Chapter Four: Shoot the Messenger
Wilson was doing charts, or reports, or some damned thing, and was therefore eminently interruptable. House did not hesitate to do so. He bellied up to his friend's desk and dropped Angie Barton's file on top of the oncologist's paperwork.
"Thank you," Wilson said politely. "It really was getting a little too productive in here."
House was unsympathetic. "If you wanted to be a desk jockey, you should have gone into the insurance racket."
"I should have gone into it anyway," Wilson sighed, setting aside his own papers and picking up Angie's file. "There's a lot of money to be made in healthcare, and they're the ones who seem to be getting most of it."
He read silently for a moment, then looked up, puzzled.
"This came in through the clinic? Looks pretty straightforward to me. Do you want a referral?"
"I want you to look at her."
Wilson closed the file and regarded House with suspicion. "Okay, wait. It's all coming back to me now. Cuddy said you were closeted with one patient for about 45 minutes yesterday. You even left late. Who am I looking at here?"
House evaded his eyes. "Daughter of a friend."
Wilson did a double take. "A friend?"
"Why does everyone say it like that?" House asked irritably. "I did have a life before the big double P."
Wilson was rereading Angie's history. "Sooooo, this Scott Barton—undergrad drinking buddy? Lacrosse teammate? Shared a jail cell?"
House gave up. "The friend is Carolyn Barton, and because I know you won't rest until I tell you, yes, she was a friend with benefits."
The joy of gossip shone in Wilson's brown eyes. "When?"
"Freshman through junior year."
"'She was my fiiirst love'," Wilson sang.
"You know, your interest in other people's love lives is really unseemly."
"Give me a break, House. If we were discussing anyone else, you'd be dishing at warp speed right now."
"Don't change the subject," said House. "Will you see the kid or not?"
Wilson consulted the calendar installed on his computer. "Next Thursday at 2:30?"
"Sooner."
"I might be able to open up a space on Tuesday…"
"Tomorrow."
"Not a chance!"
"Wilson. She's Carolyn's only child. Would you want to wait a week to see a specialist if it were your kid?"
Wilson shot another speculative look at House. "Is she your kid?"
"Do the math, lamebrain."
"It must feel weird to know your old girlfriend's got a kid in college," Wilson jabbed back. "You must feel really old."
"I hadn't even thought about it," said House, rising stiffly, "but thanks for mentioning it." He leaned heavily on his cane like a pathetic old man and looked appealingly at Wilson, who groaned and looked at his calendar.
"Who needs nourishment anyway?" he asked his computer screen. "Tomorrow at noon, then. Do I have to see you, too?"
"Wild horses couldn't drag me away," said House, and blew Wilson a kiss as he left.
In the corridor he almost literally ran into Foreman, who did a neat dance turn to avoid the collision before falling into step beside him. House glanced at his fellow, noted that he looked like he'd just left Shakira, sated and in love, in a tangle of silk sheets.
"Kevin Mahoney is scheduled for an ANA," Foreman said casually.
"Who's Kevin Mahoney?"
"Lupus Boy? Ettinger's latest victim?"
House grunted and led the way into his office, where he grabbed his jacket, then to the elevator.
"'That's incredible, Foreman!'" the neurologist mimicked enthusiastically, as they rode to the ground floor. "'Tell me, however did you do it?' I bought Ettinger coffee and told him that 'someone' had mentioned a kid on the ward who was giving him a hard time. I was sympathetic and let him complain for half an hour. Then I asked a lot of leading questions until he figured it out for himself. Diplomacy," Foreman summarized. "It's a beautiful thing."
"A positive ANA isn't conclusive," House reminded him, barreling out of the elevator, scattering visitors waiting in the hallway.
"We talked about follow-up. He seems happy to have someone to tell his troubles to, so I guess I'm consulting. You're welcome!"
