard work. But if it saves even one meaningful relationship in your life, it might well be worth the effort." He didn't need to add that given the dearth of relationships in House's life, he would do well to preserve the few he had.

He was doing it again, he supposed. He was feeling rejected, so he had resorted to punishment. Wilson had asked him to be present at the operation and he had refused, effectively pushing his friend away. But whom was he really punishing? If Wilson died, he'd be castigating himself for the rest of his life for not being there, for parting from him in bad blood, for not saying farewell. And if Wilson lived, he probably wouldn't want to have anything to do with House anymore. Either way, he lost. Nolan was right – this was idiotic.

Wilson was right to have been angry with him. He'd mocked the man's concern for his friend's well-being. Wilson had lost it then, but he hadn't really meant it when he demanded that House move out. Asking him to be present at the operation was Wilson's way of saying, 'I didn't mean it. You're still my friend.' And he, House, had messed it up once again, because he'd made it all about himself. But Wilson had been sending messages too, not just House. His request for House to be present had its subtexts, too.

Factual information: I'd like you to watch from the operation gallery.
Wilson's emotional status: I'm scared I might die.
Relationship to House: You are the most important person in my life, the one I want with me when I die.
Appeal: Be there for me!

What had he answered, idiot that he was! One word, just one word would have changed the meaning of everything.

House looked at his watch. Wilson's two hours – no, his two hours were practically over. The diagnosis was clear in his mind: pride, obstinacy, petty vengeance. The treatment? He stood up, steadying himself slightly with one hand on his desk, then he hobbled towards the door. If he hurried, he might just make it.

A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work today in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? [King James Version, Matthew 21, 28 – 31]