Sitting at his desk that same morning, Wilson was faced with the impossible task of concentration—in the looming silence, he found himself repositioning a patient-file label so many times that the adhesive had begun to wear, and suddenly that coffee on the corner of his desk seemed like a horrible, horrible idea. He knew there was no way House could dose him from Mayfield, but who wanted to risk it?
Not I, said the oncologist.
And he kept yawning, which he also couldn't understand. A full eight hours of sleep and he was still exhausted enough to yawn this uncontrollably?
It was hurting his head, focusing on all these ideas at once, so he narrowed it down to the label. He gave up fairly quickly as soon as his eyes strayed to the clock. Nine forty-eight. Normally House would have already been in to harass him, to at least acknowledge his existence, but his door remained closed and his morning unperturbed. He had all the time in the world to complete the menial tasks that got pushed to the wee hours when House was skulking around, and Wilson was starting to think that all this time was far too much because it seemed his brain had been wired for distraction from nine forty-five to ten every morning.
Sighing, he crumpled the uncooperative label between his fingers and tried to suppress his personal upbraiding of how pathetic that was, maybe not pathetic, per se, but definitely bizarre. And he didn't like it.
"I'll just stretch my legs," he said to the empty office. "Take a visit to the vending machine…or something." His gaze returned to the clock in hopes that his decision had somehow spent up the last twelve minutes so he could get on with the morning. Alas, no such luck: the space-time continuum kept on trucking, so he opted to take the cue and do the same.
That day, more so than a few days previously, Princeton-Plainsboro's hallways seemed wider, his own step more sluggish. That day, more so than ever, the fact that he was walking alone was too conspicuous for comfort. He walked alone all the time, making his own rounds, getting to his own appointments, but never with a palpable hole at his side. Another sigh escaped him.
And then before he could even make it five yards from his office door, he suddenly wasn't hungry anymore (not that he ever had been, really) and was just as suddenly quite lost for a course of action. He stood there a few seconds before shuffling into the diagnostics conference room and falling into the nearest chair.
They had been staring; at least now they had a reason.
"Good morning, sunshine," Thirteen sighed without a glance up from her file, voice arched both in sarcasm and inquiry. "Glad to see you're so chipper."
Foreman merely studied him over the tips of his fingers, his large eyes clearly more piercing than usual; Wilson could only keep eye contact for a few moments without it becoming brilliantly awkward.
"We haven't seen him today either," Taub said with a brief glance. "Don't know where he could be."
"We paged him," Thirteen piped in.
"And called his cell phone."
"And land line. No answer—wait," she called, but Wilson was already beyond the glass walls and nearly jogging down the hall, Foreman's eyes trailing after him the entire time. But he hardly had the mental capacity at the moment to worry over such insignificant matters. He needed the elevator to move its sorry ass a little bit faster.
"Idiot," he mumbled to himself, dashing to his left where he had almost forgotten a stairwell existed—not that he had ever made much use of it considering his normal company.
This, he thought, is beyond ridiculous. Despite nearly stampeding over a whole slew of nurses and clinic patients, Wilson's gaze remained cemented on a certain Dean of Medicine's office door. He couldn't quite think straight, save for the steady stream of "ridiculous" on loop, and somewhere in said steady stream he knew when he at last arrives at her desk that any skilled oration will dissolve into incoherent stuttering and repetitive hand motions.
It had happened before.
And now, when he really wanted to make a point, he hoped it wouldn't happen again. Ever. But especially—
"Oof!"
Out of the crowd and without warning, a nose bumped into his chest and a rainbow of file folders, precariously gripped by manicured fingers, flew up past his eyes and all at once barreled on past him to the elevators as though nothing had occurred. "'Scuse me, Dr. Wilson."
He took a much-needed millisecond to collect his thoughts—"But-wh-hey!"—but there was a hole in his pocket. "Don't just ''scuse me, Dr. Wilson' me!" He jogged up beside Cuddy, where she was still staring at the lit-up floor numbers until she finally turned her head the slightest bit.
"What is it?" Clearly she was more than a little skeptical.
