AN: So. I don't know how regularly I'm going to work on this. But I kinda figured I might try rewriting the story because I'm now a much older, much BETTER writer than I was when I wrote "Stumble" originally.
If I finish this rewrite, it will stick closely to the original plot line but will not be identical. This is an alternate ending to Season 6; I thought it would be interesting to write it in that context, since the story focuses on the House-Wilson relationship, and if S6 had ended this way, it would leave things open to a lot of significant development in their relationship.
Anyway. No slash intended. Be prepared for male-male romantic friendship. I'll try to keep them in character as much as possible, within those parameters.
Again, no telling when or how often I'll update.
Stumble (Remix)
by Marie S. Crosswell
Chapter 1
In between the hospital and his apartment, House makes only one decision. He does not consider the long-term consequences of his choice; he thinks only of immediate relief, a classic drug addict thought process. For all the months he spent in that asylum, for all the therapy sessions with Nolan, the moment he passes through the hospital doors, he is exactly the same House he had been for all those years before losing his mind. He speeds on his motorbike, and the scarred muscles in his bad thigh throb hot. He blows through a red light on purpose and he turns corners too fast.
It isn't that he failed his patient. It's that he did everything right—everything—and still lost.
He tried to believe that his life could be different, that if he changed, the Universe would drop happiness in his lap. He got better because he thought the logical chain of events would lead to a reward.
He was wrong. Fuck him, he was wrong.
When he lets himself into his apartment, he leaves all the lights off in the living room and the hallway, throws down his backpack on the floor and limps down the hallway past his bedroom. Everything around him looks hazy, except for the bathroom when he flips the light switch and floods the room with white. The mirror above the sink stands out in his vision so clearly, his own face sharp in the glass, and he smashes it hard, harder than necessary because beneath all that pain is a rage good enough for a thousand windows.
His emergency Vicodin containers wait where he left them a year ago, before he admitted himself to Mayfield. Even then, with his career on the line, with the question of his sanity hanging in the balance, he wanted to leave the door open just in case. In case he lost everything else.
He sits on the floor with his back against the tub, hands shaking, skin hot and cold with sweat. He still smells like the dust at the accident site. His eyes are red with it, red with tears now too. He pops the cap off one bottle, shakes some pills into his palm and looks at them. First, he thinks of taking two, just enough for the pain in his leg.
The longer he looks at the small pile in his hand, the more he knows two won't be enough. All the Vicodin in the world won't be enough.
In this moment, he is flooded with self-loathing, swallows back disgust. Hannah's dead, and here he is again, feeling sorry for himself, going back to the drugs just like everyone used to tell him he would. He closes his hand around the pills, makes a fist, elbow on his knee and forehead resting against that fist. He shuts his eyes and tries to breathe as he feels his lungs shudder.
He cut off her leg for nothing. All that pain—for nothing. He can still hear the loud roar of the buzz saw, Hannah's scream echoing in the empty spaces of the rubble. She could have died with less suffering than that; she could have died with her leg still attached.
He sees her dark doe eyes in the ambulance, as he looked at her and realized there was nothing he could do.
He opens his fist and looks at the pills again, now sweaty in his hand. Never enough. Never, ever enough.
He pops the pills one by one into his mouth; he hasn't lost his ability to dry-swallow even after all this time. He sets the containers on the floor and turns himself over onto his knees, pushes himself up using the tub for support. He goes into his kitchen for a bottle of whiskey hiding on the top shelf in one of the cabinets and brings it back to the bathroom with him, all the while clenching his throat tight around a sob he refuses to let out.
Back on the floor, in the white light of his bathroom, he does the one thing he never thought he'd do. He lines his stomach with Pepto-Bismol and empties both bottles of Vicodin, floods his bloodstream with Jack Daniels. He cries, as he does it. He cries through all forty-seven pills, and once they're gone, he sips on the whiskey and waits for all sensation in his body to fade.
He turns his head for no reason at all, drowsy with the drugs and booze already, and a big chunk of the smashed mirror catches his eye. He reaches out for it, takes it clumsily in his right hand and holds it for a while, the whiskey bottle gripped in his left hand.
He feels that cool piece of glass against his skin for a long time. Meanwhile, he drinks more.
