It was quite possibly the worst soup he'd ever made.
A pit lined with rotten-smelling, bubbling acid.
A boiling cauldron of pure stink.
A cocktail of bitterness.
A cocktail . . . that's what it was. A cocktail. But what was in it?
Greg House tried to move back in time, to go back and remember what he'd put in the soup. The odd thing was, he couldn't remember making any soup.
But like every great scientist, Greg House had a method for filling in empty spaces. He took the areas around the empty spaces: the before and the after. And he reasoned. He deduced. He played with puzzle pieces.
He played with all the puzzle pieces in existence until one fit. And if one didn't fit just right, he made his own puzzle piece. One that would fit perfectly and elegantly in the space.
The answer came to him with that thought. The cocktail had been his own creation. If Greg House had it in him to create anything over the past few hours, it would have a singular, solid purpose.
It would make the pain go away.
He remembered what was in the cocktail, and it gave him a thrill. It thrilled him because it had worked. Like almost every great experiment he'd created, the potential benefits had far outweighed the potential risks.
The cauldron was in his stomach. And now, working its way through his bloodstream.
It was a cocktail of oxycodone and alcohol.
And it was beautiful.
Some time later. Seconds. Minutes perhaps. Hours possibly. Could be days. Or even months. All Greg House knows is that it is Christmas.
He knows this because he senses the presence of cheery, decorative lights. He can feel them shining through the windows, gleaming on his retinas, burning his skin. He feels them like a burn victim feels flames kissing his flesh, even though most of the nerves have already been burned away.
Much to his chagrin, that train of thought takes off and brings him at locomotive speed to a related thought.
The last burn victim he'd treated. Damned if he could remember his name. Kid had a seizure and got out of control on an ATV. Big explosion. Seratonin storm. Lots of guilt-ridden, whiny parents.
Greg House rarely has any kind of emotional attachment to anyone, much less his patients. But his special cases—the puzzles he spends hours solving—are burned into his brain. His many triumphs are enshrined in the back of his mind, where he can review them, revel in them, and learn from them. The same goes with his relatively small number of defeats. Unfortunately, that means that the patients are enshrined there, too. Forever.
The patients are there, waiting behind locked doors, in case there is ever anything else to be learned from them.
Somewhere, a lock clicks and a door opens. House feels a vague sense of misgiving. Somehow, seratonin-storm-burn-victim-kid had gotten out from behind his door.
And now someone was in his head, opening locks, letting more people out.
Footsteps around him. Someone was inside. Either the apartment or his brain. He couldn't tell. But one thing was certain. Like a rampaging systemic disease, the intruder would not stay hidden for long.
Not from Greg House.