This last was shouted at the back of House's head as he accelerated past the clinic doors and through the lobby. Foreman halted and watched, amused and annoyed, as his boss sailed through the automatic doors and headed toward the parking lot.
The Barton residence was located in a rural area about fifteen miles west of the city, or a half-hour drive in moderate traffic at the posted speed limit. House regarded speed limits as another reason to question authority and traffic as an obstacle course, so he made the trip in just over 15 minutes. The house was located across the road from a horse farm. White wooden fences enclosed pastures full of contented-looking beasts rummaging around the pale spring turf for the first blades of grass. Two yellow barns stood off to one side. In the riding ring, a woman in a tennis visor was shouting instructions to a little girl on plump grey pony.
Carolyn's place was a small green farmhouse with white trim and shutters and a broad front porch. It looked well-kept in a low-key, comfortable way: the bushes and flowerbeds looked neat and the lawn was cut, but the landscaping lacked that razor-sharp, veneered look so popular in the suburbs. House parked next to a green late-model pickup truck and got out. As if activated by the sound of his car door closing, a dog began to bark. Following the sound to a side entrance near the driveway, House saw an overstimulated German Shorthair Pointer flinging itself repeatedly at the storm door. After a beat Carolyn appeared behind the mutt. A brief struggle ensued, then she emerged victorious, one end of a web leash in her hand, the other straining at the dog's collar.
"She won't hurt you!" Carolyn yelled, but House had heard that one before and stood aside warily while Carolyn hustled the dog past him to a fenced yard. Inside, she loosed the animal and slammed the gate just as it lunged forward. The dog engaged in a series of leaps, still barking its fool head off each time its head appeared over the top of the fence. Then it abruptly tired of the game and trotted off to pee in the bushes.
Carolyn pushed her hair back from her face. "Well! Nice to know we're safe from marauding doctors, anyway," she said breezily. "Come on in. I'll make coffee."
House said nothing as Carolyn fussed around the kitchen, filling the coffeemaker, getting out cookies, chatting gaily. Angie was sleeping round the clock. She didn't seem very hungry but did manage to choke down a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Phood between breakfast and dinner. Her boyfriend brought over a bouquet of balloons last night, and that seemed to raise her spirits.
Coffee mugs in hand, Carolyn sank into a chair and finally looked him in the face. Her smile slipped away. "Oh my god. It's bad news, isn't it?"
House watched his old friend age ten years as he delivered the speech he'd been rehearsing since Princeton. Leukemia was serious, yes, but far from a death sentence. Angie was young and had an otherwise good health history—no previous cancers or treatments for other diseases that might weaken her defenses. Further testing was needed to determine whether she had acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) or acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), but he'd bet money Angie had ALL, and in any case the treatment was about the same and the recovery rates for both were comparable. One of the best oncologists in the tri-state area was a close personal friend and had cleared his calendar to see them tomorrow.
Carolyn, who did not seem to find it at all remarkable that House had a friend, stuck to the business at hand. "So AML is more dangerous than ALL?"
This momly ability to zero in on the one weak spot in your story—was it the result of a hormonal change during childbirth? House made what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. "For someone like Angie, it's really not an issue. She'd have excellent chances for remission either way."
Silence while Carolyn processed this news. A calico cat drifted into the kitchen and, sensing a visitor with allergies, curled itself senuously around House's leg. He longed to punt it across the room but guessed that now was not the time. He counted the seconds to see how long it would take before the sneezing started. After more than a minute—a personal best—he spoke.
"I think we should talk to Angie, don't you?"
Carolyn nodded and rose. "She's in her room. Asleep, probably. I'll get her."
Alone at last, House cased the kitchen. Like the exterior of Carolyn's house, it was well-kept but unremarkable, done in yellows and greens with good but not premium quality appliances. Oddly, there was no sign of any male presence—no big clunky boots by the side entrance, no outsized barn coat or gimme cap hanging on the hooks near the door, no set of keys tossed into the fruit bowl on the table. If Scott Barton was still in the picture, he was much tidier than House remembered.
