Day 6 – Wednesday
He is working on his paper after breakfast when a security guard comes into the office. He tenses, he's already had one encounter with security this morning when he'd retrieved his notebook and isn't eager to have any more. He kneels up and clasps his hands behind his back and waits, head down.
"Downstairs boy, Mrs Foster wants to see you straight away."
"Yes, sir."
He feels annoyance at another interruption to his work, he needs to get this done, Doctor Cuddy is expecting to see some real progress, he wants to show her that he can work hard.
He enters Mrs Foster's office quietly, sinks to his knees on the floor in front of her desk and waits for her attention.
"Who hit you?"
Her question takes him by surprise, he's almost forgotten the bruises on his face. He doesn't want to waste his time on this, he's got work to do.
"No one," he tells her briskly. "Ma'am, I have work to do for Doctor Cuddy, I need to go
back to my office."
She narrows her eyes at him, tells him that he has bruises and a split lip. She asks if he hit himself.
"No one hit me," he repeats firmly.
"Ten lashes for self-harm," Mrs Foster says. She stands up. "I don't tolerate slaves lying to me, Greg. If you hit yourself, I need to hand you over to the security staff: they'll inform your supervisor and administer a judicial whipping. If you're lying to me about hitting yourself, two strokes of the cane."
Her statement is like a punch to his abdomen. Ten lashes for self harm. Not cane strokes, lashes. The caning had hurt, but he's seen a few public whippings and he doesn't want that. She'll also tell his supervisor, Doctor Cuddy and he reallydoesn't want that. If she thinks he's too much trouble to keep she might send him back, or sell him on. Or she might come and watch him being whipped, and what will she think of him then?
His previous confidence has gone, he's reminded again that he's totally at the mercy of these people. She goes behind him to open the door, to go and get the security staff for his ten lashes.
"I didn't hit myself," he says quickly, his voice shaking.
"Good. Get up and bend over."
He gets up, with trembling fingers he drops his jeans and undershorts to his ankles. Bare ass he bends over the desk. The two cane strokes burn his already sore ass and his legs are shaking by the time he is ordered to kneel again. He goes to pull his up his pants but remembers he hasn't been ordered to do so. He kneels again, jeans and underwear around his ankles, genitals on display to her. His paper is forgotten, he's just a slave kneeling on an office floor.
She asks him again and he tells her, leaving out names, saying that he 'spoke back' to the maintenance worker, which he had, even if it had been at Doctor Cuddy's orders.
"Do any of your teeth hurt?" she asks. "Did she hit you anywhere else?"
He shakes his head, mutters a "no" to both questions, recognizing the intent behind them, she wants to find out of he is more seriously damaged than it appears.
"Then get back to work," she says.
He stumbles to his feet, pulls his pants back up and ducks his head. He remembers to thank her for caning him and then leaves. It's a long trudge back up to his office on the second floor.
At eight he reports to Doctor Cuddy's office, notebook in hand. He goes to his knees and holds it out. She takes it but then stares at him and asks him if he's been in a fight.
He shakes his head, no. It's the truth after all, he hasn't been in a fight.
Doctor Cuddy leafs through the notebook, stopping to read here and there. She seems pleased, he's done much better than yesterday. She tells him to keep the standard up, he has every intention of doing so, if people would just leave him alone.
She tells him to go and continue working, and then to deliver his notes to her secretary and then go downstairs and get changed into one of his rolltops and put on a labcoat, and be back here at quarter to one. He's not sure why, and he feels apprehensive about putting on garments that conceal his collar. He hopes no one in the basement sees him with them on, although there is very little chance of that.
She warns him 'not to get into any more fights' and dismisses him. As he goes back to his office he wonders how he's supposed to avoid it.
He leaves the second floor office in what he considers good time and takes the notes to her secretary as ordered, for her to type up, asking as humbly as possible. The secretary gives him her usual sour look but takes the notebook. She'd kept him waiting a couple of minutes before she 'noticed' him and allowed him to speak so he's running a bit late now. He trots down the four flights of stairs to the basement level, arriving back at the dorm breathless. He enters the bathroom for a quick splash of water on his face, staring at the bruises, not much he can do about those.
The dorm is deserted and he is undisturbed as he takes the rolltop and the white labcoat out of his locker. He used to avoid wearing his labcoat whenever possible in his old life, and has never been fond of rolltops either. Now, though, they represent a chance to conceal his collar, to appear as just another doctor.
