Part Four:
Wilson switched the setting on the showerhead to pulsing and lingered under the delightfully hot water. The long row of metal showers that stretched along the wall of the half-screen cubicles in the white-tiled wash chamber were more sophisticated than their utilitarian appearance let on. Every one had an unlimited supply of temperature adjustable water and a head that could be set to hard, soft or pulsing. Sometimes, he thought, it was the only way any of the staff survived the inevitable hazards of being covered in blood, puke, piss and shit or just having a ferociously bad day. He bowed his head forward, letting the thrum-swoosh-thrum-swoosh of the water work the kinks out of his aching shoulders and back.
He'd been up all night, and back and forth most of the day, holding Tania Walker's hand. She'd been transferred in a month ago, believing she was on death's doorstep. Her last few weeks had been spent discovering that, instead of that leading to a pearly gate, it was part of a series of endless doors in some viciously dark comedy sketch. One complication after another had brought her to Princeton Plainsboro and a whole string more had taken her to the threshold of the world, pushed – only to pull her back, over and over again. In the end, it hadn't even been the cervical cancer that killed her. An opportunist infection, borne by one of the body's own microbes, had attached itself to her central line and gone straight into her heart. He'd hit it with practically every antibiotic in the history of medicine, but her body, already as fragile as a dried-out rubber band, had finally snapped, leaving the ruined remains clutching his fingers at fourteen seventeen that Thursday afternoon and sling-shotting her soul into the wherever after. She would have been twenty-five on Saturday.
Squeezing his eyes shut as the water smeared his hair over his face, Wilson silently cursed – and not for the first time – the arrogant GPs (all three of them), the two idiot OB/GYNs who should have known better, and whichever incompetent lab technicians had botched the results of five smear tests over the course of a year, before Tania had been rushed into Princeton Plainsboro. He considered cursing – and didn't – the old friend at Trenton who had sent him the file with the self-deprecating fax: If anyone can get a plug in this drain it's you, Jim. Firth was an egotistical son of a bitch and more than self-centred enough to bounce him a hopeless case to save his own statistics. You should send yourself on that assertiveness training course you've booked half the med students onto, Wilson reproached himself. Having House permanently wiping his boots on his back was doing him no good at all. If it looks like a doormat and it lies there like a doormat…
What price success? he wondered ruefully. Between Cuddy's ambition, his own, and House's madcap motivational coercions, he'd turned Princeton Plainsboro's mediocre oncology department into a fierce contender for the top spot on the East Coast. It had reached ninth nationally at the review last autumn. He'd just heard that he'd won two of the three most coveted federal grants for oncology this year and another two he'd been gunning for. He'd got the access he wanted to a new wonder drug that was still in the experimental phases and approval to participate in a very selective clinical trial. He should have been doing a dance of triumph.
But riding in on victory's tailcoats had come a whole host of hopeless cases. Each one's final phase had been agonisingly protracted, earning him a dozen sleepless nights hunched on a chair beside the stiff, stark sheets of an adjustable bed, his finger bones being ground to powder in the convulsive, skeletal grip of the dying, breathing in the fumes of ammonia and musk as the last painful breath rattled out and the bowels loosed their hold on whatever was left when life departed.
It had been a shitty two months, no pun intended. Half way through it his anti-depressants had packed up, leaving his exhausted psyche floundering in a chemically unbalanced mire of self-doubt, guilt and despair that did no one any good and one little girl a lot of harm. Sweeping a hand down his face, Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose and administered another anguished mental kick in his own ass. How could he have missed it? Never mind that the four other doctors of varying specialties who had seen Alicia Walker had missed it. Never mind that the damn lab results had missed it. Never mind that she was four years old and it was almost unheard of for a child to be in the twelve percent of paraneoplastic cases where there wasn't a cancer to treat. There had been almost no chance that she'd survive.
But he should have recognised it sooner. He'd built his career off being able to spot the signs that masqueraded as non-sequiters and he'd written a paper on the topic in med school. If he'd thought harder.... If he'd upped the dosage on his Prozac for one more week instead of being sensibly guideline compliant…. If he'd just swallowed his stupid pride and asked House for a consult….
She'd still be dead. But at least her family would have known why she was dying.
The door to the shower chamber opened into his silent tirade. Wilson didn't bother to look up. The only person likely to barge in without acknowledgement was House and, as much as he wasn't in the mood for a smart-mouthed comment right now, if no one else was likely to appear, he'd get a brief hug and a lewd proposition. Lately, it seemed to be the only thing that could make him smile.
"Dr. Wilson."
The voice was tattered, but familiar. It wasn't House. Flinging clinging cowlicks of hair out of his face, Wilson swiped at his eyes and peered through the steam at the intruder.
"Excuse me—" he started politely, half-turning his back for the sake of whatever propriety he could muster given that he was stark naked.
