Mastering dreams

"So you find him difficult to work with?" Martha heard a voice near her. She spun around wondering what was going on. She was sure she had fallen asleep! And surely she had as she couldn't possibly have travelled here for real. She was sure she was on a beach somewhere in the Greek islands but couldn't say for sure where. Not that it really mattered. She searched with her eyes and found a very handsome man standing near her. She was sure he was handsome – the sort of Greek God kind of handsome – though it was a bit difficult to see him in the shadows. She was sure that had he not wanted to be seen, she wouldn't have seen him. He looked Greek – dark hair and eyes, olive skin – but he also looked strangely ageless and raceless.

"Who do I find difficult to work with?" Martha asked cautiously.

"You boss, of course," the man laughed. "House. Who else? Or do you work for someone else that I don't know about? And I have to warn you that I do know about everything."

"Who are you," Martha wanted to know. "Dreams are usually based on things we have seen or read about during the day, or things that for some reason have been brought to mind by something during the day, and therefore we usually know what is going on and who it is we meet in the dreams. At least while we are in the dream. Why don't I know who you are?"

"Maybe that is part of your dream," the man suggested. "Uncertainty. After all, House has just got you to doubt yourself and your values."

"So you're a manifestation of my uncertainty?" Martha deduced. "Because I suddenly feel unsure, and maybe like I'm an outsider, an alien, in a world that everybody else is familiar with my subconscious creates you in my dream to help me figure out how to deal with it."

"Very good," the man approved. "If that is what is happening. After all, we don't really know what dreams are. Some say they are messages from gods."

"You're trying to tell me you're God?" Martha frowned. "I don't believe in God."

"But that doesn't prove that God – or gods – don't exist," he pointed out.

"Who are you?" Martha demanded.

"Erebus," he answered simply.

"The god of shadows," Martha mused. "Son of Chaos, husband, – and brother – of Nyx, the Night. I can't understand why I would imagine you."

"If I am a manifestation of your subconscious," Erebus proposed. "Then surely I am a very logical choice. You are a very black and white person, and shades of grey – the shadows of life – are a little explored territory for you. Yet with House you struggle with grey all the time. Nothing seems clear with him. He bends the rules any which way he wants, he hides things from the patient, from his team, from his boss. He lies, he breaks the law he seems to have no morals or ethics, in short he is Chaos personified and yet, he is compelling and brilliant and he saves lives."

"You can save lives without lies," Martha insisted.

"Without lies, your last patient would be dead," Erebus reminded her. "That is, after all, your current dilemma. How can you work as a doctor if you cannot tell the truth. Sure, you have on occasion withheld some parts of the truth, and you have found ways to use truth to manipulate people, but all in all you take the concept of 'informed consent' quite seriously."

"People do have the right to know," Martha stated. "I just need to learn to present the choices in a way that they will choose the option that is more likely to cure them."

"And how much time do you think you have with each patient to do that?" Erebus wondered.

"What do you mean?" Martha asked.

"It has taken you three years to know the medical procedures you know," Erebus explained. "There are new procedures and experimental cures being developed right now and nobody knows all the risks and benefits that they have. How long do you think it would take for you to get someone who has no medical degree – maybe no education at all – to understand enough of the medicine so that you can say that they have really been informed and know all the possible risks and benefits and are capable of making an informed choice? Is it even possible?"

"I'm a doctor," Martha insisted. "I have to figure out how to explain things to my patients clearly enough. They don't need to know every little detail, just the important facts."

"And are you sure you know what the important facts are for them?" Erebus asked. "Had Chase not told you that the cure came from embryonic stem cells, you would not have known and had the man not been crucifying himself you might not have found out about his strong beliefs and then you would have got him to consent to the treatment but it would not have been an informed consent."

"Surely he would have asked me about the treatment," Martha maintained. "And then all those things would have come to light."

"And then you would have still needed to lie to him to save his life," Erebus asserted. "He was dying in a couple of days, so how do you think you would have changed his mind in time without a lie?"

"I don't know," Martha worried. "But surely I would have found a way."

"House found a way," Erebus pointed out. "And the patient was ok with it in the end."

"House got lucky," Martha stated. "Doctors have been sued for less."

"So has House," Erebus reminded her. "He doesn't care as long as the patient lives."

"The other patient did say medicine is like politics," Martha muttered. "Only results matter."

"You didn't believe him either," Erebus observed.

"I do believe that the way things are done affect the results," Martha explained. "The end does not justify the means. Especially not in politics. People don't want to govern, they want power."

"And power corrupts," Erebus agreed. "But do you have a better system in mind? Either for government or medicine?"

"Medicine isn't about power," Martha exclaimed.

"No?" Erebus asked. "You hold life and death in your hands, at least a little bit. That is power if anything."

"But I don't decide who lives or dies," Martha insisted. "I just do my best for every patient and try to save them no matter what. I don't want to lie to do that."

"But sometimes lies are the most efficient way to do it," Erebus repeated.

"I don't know how to work like that," Martha cried!

"Well, you don't need to worry your conscience too much about your latest patient," Erebus told her.

"Why not?" Martha didn't understand the statement. "We lied to him and forced him to accept a treatment that was against his faith. Even if I do think he was being stupid."

"Don't you think he accepted the lie rather easily?" Erebus pointed out. "I mean, even if what House told him about the micro-cancer had been true, God had still kept the deal."

"The man promised to crucify himself every year if God cured his daughter's cancer," Martha asserted. "How would you say the deal was kept if the cancer was still there? And I can't believe I'm arguing about what deals God has or has not kept when I don't even believe in him."

"Hypothetically speaking, then," Erebus conceded. "if there were a god, the man had not made a deal about the cancer, he had made a deal about his daughter's life. He had promised to nail himself to the cross every year his daughter was alive, not every year she was cancer-free."

"And as the daughter was alive, the hypothetical deal was kept," Martha realized!

"So for him to fold that easily," Erebus went on. "He had to have already figured out that his deal was silly. If there is a god you can't influence him with deals like that. The whole point of a redeemer is that you don't have to crucify yourself; it's been done for you. And if his deal was so pleasing to his god, how come he lost everything because of what he did? Trust me, he had already figured – at least subconsciously - that he needed to find a way out. And his illness and House just came up most conveniently."

"As there is no god," Martha repeated. "This whole conversation is silly as was his deal."

"Ok, insulted though I am," Erebus sighed. "I'll accept your position, but if you are insisting on telling people all they need to know about treatments and cures you need to accept that for some people God does exist and he is real. Even if you can't understand the realness."

"House doesn't accept anything other people believe unless there is proof," Martha muttered.

"But he has no problem with lies," Erebus pointed out. "You do."

"But I also have a problem with letting patients die," Martha mourned.