The next morning House asked for the wheelchair, his pain levels still weren't quite back to normal after the night's crisis. The social worker in charge of his group reacted shocked when she saw his battered face: "What on earth happened?" "PAIN happened!" Wilson snapped at her but then got a hold on himself. "I need to talk to you for a moment. Who distributed the lunch time tablets yesterday?" "Erm... Colette I think. Why?" "Get her! Now! The reason why House is in that state is because he didn't get his Vicodin with lunch yesterday. He needs that! I've told you before!" The social worker pulled a concerned face: "Oh God, I'm sorry. I guess she is kinda forgetful with those things. It never seems so serious with painkillers, does it? It's not like they're life and death medication." "WHAT?" He turned her towards House almost violently. "Look at his face! He punched himself; he was in such desperate pain! Why do you think he's wearing that T.E.N.S. device? This man has serious nerve damage in his leg! He has been in constant, excruciating pain for almost ten years! I had to give him Demerol last night just to take the edge off it! He needs those tablets to survive, you idiot!" "Mr..." "DR Wilson!" "Dr Wilson, I do appreciate your concern, but I'm sure you'll agree that 'idiot' is not a term the use of which we can accept at a centre for the cognitively..." "Sorry, missy, I think you're getting me wrong here! I'm not trying to insult your clients. THEY are cognitively impaired. YOU are an idiot!" Wilson had almost managed to terrify himself with that outbreak. "And now I need your name and your supervisor." "Ashley Cairnduff", she informed him icily and took House in with her as she went to get her boss: "Do you want to come in, Greg?" Her smile looked fake.
Wilson took a couple of deep breaths as we waited for the supervisor and flashed a reassuring grin into the middle distance, just to let any casual passers-by know that really everything was perfectly fine, just a personal matter he had to sort out. It was two or three minutes before she came, a good-looking woman in her early thirties, dressed for getting down and dirty with her clients if necessary, and with the kind of face that had taken at least three different ethnicities to assemble. She looked less than delighted, so Wilson had to assume that Ms Cairnduff had already told her side of the story. "Are you Greg's carer?" He hesitated for a moment, it still sounded strange to him to be addressed as anyone's carer, let alone House's. "Well, are you?" "Yeah, sorry, I guess I am. It just sounds strange. See, he's my best friend. All that's changed since his accident is that I moved in with him so he won't play with the scissors and the matches." Her gaze softened, she seemed to believe him. "What's that bruise on your face at all?" "Oh, that's where he punched me last night when I asked him to move so I could inject him with Demerol." "Ok, so he obviously WAS in pain. I'm sorry about that, I'll make sure it won't happen again." She was smiling at him now, in an apologetic kind of way. "I hope so. Seriously, Ms..." "Garvey, Natasha Garvey." "Jimmy Wilson." He offered his hand and she shook it. "Natasha, I need you to take this seriously. House has chronic nerve pain, quite unconnected with what's bringing him here, and..." "You're on second name terms with your best friend?" She looked at him with one raised eyebrow, very sexy. Wilson shrugged. "We met in work, and I guess among doctors that's the normal form of address. We just never changed it." Natasha was obviously trying to disguise shock. "Greg was... a doctor?" He nodded. "A medical genius, world famous. There are hundreds of people alive now who wouldn't be if it hadn't been for him." The only thing about her that didn't say 'oh my God' was her voice. "What happened?" Wilson still found it hard to talk about this aspect of the story in a steady voice. "It's your fault", his conscience told him all the time. "He carried out an experimental procedure on himself trying to save a patient and ended up in cardiac arrest. After they had resuscitated him..." He couldn't go on. She put her arm around him, in a sisterly way, comforting. "Listen, why don't you come in for a cup of coffee and calm down a bit? I think I'll need to hear more about Greg so we can work out a suitable program for him here." Wilson smiled. "I'd love to, but I'm late for work as it is. Could I come in for ten minutes when I'm picking him up tonight?" "Of course you can, I'm looking forward to it." Wilson got back into the car feeling a whole lot better. She did seem to want to help, and it had been a long time since he'd felt so attracted to anyone.
As soon as he arrived at the hospital, he swooped down on Foreman like a hawk on a chicken. "Foreman, I'll bring House in, I need you to do a functional MRI of his brain while he's asleep, a memory test, a..." Foreman looked bemused. "Easy, easy! Are you channelling his spirit now or something?" Foreman was right, he was sounding like the old House. He laughed. "Well, maybe that would help us make use of it. But I think I've found a way to get it back, to get him back! Listen, I think his intellect is still in there somewhere, he's accessing all sorts of memories in his sleep!" He told Foreman about House's dream, how amazingly it had reflected his old life, his old personality, everything. Foreman nodded thoughtfully: "I hear you, Wilson. But I think you're being over-optimistic. His memory has never been the problem, all the medical knowledge in the world is still in there. What he's lost is the ability to make sense of all that knowledge. And we won't bring that back even if we did find a way of giving him conscious access." "Foreman, it's a hope! I'm not asking you to poke around in his brain, he's suffered enough damage doing that himself. I'm just asking you to have a look at it." Foreman shrugged. "Ok, bring him in, I guess it can't do any harm. But don't get your hopes up!"