Carolyn reappeared, a sleep-stunned Angie in tow. The girl, now clad in t-shirt and pajama bottoms, shambled to the table and flopped into a chair. House tried not to notice that she wasn't wearing a bra, or that she was better endowed than her mother ever was.
"Mom says you have my test results," Angie croaked. "It's not mono, is it?"
House was already sick of his lecture, but managed to get through it a second time. In this version he skipped the distinction between ALL and AML. Angie looked befuddled enough as it was.
"So I have—cancer?"
"I'm afraid so," said House.
"So, like…so I'll need, like, chemo?"
"Probably. Dr. Wilson will go over all that with you once he's run a few more tests."
Angie stared at the table in front of her. She tried a laugh.
"I can't think of any good questions," she pleaded, looking at one adult, then the other. "The only ones I can think of are so stupid."
"There are no stupid questions," intoned House, belying a lifelong conviction that most questions were not only stupid but ridiculously beside the point.
"Okay." Angie drew a deep breath. "So…what about college?"
"You'll need to take a leave of absence while you're undergoing treatment. But you can pick it right up again once you're in remission. Lots of kids do."
Carolyn took her daughter's hand. "Angie, what do you really want to ask?"
The girl's eyes grew bright with tears. "Am I gonna lose my hair?" She forced another laugh, but it came out as a sob. "I'm sorry, that's so shallow, but it's all I can think of. Am I going to be bald?"
Instinctively, House touched the thinning spot on his own scalp. "I don't think it's shallow at all," he lied. "It's a pretty severe change. But you'll have to ask Wilson. He knows the most up-to-date stuff; maybe they've found a way around it since I last read up on it."
"If you do go lose your hair, I'll shave my head," Carolyn said, squeezing Angie's hand. "Solidarity among bald babes, right?"
"God, Mom, don't," Angie protested. "You have a head like a potato, it'd be really too weird." But when she laughed this time, it was almost natural.
House drove home in a state of profound depression. He'd lingered in that bright pretty kitchen, almost enjoying the scene as the two women joked and encouraged each other and otherwise armed themselves for the long fight ahead. The afternoon slipped by; Carolyn made dinner, and Angie and House discovered that they both loved Tim Burton movies and thought Michael Moore was a blowhard but said things that needed saying. Scott Barton did not appear, and his name did not come up in conversation. The overall atmosphere was determinedly cheerful.
But when Angie went back to her room ("Time for Drawn Together on the Comedy Channel," she explained), Carolyn sat drawn and tense, holding herself together until they heard Angie's door close. Then she cradled her head in her arms and wept soundlessly. House had never seen anyone cry that hard without barking like a dog. Carolyn had never repressed her emotions: she laughed and cried at the smallest provocation, got angry and forgave with equal ease. But this was different: a raw red grief unmitigated by reason and devoid of self-pity, which somehow made it more frightening to witness. House hitched his chair next to Carolyn's and put an awkward arm around her shoulders.
The storm was passing. The shaking stopped; the breathing became more regular. Carolyn leaned back and drew a Kleenex box close. "What a mess," she whispered. "Well, at least that part is over."
"Anything I can do to help," House began, not sure what more he had to offer but not wanting to just fade back into the background, either.
Carolyn slid an arm around his waist and rested her head for a moment against his shoulder. "I can't believe how lucky we were to find you," she said, giving him a quick squeeze. "I am so glad you're here. That's a huge help, right there."
House couldn't begin to identify the feelings aroused by that remark, let alone make sense of them.
He made a quick stop at the hospital to pick up his knapsack, then lingered to hack into the lab's server to make sure Lupus Boy was on track for the ANA the next morning. It was after eleven when he entered his apartment to discover that it was already occupied; Cameron's coat was hanging by the door, and her boots slouched provocatively next to the couch.
