Last night, after I fell, House didn't help me up. He hobbled up to me and looked down disapprovingly while prodding me with his cane.
Oddly, instead of berating me he questioned me shortly until he was sure that I didn't have some sort of infection. The interview ended with a question asked just bitingly enough that it could be passed off as sarcasm.
"It isn't me, is it?"
Post-detox House says things with words that strung-out-junkie-House would have said by throwing a monstrous temper tantrum. It's refreshing. But, that doesn't mean it isn't weird. He is still epically self-centered.
I lifted my head up, which took a lot of effort because it was very heavy, so that I could look him in the eye when I told him, "Not everything is about you."
"It's okay, Doctor Wilson," a tiny hand laid itself on top of mine. "This book makes me sad, too. But, it is happy in the end."
"Where was I?"
Not somewhere it was appropriate to be daydreaming about House. I was in the oncology department's branch in the children's ward on my lunch break reading The Giving Tree to a little girl because it seems to be physically impossible for me to say 'no' to dying kids.
She pointed to the page, "'And the boy...'"
"And the boy stayed away for a long time. And when he came back the tree was so happy she could hardly speak. 'Come boy, come and play,' she whispered. 'I'm too old and sad to play. I want a boat that will take me far away from here. Can you give me a boat?' " I paused, gazed around the room. There had to be something less depressing to read around here somewhere, "Don't you want to read Frog and Toad are Friends instead?"
"No. Want to read this book. I like it 'cause I like you. And you are like the tree."
Yes, I would give myself away in bits and pieces until there was nothing left. I wasn't motivated by love rather so much as an overwhelming, irrational feeling of guilt and anxiety which drove me to love people. But, what do motives matter anyway?
For example, a self-deprecating smile crossed my lips. Its true meaning would probably fly over her head and all she would see was a smile, "Thanks."
"When you make me better I am going to go back to school and then I will grow old and learn to make other people better," she took the book from my hands. "Let me read the rest."
It crossed my mind that if she were lucky she wouldn't make it to the end of the second grade. But, a year is a long time for a first grader.
Something moved in my peripheral vision. I glanced quickly towards the door and registered suit pants, a low cut shirt, dark hair. Damn it, I was cornered by Cuddy. I'd been avoiding her ever since we had outbid her on the apartment. She waited for me to excuse myself and followed me as I left the room.
"I need a favor."
"Hello," I greeted her. I still think that killing people with kindness is the best way to deal with the world, even if my secondary agenda was to point out that she was being rude.
She gave me a look like she was too busy for greetings or my cheekiness, "Can you lead a seminar on terminal illness next semester?"
"If I recall correctly," there was a short pause while I thought. It was difficult to concentrate. I felt like there was a slowly growing hole under my sternum where it articulated with the 5th, 6th and 7th ribs, "next semester starts in two weeks? Let me think about it."
She shook her head in frustration, "It starts in two weeks. So, you don't have time to think about it."
If she didn't have time to say, 'Hello, how are you?' weeks after approving me for life threatening surgery I didn't have time at that moment to tell her that I would be glad to teach a class. I would stop by her office before leaving to tell her I'd do it.
"I'll think about it," I paused at the door to House's office.
She muttered something along the lines of, 'I'll find someone else,' and kept walking.
I opened the door to diagnostics department. The House's team didn't even look up from what they were doing. They appeared to be bored instead of worried. I guess they didn't have a case.
"Take me to your leader," I commanded.
"House," Thirteen filled in another line on her crossword, "took the day off."
Why hadn't I known about that? "Where'd he go?"
"He said he was going to New York," Chase articulated slowly. He was concentrating on his doodle of a brigade T-cells with wings and halos battling an invasion of bacteria with goat horns.
"If I didn't know better," Taub twirled his pen in his fingers, "I would say that he was just visiting a dominatrix. But, Foreman says he's buying you a gift."
Foreman, who had been deep in thought, threw up his hands and gave Taub a dirty look. Then he explained apologetically, "I'm sworn to secrecy. You're not supposed to know."
"Uh-huh," was all I could manage. What was House planning?
Taub leaned towards me, "What sort of dirt do you have on him that he's going out of his way to make you happy?"
There was no dirt. "There is no dirt."
Chase and Thirteen exchanged significant glances. Taub caught this and responded by saying, "Oh, please, there's no way! Double or nothing."
"You're on," Thirteen was studying the magazine again and didn't look back up.
"I'll buy in on Taub's side," Foreman added.
Seriously? Were they betting on the status of our relationship? What a ludicrous notion. We were good friends but... "We're not dating. If that's what you're getting at."
"It's not," Chase caught my gaze with a mischievous look in his eyes and a serious expression on his face.
Either the team was weirder than usual or when House was around their bizarre behavior was eclipsed by his. I exited with a sighed, "Well, thanks. This has been enlightening."
I arrived home exhausted to the smell of slightly burnt chocolate, cooking spinach, chicken soup and skunk. House was cooking up a storm. Literally, it looked like a hurricane had swept through the kitchen.