He slips the rolltop over his T-shirt and smooths it down. He suspects that an outline of a collar could still be seen if one knew to look for it, but most people wouldn't be looking for it. The labcoat goes over top and he strides out of the dorm room into the corridor with confidence.
A security guard is coming from the opposite direction, the guard starts to nod at him, a friendly greeting to another free person - then his eyes narrow and his hand goes to the gun at his hip. Greg freezes in place
"Stop right there! Kneel down, put your arms in the air."
Greg kneels quickly, his heart hammering in his chest. He lifts his arms up high over his head.
"You're that new slave, Doctor Cuddy's boy, what the fuck are you doing with those clothes on?" The guard has his gun drawn now and more people are coming into the corridor from the offices either side, hearing his shout.
Mrs Foster comes up to them.
"What is going on here?"
"Slave trying to escape, Ma'am. He's hiding his collar."
Mrs Foster looks at him.
"Greg, did Doctor Cuddy tell you to wear those?"
He gulps and stammers out a 'yes, ma'am'.
"In future, you will notwear them down here, do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Get up and go back upstairs ."
He hurries off, all of his previous confidence gone again.
In her office Doctor Cuddy stops him from kneeling and inspects his clothing and appearance, she seems pleased. He's still shaken from the encounter down in the basement and is dismayed when she tells him she is going to have him meet a Nurse Previn, who is in charge of the free clinic. If Doctor Cuddy's plan is to work he will be spending a lot of his week under her control. He knows that it is important that he impresses her.
"I'm going to introduce you to Nurse Previn as 'Doctor Greg House'. I'm not going to tell Brenda you're a slave until after I've introduced you and explained about you working in the clinic. You need to act like a normal person. You'll sit on a chair, you won't kneel, you won't say 'yes ma'am' and 'no, ma'am'. She needs to realize that this can work, that the patients won't have to know that you're a slave."
He's nervous, after what happened in the basement he's pretty sure that it's some sort of major crime to conceal that you are a slave from free people. The collar seems to be burning his skin under the rolltop. He takes the chair she indicates, squirming as he sits down, his ass is incredibly tender after having eight cane strokes in a couple of days, not to mention his encounters with Mr Johnson and the security guards. He sits right on the edge, his whole body tense. It feels strange just to be sitting in a soft chair, he's become so used to kneeling on the ground, or sitting on a bench for dinner. He feels like he's doing the wrong thing. If it feels wrong to just sit on a chair how is it going to feel when he's treating patients again?
A lady enters the office a short time later, she smiles at Doctor Cuddy in greeting and then turns to him, her eyes are sharp as they look him over and he gulps, fearing she's seen straight through his flimsy disguise.
"Brenda, I'd like you to meet the doctor who'll be working in the free clinic with you, Doctor House."
It's strange to hear his name again like that, almost as if she's talking about someone else.
The nurse walks across the room and puts her hand out for him to shake.
"Pleased to meet you, Doctor House," she says.
This isn't right, he looks to Doctor Cuddy for reassurance and permission, she nods slightly and he shakes her hand, his grip tentative. How will she feel when she realizes she's shaken the hand of a slave? He fights the impulse to get out of the chair and resume his place on the floor.
Doctor Cuddy encourages him to tell the nurse his qualifications.
He starts out confidently, "I have a double specialty, Board certified in nephrology and infectious diseases. Doctor Cuddy bought me to run the Diagnostics department."
He stops abruptly, realizing what he said, and looks at Doctor Cuddy in fear.
Nurse Previn catches on quickly, looking from him to Doctor Cuddy in puzzlement.
"Lisa, you bought him?"
Doctor Cuddy tells him to take off his lab coat and roll-top. He feels a little relief that he no longer has to pretend, but also sad that he is shedding these items and is now just a slave again. He's dismissed to go and get lunch from Doctor Cuddy's secretary.
When he returns the women have clearly been discussing him. Nurse Previn looks annoyed. She stares at him and then tells him to put his rolltop back on, as if the collar disgusts her. He complies quickly and then sits perched on the edge of a chair and is given a sandwich and permission to eat it. It's salad on wholewheat again and he is so tight with anxiety that he finds it hard to eat. This meeting has to go well, if he can't work in the clinic there will be a giant hole in Doctor Cuddy's plan for him, and maybe she'll decide he can't do diagnostics either. He'll be sent back to Mr Smith to face a lifetime of cleaning bathrooms...
