Chapter Four
Greg waited until he got home before deciding to open the email from the travel agent. If his mother hadn't told him about it, he would have never noticed it. His spam blocker quarantined it to suspect mail. He never looked at that folder. It would have been deleted. Damn. It would have been the perfect excuse.
Instead he had a flight itinerary. His plane was due to depart the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The return flight was the following Sunday. "What was she thinking," he exclaimed. No way Cuddy would okay that. Shit, she so would. Lisa had been bugging him to take a real vacation for ages.
His phone was in his hand dialing his mother's number without an organized thought in his head.
"Greg? Are you home already?" His mother seemed genuinely shocked to hear from him so soon.
"Yeah, I took a look at my flight itinerary."
"You sound upset." She didn't sound pleased.
"Still tired."
"You're patient doing okay?"
"Diagnosed, treated and discharged."
"Then you can get some rest. Call me tomorrow. I'll tell you about the hotel reservations then. Goodnight, Greg." She hung up before he could respond.
It all seemed a little too suspicious. The seemingly overwhelming amount of detail put into the one-sided planning of this event was oppressive. Somewhere deep down it was also exhilarating. Especially since his mother had no idea what he had been through emotionally and physically since John House had died. What should have been a liberating event turned on him, causing the first slide in a series of downward spirals leading to the depths of his own personal hell. It was like fate was trying to guide him toward social situations he found daunting. The level of social anxiety he suffered from increased since the Mayfield stint.
Dr. Nolan thought that SSRI's would help with that, but Greg knew it had nothing to do with his depression. That particular disease had morphed through his progression from boy to man. The social issues were separate; a result of a toxic family full of co-dependency and instability. Moving frequently around the world, through vastly different cultures, never provided him the necessary social skills needed to forge a solid understanding of his place in that world.
It was very possible that most of his social gatherings attending during his formative years were overshadowed by his dysfunctional relationship with his father, and almost always ended in disappointment followed by disciplinary measures. In the absence of the father, it might just be possible for him to experience a social gathering where few knew him personally and there were no expectations. Did he have it within himself to step out of old habits and insecurities and find a new, improved version of the man everyone thought was brilliant but an ass? Nolan would tell him to do it. What was the worst thing that could happen? He would either gain insight and grow or repeat old mistakes and remain the same. Nothing to lose.
Greg went to bed with an overall positive feeling. His leg ached, but only at its usual level. The anxiety and apprehension of earlier in the day abated with his mother's willingness to not nag her son about plans and parties. He was less tense, and without his body being wired, the leg muscles had a chance to relax. Of course, being in bed didn't actually mean sleeping. He had always been an insomniac. Even before med school. Four solid hours of sleep a night was considered a good night's rest. But that rarely happened. The pattern was more like forty minutes to an hour of sleep, awake and tossing and turning for up to twenty minutes before the next cycle began.
Being a doctor, he knew that there might be some sleep apnea involved. When he had been hallucinating, just weeks before his breakdown, Wilson had tested him in the sleep lab. There were no abnormalities that woke him from slumber. He progressed through the different sleep cycles, albeit quickly, yet there were no brain wave or breathing interruptions that triggered his unusual sleep patterns. The painfully restless limb and ever racing mind were the culprits. Only when his thoughts shut off, could Greg House put in a full night's rest.
And his thoughts continued to race. Greg stared up at the ceiling, which in the darkness presented a dark chasm tugging at his thoughts like a psychic black hole. The void of nothingness extracted snippets of memories past, peeling away the layers of regression until a faint outline of what had been carefully ensconced in the gauzelike mesh of cloudy memory could be seen. He was seven or eight. A precocious young lad full of newly learned experiences that begged to be explored further by putting the theories into use in random situations.
Of course, by that age Greg had understood heat, hot and that placing a hand in a flame was not a good idea. Almost every child learned that lesson by approaching a stove. He was able to understand the connections between heat and its ability to transform substances into something else. The propensity for grasping chemistry and physics was quite evident in the budding prodigy. He was proud of himself for making those types of connections intellectually years ahead of his cohorts. It should have made his parents take notice, but they took it all in stride.