"I thought last night was bad, but this... is..."
He was sitting at the island with what was more than a small pile of marijuana laid out in front of him in a Petri dish. He was rolling what appeared to be a massive joint.
"Perfect? Wonderful? Just what you needed?"
"I am not smoking that with you." He feigned a look of shock and disappointment while licking the paper of the joint to seal it closed.
"Look," he held up his creation, "at this masterpiece. I should have been an engineer." I loosened my tie, took off my suit jacket and sat down next to him surveying the kitchen. There were a plate of brownies and a pot boiling on the stove. He followed my gaze, "Jewish penicillin..."
Only House would find a way to be antisemitic while trying to comfort someone, "What are you trying to pull?"
Direct, blunt and self-assured as usual, House explained, "The only thing that popping benzos will do for your depression is make you so relaxed that you don't care how you feel. You know, in the long run, it will make you worse. Smoking weed will accomplish the same thing as the klonipin without the danger of damaging your liver or becoming addicted. And there is much less of a risk of exacerbating the depressive symptoms." He paused to light the thing, took a deep drag and held it for a moment. Then he opened his mouth and inhaled through his nose so the milk white smoke circled back through his nostrils. "Besides, I went to the heart of darkness Washington Heights to buy this for you. I risked my life. You are obligated to smoke this with me."
That argument might have worked if I hadn't attended graduate school at Columbia. The university medical center is in Washington Heights. It certainly is not a nice neighborhood for a woman to walk through alone. Female medical students in their lab coats are cat called in Spanish as soon as they leave the hospital. But, other than the constant threat of sexual harassment it is not that dangerous during the day.
"You didn't risk your life."
"Maybe not. But, you need to quit being such a wienie. You aren't on call. I checked. Nobody is going to die if you smoke a joint," He handed me it to me. I must have been looking skeptical, "What kind oncologist are you, anyway? Aren't all of you people for medical marijuana?"
"We're too old to be doing this," I argued weakly, watching it smolder between my fingers.
Maybe it would help. I supposed it couldn't hurt to try. Besides, if I didn't House would probably harass me until I admitted to being addicted to benzodiazepines, which I wasn't. I took a drag.
"No," he countered as he slid me a glass of water. I started coughing, "We can choose to get high because we are adults. And you're holding the joint like a woman."
I was too busy choking up a lung to say anything clever in response. The stuff was so strong that it was making my mouth water. The world was spinning already. He took a handful of my shirt and limped across the room with me in tow to the couch where he sat down far too close to me, again. He looked at me expectantly.
I passed him the joint and my best 'This is ridiculous; I can't believe we're doing this' look.
"What I think is ridiculous," he took another drag and finished the sentence on an inhale, "is how much you cough." A horrible, mischievous look crossed his face on the next exhale, "You were breathing in too fast. I'll do it for you. Breathe as slowly as I do."
I squinted incredulously at him as he inverted the joint and took it ember first into his mouth. He beckoned me to come closer. I did. I breathed in, he breathed out. He leaned back. It occurred to me that he was smiling at me the way arrogant bastards do when they've won their first kiss. Either that or he was just as high as I was. Our lips hadn't touched. I held my breath and didn't cough this time.
And there it was, the almost the same feeling of melting into the couch, of inertia, of not really caring about my irrational, misplaced sadness. But it was without the delightful feeling of each of my muscles relaxing that the klonipin provided.
"Thanks," the words dropped from my mouth and without my really thinking about it continued, "I feel less crappy."
House shook his graying head. He was trying not to tell me how stupid he thinks I am, "You only feel crappy because of SSRI discontinuation syndrome and the fact that you are back at work far too soon after being discharged from the hospital. But," Oh, great House had figured it out and I was too high to move let alone lie to him. Conniving bastard, "what I want to know is why you were stopping the SSRI in the first place. I was wrong about you stopping suddenly. You were weaning off of it."
It took me a while to sequence my frustration into a coherent answer. House is much better than I am at keeping his wits about him when he's blitzed. He should be. After all, he spent years trashed, passing his addiction off as being an ass. Well, he's still an ass. He looked impatient as he gestured for me to get on to the point.
"You looked at my file. What is it with you? Same song different verse..."
He didn't push. Instead he licked his lips and held his chin in his hands and generally sat there looking like he was deep in thought. This was House hurt and about to bite back.
I cut in before he could, "Why else does anyone stop a medication that is working? I was stopping because I didn't think I needed them anymore. Why does it matter so much to you? Because my medication regiment is puzzling? Because you don't like that you didn't realize it sooner?"
Surprisingly he didn't push back. He didn't even tell me that I should get back on antidepressants as soon as possible. He usually bites back when I press those buttons, the 'stay out of my private life' and its compliment 'I may or may not retaliate by ignoring you' buttons. Instead, he abruptly dropped the topic and changed the subject, "I got some movies. Nothing you have to think too hard about. You want to watch Muppets From Space or Yellow Submarine or James and the Giant Peach?"