Wilson was bucking with each press of the paddles. House knew that if he didn't wake up this time, next time, they would stop, policy and sense would demand that they would stop and the shrieking of the flat-line would be unplugged and that would be the last noise Wilson made. And as he pressed against the glass he felt a wave of vertigo, as if the whole thing was tilting and he was watching the scene from somewhere higher, swinging directly his friend's body and the muted movements of the staff. And the mental chant of charging - clear; charging - clear, was inexorably moving towards --
time of death - but the light was angled to turn his wristwatch into a blind disc of white and he had no idea what time it was, but if Wilson didn't snap out of it this time - this time --
Wilson's chest jerked skywards again, and with it the little red line peaked and dipped, and kept on going. And the staff un-tensed for the moment, rounding their shoulders and nodding to one another, and kept on going like the faceless professionals they were, while House fought the urge to sink to the floor as his whole body rattled with relief.
In a sudden moment of self-consciousness, as happened sometimes when he had drifted off in thought on the bus or was watching the tv, he realised that his mouth was practically hanging open and he snapped it shut in annoyance. He was acting like any gaping, gormless relative; but what could he do? The fact his brain had shut down in the moment of crisis was proof he was of no use to anyone, no help to Wilson at all, but here he was, still watching, because - because of what?
He was suddenly assaulted by hundreds of past echoes of his own thoughts, on all those people who clung to the waiting room as if they any actual impact on what was happening, or had something to prove, to show they cared. He felt a vague rush of panic, of self-betrayal at his own loss of clear-thinking, and wondered what he was doing, why he was here. Because you're a human being Wilson would shout at him, glowering in exasperation. Wilson was going to say that, decided House; because obviously they couldn't have had their last conversation, and Cameron was bound to rat him out and tell Wilson about his idiotic vigil.
A masked figure below him hung up another bag of blood. Wilson slept on, utterly unperturbed by the fact he was making House act like a moron.
And House, he would answer, no, it's not that, and he would wipe away Wilson's smug little humanitarian theory. He was here because -
Even though it was making him want to puke or pass out, and exact a terrible revenge on Wilson as soon as he was conscious enough to appreciate it, he was scared to turn around and turn back to a world without his friend in it.
He'd say something like, because I wanted to see if after all your time in the chemo playpen you actually did have a heart of gold, or because I was guarding you against nurse Debbie; she got all fired up after ripping your shirt off, and Wilson would roll his eyes, and that would be that.
The surgery lasted for an agonizingly long time, a sort of hopeless limbo period in which House stared at the milling figures to whom he daily doled out abuse and found himself silently pleading with them not to screw up. Tedious minutes where Wilson seemed out of immediate danger were all laced with the constant threat of another crash, and House alternated between pacing around the tiny box and trying to identify the figures behind the masks, mentally scrutinising their levels of experience. There was another glitch, a moment when Wilson's heart just stopped for a few seconds, and he had felt with a leaden certainty that it was over: House wasn't the sort of man who got lucky twice. Wilson had bounced back almost instantly.
Now they'd stitched him up and were wheeling him out, barking soundless orders from behind the window and probably providing the nurses they were handing him over to with a shitload of information that House should definitely know about. House's actual understanding of Wilson's medical situation beyond not dead (yet) was minimal. There might be organs ruptured, ligaments severed, permanent damage and complications, as well as the hows and whys and what next? Below him someone was industriously mopping blood off the floors, skirting calmly around the empty table. He should go, keep up with the news.
Instead he made a far-too late investigation into how much his leg hurt, shifting his weight for the first time in what felt like hours, and nearly slammed into the wall as his brain caught up with his body. The stairs would have to wait a few minutes.
He ended up sliding gently down the wall of the room and easing his leg out in front of him. He spun the Vicodin bottle idly in his fingers and watched the pills randomly colliding, falling away, bumping together.
When the door opened, who knew how much later - (was it still night? Or morning?) - he almost didn't have the energy to look up. The silence stretched out and he finally tilted his head, up from the fuck-me shoes and form-fitting skirt and into the tired, sympathetic face. She raised her eyebrows questioningly when she saw him on the floor.
"Are you ok?" House stared at the scuffed tips of his shoes. He couldn't decide if she was a welcome distraction.