"You haven't told his team where he is!" he hissed.
"You didn't, did you?" she asked as they both stepped onto the empty car.
"No, but I should have." They glanced at each other with identical almost-glares before he continued, "They've tried to reach him multiple times with—strangely—no success. At least you could have mentioned to them earlier he 'called in sick.' Remember the last time they couldn't get in touch with a colleague like this?"
Her grip around the folders tightened. "All right," she conceded, muttering. The door slid open as Wilson opened his mouth, and four other physicians packed in amidst their moves to get out.
He noted with a hint of dismay that he was following Cuddy back to the diagnostics department; could she be about to brief them now? Why hadn't he been informed about this? Maybe he was exaggerating his own role in the ordeal, but hadn't House confided in him first about the hallucinations, about the self-doubts?
"Listen—" Abruptly Cuddy had whirled back around, stopping just beyond the line of sight of diagnostics and it almost caused another crash. "I'm sorry that I did not handle this perfectly, but excuse me for not having a flawless plan of action a day and a half after he was admitted!"
Her glare waited to ebb, made him blink quickly in reeling and leaving him standing there dumbly as she entered the conference room. From then on, Wilson had even more respect for House than he already did, for it took some serious nerve to face that piercing death glare day after day and be able to function immediately afterwards. When he finally did shuffle in behind her, the stack of folders had found its way into a haphazard, askew pile on the table, the hapless target of the team's staring.
"What…?" Taub started, pointing cautiously to the Leaning Tower of Princeton.
"Resumés," she stated with a forced air of normalcy.
Almost instantly, four pairs of eyebrows flew skyward. "For what?" he asked again, and there was a pause. With every answer from Cuddy, it seemed, came a hidden sigh.
"I know you all don't want to think about it, but…we need to start trying to fill Kutner's position." Another pause, well-placed. "You don't have a case yet, so…go ahead and take a look at these."
Taub kept staring, eventually looking past Cuddy and on to Wilson, but the oncologist merely gave a minute shrug. Thirteen stared too, but narrowing her eyes at Cuddy as if to see through to any ulterior motives.
"Shouldn't this wait until House gets here?" Foreman said, arching an already raised eyebrow.
"He's off this week," she replied delicately, too delicately, because everyone noticed and everyone gave hints so she knew it. "You know House. Pick some out that he might be compatible with."
They watched as she turned on her heel and marched back out the door, as Wilson followed her with his coat flashing up angrily in his wake, as their argument broke loose, muted by the thick glass walls.
"Wilson doesn't get this worked up unless he's arguing with House," Thirteen noted quietly.
"Or about him." Foreman tried hard to suppress his sigh, fingers massaging his temple in a failed attempt to scrub away the seeds of growing suspicion.
XXX
Wilson sat alone at lunch later that day, replaying and replaying the last exchanges of that latest scuffle with Cuddy—
"And you're letting them hire for him? Just how long do you expect him to be gone?"
"Before I literally ran into you, I was on the phone with his doctor." Their volume now subsided, she continued in a lower tone but no less intensely, "His condition has deteriorated. Drastically. They're reconsidering the estimated date for his release as we speak."
Drastically—what had she meant by "drastically"? For every syllable of the word, he dug a fork prong into his half-eaten lunch, casting absent side glances at the unoccupied seat facing him until it filled itself.
"Mind if I join you?" Foreman said, sliding in with his tray.
"Hey Foreman."
"Are you all right? Earlier you seemed a little—"
"Do you want my chips?" Wilson interrupted.
"What?"
"My chips." He held out the unopened bag of Lay's with a shrug. "I don't think I'll be able to finish them."
"Um, OK. Thanks."
Wilson placed the bag at the corner of Foreman's tray and ducked his head down so the only view he had was a scenic vista of sandwich and salad. They ate in silence for a while, Wilson fidgeting and his fingers strumming until he couldn't take it any longer—
"Listen," he said softly. "Cuddy doesn't want me to tell you, but—"
He was suddenly aware of someone standing beside their booth, someone in a skirt and in an increasingly frustrated mood, and he managed to stare mutely up at her oh-so-frustrated-yet-cheery grin.