"No." The intruder cut him off in a low, fiercely controlled voice. The frosted glass half-door of the cubicle was pushed back and white t-shirt was peeled off and tossed aside, prelude to a bare footed approach. Shower spray pattered on black jeans and a matching tank top, disappearing instantly. "I want to talk to you."
"Okay." Wilson reached for his towel, folded over the half-screen and more than slightly damp. "If you could meet me outside in a few moments..."
"Uh-uh." A jerky little headshake. "Wrong kind of conversation."
"Ah."
Wilson swallowed nervously. There were at least three ways one could 'talk' to someone, though two of them didn't require words and usually only one involved nudity. This wasn't the first time this particular version had happened, although it definitely didn't get any less unsettling. He kept his eyes carefully on the pale, tear-streaked face and not on the smooth, sculpted stretches of bare skin and muscle. Nonetheless, his body reacted against the soft terry-cotton of the towel. He fumbled to secure the knot holding it around his waist.
The intruder let out a thin, satisfied sort of chuckle and moved close enough that there was no way to get out of the cubicle without coming into contact. He stepped to one side anyway, but the intruder darted in front of him and set one hand on either of the partitions, barricading the exit.
Wilson stopped, careful not to aggravate the situation.
"Please excuse me," he repeated firmly.
"No." Long fingers drummed provocatively on the partitions. Then, quick as a flash, the towel was plucked from his waist. It arced into the air and fetched up with a whump against the far wall. A dark gaze raked him from head to foot and a slow smile spread across the intruder's face. "I don't think you're going to make me."
The water tapping against his back seemed to have grown very hot all of a sudden. Wilson swallowed and took a careful step in reverse, his hands held up in tactic surrender. A second later his back hit the shower mechanisms.
The jolt woke him. He lashed at his face, swiping away non-existent water. He struggled in the clutches of sodden, slippery…sheets? What the hell? Wilson put his hand out, cursed and snatched it back. He glanced instantly at the other side of the bed, wondered if it had been empty before – or after. The stench of sweat and urine was unbelievable. The windows were wide open.
He was still dreaming. He had to be. He could hear water pounding steadily and steam floated across him to billow out of the window. Any second, he was going to wake up. He glanced in the direction of the running water and caught sight of the open door to the en-suite. No such luck. He ducked his head, a sullen throb and a blaze of heat across his cheeks making it through an odd, floating sensation. Puzzled, he flipped back House's overcoat, tucked around him with the covers, and glanced down at himself, trying to match the nightmare's reminder of his injuries to the disconnected sensation when he moved.
The sweat-soaked scrubs had melded to every line and limb of his body. The top clung to his torso, outlining the cast and sling strapping his arm to his chest beneath it. The right sleeve draped limblessly over the sheets. He worked his left hand under the clinging fabric and moved the heavy plaster slightly to feel cautiously around underneath it. His side didn't hurt anywhere near as much as it should. Strangely, though, there was one new sore spot down near his left hip, a tiny one, about the size of a needle stick….
"HOUSE!"
Wilson flung back the covers and scrambled to get up. The sheets stuck to him, pulling tackily against his wet scrubs and skin, clawing some of the soreness back to the surface. He swayed and sank back against the squelching mattress, giddy with pain and pills and mortification. House chose exactly that moment to lurch into the doorway of the bathroom. He snorted, apparently amused at Wilson's plight, as he sat panting on the bed edge, the room shifting like a Tilt-A-Whirl and his pulse bumping sluggishly in his carotid.
"You dosed me," he snapped, finding nothing funny about it at all. "What with? Tell me it wasn't your morphine!"
House ignored him and tramped over to rake the soggy covers into a heap at the foot of the bed with his cane.
"You peed in our bed," he pointed out, as if that were the much bigger issue.
"Right. That's never happened around you before. You damn well drugged me! In my sleep."
Spots danced before his eyes, his vision threatening to white out into tiles and running water again, as he realised that, although he'd woken fully dressed, House must've had to take some of his clothes off to do it. The overcoat. He'd been wearing it last night. This morning it had been draped over him.
"What did you do to me?" He meant to yell, but his voice tipped up toward the alto ranges and he softened it instinctively, right down to the seething whisper his department had learned to dread. "House, what the hell did you do?"
House stammered at him, tripping over his own tongue, sounding ragged and a little hysterical himself. It didn't match his narrow-eyed, unflinching scrutiny at all.
"Wilson!" he barked and the stuttering stopped. "Easy."
House didn't move from the foot of the bed, but he let go of his cane, leaving it propped up against the box frame and raised his hands in a careful, pacifying gesture.
"Don't touch me!" Wilson recoiled, though House was nowhere near him and in no way inclined toward the pawing and patting most doctors, Wilson included, used to calm skittish patients. "Seriously. Don't."
"Dead as a lion," House promised in his own quiet, uncompromising tone. "Now stop gibbering like a demented monkey and take a breath. Slowly. Hold it for five seconds, then let it out. Slowly."
