...and gathered himself together.
"Thanks for your concern, but I think a few shots should make me feel better. Goodnight, Dr. Cameron."
He hung the phone up in it's base, a small burning feeling in his chest. It wasn't the drink, or the residual pain that winced at him whenever he thought of his mother. It was his abrupt ending of their phone call. It was blaringly obvious that she cared, more specifically, about him. He remembered that she had been crying. Either her cat had been run over by a car, or it was his parents that she was tearing up about. Her desire to reach him was declaring itself like a two-page colour ad in the newspaper, announcing in block lettering that he was the only one that she would ever need. Pretty-sounding in a greeting card.
But he wasn't the one that she called in the evenings, Chase kept her busy every weekend, on hotel beds or in examination rooms, but it was all empty. He was a shell for her, something to fill with whatever she pleased, to return to when she felt particularly lonely. Evenings when she was pining, with her Sauvignon Blanc in a pretty flat, for him.
Thinking of being with her, it sounded really good. Hot and convenient. But he knew that these kinds of connections never stayed glittery for long, they were both flawed, messy people. He would say or do something and she, naive and small and warm, would bruise. However, the more he thought about her, naive and small and warm, he wanted to pick up the phone again, end the exchange differently. Even if he didn't want her prodding into these more raw parts of his life, it meant a lot that she wanted to.
Frankly, she fit quite well into that space. That was what bothered him the most. But it hurt too much to think about, his lead leg having its own personal seizure, the throbbing spot for his parents, for her in his chest, the hot, syrupy feeling in his mouth from the whisky. He pulled his T-shirt off and limped towards the bedroom door, muttering a quick prayer to Jesus or Buddha or whoever wasn't busy when his head found the pillow.
The lights were painful that morning, as he stepped into the hospital, his head throbbing with a steady rhythm like that of his patient's breathing yesterday, when he finally discovered the correct diagnosis. As always.
Hordes of doctors, technicians, professionals in starched clothing passed him, busy on their way to get lab results or make meetings with terminal cancer patients, to throw in the next load of soiled laundry. To cut out an old, dirty heart and sew in a new one. Through this commotion, one that never brought him out of his haze of pain and daily examination of the floor tiles, his father's voice was echoing with every line he stepped on,
"How did this happen? You are a child, Gregory, one with no concept of how you affect people. I hope that you lose your job so that you realize what big holes you've cut in your co-workers lives, simply because you can't pick up your messes. Obviously how I raised you, with the intention of respecting other's authority, has done nothing. Your drugs have taken the throne again."
It was the response that he got when phoning his mother at Christmas, and telling her about the court hearing, and apparently, his Daddy forgot to ask him what he wanted from Santa. House's eyes burned, his soul shriveling with the childishness that his father dealt with him, the way he made all of House's nearly 50 years of life seem like something tiny, something easily understood like a plot from a badly-written soap opera. He hated him, more than he hated reaching into patient's orifices or the mind-numbing pain that came from accidentally rolling over onto his left side in his sleep. When his felt the nerves ripping angrily like a piece of cloth, when the infarction left him with the pain of the back draft, when he was blinded that first time, he cursed it, not because he had no idea how he would survive this for the rest of his life, but how his father would respond to House's coping methods. John House was now dead, and his son discovered that he felt not sadness, but the relief that the Fates had decided he had no more energy left to survive another piercing barb from this elderly man who had helped give him life.
Soon he was at the end of the hallway, and up the elevator, and not surprisingly, felt no better, not even when Cuddy approached, her eyes narrowed with disappointment over something that he had apparently done, and her mauve blouse delightfully low-cut. He listened to her rant about how he had been leaving his sandwiches in patient's rooms, and how that was unprofessional and unhealthy and potentially dangerous for those patients on strictly controlled food intake. There was currently nobody to diagnose, or no one had approached him with a new case, and a few hours in the clinic had not been suggested by the Supreme Being as a way to fill this graciously empty time. But House wasn't bored, he had a mission. He needed to make best use of the time he had been given. It was time to talk with someone. Another man who had long ago concluded that his friend's addictions, issues and absurd coping methods held no ground.
Soft jazz music slid up to House's ears as he opened the oak door, only to find Diana Krall crooning 'The Look of Love' and his friend James Wilson asleep at his desk. Diana had apparently seduced him; Wilson's head was leaning back against his chair, his fingers draped over the armrests and his mouth slightly open. House, being not in the mood for boyish pranks, strode over to the desk and picked up a stack of reference books, dropping them quite loudly on the countertop. Wilson's head snapped up, mumbling and blinking at House, who had settled himself into the chair usually reserved for Wilson's patients.
"Where are all the dying people? Did you save them? You don't usually fall asleep in your office."
Wilson took a moment to answer, rubbing at the corners of his eyes.
"I had a really long procedure this morning, one of my breast-cancer mothers found another tumour in her colon yesterday, so we did an invasive surgery and it turned out to be benign. "
House narrowed his eyes. "It's only 10:30. And how could she 'find' (he made quotations with his fingers) a colon tumour? It's not exactly the kind of thing you discover in the shower."
Wilson sighed and rolled his eyes. "She was having difficulty with her bowel movements, so we did a scan, just in case… wait, why are you suddenly so interested in my patients? If they're not hindering your time with me, or they have no prescriptions for you to steal, you are perfectly content to leave them be. "
House diverted his eyes to the black-rimmed squares of Wilson's pocket planner, each day gasping for air at the sheer amount of daily appointments penned in Wilson's loopy oncologist scrawl.
"My parents died."
The change in Wilson was immediate, he melded from weary doctor to concerned friend, his brown eyes deepening and his frame leaning forward.
"Oh, god, House, I'm sorry."