It's an awkward lunch and Nurse Previn looks at him, an almost sympathetic expression on her face.
"Shouldn't he be kneeling?"
He realizes that she still regards him as a slave, not as 'Doctor House'. A slave who is obviously ill at ease doing something as ordinary as sitting in a chair having lunch.
They discuss him for a while, as if he's not sitting right there listening to them. Nurse Previn speaks plainly, clearly disagreeing with Cuddy that he can treat free people. Oh, he'd be okay to treat slaves, but not free people.
"How can anyone have any confidence in someone who lost control of their life completely and got collared?" she asks Doctor Cuddy, glancing at him again.
Doctor Cuddy looks shaken, unsure. She looks as if she's realizing that she made a major mistake and Nurse Previn has just pointed it out to her. Greg is frozen to the chair, he can't even eat his sandwich. Maybe they won't even let him clean the bathrooms, maybe he'll be sent back to the Center and they'll try and get a refund.
Nurse Previn looks at him. "You, get out," she snaps, her tone is one of someone who is sure of themselves, sure of obedience.
He gets up, puts his sandwich down and goes to leave. Then he stops, this might be his last chance. He's strung tight with anxiety, this is so important, this has to work. He fights the impulse to kneel, instead stands with his hands clasped behind him. He tries to tell them what he knows, but the words choke him and all that comes out is an incoherent stammer, he is pathetic.
Nurse Previn says 'what?' impatiently and he takes a deep breath, last chance he tells himself.
"Mr Smith has type two diabetes. You have toothache." The words come out crisp and clear that time, a doctor giving a diagnosis. It had taken him only a few seconds to realize Mr Smith's condition when he first met him, Nurse Previn had taken two bites of her sandwich before he realized what was wrong. When they question him, he explains how he knows these things, then he adds;
"I can do what Doctor Cuddy wants."
He's talking to himself as much as them, he knows it's true now. He can do this. He's a shattered mess but his medical skills are still there, still sharp.
He's back in the office and kneeling on the floor, with his notebook propped up on a chair in front of him. The words are flowing easily again and his paper is taking shape. He can see how the diagnostics department is going to operate now. Can see how they'll take an inter-disciplinary approach to a patient's condition. He's sketched up a couple of flow-charts of the diagnostic process and added some tables of common diagnostic tools, showing how they can be adapted to a much broader range of cases.
He realizes that the time when he's supposed to go to exercise has come and gone but Doctor Cuddy's orders were that he was not to leave the office for any reason so he stays, happily working on his paper.
He's so intent on his work that he doesn't hear the person enter the office, the snick of the door being closed is the first he's aware of it. He's against a wall and he cringes against it as he looks up. He pushes his notebook behind him and it takes a moment to register that his visitor is not a person here to cause him harm, it's Doctor Cuddy. He's in a huddle by the wall so he uncurls himself and goes to kneel. Then he remembers Doctor Cuddy's words about 'acting normal' and not kneeling all the time. So he gets to his feet instead, still placing his hands behind his back and ducking his head.
"Doctor Cuddy," he says, respectfully.
He's ready to drop to his knees the second she orders it but she doesn't. Instead she tells him to sit so he automatically drops to the floor. When she shakes her head and tells him to sit on a chair he does, perching on the very edge uncomfortably, his ass is so bruised and sore it's a lot easier to kneel.
She wants to know what happened to his face, and he tells her he answered back. She drags the full story out of him, including that he told the maintenance worker to leave, on Doctor Cuddy's orders. Just thinking of the cigarettes again brings up a wave of nausea, he doesn't tell her about those but she figures it out anyway, he doesn't tell her that the worker wanted to use her new diagnostics doctor as a footstool, as she had done before.
He can't help shifting in pain on the chair and she realizes that something is wrong.
"Get up, drop your jeans and turn around."
He gets to his feet, turns around and pushes his jeans down around his knees, there is silence and she sighs impatiently and he reluctantly pushes his underwear down as well. He feels extremely exposed, standing in front of her, bare ass exposed to her. He knows that there are eight very vivid cane marks across it.
She doesn't say anything for a long moment and he hangs his head, feeling the marks across his backside burning into him, branding him as a troublemaker slave, one who has to be punished to behave.
When she speaks again her voice is stern, her tone impassive.
"Pull up your jeans, you can kneel. What were you punished for?"