"I'm fine! I'm fine! For fuck's sake, just tell me what you did! What did you—? Why did you—?"
Wilson gasped to a stop. His chest was burning from lack of oxygen. Abruptly, he recognised the frenzied gabbling he'd attributed to House. Yeah. Well. It just figured that would be him. Great. He was making an idiot of himself. Insult to injury. Literally. He dragged in a draught of ammonia-scented air, held it and let it out, then another, and another. The fog gathering in his peripheries faded away and the next breath didn't shake so much.
"Okay," he growled, fisting the sheets in one hand for something solid to hold onto and shoving the replay stubbornly to the back of his mind. "Not fine. Answer the question."
"Nothing you needed to be awake for." House scooped up his cane again and went back to prodding at the bed sheets. "In case you've forgotten, Dr. I Got My M.D in Cereal Box, patients don't have to be conscious for everything."
Every one of Wilson's injuries began to throb at that. Hands drove into his flesh again. Knuckles cracked on bone. Feet slammed into his side with dull, sickening crunches. His arm was twisted behind him. His shoulder popped and flopped loosely in giddying rush of agony. He crashed onto his knees. Fingers tore at his hair, wrenched his head back. His mouth was prised open. He gagged. Recoiled. Swallowing, spluttering, he dragged himself out of the replay.
"Have you, oh, I don't know, ever heard of consent?"
House eyed him steadily, not backing down in the slightest. "You gave that when you agreed to Cuddy's terms of discharge. You might be off the clock for your little getaway extravaganza, but you've stuck me with a forty-eight hour shift. You know my credentials. In fact, I think you still have my credentials, since you wouldn't let me light the fire with them when I first moved into my apartment. If you can find them, you can check them again. Or do you want me to do up a chart on a post-it note? Wear a stethoscope? Some other symbolic verification that you're protected by the Hippocratic oath? If you'd wanted that, you should've let Foreman admit you."
"Hmm, stay in so that hospital guards can drink coke and watch the football instead of the security cameras some more or come home where I should be safe and entrust myself to your ethics-indifferent brand of medical violation. Assuming that what you did to me was real doctor stuff," he added, eyes narrowing as another thought occurred to him. "As opposed to some cracked attempt to cheer me up."
Incontinence was, admittedly, the side effect of some sedatives. But not usually the Ambien he'd been on last night. Experience made Wilson glance around for the tub of water he'd had his hand put in while he slept. There wasn't one. Even the waste bin had gone. Apparently pranking whilst someone was injured was below the belt. House noticed the suspicious searching and an odd, closed look came over his face. Discarding the covers abruptly, he stalked back toward the bathroom.
"Not being in pain is fun," he said, over his shoulder. "Don't knock it."
Wincing at the series of unnecessary thumps from the bathroom that followed, Wilson kept his soggy seat on the bed edge and tried to work out what was happening. House was the one who could go from nought to annoying in point one of a second. But he wasn't. He was behaving in that too casual – too civil – to mean it way he pulled off when he was secretly hurt. Wilson had been awake for less than five minutes. Without mentioning House's pain management strategies, pissing him off that quickly had to be a record.
Only he had, hadn't he? Even if he wasn't criticising House's self-medicating, he'd taken a hell of a jibe at his ability to do his job. An unjustified jibe. House was an arrogant, invasive, rule-flouting ass. But he was every bit as brilliant as he thought he was and better. There was no one Wilson trusted more to get him through a medical crisis. House had been listed as his medical proxy for years, along with an addendum qualifier that he could refuse to act as proxy if he needed to in order to take on Wilson's case personally. Not that any of that meant he had no right to be pissed about getting drugged in his sleep. Especially when he suspected it wasn't the first time House had secretly dosed him in the last two days, not counting the Ambien in his hot chocolate.
The brief burst of energy wearing off, Wilson ran a hand carefully over his bruised face and decided he was too tired to be morally outraged. Whatever House had done was working. He hurt at least fifty percent less than he'd expected to. All the same, he wasn't so credulous that he'd automatically chalk it up to genuine doctor stuff. Heaving himself to his feet, he plodded over to the bathroom to see if he could prise the cause out of the culprit.
House was perched on the edge of the bath, testing the water temperature with one elbow. Wilson could smell sea minerals. His favourite oil glistened on the surface of the water. He cringed silently that House had found that, and more, since to do so he must've been going through the under-sink cupboard with the cleaning products in it. Passing up another golden opportunity to mock, House said crisply,
"Get cleaned up."
Yeeaaah. He'd get right on that. Staring at the fresh yellow towels on the toilet seat, Wilson told himself firmly that he did not need to go around checking all the door locks in the apartment were secured first. That was simply ridiculous. House eyed him, head cocked consideringly. Then, as though concluding he were the problem, he levered himself up and came out into the bedroom. As he passed Wilson in the doorway, it occurred to him that House was putting most of his weight on his cane. His skin was pale, his eyes bugged and watery. The age lines on his face looked deeper than usual.