Thanksgiving dinner was a tradition at Aunt Sarah's. Holidays always seemed the best time to show off new talents. After everyone exclaimed how much the little ones grew, it followed course for oneself to demonstrate new skills. And naturally, Greg liked to surprise people with his new found brain power. He'd rather set the scene and manipulate the players so he looked the part of a hero. This particular time it served a two-fold purpose.
Dinner was set to be served closer to four than two. He had skimped at breakfast as his father laid down some ground rules for their excursion. The phrased like 'children are seen and not heard', 'don't speak unless spoken to', 'don't interrupt', and all the other restrictions adults set forth upon children were issued. When the House family arrived at their destination and the door opened inviting them to a home filled with the glorious smells of roasting turkey and sweet pies, it set Greg's stomach to growling. That garnered harsh glares from John House. He was embarrassed by his son's natural body function. Greg received the warning look of dissatisfaction from his father. It was one that told him it was his own fault for not finishing breakfast.
So Greg was forced to sit in the living room, listening to pleasantries spoken by the adults. Phony conversations of flower beds and Army/Navy football games seemed to be the subjects of the day. He excused himself from the room, a tactic hardly noticed by the four adults, and snuck into the kitchen.
There he peeked into pots simmering on the stove top. The amazing smells of sage, thyme and rosemary permeated the air making his mouth water in anticipation. He turned on the oven light, peering through the tempered double pane of glass revealing the turkey roasting to a golden brown as pumpkin and apple pies cooked on the rack beneath. Greg's stomach rumbled with a ferocity that only the starving could feel. Sure that he would die from lack of food, he decided to speed things along just a bit.
After all, if a turkey cooked at 350 degrees for 6 hours, then that same turkey would only take, say, 4 hours if a higher temperature was applied. Greg spun the dial to 475 degrees. He left the rest alone, seeing how it all seemed to be already cooked and left on low flame to keep warm until the bird finished. He returned to the living room, a satisfied smile on his face.
It wasn't even twenty minutes later when the scent of turkey emanated strongly. Everyone concurred that it was just about the most inviting smell there was to offer. That was until a slight acridness crept in.
"The bird's burning!"
Aunt Sarah rushed into the kitchen, Blythe House close at heel.
"Harold, John!" She shrieked.
Greg remembered his father mumbling something about the turkey being heavy and requiring a man to get it out of the oven.
He followed his dad to the kitchen. Something wasn't right. As a matter of fact, something was terribly wrong. The kitchen was filled with smoke. Flames were present behind the over door glass. The golden bird was blackening to incineration right before their eyes. Greg was shoved to the side as Uncle Harold tried to help. But within those few short seconds, the oven and stove top were engulfed, flames licking their way up the walls, across the cupboards and everywhere it found fuel to feed itself. He was awestruck.
Standing outside the domicile, the House family was surrounded by fire trucks, their hoses snaking across the front lawn and into the home through the front door and broken windows. Aunt Sarah was sobbing uncontrollably into Uncle Harold's chest. John House stood with his arm around his wife's shoulder, staring into the disaster with an occasional side glance to his son, who was enrapt with the flurry of activity around him, oblivious to the anguish his family was experiencing.
When the fire chief came out and spoke to the men, Greg was distracted by the other firemen rolling up the hoses. It wasn't until his father's talon like grip pierced his shoulder that little Greg was aware of just how much trouble he was in. It wasn't the first time this bird of prey's approach signaled grief.
Greg looked up into his father's eyes feeling the full weight of his glare.
House's eyes popped open. He was lying on his back, unaware of how long he had been asleep. He rolled his head to the side to read the digital alarm clock. Damn, only midnight. He tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position, the ache in his leg having ratcheted up a few notches.
Finally he gave up, hoisting himself to a sitting position while trying to stretch the cramped muscles of his right thigh. It took two hands and a lot of momentum just to swing his legs over the side of the bed. Gingerly he tried to get to his feet, prepared for the stiff leg to buckle at the slightest onset of pressure. Two steps later had him falling to his hands and knees, the jarring motion further exacerbating the pain in his thigh.
He had two choices: pull himself to a standing position or submit and roll onto his back like a helpless turtle.