Author's Note: Oh you poor souls! On top of all the crushing amount of reading I have to do, I also got Assassin's Creed 2, so any free time I had was dedicated solely to completing that (and I still haven't finished it), so...my time for this story has been nil, unfortunately. It should get better after the quarter is done, but that's still a ways.
Also take note that I'm not a doctor and since the story doesn't actually revolve around the diagnosis, the medical facts are in all likelihood very wrong. Don't hold it against me too much.
David Shore still owns everything.
Chapter 7
House truly never thought he would take solace in clinic duty, but he started hiding in there much like he used to hide in coma guy's room. Nurse Brenda appeared utterly perturbed by this new occurrence and only called in Cuddy when he had spent thirty minutes in an exam room after he'd sent his last patient out.
"I know you hate the clinic patients," Cuddy said as she walked in. She seemed to be struggling not to grimace in empathy – she'd certainly dealt with plenty of self-assured Internet doctors and overanxious mothers, "but I need you to do your job."
"Oh, c'mon, Cuddy! I fool around more than this on a regular basis and I've already put in two hours of clinic duty today. More than I usually put in a single week," he replied, finally tearing his eyes from his DS after Link met an unfortunate end
"Which is what it should be, but I can't have you sitting in an exam room as you are now and simply waste the hospital's time. How about this," she reached into her coat pocket and drew out his favorite flavored sucker. "if you see another five patients before lunch, you can have the sucker. I've already given the rest of the children in pediatrics so, if you want your sugary fix you better get to work." A coy smile was on her face and House sighed.
He continued to glower but then he turned off the DS and snatched the lollipop from her fingers, "I'll settle for sucking this off." He raised his eyebrows suggestively and she wrinkled her nose in distaste.
"I think that's the worst comment you've made."
"Oh, please, we're alone. If you haven't filed for sexual harassment by now, you never will."
She gave him a smug smile but then said, "I'm going to be busy with work later this evening, so don't bother coming over if you insist on attention."
House suddenly smirked. "That might call for a distraction."
"Don't even try it! Now get back to work." She opened the door and he filed out behind her. She even slapped a file onto his chest to ensure he did not slink out in the five feet that stood between him and the desk. He sighed. This was going to be a more productive day than he was used to and wished more than ever that he hadn't given up drinking. Jigglypuff was going to be beaten bloody that night in Brawl. Finally, at 11:30, he barged into Wilson's office and said, "You better be reaching for your wallet."
Wilson appeared amused. "Cuddy told me you were in the clinic. Is the challenge of convincing people they don't have the swine flu not enough for you?"
"More like, 'How can I be pregnant? I've never had sex' act." She ended up with syphilis to boot, the poor future baby. To enter into a world of endless suffering by having a twit like that for a mom," House grumbled and then he said, "Quit distracting! I'm hungry."
"I'd heard this was your second day to be in before ten. The board is becoming suspicious. They think you're going to start an apocalypse of mayhem and this is just the calm before the storm."
"Damn! They know me too well. I'm going to have to mix things up. But right now, I'm ready to commit seppuku in the clinic if you don't feed me."
"I can't imagine the janitors would enjoy cleaning up that mess," Wilson replied as he pull on his coat. "I'll buy an extra bag of chips for you to steal."
Halfway through lunch, as House was eyeing the french-fries on Wilson's tray, he noticed his old team trooping in and scowled. "What does, 'I have no part in this patient's diagnosis mean to you?'"
"We're completely stumped," Foreman replied and his tone was that of a person who was sick of being in his superior's shadow, both literally and intellectually. "Just give us a direction to go and we'll leave you alone. He's starting to show signs of disorientation and hysteria and he's coughing up blood. He also crashed earlier this morning."
House snatched the file and hit Wilson on the head dumping it over to him. The pages slipped out and scattered all over the floor.
"House—!" Wilson and Cameron went scrambling after the pages.
"Cancer! You want to hand it to Wilson, not to me!"
"We've looked at common symptoms of cancer: no spindling of the blood, no masses in a CT Scan, we've even looked in the brain and we can't find anything!"
"Well, look again!"