"Get on with it." House glared at the dark stain on his overcoat, which was sprawled across the floor like a cotton-blend corpse outline. "You stink."
Wilson grimaced, his own concern for his friend deflated by a spike of shame.
"Do you have a non-jerk setting anywhere in your head? Something approaching – oh, I don't know – normal?"
"Is bedwetting normal in forty-one year olds?"
Wilson crossed his arms as best he could and refused to be embarrassed any further.
"Why else would companies make adult diapers?"
House clamped his lips together over a reflexive grin, surprise and approval flitting through his eyes. Wilson felt his own mouth twitch in response. Stealthy midnight eightballs aside, coming home had been the right choice. If he'd let Foreman admit him, there would have been staff relays coming and going, tiptoeing about as if Cuddy had re-carpeted the halls in eggshells. It was a weight off his aching shoulders to know that House wasn't planning to creep around and make him protest that he was okay, until even he thought he was protesting too much. Somewhat fortified, he reached out and snagged House's wrist.
"It's very rare for a drug with antimuscarinic properties," he remarked, head tilted slightly to study House's reaction. "But Cyclizine can sometimes cause incontinence. It also an opioid-enhancer."
Another kind of sedative was more likely. As far as Wilson knew, incontinence was only a theoretical side effect of Cyclizine: all drugs could, on occasion, cause the reverse of any of their intended effects. But there was no reason to assume House hadn't doped him more than once. He'd never know if he didn't at least pretend to offer the benefit of the doubt.
House flexed his jaw and studied the tentative fingertip contact Wilson had on his arm, as if considering shoving it off. He'd never been good with apologies, giving or receiving. With an obvious effort, he nodded and some of the cool distance on his face dissipated into plain bone-weariness.
"You threw up again during the night," he admitted gruffly. "I paged Chase and had him drop a few things off. He brought an IV kit, Cyclizine shots for the nausea, more Vicodin, lorazepam, and Xanax, for if you have another panic attack. I gave you more Vicodin in the water you were drinking at six hourly intervals, two shots of Cyclizine – the last about two hours ago – and one milligram of lorazepam at six oh nine this morning. You'd woken up every hour before that with no problems, because the Ambien wasn't keeping you under. I figured you needed some real sleep."
Despite the curt delivery, the restive fidgeting with his cane tip against the neutral broadloom betrayed how worried he'd been. Even with the amped- up Vicodin in his system, muting his emotions as well as his pain, Wilson felt a swell of nausea. It had nothing to do with the concussion and everything to do with guilt. It pooled in his stomach, thick and heavy, dragging his shoulders down and making him grimace.
"You didn't sleep at all, did you?" he asked quietly, though there was no real question about it.
House did shrug that off. He limped over to strip the bed.
"Greg." As much as Wilson wanted out of his wet scrubs, he couldn't leave it like that. Palming the back of his neck awkwardly, he said, "I'm sorry. I'm being an ass, aren't I?"
"Seriously?" House flashed him a look that was half disgruntled, half pretended surprise. "You can't tell?"
"Honestly, no." Wilson made a vague, circling gesture in the region of his temple. "My head's all scrambled."
"Confusion and irritability are side-effects of minor traumatic brain injuries," House pointed out, peeling off a pillowcase and tossing it into the heap of damp linen on the floor. He sighed and apparently felt compelled to admit, "The Vicodin won't help with that either. You're not used to it."
Pillow wadded in one hand, he dropped his arm down by his side and half-turned to finish off with a pseudo-mild expression, "Fortunately, you're being as charming as a kitten with a ball of string."
The corner of his lip curving sheepishly, Wilson nodded his own acceptance of the mutual apology and started to retreat.
House, not as immersed in piling up bedding headed for the giant machines at the Laundromat as he'd been making out, arrested him in a cooler, calculating tone.
"On the other hand, all of those symptoms, as well as the nausea and temporary amnesia, can be caused by an acute post-traumatic stress response. I had attributed it to the concussion, but you're remarkably coherent for a man who claimed to be unconscious yesterday for long enough to rate a grade three."
"Am I?"
Wilson had never perfected a poker face, so he opted for puzzlement instead. Quickly, he closed the door between them.
*
Alone in Amber's royal blue and lemon bathroom, he worked his way out of the rank, sopping scrubs. The trousers came off easily enough. With the ties loosened they slid down his legs and puddled on the tiles. The top, however, was a bitch. His left arm was in the sleeve, but his right, trapped against his bare chest by the sling, was underneath the bulk of the cloth. He had to bite the scrub cuff to worm his left arm out of the sleeve, then get hold of the hem and ruck the rest of the top up over his head. It was awkward, it hurt and, although he could hear House clumping about outside the door, he couldn't bring himself to ask for help.