Despite Foreman's gloomy predictions, Wilson realised something good was happening to him when he found a big, happy grin had crept across his face while examining a patient's test results. Ok, so she was clearly in remission, but that didn't usually make him that happy, did it? He called her in: "Good news, Mrs Di Marco, you're in remission!" She looked at him as if she didn't dare believe his words. "Totally cancer free, not a single clonal cell in your body!" "Oh my God, Dr Wilson, thank you!" She got up and hugged him. "Hey, it's ok! I'm only doing my job..." "Y'know, I could tell it was gonna be good news when I saw you there behind your desk. You were looking happier than I'd ever seen you." He couldn't really tell her that that had very little to do with her current state of health, could he? "Well, it's being able to tell people these things that keeps you going in oncology", he smiled, even as his gaze reached her chemo-ravaged scalp. "And now buy yourself a funky hat and go dancing, I hope not to see you here again till your check-up in six months!" She hugged him again before she went out, already texting the news to all her loved ones. Wilson went back to work - concentrate, his next patient was a pretty nasty case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and he'd have to find a new treatment protocol for him.
After work he put on Beethoven's Sixth in the car, he was feeling that good about the world. He'd ask Natasha out he had just decided, she was just too good to be true. He was still smiling as he walked into her office, small and shabby as it was, telling of great enthusiasm and chronic underfunding. "Careful, don't take that one, I don't think it'll hold anyone over 100 pounds", she winked as he was trying to pick out a chair from a pretty rackety collection. "That one over there should do you." He sat down and made himself as comfortable as he could in a stackable conference chair from about 1976. She shoved a cup of strong, fresh coffee across the desk for him and looked at him with an expression of genuine interest. "So, tell me about Greg. What do you think we can do for him here?" "Well, first and foremost I really need you to take his pain management regimen seriously, as I said this morning. House has..." He didn't realise how time was passing as he was talking to Natasha, telling her about House, what had happened to him, their friendship... It felt good to let it all pour out for once. Only when Ms Cairnduff stuck in her head he realised he had been in there for nearly half an hour already. "Is Dr Wilson going to be ready soon? Greg is getting quite upset waiting for him out here." He turned around and could see House sitting there with an anxious expression on his face. A pretty young woman was holding his hand, with long blonde hair and, yes, pretty amazing baps. "I'll be right out, House!" He shouted. "Just making sure they'll never forget about your Vicodin again!" House seemed to see the point there, his features relaxed. "Ok!" He smiled back. "Well, I guess we better finish up, hm? Unless you want to come along", Wilson suddenly found himself saying. "Where there's enough dinner for two, there's enough dinner for three." Natasha smiled. "Sorry, not tonight, I've an early start tomorrow. But how about Saturday?" Wow, that was encouraging. "Yeah, Saturday sounds great." She nodded towards the two turtledoves outside who were now whispering to each other and winked. "Y'know, I think it might turn out to be a doubledate."
With House firmly installed on the passenger seat, Wilson knew he had to breach the only subject to him that had been on his mind all day when he hadn't been thinking about Natasha. "House, y'know the way something in your head went wrong when you had that accident?" They always talked freely about the subject. House had been told he'd had an accident, and that there was something wrong with his head now, but that knowledge was of no concern to him; he couldn't put it into context. "Yeeeessssss... Why?" "Maybe we can put it right after all. But you'd have to go into hospital for a couple of days, Foreman would have to run a bunch of tests on you." "Why?" "Cos he won't be able to put things right if he doesn't know exactly what's wrong with them, ok?" House looked slightly scared. "Will it hurt?" "No, nobody will be allowed to do anything that might cause you pain. You're in enough of that as it is." House nodded, thinking. "Ok, but you'll bring me lunch everyday, right?" "Of course I will." They changed subjects and talked about the days they'd both had, and about the amazing women they'd met. "I'm going out with Natasha on Saturday, do you want to invite Elaine and you both come along?" That would throw the idea of sophisticated entertainment right out of the window, but then who needed sophistication all the time? "If you don't want to I can ask Cuddy to come over, you can have a chat and a bottle of wine, and a giggle with Rachel." He didn't like House to think he needed a baby sitter. In the old days he had known he needed one, but that had been a different kind of baby sitting, too. House shook his head. "I'll ask Elaine out. She's gorgeous, isn't she?" He seemed very proud to have caught such a beautiful lady's attention. "She is. And you're right, her boobs are amazing." They both laughed.