Rock Songs and Razorblades

Part Three:

Schara. Fireplace. A place of fire. The Greeks were right about that. Most wounds deep enough to cause fibrous tissue to form burned like a bitch. Grinding the heel of one hand into the depression of scarred flesh and muscle knotted over bone, House rolled his pill bottled up and down the staircase of his fingers in the other. He'd returned to the Diagnostics office by moonlight and sat at his desk in the circle of white light cast by a single lamp. On the desk in front of him, printouts of Wilson's medical files were spread open like chest of a cadaver. For the hundredth time since he'd realised Wilson was sick, House dissected them methodically, alias by alias. The black type bled before his tired eyes.

Wilson drove back to his hotel, tore open the envelope in the car and signed along the dotted line. He crossed out his temporary address on the front and rewrote the return address between the scribbled lines: Pellettieri, Rabstein and Altman, divorce attorneys. He gave the envelope back to the desk clerk to post, went straight up to his bathroom and locked himself in.

He'd never wanted to stay at Baker Street so badly. He'd never deserved to less.

Eight hours and forty-two years from when he'd begun, House put down his half-empty pill bottle and picked up the phone, blocked his own caller id and dialled.

"You want to joyride my Repso?"

"House?" Wilson sounded wide-awake and startled. "You okay? It's four in the morning."

"'Cause, y'know, all the cool kids are having a midlife crisis these days."

"Are you okay? How much have you had to drink?"

"You've got to borrow the leathers too."

"Where are you? Are you okay? I'll come pick you up."

"And if you scratch it, you pay for the respray."

"House, stop this. I don't want to borrow your damn bike! Are you okay?"

"I am," House said and put the phone down.

He slept on the yellow Ottoman in his office, woke early and watched the sunrise from his balcony. Not long after, Wilson's Volvo pulled into the lot. House prowled the corridors in search of the mythical meeting and found Wilson in the gym, working away to Bayside's "How to Fix Everything."

"You lied," he announced, throwing the glass doors open.

Wilson stumbled and barely kept his footing on the running machine. He tapped a button and slowed the treadmill to a pace to which he could jog. The frantic whir of the mechanisms quieted.

"Yeah, I'm Don Quixote." He tugged self-consciously at the right sleeve of his grey t-shirt and took up a grip on the support bars. The muscles in his forearms bulged; the skin was smooth and tanned. House studied the places he couldn't see: strong runner's legs beneath grey track pants, the hard lines of Wilson's chest and abdomen, the powerful curve of his upper arms. "There was a message for me when I got back to the hotel. The meeting was cancelled. The chairman has heat stroke."

"What was the message delivered with, a two by four?" House pointed his cane at the white strip of bandage just visible beneath the hem of the t-shirt sleeve.

Wilson didn't look down. "I slipped in the shower this morning, cut my arm and wrenched my shoulder."

"You didn't call the E.R."

"For a minor laceration?" Wilson panted, forehead wrinkled in convincing confusion.

"For a transfusion. You have dyspnea and muscle fatigue."

Another scoff. "I'm running, House. Breathlessness and lactic acid build-up are pretty standard side-effects."

"Doesn't cause koilonychia. Your fingernails look like teaspoons. You're anaemic. Iron deficiency."

"I know. You thought I was taking the ferrous sulfate because it's yummy? Vaughn picked it up during my last physical."

"When was that?" House asked sceptically.

Wilson flashed him a look that was all irritation and cynicism. "A few days ago; I don't know if he's charted it yet. Get your nose out of my medical records."

He tapped a button again and the treadmill began to spin faster, louder. House shook his head and turned for the door. Over his shoulder, he said:

"Next time stay over and shower with me. Your rabbi was right when he told you autoeroticism was bad for you."

He went back through Wilson's medical records that evening. At around nine p.m. the missing physical report mysteriously appeared, the signature a sludgy, illegible mess. House closed and shredded the files, left his assigned patient malingering in the hands of his fellows and went home. He sat on his couch, watched a slasher movie he'd rented and forgotten to return, drank a whole bottle of bourbon, and took too much Vicodin.

For the first time since the heat wave had started, his leg hurt so much he felt sick.

Wilson tossed and turned in his sleep, dreaming of cases: a chaotic montage of yellow skin and ruddy palms, sunken faces, tumbleweeds of hair, brightly coloured scarves, salt-streaked blotchy cheeks, biopsy punches, microscopes, slides, infusion pumps whirring, sagging bags, funeral clothes, towers of charts, stacks of blue files, machines humming and bleeping, children, balding, dying, crying daddy, daddy and screaming, screaming, scream—

He woke with a silent one hanging on his lips, got up and stumbled into the hotel bathroom. He opened the cupboard over the sink and, with the sickening sense that he was taking too much, got down the kit of medication he prescribed for himself.

In the morning, Wilson dosed himself up with Tylenol, called in sick to work and went out to the wooden porch in the suburbs of Princeton. He hunched over his knees in a stuffed wicker chair and stared into the murky depths of his coffee, as he spoke, halting, wary, and frustrated.

His latest therapist reclined on the swinging sofa. A faint breeze blew in from the fields and stirred her wavy copper-brown hair back from her face. Dust had caught in the faint notches between her brows. She scribbled on her prescription pad, pressed against one upraised knee.

"I'm prescribing a test course of Naltrexone," she said quietly. "In addition to the Prozac. I—"

"You think I'm addicted."

Wilson slammed his coffee down and went over to one of the wooden pillars. He glared into the swampy darkness amidst the scattered forestry hemming in her land. She tore the paper off, the seams parting stickily behind him.

"Did you manage a week without it?"

"Yes."

The ropes creaked patiently as she worked the swing to and fro, one bare foot pushing against the boards. Her silence niggled him.

"A working week," he amended, grudgingly. "Several days ago."

"We arranged seven days, not five."

"It's been twenty years! I can't just—" he stopped himself with a dismissive gesture. "It's not an addiction. I know what that looks like."

"Speaking of, House called before you did."

Wilson's stomach dropped. He raised his chin and affected puzzlement. "He did?"

"He wanted to speak to my husband about the results of your annual physical."

"Why would he—?"

"Why would my husband's name be on your file? He doesn't know and I suspect that I'd rather not." She rose and came up behind him, long summer skirt swishing like the tail of a soaked cat. "You're protected by patient confidentiality, so far as it goes, but I won't lie for you, James. Don't put me in a situation where I have to choose between lying and the law. It's a poor excuse not to trust me."

"I do trust you."

She shook her head and studied a leaf floating on the breeze, its veins standing out sharp and clear on tissue paper fine greenness.

"I'd rather you didn't lie to me either."

Wilson ducked his head and rested his brow against the pillar, lacing his hands around it loosely. His voice came raw, honest now and uncertain.

"I'm trying, but…"

"You don't trust the idea of me." She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, her grip firm and sure. Wilson studied the prescription when she held it out; the paper fluttered between her prosthetic fingers like something trapped.

"Is this an ultimatum? If I don't take it, I can't come and see you any more?"

She shook her head, calm, clear eyes trained on him. "I'm not Sam or Bonnie or Julie and I'm not one of those damn amateurs who sent you away. I haven't given up here. Have you?"

TBC…