"Cuddy," Foreman greeted stoically.
"Enjoying your lunch?" She gazed at each of them in turn, still grinning: Wilson continued to say absolutely nothing.
"Yeah," Foreman said after a too-long pause.
"Good!" Her eyes lingered over Wilson a moment longer; she pointed at the chips. "These yours, Foreman?"
He shook his head. "Wilson's."
Without another word, she slowly plucked the bag from the table and, raising her eyebrows in a suggestive, administrative fashion, went on her way. They stared after her for a good fifteen seconds until Foreman had to comment—"Weird."
"How did she do that?" Wilson murmured with a quick glance at Foreman. "How did she know that I was about to tell you?"
"Don't read into it too much."
"What?"
"You're overreacting. It's probably just a coincidence."
"Somehow…I doubt it." Sighing, he looked back to his lunch and lost his appetite: another wave was pounding through his stomach and it certainly wasn't hunger. Slowly his eyes decided to make a break for it, nearly pushing themselves out of their sockets.
"Wilson?"
"She bugged me!" he whispered; his hands started to feel the insides of his shirt collar, and what he was searching for Foreman could only guess. "You know, with those tiny microphones!"
"When would she have bugged you?" he asked carefully.
"Does it really matter when?" Reason seemed wasted on him at that point, and Foreman's head began to pound with a lethal combination of fatigue, stress, and confusion. "Foreman, I really think she bugged me!"
"And I really think you need to stop being so paranoid." He shot him a look that screamed "got it?" and rose with tray in hand. "If you're still worried in a couple minutes, call up House or something."
If he had turned back to look at Wilson one last time before leaving the cafeteria, he would have at last noticed the holes bored into his back by the oncologist's gaze; removed from the source, he would have been able to pick out the words "I wish I could" seared into his skin.
XXX
"Did you bug Wilson?"
Cuddy grinned briefly at the paperwork piled on her desk, letting it fade as Foreman fully entered her office. "Nope," she sighed. "He's just predictable." When he simply nodded to himself and didn't leave, she had to fight the urge to sigh once more, this time with all the turbulence jammed into the past week. "What did he actually tell you?"
"That…there was something you didn't want us to know." She didn't have to say a word to let him know he was right. "It's about House, isn't it?"
"Yes," she said quietly, making her way reluctantly to the other side of the desk and placing what she hoped was a forceful yet reassuring hand on his shoulder. "But it's nothing you have to worry about right now."
"So there will be a time when I have to worry."
"Hopefully not." He noticed the hitch in her voice and tried to wish it away. Luck was not on his side.
XXX
Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital—what a sickeningly cheerful name for such a sickeningly dismal place. If they had really wanted an appropriate name, they should have tried Novemberprison or Februaryhell, not Mayfield, not anything that implied outdoorsy, flowery optimism.
"Bitter, are we?"
Fields and meadows had no place in a realm ruled by padded walls and strait jackets, medication and therapy. Fields and meadows belonged to the free, not the dead and hallucinated. More and more, House wondered whether parts of him were falling under the former category. Dead.
Dead.
It was too familiar.
"Duh…I've been with you for weeks; of course it's familiar."
"Shut the hell up," he grumbled.
"You want the fields and meadows like all your doctor buddies?" Amber inched agonizingly close to him, a habit it seemed, and not one he was terribly fond of. "Fine." Out of nowhere—
Cameron and Chase and Foreman and Taub and Thirteen pass him by, shaking their heads—a dreary sky—thunder?—a large field, pockmarked by—laughter, behind him, not from any whom he saw—the end. The end of the flashes holds two monoliths, surrounded by their peers, weathered by the elements, and with a jolt he sees the names etched into the stones and remembers how he didn't see them. Until now. Now he sees them, and he turns toward the crowd, faceless suddenly, and their voices, meshed to one—"Where were you?"
The scene dissolved back to his hospital room; his hands were shaking again. The Vicodin, they told him. Detox. What explanation they hadn't offered, however, was fear.
A/N: Review?