When he's had enough of the alcohol, he sets the bottle down on the floor and pulls up the sleeve of his jacket. He sets the sharpest edge of the glass against his wrist and blinks down at it, vision unclear.
The blood comes painlessly, clings to the glass even as he drops it again.
As he slips into unconsciousness, Cuddy's words float into his head: What do you have, House? Nothing.
Nothing.
After Foreman found him and told him about House and the dead woman, Wilson called House's cell phone five times in between the ER patients he attended. The first two calls, the phone rang until going to voicemail; the last three, the phone was shut off and never rang. As an hour passed, then thirty more minutes, Wilson felt the weight in his belly grow heavier. But he had to help as many of the Trenton victims as he could. Only when Cuddy appeared and told him to go home—a weary, meaningful look in her eyes—did Wilson finally throw away his surgical gloves.
He calls a sixth time in the car. He leaves a voicemail he doesn't expect House to answer, thinks for a minute, then calls House's apartment phone. The machine answers, and Wilson doesn't leave a message. He drives to the light where he could turn right toward his condo and Sam or left to House's place. He waits for the light to turn green, hesitates, then turns.
He's been friends with the man too many years to ignore this feeling, one he's felt more times than he should have. Something's wrong with his best friend.
Wilson still has a key to House's apartment; he would laugh if he weren't so worried. He lets himself in and calls out House's name but doesn't receive an answer. House's bike sits outside next to the stoop, so he must be home.
Wilson turns his head toward the shaft of light at the end of the hall, coming from the bathroom—and sees House's legs framed in the open doorway, body on the floor. Wilson lunges toward him, kneels in what little floor space he has, shakes House's by the shoulder and yells at him to wake up. He sees the empty containers of Vicodin and the whiskey bottle with only a little bit of alcohol left in it, sees no sign of vomit, catches sight of the pink Pepto-Bismol bottle on the other side of House's body, feels a warm wetness in his knees and looks down to see darkening blood all over the floor….. He fumbles for his cell phone without even processing what it all means.
Wilson demands an ambulance, hangs up on the operator without waiting for a full response, then shrugs out of his suit jacket and presses it against the wound in House's wrist. He tries to think of what else he might do, but he doesn't have any medical equipment on him. He looks for House's pulse in the right wrist and doesn't find one, presses his ear against House's chest and listens for a long time….
A faint, slow beat.
"You stupid bastard," he says, clenching his suit jacket around House's wound. Wilson leans his head into House's chest, realizes his whole body's trembling. A tear slips out of each eye, and he can't remember the last time he cried, except for when he lost Amber. "You stupid, stupid bastard."
Everything is quiet in the apartment, except for Wilson sniffling. He can smell the leather scent of House's jacket. He waits for the sound of the sirens. He says the kinds of things to House that you only say to someone when you know they can't hear you.
Wilson is the only person waiting outside House's room, in the lone fluorescent light of the hallway, the rest of which is cast in darkness. He told the head nurse on night shift not to call Cuddy or House's team; they should sleep after the day they've had. He paces with his arms crossed, sometimes hands on his hips, sometimes one hand rubbing the back of his neck. He drinks the bad, watery hospital coffee. He listens to the distant rustlings of other patients in their rooms, nurses roaming the corridors.
He rode with House in the back of the ambulance, and if the EMT noticed Wilson's hand holding House's, he didn't say anything about it.
It isn't the first time Wilson has faced House's death, and he hopes to God it isn't the last. But this is different—this was intentional. He never thought…. He never thought he would have to feel these feelings. It isn't just the terror and desperation. This time, there is the unique sting of betrayal. Nausea. A new flavor of pain that was never there before, all those other times Wilson might have lost him.
He remembers the day, not so long ago, when he asked House to be with him during the liver transplant surgery for Tucker. Those blue eyes, so earnest in a way House rarely is, and his words—so simple and true.
If you die, I'm alone.
Wilson bows his head, thumb and forefinger against his brow, tears burning like sea water. Sam's called him twice already, but he hasn't picked up the phone or called her back. Like so much of his adult life, Wilson can only see House, only thinks of House.
Now, of life without House.
"Don't do this," he whispers. "Don't do this to me."
Wilson shuts his eyes and sees House standing above him, on the other side of the glass, disappearing in the light of Wilson's unconsciousness.