"You just want it to be cancer so that he'll have a greater chance of dying," Cameron suddenly spoke up and glared at him.
It was spoken loud enough that a hush fell in the vicinity and all eyes fell on them. House glared hard at Cameron, who wilted under those fierce blue eyes. When he felt she was sufficiently cowed he turned away from her and spoke to his Reuben, "In the time that you've worked for me, how many times has it been cancer? I think it's pretty clear nature doesn't have just cancerous cells up her sleeve. You don't like my answer, go find your own!"
At the end of the day, House stood behind his desk and stared out at the sunset and supported his neck with his cane, the fiery beauty of the sky completely lost on him. It had been confirmed by Wilson an hour after lunch. Tony had Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. He was pudgy enough that the team had completely missed his swollen lymph nodes and Wilson did his usual breaking of the news.
House felt the slight fluctuations of his surroundings and the glass door clicking shut, which would have been inaudible to anyone else. He didn't turn but he asked, "How bad is it?"
"He has a month or two at best. I noticed that he had very little reaction to the news. Just sort of shrugged," Wilson said.
House finally turned and he asked, "Do you think it's the cancer or is he a full-fledged psychopath?"
Wilson raised his eyebrows at him and he seemed to have trouble finding the correct words to answer House's question. "Aside from his anger management classes, we have very little background on his psychology. Just from what I've observed, I seriously doubt that his psychopath is a symptom of the cancer. In fact it was probably the road block that caused Foreman to overlook the option of cancer for so long. Although, I wonder if you think it's merely his apathy or perhaps….his violent tendencies that have you concerned about his mental status."
"Gee what gave it away? My inexplicable behavior?" House replied and Wilson only shrugged in response.
"It's certainly easier to see your motives when you act a completely different way than your usual annoying superiority. You're even more tight-lipped about him than even your father. A mere childhood bully would never have made you react…"
Silence fell between them and House continued staring at Wilson as he stood silhouetted against the window his expression complexly inscrutable. Finally, House broke it in his usual way, "Well, Dr. Freud, what do you consider my diagnosis?"
"An arrogant jerk with the beginnings of an Oedipus complex and a need to hide his true feelings" –at this Wilson drew an eye roll from House –"behind a wall of sarcasm while at the same time projecting the usual untouchable front. You're completely normal. I mean, normal for you."
"If you had a better couch, maybe I'd drop by more."
"You'd have to talk, not sleep. I don't think Cuddy would approve otherwise," Wilson replied with his usual amused expression.
"I am seeing Dr. Nolan still," House replied. Wilson could see the walls come back up now and he knew House had nothing more to say."
"All right, House, but as I said, I'm here if you need me."
"Thank you, Redundancy Department of Redundancy." House turned back to look out the window, but he was aware, by the click of the glass door, when Wilson left.
Tony was lying on his side in bed with his eyes closed, but anyone looking in would not expect it to be racing, or as much as his IQ allowed. What the doctor had said to him truly hadn't fazed him. Life had been one long kaleidoscope of moments between nightly binges on beer & tequila. This three-day period was quite possibly the longest he'd been sober since he dropped out of middle school at sixteen, only going for that long at the insistent nagging of his mother.
No, he had little care for what life he had left. No, his cancer was not the reason he was here. His apathy had stretched back to even when his sister hauled him to the doctor and all the specialists afterward. It was simply one word which had snapped him out of his stupor: "You might ask for a consult with Dr. House. He's supposed to be able to solve any medical mystery."
His brown eyes had almost immediately cleared from the painful haze of the drinks still in his system – he'd cut the drugs since the first visit – and he focused on the doctor. "House?"
"Yes, Dr. Greg House. I can send the administrator of his hospital your file. He won't touch the case if you go to him directly. He's a world renowned jerk as well."
Tony gave a small smile, but there was a new light to his otherwise dull brown eyes – the doctor took this as a new sign of hope – and he said, "Sure, I'll go see him." And so he'd flown up from Florida alone, leaving his bewildered sister behind when he scraped together every penny he could for the plane ticket. He had to – had to know if this man was the same little shit who wouldn't bow down to him all these years ago.
