Disclaimer- I am not affilated in any way with House. I apologise for any OoC that may occur in this chapter. It was my intention to keep as much in character as possible.
He swallowed the Vicodin, walking away from the deserted operating table, his own words echoing in his head. Time of death, eleven-thirty PM. It was the hardest thing to say. Part of him wanted to turn back, try again. Maybe this time, the heart would begin its beat again. His own pulse sounded loudly in his ears, as if mocking the already-cooling body on the table.
Blood stained the instruments lying next to the body. Gauze was strewn across the floor,blossoming crimson. Everywhere he looked, signs still showed of the struggle to fend off death that had taken place there mere moments ago. Yet somehow, in the midst of the incarnadine mess, the face he mourned still stood out, calm. Too calm.
Someone he had loved. Loved still. There was a time in his life when he thought he could be free of this feeling. Torn between rejection and new love, he would turn away, hide within himself, promise himself that he'd never love again because it hurt too damn much. And life went on without him and stole his heart anyways. Cupid carried a scalpel.
Death was nothing new to him. Doctors were forced to deal with it on a daily basis. There were patients who lived, and those who did not survive, and if the doctor was smart, he'd learn to think of them only as patients, and not as people. It's easy to treat someone if you don't give a damn about them. So if you did give a damn, you were sunk. Trapped in the endless whirlpool of empathy and sympathy that modern society tried so hard to pass off as normal, so that you cared about everyone who walked in through those big double-doors in the clinic. Everybody's problem would be yours to care for and the world would be one happy place. Except for you, because if someone died, they didn't need to worry about their problems anymore, and you still did.
And for all of his aversion of patients, his turning away from things that he knew he was not ready to face, he still found someone he cared about. Love? An overused term, cliché and too simple to describe actual emotion. Yet, had he loved? Despite it all, the word did fit. He had loved.
Unspoken, the word had been all that had separated them.
Dark hair fanned over dark eyes, still closed. If it had not been for the pale tinge of the skin, he could have overlooked the blood, fooled himself into thinking that life still animated the features. He felt cold, as cold as the metal tools on the table, as cold as the corpse on the table would soon become. Gone was the hurt, for a moment, that bound him to the past. He was empty, and lost. When all of this was over, the funeral and the mourning, he could walk the halls again, deep in his own sorrow, lashing out at those who dared to empathize. He would abandon his cane, so that with every step he took, pain would lance up his side, reminding him of his loss.
House slammed his fist into his damaged thigh, feeling the agony override all thoughts in his mind. He fell to his knees, his vision white and body shaking. If he thought it would help, he would have screamed, voiced the fiery pain that pervaded every fiber of his being, and yet, did not block out the empty feeling in his heart. The pain would soon subside, and if it didn't he would take more Vicodin.
And if he took enough, everything would go away.
Author's note- This is my first deathfic, a oneshot. I wasn't going to post it, but my muse made me. (Owww...) So... Who do you think died?
Also, I'm doing a one-shot contest. Whoever can tell me first what quote from House I put in this story, and what episode it's from, I'll do a House oneshot for you, on any subject you want! Any POV, any subject. So get looking! And in that story, I'll put another quote...
EDIT:OKAY! Due to a big mistake on my part, I misquoted the quote. It was from Occam's Razor
Mr. Merrell: How can you treat someone without meeting them?
House: It's easy if you don't give a crap about them.
I put down It's easy to treat someone if you don't give a damn about them. So, anyways, for being the closest anyways, and readind my mind, the oneshot goes to Astarcsifor reading my mind! Sorry about the mixup. It won't happen again. And there will be more chances, since the oneshotI write for Astarcsi will have a quote in it too. (Actually quoted, and not misremembered.)
P'Bantonox