That would go one of three ways. House would refuse point blank and go and hide on the couch with the TV on in a way that was only marginally more grown up than covering his ears and lalalaing very loudly, because he did not want to deal with Wilson being hurt. Alternatively, House would help, but he'd mock or grope or poke Wilson in one of his bruises, because the only way he could deal with mountains, or molehills for that matter, was to make one into the other, and Wilson wasn't ready to have this made into a joke at his expense. Or House would help and he wouldn't do anything else; he'd be quiet and professional and…and distant, like he'd been last night. Just thinking about that made it sound like the worst of the options. Whichever way it went, they'd end up snapping at each other again. Fighting with the scrubs himself actually hurt less.
He managed it eventually and scooted the damp heap of lilac cotton across to the base of the laundry hamper with the side of his foot. If the stains didn't wash out, he'd buy Foreman a new set. If they did, well, what he didn't know couldn't gross him out. Naked, Wilson glanced habitually into the gargantuan mirror on the wall opposite the bath and immediately wished he hadn't. House had chinked the narrow window above the foot of the bath to let the steam out, apparently guessing that a blinding opaque fog filling the room would have had Wilson back in the bedroom in a hot second. Unfortunately, it meant a crystal clear view of his own reflection and Amber's exhibitionist streak hadn't taken into account the possibility of having to confront that whilst mangled.
He'd been aware that he hardly looked his usual neat and tidy self around the point at which the SAART had got out their camera. It was a stupid thing to have got self-conscious about, given where the lens had been mainly pointed and the types of injuries they were trying to record. But then he vaguely recollected having asked Cameron for a blowdryer when Chase was putting stitches in the three-inch gash across his right pectoral too. The clunk on the head really had scrambled his brains. He could practically hear House asking whether he styled his pubes and telling him to quit medicine to coif hair in the Rainbow Salon. An involuntary smile at the dry echoes of well-honed mockery crumbled as he examined himself properly for the first time.
He stood awkwardly, his weight listing to the right, half-consciously resting his left knee, which had puffed up overnight and turned gothic shades of violet and crimson from a useless attempt to stop himself being shoved down onto his face. His thigh was peppered with bruises, the worst nearly a scrape where a kick had glanced off, missing his groin by an inch. A queasy, quivery sensation raised goosebumps over his arms and legs as he tentatively cupped his cock and balls. The skin flinched, shrinking in his palm. He hesitated, the muscles in his arm bunching at the contradictory urges to cover himself protectively, much too late, and to pull his hand away from the lumps of flesh that no longer seemed to belong to him. He closed his eyes for a second, squashed both impulses, and with a veneer of practicality pasted firmly over the top, palpated himself carefully, running through the motions that Montrose had performed during the genital/rectal exam.
His cock was soft and unreactive between his fingers, the shaft unbruised and easily palpable. The glans and urethral opening felt normal. He ignored the relief that came with that thought. Gently, he lifted his cock up so that he could examine his testicles. They'd retracted upwards toward the inguinal canal, retreating from a chill that had nothing to do with the room temperature. The skin, shrivelling under every touch, felt slightly too tight. Despite his urge to shiver, it was also a little hot. A vague, unfamiliar ache lingered when he took his hand away.
Frowning, Wilson limped over to the medicine cabinet over the basin and dug out the spare penlight he kept on the top shelf. He went back to the door, checked the lock, glanced around to make certain the room was empty – which it obviously was, idiot – and flipped off the lights. He snapped the pen on and, juggling it awkwardly against his sac, watched to see whether any area would transilluminate. It didn't. No hydrocele, then. Maybe the start of an infection? Hell. That would figure. He snapped off the pen, tossed it into the sink and put the lights back on. Probing cautiously, he moved his testes about, identifing the wiry vas deferens and, with some inevitable guesswork, the components of the spermatic cord. A wave of nausea roiled through him and he jerked his hand away, feeling sweat bead all along his hairline.
Okay. Enough. Fine. Apparently House had been right about what that stood for. Dragging the back of his hand across his damp forehead, Wilson inhaled slowly through his nose and released it through his mouth, counting to five every time. His breathing steadied and, after a moment, his pulse stopped skittering so hard he could feel it in his wrists and throat. Backing off any further exploration there, he carried on with his visual assessment.
If he half-turned, he could see the bruising on his back, solid, blue-black blocks that had landed squarely above and below his kidneys, missing his spine by millimetres. There was an angry red line, about two inches thick where he'd staggered into the edge of one of the cubicle partitions. It looked rather like House had cracked him one with his cane. The rest of his back looked normal, only a few scattered, minor, abrasions marring the natural, creamy, ever so lightly suntanned appearance of his skin. He prodded the faint scar just above his left hipbone where seven year old Danny had crashed into him on a sled when he was nine, taking momentary comfort in the memory of lying laughing in the snow, too hyped and bundled up in layers of coats to register that the sharp corner of the sled had actually bitten him.