Well, the little shit was no longer little, but he could still see the same features. And, of course, that mocking sneer and blue eyes. No, it couldn't have been anyone else. House had even acknowledged him as someone from his past. Now all Tony could think about was revenge.
If he hadn't had the IV stuck in his arm, he would have leapt off the bed and wiped the smug smirk off his face and he also recognized the extreme advantage of three other people standing behind him, obviously much swifter and younger. He cautioned himself to bide his time and the opportunity would come.
And now it had. He opened his eyes and glanced around at the darkened floor, seeing only a few otherworldly shapes glide underneath the eerie glow of the fluorescent lights.
He was not the brightest man as many of his test scores could attest to, but it took very little inspection to find the off-button to the monitor switches and quickly pulled out the IV in his arm. A bead of liquid, protruding from the hole, slid down the rest of his forearm to drip on the floor, but he gave it little notice as he went to the little night stand next to the bed. Since he had checked in without a fuss, they let him keep his clothes in one of the drawers, and he searched the pockets until he found what the item he was looking for, and then he tucked it into the palm of his hand and slid out the door.
House remembered that in the days before Mayfield, he kept a bottle of scotch and a little glass nearby for contemplative endings to the day, but that had been cleared out and in its place probably sat something along the lines of Diet Coke. He did occasionally miss drinking, at least when he hadn't overloaded on it but now he could no longer trust himself. Dr. Nolan may not have said it aloud, but he was almost certain he had some psychotic disorder that caused him to latch onto things – Vicodin and alcohol or even his music – with an inhuman obsession.
As a result, there seemed to be little point in continuing to idle in his office but the prospect of heading home to Wilson's scrutinizing eyes and prying questions made him prematurely groan in disdain. He considered heading over to Cuddy's, but they'd eaten together only last night and the last thing he wanted to do was come to her looking like some pitiful puppy begging for attention. No, best to stay here until he was certain Wilson would be in bed by the time he arrived back at the condo.
He turned his thoughts towards Tony. He had been doing his best all day to stay away from the topic, but now that he was alone in his office he felt safe enough to contemplate him. Wilson had told him he had a month or two at best to live. House doubted he would have ever remembered the monster if he hadn't stumbled into their hospital and now every single instance of brutality Tony had committed on him resurfaced to his mind, so clear in detail and precision it was as if they'd happened yesterday.
Digging through his mind, he decided to try some questions that Dr. Nolan asked him virtually every session. How does that make you feel? He still couldn't keep himself from sighing in exasperation at the questions, but he had long accepted them as a necessary part of routine. Digging through his mind, House was surprised to find that the relief was minimal at best. The predominating feeling was anger and even regret that he never had a chance to face Tony man-to-man. With two good legs, he knew he would have won that scuffle, but now the odds seemed to be a toss of the die.
He winced at the thought and retreated from it, feeling his shoulders sag with disappointment. Violence? That was his father's predisposition, not his! But much like how he had forever wanted to prove John House wrong in his assessment that the only strength you could have was military, he wanted nothing more than to prove to Tony that he couldn't beat everyone into submission.
If he were Freud he might have thought that perhaps standing up to Tony might have been a subconscious rebellion against his father and his abusive orderliness. Except Tony had been far from orderly and had such a low IQ it might have bordered on mentally handicapped. Whatever the trigger was, he approached both of them with an entirely different line of thought and, particularly now that he had saved himself from the crutch of Vicodin. He was going to acknowledge Tony's dying presence and let it be.
The door swung open on its silent hinges and much like earlier, House seemed to feel the new presence by the mere stirrings of air. "I thought you'd…" He turned toward the door, expecting to see Wilson, but found himself staring down the subject of his thoughts. Tony was smiling, though it didn't reach his eyes, and he seemed to eye House with an almost predatory gaze. A glint caught House's eye and they slid down to Tony's hand which held an open pocket knife.
They both stood there, at opposite ends of the office, neither one hardly daring to breathe. Finally, House whispered to no one in the quiet office, words that would have carried all the way over to Tony, "Oh crap!"