July 7th
Greg wakes with a gasp and finds he sits straight up. Sweat pours down his back, his hands held out as if to push someone or something away. The dream fades even as he tries to recall it—it's about his father, but he cannot make it come into focus. Slowly he lowers his arms and wipes the sweat from his face, gets out of bed and limps to the window, his hand on his thigh. Outside it's hot and miserably sultry. He can feel the heat as it attempts to push through the walls to the air-conditioned interior. The orderlies complain about the temperature when they come back from their breaks; the new nurses at change of shift look wilted. Still, he'd rather be out there than in here.
It's been a filthy bitch of a day. The thought holds resentment and guilt in equal measure. Wilson had come to visit and they'd fought, a nasty sparring match that sent his friend away in outraged, resentful silence. At the time it had felt good, even great. He still has the power to make someone else dance to his tune. Now Greg knows it for what it was-a petty and small-minded act, designed to hurt someone who genuinely cares for him. If I learned anything from Dad it's how to screw with people.
The only person he cannot manipulate is Doctor Goldman (or as he calls her, the House whisperer). Before Wilson's visit he'd wasted a noisy therapy session in an attempt to hurl sharp little rocks of gratuitous cruelty and bitter sarcasm at her, all designed to get a reaction. And yet he was the one who had ended up in pieces while she watched him with the cool, imperturbable look he has grown to detest. At the end of the hour she'd stood, crossed the room and ushered him into the care of the orderly outside the door, all in complete silence. He couldn't tell if she was angry, upset, disgusted, terrified, or just plain bored. Her refusal to engage spurred him to greater excesses in the ward. Now he's locked up in an observation room once more for the next twenty-four hours. It's a place with rounded corners, no loose items, no mattress, sheets or pillows on the bunk, and one tiny window of thick plexiglass reinforced with chicken wire. Through that little porthole he can just see across the hall to the larger window with a good view of the front lawn. Everyone else is gathered in the common room to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, this week's special-treat movie. At least he's been spared that torment. He's a Jack Cannon fan. The writing's infinitely better, the hero more believable. Maybe he'll request one of the books from the series, though he's read each entry a dozen times. His own copies at home are annotated and dog-eared . . .
Greg feels a sudden rush of what can only be called homesickness—a ludicrous emotion, but it's there all the same. It's stupid because the apartment isn't home, not really. He's lived there longer than anywhere else he's ever been, but it's still just a dwelling place where he can dump his stuff, bring in takeout and beer and bourbon, play his music at all hours to annoy the neighbors, and wallow in a hot bath for ages without anyone else in need of the bathroom. To be honest, that's all any of the places where he's ended up have ever been to him, merely a collection of rooms convenient to work. He learned long ago not to get attached to locations. Inevitably the call comes to move on for one reason or another, and the pain of departure never gets any easier. Better to not have a home than to lose it over and over again, as he did in his childhood and early youth. Of course eventually he learned to take interest in the exploration of new places and people; his reward was first-hand knowledge of customs and beliefs, the acquisition of various languages and their idioms, the realization of just how ephemeral and transitory life truly is. Not a bad tradeoff. But at times like this, he wishes he had a home of some kind. Stupid, yet there it is.
He presses his forehead to the glass, but there is no cool relief. The hot night beyond his confinement is dark and restless; he can just barely hear the tree leaves rustle, a faint dry susurrus. Heat lightning flickers in the distance. As he stands there, a fragment of dream slides into his mind.
(It is night here too, but a cold and windy one that heralds the approach of winter. He burrows his naked body deeper into the big pile of leaves at the base of the oak tree and turns his face away from the warm yellow light as it spills out of the second floor bedroom window. The light is on for a reason. It is his father's way of driving home the point. His mother is nowhere to be seen, but he knows she stands guard all the same though she can do nothing to help him.
And suddenly the leaves are gone and he lies on the withered grass, the starved stalks prickly against his bare skin. But the icy wind no longer bites at him. Now it is hot and the air is thick with stagnant humidity. He struggles to sit up. It is pitch black; not even the indifferent stars keep him company. Fear jolts through him when he realizes the light is gone too. He is completely alone. No one sees him, no one guards him and equally, there's nobody to punish him. Somehow that last fact is just as full of terror as the ones that preceded it. He can hear his own breath as it labors in and out of his lungs, and that is all. He reaches out to grasp something, anything; his body tilts forward and starts to fall-)
He makes an inarticulate sound and clutches the window frame. A thin film of fog appears on the thick pane, slowly dissipates. He closes his eyes against hot tears under his lids. If he lets them go, they will never stop and he'll dissolve, turn into the nothing he truly is.
"Seawater," Amber whispers behind him. "An ocean of self-pity and cowardice just dying to leak out all over everything, that's what you are."
Someone help, he cries out inside, someone come in here! Amber chuckles.
"I'm here, aren't I?" She pats his shoulder. Her pale eyes glitter with false concern. "You've always known you'd end up this way." The soft words burn like brands. "No one will ever be there. You're too busy pushing them away. And anyway, what does it matter? You've got me."
"SHUT UP!" he shrieks. "Get out, damn you! Leave me the fuck alone!" Above Amber's delighted laughter, in an agony of fury and despair he hammers at the window, because he knows it will bring the orderlies.
They've just finished with the restraints when he says "Get Wilson."