"My leg hurt," he said, after a pause. It had the advantage of being both completely true and having nothing to do with the question she had been asking. A shadow slid over his legs, and then Cuddy was sinking down the wall and sitting next to him, twisting her neck to look through the window.
"Ruptured appendix," she said conversationally, gesturing to the newest arrival downstairs. House hadn't noticed the next body being brought in. He glanced over. Middle-aged female; the surgeon rooting around in her lower abdomen looked utterly unruffled. He found he didn't care, didn't give a solitary shit about whatever happened to her down there. The world suddenly began to feel slightly more normal.
"He's in the ICU," she said eventually. Even House couldn't possibly get away with saying 'who?', but he had a desperate urge to evade the coming conversation. He gripped his thigh to make it very clear that the only reason he was loitering in the observation room was the inconvenience of the stairs. Cripple card.
She smiled, and House stared at her in surprise. "I'm amazed you didn't barge into his surgery yourself," she explained. "Start supervising and yelling. I was all ready to bring security down here."
"But that would have been rude," he said in mock-puzzlement. "Anyway, I don't bludgeon the people wielding the scalpels. I find it doesn't boost the patient's odds."
"Do you want to see the patient?"
"And do what? Watch him sleep for the next twenty hours?" He watcher her uncross and cross her legs.
"He's stable, for the moment. The surgery went well, on the whole. No real complications --"
"His heart stopped. Twice," House pointed out, knotting his fingers on his stomach to prevent them from giving anything away. "I wouldn't call that going well."
"I heard," said Cuddy, looking at him sympathetically.
"If you want to go stroke someone's hand, Wilson's right down the corridor," he snapped. "Try there, seeing as he's the one who's half-dead and can't fight you off." Cuddy looked slightly sick at this description, and House felt somehow better for saying it. Impressing it on other people meant he didn't have to think about it himself, somehow. He frowned, at himself; it was practically his job to think about it. The words friendship and ethical responsibility swam swiftly through his mind.
"What's his status?"
"We put him on a vent for now, help fight the sepsis. Luckily the ribs aren't in any position to puncture a lung, so that's one less thing they had to deal with."
House reviewed the 'we' and 'luckily', and then stopped himself. He didn't want to take this out on Cuddy. It wasn't her fault that he had spent the last god-knows how many hours going through spectator's hell and murdering his leg in the process. Annoyingly, according to Cameron, it wasn't even Wilson's fault.
"The other wound . . . His arm - there could be some complications - when he fights off the sepsis and recovers from the blood-loss." House's head snapped up, but she shook her head. "It's too soon to even speculate about," she said firmly. "First he has to get through the next twenty-four hours, stabilize."
"What kind of -"
"House." Her small white hand was gripping his sleeve, and he looked at her face. She'd been crying, he realised. "Not yet. Right now is important. He just needs -- in a few days. When he wakes up. It's not even remotely important until then." He disagreed, but he didn't say it. Another thing to think about, when the fuzz cleared out of his brain.
He got to his feet, clenching his jaw through the shot of pain in his leg and watched as Cuddy stood up beside him. He saw his grip, white-knuckled on the cane, and thought blood-loss. Bloodless; that was how he had looked. Dead.
"You should go home, get some sleep," Cuddy said.
"Says the woman practically swaying on her feet," he retorted. He was only faintly relieved when she took a gentle hold of his arm as the stepped towards the staircase, perhaps to steady herself, as he felt himself anchored. The journey down was nothing like as smooth as the trip up.
"I should --" he gestured wordlessly, and she nodded.
"I'll show you to his bed. You can sit with him for a while," she said.
"I can look over his chart," corrected House. "Doctor, not grieving widow."
"No grieving required," she shot back. "His stats looked good. He should be fine." House snorted and walked ahead, and she grabbed onto his arm again.
"House," she said, staring at him anxiously. "It's ok. There's every chance he'll make a complete recovery from this. He'll be fine."
House stared at the door she had led him to, and swallowed. Now was as good a time as any to find out. "Cameron thought he'd been stabbed." Cuddy winced, but nodded, and he found he couldn't look at her anymore.
"Then yeah. He'll be fine." He wrenched his arm away and stepped into the room. He tried to ignore the new surge of guilt rising up in his stomach; she hadn't followed him inside. Reaching backwards, he shut the door on her shocked eyes and pale face and moved forwards towards the bed.