Chapter 2
At around 3:00 his leg started to ache. The Vicodin had worn off and the cold front passing through had made his scar and what was left of his thigh achy and painful. Of course it woke him up, he hadn't had a full nights sleep in how long. A timid hand reached from under the even so warm covers and gathered the bottle of pills from the night stand. He could tell that the fire had gone out, of course, and since the thermostat was broken his house was getting very cold, very quickly. After swallowing the pills he checked the alarm clock, rolled over and got some more sleep before his alarm would sound.
"Burr it's a cold one out there. That storm is still a blowin'. The roads are bad so give yourself some extra time. The current temperature is -7 degrees and is still dropping. The storm dropped about" House hit the alarm's snooze while muttering; "Yeah it's about -7 degrees in this house too." The snooze would buy him some time to get ready to brave the cold apartment and get ready for his day. The snooze in fact did buy him some time, the storm knocked out the power in his building as well as some surrounding house's which meant two things: the alarm didn't wake House up again, and House didn't wake up again until around 8. His leg woke him up again, and rolling over saw that the alarm clock was dark. "Shit." He grabbed his watch off the nightstand and it read 8:00. He was going to be late, no doubt. He got out of bed, without wearing socks and the floor froze his feet. Between his feet being cold and his leg steadily getting more and more painful as his body temperature dropped he had a rough time doing anything to get ready. He randomly grabbed some clothes; he had more in his office and in his car so he could change once he got to the hospital. After putting on a long sleeve shirt, two sweatshirts and his jacket as well as a pair of jeans and some boots he got his cane and was at the front door. Donning a ski cap, a pair of gloves and a scarf he was ready to go start his car and get to work where it was warm. On his way out he read the thermometer by the door and it did in fact read zero degrees, now that is one cold house.
Once he was outside did he realize how much damage the storm had done. It had dropped about 5 inches of fresh snow while House was asleep, five inches that was good for skiers, bad for cripples who use a cane. Of course under the snow was a sheet of ice and just to make his day even better House fell down the front steps. A soaking wet and swearing House made the longer than necessary walk to his car and just found more bad news. Once he pried open the frozen door he couldn't start his car. He tried for about 10 minutes until he was shivering from being soaked. He made the walk to his apartment again and was more careful on the stairs. The apartment was by no means warm and didn't help him at all in the regaining heat except for shielding him from the wind and snow that was waiting outside.
He mulled over his current situation in his head. "I'm cold, late, my car won't start, the heater is broken, fire's out and the electricity's out. What am I going to do?" He did the only thing he could think of. While shivering he stripped off all his wet clothing, which was pretty much everything. He gathered all the blankets he could from his house and put them on the bed. Climbing in he grabbed his cell phone while it still worked and called Wilson. With no answer he left him a message. "No heat, no electric, can't get to work, my car won't start and I'm freezing. When you get this please come over. Quickly." He only hoped that Wilson would go looking for him, for he knew that his fate would be hypothermia if Wilson didn't intervene and get him somewhere warm. His body heat would only last so long in this bed.