If only this were so easy to dismiss. He made to shift his hand toward his coccyx and stalled as his heart rate hiked again. Annual physicals didn't make that procedure any more bearable and – no. No. He curled his fingers into a fist and lowered his hand to his side. Montrose had said he was fine. So.
Turning back to face the visible damage, Wilson went on, methodically. His left side, like his legs, had only a scattering of bruises. He'd skinned his left elbow; the grip tiles in the shower scraping a long track down his forearm and over his funny bone that looked like road rash. The bruising where he'd hit the nightstand was spectacular, but superficial, red and so puffy there were little dimples in the swelling where his knuckles were, rather than the normal bony protrusions. He wiggled his fingers, wincing, but reassured himself that nothing had broken.
His right side was a mess. A white big rectangular dressing had been taped over his hip and blood had soaked through it, leaving a rusty impression of the grip-tile graze beneath. There was a gash across his upper chest, stitched and dressed, where he'd crashed through one of the closed cubicle doors and the supposedly shatterproof glass had splintered and gouged out a ribbon of flesh. Another piece had been jabbed into his side, before the second assailant, charging into the room at that moment, had snatched it off the first and considerately flung it away.
His ribs were one giant splash of bruising, as though someone had hurled a bunch of red, blue, black and purple paint cans straight at a canvas and let them explode. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd been kicked there, though he hadn't exactly been trying to remember. The flimsy sling and stupid pink cast spoke for themselves. The muscles and tissue around his shoulder capsule felt squishy and hot, as though the joint had been filled with that self-warming variant of astroglide. The slightest movement literally stripped the illusion, the overstretched ligaments and tendons twanging as though he were dragging them over a cheese grater. The thought of taking the sling off in two days and having to try using his arm again made him feel ill.
The worst of it, apart from that nebulous, nerve-wracking sense that something unseen was wrong with his junk, was looking himself in the face. There was a dramatic bruise across the right side of his jaw – he was lucky that hadn't dislocated too – and a smudgy one across his cheekbone that House would doubtless end up comparing to woman's kohl. But it wasn't any of that. It was the shock that seemed to have burrowed into every pore and line of him. His skin was blotchy and pale, his cheeks were hollow, and the lines around his mouth had become deep grooves in the dark, scratchy beginnings of stubble. There was a crinkle between his eyes that wouldn't smooth out, hoisting the ends of his eyebrows up into a kind of baffled salute. He looked at once old and impossibly young: baffled, battered, bewildered.
And he looked like every family member and cancer patient to whom he'd ever delivered bad news. Like Tania. Like poor little Alicia. He had that same shocky glaze over the surface of his eyes and the raw, core-deep devastation beneath that he wasn't yet able to feel. He looked away, shying from the look, from the number of times he'd seen it at work, or staring back at him in the mirror after one of the innumerable fuck-ups he'd made of his personal life. Well, he'd gone and done both this time. Hats off to Dr. Wilson. First prize a kick me sign.
Or one that read: point and laugh. Wilson raised his hand with a kind of appalled disbelief and ran his fingers through his hair. He'd got all the shampoo out yesterday before he was interrupted and, despite the panic and the pain sweats, which had turned the roots to greasy stalks, the upper layers stood up in fluffy, tousled disarray. House ought to be grinning his fool head off. He got a real kick out of getting Wilson thoroughly tousled whenever he could. No matter how much tussling on the couch, floor and mattress preceded a good roll between the sheets, he'd never done as first-rate a job as this.
For some absurd reason Wilson's eyes prickled with tears as he thought about their antics. His skin teemed and thrilled with a compulsive need to go and plaster himself all over House. To crush their lips together and jockey for dominance, their fingers skating on sweat, laughing, biting, pushing, shoving, jostling, thrusting and taunting, until they slammed breathlessly together, interlocked, prising deep groans and throaty shouts out of one another. Finally, finally, they would sprawl, panting, cheek sweat-glued to chest, House's heart belting under Wilson's ear, and long, guitar-calloused fingers toying idly through the soft brown hairs at the sensitive nape of his neck.
He wanted that. Needed that. Needed it so badly that his stomach cramped, as though one of his assailants' hands had got inside his skin somehow and ripped out his core. Because right along with it came sickening dread, a skin-crawling terror at the thought of being touched, because it would hurt, hurt more, hurt worse, hurt in ways he didn't know how to brace himself for. He squirmed in his skin and a quake spilled through him, as another far more familiar fear reared its dark head. That turbulent tumbling with House had been pretty much all that had got him through the last few weeks. He couldn't even start his next round of antidepressants until the last batch had cleared his system. Blast. Shoot. Damn. Hell. He could not, would not, fall apart. Not here. Not now. Not because of this.
