A/N- I love Death Cab for Cutie, but they're not exactly happy clappy fun time music. They're more, wallow in angst and misery music. Which is exactly what this is...inspired by the song What Sarah Said. Yeah, I love Huddy. I love Hilson too, but Huddy is just great for the angstfest, because of the whole "Will they/won't they/weren't they?" angle. Hilson is damn near canon (look no further than Birthmarks. I loved that episode, but goddamn, you had to be trying to NOT see it as totally gay.)
He hates the ICU. It's a reminder of his own mortality, thanks to the week he has spent in it, himself having died, if only for a few seconds each time. It's plans made, in whispered silences, for when they get out of there. For when she'll get out of there, as though making a plans for when she gets out will somehow force her to heal. As though just having something to look forward to will suddenly make things better. Plans to go somewhere-somewhere far far away from here. From the bitter cold of New Jersey in January. As though the idea of him playing nice to whoever stepped into her shoes for a week so that she could get away would somehow stop the infection ravaging her body. As though it would stop the way that the bacteria were slowly claiming each and every organ for themselves, taking them away from her.
He supposes there's a bit of irony here. A doctor-a practitioner of stringent cleansing to avoid bacteria, has succumbed to one of the most common bacteria on the planet, Staphylococcus Aureus. Something present all around the world. But doctors make the worst patients, and she had categorically ignored all the symptoms, thinking it was nothing. It was just a low-grade fever, she had grants and reports to finish. It was just a sunburn-the snow reflected sun after all, of course her arms had gotten burnt. She'd always burnt easily, after all.
It wasn't until he found doubled over, head in her own trash can that she accepted that yes, she was sick, but it was nothing. She'd go home and lay down, and finish up her paperwork there. He was the one that forced her to at least see what it was, so that it could be treated. Using the premise that the sooner she was better, the sooner she'd be back at work.
He hadn't wanted to believe the bloodwork that had come back. There was no way to go from asymptomatic to so sick without anyone noticing it. And he wanted to hate her for it, because she should have noticed it, she should have done something sooner. He wanted to hate himself for not noticing, for missing all the signs and symptoms. He hadn't wanted to believe that the blood pressure was really that low, or that the white blood cell count was showing an immune system that had all but given up, and had resorted to playing a flat back six and a sweeper, trying to hold on valiantly against an onslaught.
Even then she claimed that the test was lying, that she was fine, even as he was threatening to restrain her as he shoved her into an unused room, ordering a drip of Vancomycin. The bag was still hanging above her, still dripping weakly into her arm, but it wasn't doing all that much. He refuses to show emotion though, and just takes it as it comes. He shouldn't be caring, he didn't care about her, he reminded himself over and over and over again, but it didn't work. It never did. She'd been here for the past three days, never getting any better, despite every antibiotic they had being forced in her. He didn't know how anything could survive in the bloodstream, but the damage had already been done.
She smiles sleepily, as though trying to reassure him. He's been here for the past three days, always trying to figure out something, some new idea that would suddenly get her up on her feet again. His hand reaches instinctively for the jacket pocket, but he pauses. He's already lost track of how many of the little white pills have gone down his throat today. Today brought on the next organ of choice for the bacteria, with the addition of hepatic failure adding to the list following the spleen and pulmonary system. She's still breathing on her own, but it won't be much longer before they'll be forced to intubate. And he can't bring himself to ask if that's what she wants. Because it's forcing him to accept that there's nothing he can do.
Instead he simply stares at his shoes. The smell of the ICU-so different from the smell of the rest of the hospital-lingers in his nostrils. Of nurses being stretched too thin to permanently erase the scent of bodily fluids, but instead covering up the scent of amines eating their way through flesh. Putrescine and cadaverine, and all the other smells of death and decay that are all over the ward, covered thinly by the scent of lemony fresh 409.
Each faint blip was telling him things he didn't want to know, as they were beeping with an unsteady rhythm. Even with a cocktail of different medications to try and keep blood pressure up, it was a sissyphean task. He was past the denial now at least least, and had long since moved into the anger-hating himself for not noticing what should have been so damn noticeable.
Or hell, even the bargaining. Wasn't that all that the plans were? Barganing with something, anything, to get her out of here. Because he wouldn't admit that he needed her. He'd never admit it, because he refused to allow himself to feel it. Allowing himself to feel that he needed someone betrayed the idea of just who he was. It betrayed the idea that he was heartless, cold, and evil. It meant that he actually cared about someone beyond himself. And he didn't care. No, he most categorically didn't care. He was doing this out of selfishness. Wilson didn't fight back-he needed someone that he could vocally abuse who'd fight back.
Or at least stand her ground. He needed someone who would always respond in kind. He took a sledgehammer to her toilet, he woke up to find all the furniture in his office gone. He needed someone like that in his life, because it made things that much more bearable. He liked having someone that he could verbally spar with. He couldn't sexually harass anyone else he knew, and he needed that in his life-he didn't want to risk his job for pointing out that the wrong nurse had "just right" tits. He needs her in his life, because it made his life more interesting. Not because he actually cares about her.
His leg starts to hurt, sitting there at her side, and he refuses to give in and take another Vicodin. He's taken enough already, he's not going to take more, and he wonders where that rational thought has come from. Instead he limps out to the waiting room and paces, because it's a large open spot, designed for pacing. Wilson comes to see him, briefly. His friend has been busy with his own patients, but has been dropping by whenever he can. He doesn't even ask-he doesn't need to, because the answer to the question is written clearly on House's face. How is she? is a completely pointless question to ask.
