Chapter 8-Vacancy
House shoved open the surgery door with his cane and looked to the floor, speaking out of the side of his mouth to Chase. "So are you going to let them eat at his brain or are you going to try closing him up?"
Chase still did not move for a time, his eyes bouncing back and forth between House, the floor, and the skull he opened as if watching a bizarre, three-person tennis match. So many thoughts bubbled around his mind that he did not know where to begin with them all. His stomach started to churn at the site of dozens of yellow maggots twisting and turning their slimy bodies in a heap on the floor. In his years of practice, nothing like this even remotely disgusted him as much. Second to that feeling was the fact that House duped him. Again.
Since the younger man merely stood his ground, House picked up the rongeur* and delicately scraped at the exposed brain. His switch worked perfectly and he could not ask for a better set of circumstances: since the old bat who was supposed to receive surgery at this allotted time died only a few minutes before attending were supposed to wheel her away, House took the opportunity to switch her bed with Jeremy's. Orderlies seldom look at a patient's chart, anyway. Jeremy and the old lady had similar stats, weight, and height, so with a shaved head one could hardly tell the difference. House smiled inwardly as he scraped at Jeremy's brain, whistling some tune he heard on the radio this morning.
The maggots clinked against the tray House dropped them in, goo keeping them bound in a greasy ball. Since the brain held surprisingly little blood, the maggots' yellow bodies shined in the bright light of the surgery room. As House worked, he tried to avoid the small pile that accumulated on the floor, hoping to spare his favorite sneakers from their crunchy bodies. The surgical team remained fixated in their places, staring at the exposed brain and the patches of tiny worms covering it.
Once House cleared as many of the bugs away as possible, he stood up to his full height and arched his back. He towered over Chase by a few inches so the surgical table was lower than he expected. As House stood, he removed his sterile gloves and placed them in Chase's hand. "Close him up; he'll need a few more surgeries to get any stragglers. And make sure there aren't any eggs in the folds before you put the plates back together."
As House opened the door, he finally heard one of the attendings vomit. Outwardly, he smiled.
A week later he sat in Jeremy's room again, checking the stitches that made his head look more like a baseball than a skull. They spent much of the week playing the video game system when House had the chance, or walking back and forth between the cafeteria and his room. Three days after his surgery, Cuddy finally allowed the social worker into the room. In two weeks, Jeremy would most likely spend the rest of his seventeenth year of life in foster care. That is, if anyone would willingly take him in.
Jeremy knew that his time with New Mom and Dad was extremely limited, so he tried to spend as much time with either of them as they would allow. New Dad typically did not let him hang around for more than a few minutes, claiming that he had work to do, but often Jeremy saw him sitting in his office throwing a giant tennis ball against the wall. New Mom let him sit in her office while she worked as long as no other patients came in to talk with her, then he had to wait with one of the nurses outside. His brain did not itch as bad as when the maggots lived in it, and he knew that a few still resided in his brain but New Dad told him that they would no longer hurt him and other doctors could get them out. Jeremy also noticed that they did not bother him at all when he was with New Mom, and that made him happy.
But right now, at that moment, New Dad poked around the top of his head. They seldom spoke to each other (except to talk about strategies to take down enemies in the war game), but Jeremy wanted to chat today. "Did the maggots eat at your leg too?"
New Dad stopped momentarily and looked at him, taking in a deep breath. "Not exactly."
"Maybe I can be a doctor," Jeremy speculated. "Then I can take them out of your leg since you took them away from my brain. That way the government can't track you anymore." He sat back against his pillow, content that he had a plan for his life. In school, even though he had to take some special ed classes, Jeremy actually did fairly well. His favorite class was definitely chemistry, only because the pictures of molecules in his book often made him giggle. But he was at the top of the class regardless.
House covered the large gash once again and picked up his cane. "Do whatever you want," he said. "Just don't come back here unless you are bleeding out of your ears." Although he hummed the funny little tune Jeremy played on his air-guitar, House never saw him again.
A week later, Cuddy watched from her office as Jeremy nearly skipped out of the hospital, holding the hand of his social worker. She smiled at the image of his bandaged white head bouncing up and down, and the social worker trying desperately to keep up with him. From her view in the office, he could not see her.
At some point she found Wilson standing next to her, although she could not remember how he got there. Long after Jeremy left, she remained at the window hoping that he would come back for some reason, trying to mentally send him thoughts in a last-ditch hope to see him again. Finally, Wilson wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into his shoulder.
"I pushed for adoption but it would take months to get any sort of approval," Cuddy said after a few minutes. "He would be too old by the time I got to him." Wilson took his time before answering.
"But now you know what it's like, even if only for a little while. Just think, that's a few weeks worth of love he probably hasn't had in a very long time."
They stood fixated in that position for a half hour, quiet tears occasionally slipping from her eyes. When she finally noticed that the hospital behind her quieted down, Cuddy kissed Wilson on the cheek and gathered her things for the journey home. Wilson could only smile.