"Don't." He spoke out loud in his softest, most serious whisper, stared square into his own welling eyes and outright defied himself to break down. "Don't. You. Dare."
He blinked hard and managed to gulp down the lump in his throat. It settled, heavy and sodden, in his belly. Almost unconsciously, he cinched his left arm carefully around his waist, not so much holding onto his ribs as simply holding. He closed his eyes and willed the strip of warmth where his forearm pressed against his abdomen to spread through the rest of his body. For a fleeting moment, he let himself imagine that it was not his arm, that a chin would come to rest on his shoulder, that it would be House—who would never in a million years touch him casually like that. And, since neither of their fantasies included plaster casts, morphine and a quadruple dose of Xanax to boot, he let his arm drop and reopened his eyes.
He shot the oversized mirror a poisonous glance, projecting everything he didn't want to feel over onto his reflection. Abruptly, and somewhat belatedly, he registered why House always hung towels over the top edge of the mirror, smearing the glass all to hell, instead of using the perfectly good towel rail over the radiator. It sucked having to look at the barely holding together wreck of a self he hardly recognised. Monumentally sucked, in fact. A fresh rain of guilt dripping down to join the reservoir collecting in his belly, he vowed to get the stupid mirror taken down or replaced when he felt better.
Checking the door was locked once more, Wilson turned to face the steaming water. Oil glistened on the top, releasing a clean, outdoorsy smell that reminded him of cracking small rocks in search of ore and minerals – treasure hunting with his family. Beside the oil bottle that he hadn't put away, House had left two things deliberately. One was his cell phone. His mother. Wilson hadn't called her in a while. He reached for the phone, then clenched his fist. No. Eight a.m. on a Friday – she'd know something was wrong. He picked up the saran wrap instead. Thumbing the neatly folded end up, somewhat clumsily, he wound long strips of it around his cast to keep it dry.
Getting into the tub proved more taxing than the car seat, but once he was settled in the water, the heat of it dragged a contented groan out of him. He wasn't a huge fan of baths; stewing in the day's sweat and dirt struck him as fairly disgusting. But House obviously was. The water was deep enough to immerse him up to the chest, swathing him in warmth. For the first time in hours he wasn't freezing cold. Once the initial sting of it against his abrasions dulled, it was glorious.
The water lapped against his back, kneading gently at muscles that had set overnight into painful spasm. His spine felt like a boy scout had been using it as a string to practice knotting techniques. Little by little, the ugly tangle started to release, taking with it some of the tightness in his chest and side. A kind of stasis settled over him, warm and silent and still. He tilted his head back against the edge and stared past the dormant brass showerhead. He wasn't calm, exactly, but empty would do.
The cooling of the water stirred him from his trance. Reluctant to move, to bring the pain back, to do anything that wasn't float here and not think, Wilson shifted his stare, but that was all. His bad arm carefully propped on his chest, he peered through slatted eyes at the moisture beading along the rudimentary waterproofing on his cast. A glitter of rainbow droplets danced along the translucent saran wrap. The cast wrap itself was really was quite violently pink. He'd have to get that changed on…Monday. He shut his eyes and sank lower into the water. Seventy-one hours.
If there was a knock, he didn't hear it. The lock clicked and the door opened. He shot upright, swearing as pain shredded through his narcotic cloud.
"Idiot."
As insults went, it was too affectionate to add much to his injuries. House put the knife he'd used to pick the catch down on the linen hamper. Wilson stared at it, heart thudding, thinking of Psycho.
"Wilson. Jimmy. It's me. Don't have a coronary."
A sharp clunk startled his attention away from the knife. House had flicked his cane against the side of the bathtub. Wilson followed the long shaft up to House's body, noticing every inch of him in hyper-focus: yesterday's faded blue jeans held up by a battered leather belt with the ridiculous tape cassette buckle that Kutner had given to him when he failed to keep his birthday a secret, his favourite orange graphics t-shirt and a brown shirt, crumpled from lying on the closet floor and being slept in. He hadn't even taken off his sneakers. Around him, though, the room was going gauzy and pale, the colour leeching out of the walls, whitening them as they closed in.
"Wilson!" House hit the bath side again with a resonant bang. "Don't get lost."
He struggled to pull himself out of the replay. The walls widened and turned lemon, but his heart kept galloping, surging around in his ribcage like a colt in a corral. He was all but trapped in the tub. It had taken so long, so much delicate manoeuvring to get in here. He hadn't even thought about how to get out. He couldn't. Not in a rush. And House was blocking the door.
Stop it. Stop it. It's House. It's okay. It's okay. It's…not. Self-consciousness smashed over him and he started to shake, going hot and cold simultaneously. It didn't matter that it was House or that he'd never indulge in anything as offensive as pity. It didn't matter that he'd seen him naked a million times. He didn't want to be seen like this, like his reflection, damaged and vulnerable and bare. He wasn't this. He wasn't weak and he didn't need help. Not from House. This wasn't how things worked between them. Conveniently forgetting all the other times it had been House propping him up, not the other way around, he flung his good arm up, half-covering his eyes as he gestured violently toward the door.