Instead he just grabs two bags of something sugary out of the vending machine, and hands one to House. He knows what it's like, he's been here before, he's watched his own patients. He's watched the loved ones of his own patients, and he knows that this is the worst part, the waiting. To be pacing back and forth in the waiting room, unable to actually do anything to make it right. And he knows it must be even worse on House, a doctor, not being able to treat something so simple that had spiraled so out of control.
He feels helpless about it, knowing that if House can do nothing, then he could do even less. If there's nothing House can do to make her better, then he's even more useless. The only thing he can do is pace the waiting room. He sees terminal patients every day, tells hundreds of people a month that they are dying, and sits with their loved ones at the end, a rock for them to lean on. The least he can do is be here for his friends, of which he counts both patient and...well, loved one doesn't exactly work, but House is the only one who's there for her that actually seems to care that their boss is dying. The rest stop by out of what seems a perfunctory obligation.
He looks around the waiting room, and House isn't the only one pacing. He's been doing it himself recently, without meaning to. For the past seventy two hours. Three days of pacing, and waiting, and watching as the little blips indicating respiration grow further and further apart. The TV in the waiting room plays CNN, but no one watches, and the year old magazines are sitting discarded, unlooked at and unused. Everyone is too busy staring at the floor, unable to comprehend how it was that a life could come to this.
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. A cup slowly coming down on a candle, and removing the last of the fuel that keeps it going, until it finally is snuffed out. Every man's life ends the same way, and hers was no different. Just another terminal patient, just another slowly rotting corpse. He liked the idea of an an afterlife, it was a comforting thought, that he'd be freed from a body that withered and aged, a body that was incapable of living forever. House didn't, but then again House had always seen life as something to be suffered through, not something to be enjoyed.
And every time the nurse steps out through the swinging double doors, every head whips around, with the same look on their faces. Is it for me? And every time, they read the look on the nurse's face. If it is one with the faint glimmer of hope, everyone perks, hoping to hear that their loved ones are all right, that everything was going to be just fine. If it's tinged with sadness and regret, everyone shies away, hoping that if they back off from it, the nurse will never come for them.
He doesn't know how long they're there for when a nurse comes out, and looks first at him, then at House. "They're about to intubate-" The nurse-a girl maybe twenty, a LPN likely fresh out of community college-looks slightly afraid, and slightly sad. After all, she's talking about the person who's signing her paychecks.
"No." House's voice is gruff, and surprises even Wilson. "I'll do it." Wilson says nothing, but steps aside to allow House past him, watching the hobbled gait with a heavy heart. The lungs were going, the liver was gone, and the kidneys were on their last legs. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the organs followed. After all, the odds of death from sepsis were at least fifty fifty, and if he had to bet-and he was not a betting man-he'd lean towards the side that no one wanted to. He'd seen it, he knew what happened, even if the antibiotics worked, recovering from multiple organ failure-or rather, dysfunction as they preferred to call it now-was an uphill and nearly impossible climb. She'd need at the least a liver transplant, and while she'd likely top the list for receiving one, there was still the issue of finding a match.
No, he knew what was coming. It was just another death, another fact of life. He walked in through the double doors, finding the small private room, with House standing there, laryngoscope in hand, staring down at the pale face on the pillow. She was sedated-she had to be to be intubated, she had no clue they were there, but they were. He could see white knuckles wrapped around the cold metal of the handle, waiting to show him the path down the throat and through the vocal chords into the lungs. Get her breathing via mechanical means, even though it would only delay the inevitable.
"House-" Brown eyes met blue, and for a moment Wilson could see the emotions that were so often hidden, so thickly guarded against. He could see desperation, fear, and for a moment he felt lost. And he knew that that was how House had to feel. Lost. And for a moment, Wilson regretted not trying to force the two of them together sooner-everyone had noted the mutual attraction, but he always had thought that they were both adults, they'd get around to it eventually, as soon as they sorted themselves out. But now they wouldn't get the chance to. "I can do it-" He held his hand out, but House pulled back, before carefully sliding the plastic tube down into the lungs, and hooking it to the respirator.
He found himself reminded of something that the sister of one of his patients had said. That love was watching someone die. That love was sitting there, and watching as they wasted away, and being there, and that no one who didn't love someone would sit there and watch them die. And as he watched long, deft fingers shake as they brushed a lock of hair away from where it was threatening to get caught on the tape holding the tube down the throat in place, he knew that what everyone said about House wasn't true. The man wasn't cold, wasn't heartless, wasn't incapable of love. It was just that he had a bad habit of not showing his love until it was too late to save it.
Ruth had said that love was patient, love was kind. He knows that this isn't true. Love is not patient, or kind. Love is sitting there, denying, being angry at, bargaining for, mourning, and accepting the death of someone. Love is sitting at the side of someone, not because of obligation, not because of any dates-of which he knew there had been none, or nights together-of which he knew there had been one. But because one actually cared try as they might to hide it, it was one act that could not be interpreted any other way. Love is sitting there with someone, being the one to watch them die-and he thought that his presence here revealed more about the man than anything that House had ever, and could ever say.