Phoenix
Summary: what if: what if Tritter had won and House did go to jail?
AN: For the sake of all the medical terms I'm usually writing Housefic in German. This is a translation (yeah, translating my own sh, that's how far you can get) of a fiction written for the DRHouseforum in Germany.
As translating is more of a pain than writing, I will continue this only if I do get reviews.
--hr
Las Vegas. Fastest growing city of the US. Endless masses of illegal immigrants, soldiers of fortune, criminals, fucked-up lives. City of Nightowls and cutthroats. There is always enough clientele, more than enough people in need of a doctor who would not ask too many questions, who would accept money or any other means of payment, who was cheap.
Ten pm in a hole-in-the-wall basement room only very few would call aparment: a bleeding man is laying on a dented, worn stainless-steel section-table, groaning in pain. A pair of surgical pliers disappears in a new orifice created by a bullet. It probed, searched, then opened. A latex-covered hand closed it again and pulled out with strength. Skin and flesh bulged outwards, the man on the table groaned louder. Then the bullet was out, followed by a gush of blood.
Pliers and bullet flew into the nearby sink. Trembling hands took a needle and stitched up the wound. The patient screamed, his nerves were on the brink of snapping.
„Shut up!" a gravelled voice snapped at him.
When it was done, the man who had once been a doctor gave his patients a few directions as to how to behave in the next days. It was a regular who did not need to hear the same instructions over and over. He knew what was expected as means of payment. A small bag appeared between his fingers.
Sky-blue eyes stared with unabashed greed and mistrust „Last time the shit was so cut-down, a shot of sugar might have had the same effect!"
„This is great stuff!"
„You corss me, next time I'm gonna kill you. Got it?"
„Must have been a mistake, man. Must have grabbed the wron bag, buddy."
„Another three-hundred, then."
„Are you mad?"
„Next time, you pay in advance. Now fuck off!"
Finally drugs and money changed hands.
The doctor limped to his desk where he deposited both in a metal box. Cleansing had to come first: Wiping away blood, sterilising his tools – a pity to use the alcohol on that, really! Rearraning everything in ist proper place – sometimes things here were a question of seconds. Lust like in the old times.
/old times…/ how long had it been now? Five years? Yep, two in jail and then this… It still seemed amazing that he had survived jail at all. After a broken zygomaticum and being roughed-up and raped the fourth time attacks had stopped out of the blue. Somebody had been protecting him, or so it had seemed. Somebody who'd had the right connections, who'd known the right people. Maybe the Mob's Lawyer? The guy with the brother who'd NOT had Hep E?
House had declined all visitors, had never opened any of those letters, had even turned-down the offer of parole because he would have spent that time out in the open close to all he never wanted to see any more. He did not want their pityful looks, their jugment, their disgust.
And so House had simply disappeared…