"Get out, Greg. Out."
"Hang on."
"No, damnit! Now."
"One minute," House growled. "Cripple speed, you jackass!"
Wilson hardly registered the soft thumps of things being set down. He was locked into a spiral of panic. If House saw him like this, he'd never be able to lean on him when he was in pain. He'd shut himself off and figure Wilson had his own problems or couldn't handle himself, let alone House's crap too, and then he'd end up overdosing on Vicodin or half-killing himself with morphine and shooting his liver up either way – he'd never get a transplant with his history – he'd die slowly, jaundiced, wasting away, in agony from his abdomen and leg, all because Wilson couldn't look out for him any more. He'd fail him. House would die because of it, just like Amber had. Just like his patients did. Just like Tania and Alicia had.
He had a sudden vision of the diagnostics office, its black slat blinds closed and dust gathering along the glass surfaces for a week, before Foreman parked himself behind the desk and had the nerve to toss up House's lacrosse ball.
"Get the fuck out!"
Who that yell was aimed at was anyone's guess. A yellow rubber duck he didn't know he owned rebounded off not Foreman's forehead but the closed bathroom door. The familiar lemon walls with the little blue diamond-shaped border tiles, glass shower screen and off-white tub processed slowly. Coming to the conclusion that he was not in the hospital corridor between diagnostics and oncology – and he was not entirely sure why he thought he had been – Wilson stared down at his open hand. Very, very slowly, he balled his fingers.
"Hah," he whispered, holding his breath until the grinding ache in his side and the white-hot pokers being jammed into his shoulder had abated. "Note to self: save the dramatic gestures for later."
"Wilson." House knocked lightly on the outside of the door. "When you're finished committing acts that will get you reported to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rubber Animals – wow, that sounded way kinkier than I was going for – you need to take your post-exposure prophylaxis. I bet you weren't listening yesterday, so waggle your ears now.
"You're on Combivir – that's 300mg of Retrovir and 150 mg of Epivir – the white oblong ones with GXFC3 printed on one side and Viracept, the white oval ones with V on one side and 625 on the other, for the next twenty-eight days. Take one of each now and one of each again this evening. There's Immodium in the bag too, since I figure you don't want the poopy side effects. And drink some water. One of the other side effects is more nausea. I don't want to have to use the IV."
"Okay, okay," Wilson called, more to shut House up than because he'd heard anything he'd said. He'd got water on his face when he threw the duck. Scraping it away with a shudder, he clambered painfully out of the bath. Mostly to himself, he muttered, "I went to med school too."
He couldn't be certain, but he thought House imitated him through the door.
Draping the largest of the yellow towels around himself as best he could, he discovered that House had come in only to bring him clothes and the pills, both of which he'd not thought to pick up from the bedroom. There was a pair of blue jeans, faded soft, sky-pale and threadbare, and his old grey McGill sweater folded up on the closed toilet lid. Underneath was a red t-shirt, a pair of boxers and unmatched socks. House wasn't Suzy Homemaker, but he was all too familiar with the need to cover up. In the grand total of two years they'd been together – the eighteen months between Wilson's third divorce and the Tritter debacle and the six or so since Amber – he'd only ever seen House naked during sex. Even then he'd keep his clothes on or the covers around him if he possibly could. He made another mental note, besides getting rid of the mirror, to rethink hassling him about that.
He started to dress quickly, finished slowly, breathless. His ribs grated as he sat on the toilet seat, contorting his legs in directions they didn't comfortably bend to avoid folding over from the waist to pull his socks on. His shoulder felt as though someone was swilling acid through it. Breathing shallowly to avoid joggling either, he went over to the sink and unbagged the vials of anti-retrovirals that Montrose had prescribed. He opened the mirrored doors of the cabinet over the sink and set the medications out on the bottom shelf. He had to push back a whole host of others to do so: paracetamol, ibuprofen, codeine; a spare bottle of House's Vicodin; a few bits and pieces for managing his breakthrough pain, including the lock-box with a single shot of morphine in it; the remains of the useless Prozac he, Wilson, had stopped using a week ago; a few left over packets of Amytriptalin and half a dozen other antidepressants that hadn't worked either; as well as various over the counter treatments for allergies, motion sickness, colds, coughs, and insomnia.
He filled his tooth mug with water and took a sip, wetting his mouth. Working out the doses from the labels on the vials, one by one, he got out the anti-virals and anti-diarrhoeals. Gathering them carefully in his right palm, he went over to the toilet, lifted the lid and dropped them into the water. He pulled the flush and watched for a few seconds as they dissolved and spun away. Then he went back to the sink and shut up the cupboard. He finished the glass of water and let himself out of the bathroom.
TBC…