"No one's coming tonight," the charge nurse says. She looks tired and pissed off. Some part of him knows it's because she's forced to take care of him when she's got a full night's worth of paperwork and drug checks and charts to deal with, but her voice is calm and rational all the same. "Come on, Greg. Settle down. Let me give you the shot. You know it'll help."
It takes everything he has to relax his muscles and not fight; this was what he wanted after all. "Wilson," he says again as the needle goes in. "Let me call him . . ." He feels the empty darkness as it lies in wait just beyond the circle of light above the bed, and it terrifies him past all reason. He tugs at the restraints. "Please," he whimpers, reduced at last to a pathetic plea.
"In the morning," the charge nurse says with weary patience. She takes his pulse, her touch light and impersonal. The Ativan begins to push through him, ready to steal away his consciousness. He struggles against it in a perverse display of defiance, but it's a hopeless cause.
Still, when the nurse reaches to turn off the light he snaps "No! Leave it on!" He cannot keep the panic hidden and hates the weakness it reveals. His voice is hoarse, tremulous. The nurse hesitates, then takes her hand from the switch. He sees a reluctant pity in her glance and loathes her for it, even as relief moves over him in a sluggish wave.
"You want some water?" she says. He shakes his head, though he is dry with thirst. She nods and walks to the door. He can't help but watch her, though he knows that even if she stays he'll still be alone. It is his last thought before the drug pulls him down.
(He is wakened by a hard hand as it pulls him out of the warm nest of leaves he's created. Cold air shocks him and he gasps, struggles to open his eyes.
"On your feet!" John House stands in front of him, resplendent in a clean, pressed uniform. His gaze holds nothing but a sort of honest, raw anger that hurts more than contempt or amusement ever could. "Got anything to say for yourself?"
"No."
"That's 'no SIR', as you well know. You will use the correct address or spend another night out here."
"N-no sir."
John looks him up and down. "Do you understand why this happened?"
"B-because I was l-late coming back from my piano lesson. Sir."
"Because you have a chronic disregard for orders and schedules of any kind. You think you can do exactly as you please without consequences." John leans forward just a little. "You're wrong.")
When Greg wakes up, it's morning. He can tell because the day orderlies are the ones who come in and remove the four-point restraints, help him sit up, and escort him back to the observation room. They still smell of cigarettes, which means they've just come in on change of shift. He's given some food, the institutional slop they serve here that's barely one step above raw sewage in smell and taste. He manages to get some of it into him because he's hungry enough to chew off his hand and anything even that barely resembles something edible is good enough. A nurse comes in, gives him a pain pill, makes sure he swallows it, and then he's locked in once again.
Wilson arrives a few hours later. When Greg enters the visitor's room, flanked by orderlies, his friend gives him a hard stare but says nothing. Greg drops into the chair and sits back, despite the pain it causes.
"Why Jimmy, how kind of you to drop by," he says. "How very thoughtful. Bring any chocolates? I'd kill for a truffle."
"I had to re-arrange my schedule again for the entire week to make this little excursion," Wilson says. His expression is cold, distant—well, as cold and distant as he can manage, which makes him look like a puppy with an unexpressed sneeze. "If you plan to behave like you did yesterday, I'm out of here."
"Come on now, don't be mean." Greg offers a smirk. He feels hollow inside, as if everything's been scooped out and he's nothing but a dried husk. "I just wanted to catch up. It's been so long since we saw each other."
Wilson doesn't reply right away. Then he says "You were in restraints. What happened?"
Greg looks down at his hands, folded over his belly. The pink marks on his wrists tell their own tale. "One of the nurses here is really into kink. Total bondage fetish."
"You freaked out." It sounds like an accusation. Greg's smile fades.
"In case it escaped your notice, I'm in a mental hospital!" He doesn't mean for the words to come out as loudly as they do, but he can't seem to control the volume on his voice. "In case you didn't realize it, I'm having a little trouble dealing with what morons like you call reality!"
"Hey, I resent that," Amber says. She sits on the table facing him. Her expression is resentful. "I'm as real as you are, you know."
"House, I know where you are and why you're here." Wilson scrubs a hand over his face. He looks tired, and worried. "I don't think you do, though. You've been here over a month now, and nothing's—you haven't changed. You're still . . ." He hesitates. "You're not better," he says. It's an amendment to whatever he was going to say originally.
"What the hell does that even mean, Wilson? Maybe I'm supposed to go through life wondering what's real and what isn't because I use Vicodin and booze, maybe that's my punishment." Greg stares at him. "Because that's what this is, you know. Discipline for being bad."
Wilson just tilts his head a bit and looks at him. "I'm not a psychologist," he says at last. "But it seems a little convenient for you to turn everyone else into your dad, so you get to be a self-righteous rebel. Especially since you put yourself in here, no one else did it." He gets to his feet. "I'm not coming up every time you snap your fingers. Either you decide to work on getting better, or get out and carry on with your little self-destruction festival. Just know that if you decide on the second choice, I won't help you."
Greg considers this statement after he's placed back in the observation room. That was a standard example of Wilson's usual hyperbolic style. There's no way he'd abandon his friend when said friend is in dire need of care and support.
"But you can't rely on him," Amber says. Her hand comes to rest on his shoulder. "You can't rely on anyone but yourself, you've always known that. Don't forget it now. That would be dangerous for both of us."
After a while he curls up on the slab that serves for a bed, and tries to ignore the heat lightning that flickers behind his closed eyes.