He pulls his clothes back up, hiding the marks and turns and kneels in front of her and recites the incidents that led to the cane strokes. Two for each offense
She says nothing more about the punishments, just glances at the clock.
Even though it's well after four she tells him to go do his exercise and apologize on her behalf to Mr Johnson for being late. He's to exercise until five.
Once again he tries to get her permission to miss exercise but she won't hear his protests. He goes off to 'exercise', dragging his feet as he goes down the stairs to the basement.
Mr Johnson is not happy to see him so late, there are only a few slaves left and they have clearly been here for a while, their bodies splattered with mud. Greg kneels on the muddy ground, naked again.
"You're over an hour late, boy."
""Sir, Doctor Cuddy said to tell you that I was working late on her authority and that I should tell you that she's sorry that this slave is late and can I do my exercise until five. Doctor Cuddy said to ring her if there is a problem with this."
Mr Johnson taps the cane he is holding against the ground and Greg holds his breath, he doesn't want yet another caning today. Mr Johnson looks in the direction of the other slaves and seems to make up his mind.
"Well, if Doctor Cuddy said you are to exercise until five you had better do it then boy. I will set some special exercises for you."
Mr Johnson points to the row of hurdles.
"You can hurdle those in one direction, and then when you come back you can crawl under them on your belly, I don't want to see you on your hands and knees, I want to see your stomach on the ground. Then you can hurdle them going back. You can repeat that until ten minutes before five and then grab a hose and hose yourself off, clean the hurdles off and put them back in the equipment shed. You understand that, boy?"
Greg gulps, the ground is very muddy and it will be a long crawl from one end to the other.
"Yes, sir."
"Then get your ass moving, boy."
He easily runs the hurdles the first time but it is a long hard trip back on his belly, and going over the hurdles a second time is a lot harder.
When he is on his fifth or sixth crawl back under the hurdles he is exhausted, he looks around and notices that all the other slaves have gone back inside to the showers and Mr Johnson is nowhere in sight. After one more trip over the hurdles it is time to clean up and he spends a few minutes hosing off the hurdles and replacing them in the equipment shed.
When he has hosed himself off sufficiently he is shaking and shivering with cold and he goes inside, he hopes that it is late enough that Mr Johnson will be wanting to leave, and not be interested in using him today.
When he passes the benches outside the shower he freezes.
Mr Johnson is fucking another male slave on the benches. The slave is bent over the bench so Greg can't see his face but he can hear soft whimpers and Mr Johnson is petting him, stroking him and telling him it will be okay.
Is this how it looks when Mr Johnson fucks him? Every instinct he has tells him to intervene, to pull Mr Johnson off the helpless slave. That is what he would have done only three months ago, when he was free. Now he knows Mr Johnson has every right to use the slave.
He can't help making an inarticulate, strangled sound as he watches and Mr Johnson turns his head and sees him.
"Get in the shower, boy. Move!"
He moves, going into the large communal shower and turning the water on as high as he can to blot out the sound of the slave's whimpers and Mr Johnson's grunts as he fucks him. He sinks to his knees and lets the water run over him, hiding the tears that roll down his cheeks.
The water cuts off automatically after a few minutes and he steps out, drying himself off. He wants to stay here, to not go back out there but he knows he can't. He doesn't hear anything any more, maybe they are gone.
They are still there, he gathers his clothes from the bench and gets dressed, trying to ignore the sight of the slave on his knees with Mr Johnson placing a chocolate on his tongue and telling him he is a good boy.
The other slave looks up and sees him, Greg doesn't recognize him, he must be from one of the other dorms. He drops his gaze.
Mr Johnson dismisses the other slave and Greg goes to leave as well.
"You'll be on time tomorrow, boy."
Greg looks at him and whispers.
"Yes, sir."
"Good, run along then, boy."
He goes, not back to the office but back to the dorm. He goes in and lies on the bunk, face down. Most of the other slaves are back in the dorm but they ignore him. When the signal is played for dinner he doesn't get up.
"You have to go, if you don't go it gets worse." Jon stops by his bunk on the way out the door.
"I can't live like this."
"You have to," Jon tells him bluntly. "If you don't go they'll come and get you. You'll be eating slave chow for a week and you'll be caned, she'll give you six for that. Either way you'll be eating dinner."
Jon leaves and Greg gets up. He goes to dinner. One more day nearly over.
