House awoke from the Ativan-induced nap to the wonderful sensation of lying comfortably on his side. He was lying on his left side. There was a pillow comfortably positioned between his right and left legs. For the first time since the initial surgery, the pain was tolerable. In fact, for the first time since this disaster he could say it was more of a discomfort than a pain. If asked to rate it on a ten scale, for the first time all night he could say it was about a four. There was no post-op pain in his left leg where they'd taken the saphenous vein graft.

Epidurals are amazing, House mused with a sleepy grin. They should be standard issue. Everyone needs one.

House knew that, unlike epidural anesthesia, where there is no feeling or movement below the level of the injection after the anesthetic agent is injected, with epidural analgesia, the patient still has feeling and can still move the lower half of the body normally. He also knew that the benefits of epidural analgesia generally include better pain control on a lower dose and the effects tend to last longer. It just now occurred to his increasingly alert and less-distracted mind that he could have asked for an epidural before the first surgery. But patients should be able to trust that when they go to surgery, their anesthetist would offer them that choice before it becomes necessary. House realized that his bullshit detector must still be flipped off or he would have remembered long ago that even doctors and nurse anesthetists can lie by omission; even when it's an accidental omission, a lie is still a lie.

Now that he was less distracted by pain, he could focus at least a little bit on assessing his own body, system by system. This he could control. Ok, let's go head to toe. Brains – not scrambled. That's always good. IV in one hand – I see the heparin drip. I wonder how much I'm on. Gotta find out. Arterial line in the other wrist. Kinda hurts, 'cause I can't bend my wrist with the arterial line in, but it's better than getting stuck every hour. Pulse oximeter on my finger. Makes me feel like ET when he pointed to the heavens with the red light on the end of his finger saying ET Phone Home. Chest and stomach – fine, I guess, but taking a dump is sure gonna be a lot of fun with no food in me and narcotics slowing everything down. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Legs. Now that's another matter. Let's see. Big ass dressing on right thigh, little tiny one on left thigh. Wound vac in right thigh. Oozing a little bit, not too bad. Dressing needs changing. Yippee. Maybe if I don't say anything they'll hold off awhile. Mmmm, epidurals are great. Tent thingy still over my legs. At least I'm warm now. I can feel both feet. Gotta remember to ask how much heparin I'm on.

"Wilson."

"Yeah, what?" came the tired reply from the recliner next to his bed.

"Go home. I'm fine. I can feel the rays of your caring bearing down on me in my sleep. Ask the nurse to come in. I need to find out how much heparin I'm on."

"House."

"Yeah?"

"Go to sleep. Why do you care how much heparin you're on? It's not like if you think about it hard enough, you can control the dose anyway. Forget about it and go to sleep. Enjoy your epidural while it lasts."

House replied "I can see everything except the IV pump that the heparin is running through. Turn it around so I can see the programmed dose."

Wilson said "Yes, Your Majesty. Here. See it? Good. Stop obsessing about it now."

House sneered, "see these little red stains on my dressing? Gee, doesn't HEPARIN do that? What was my last PTT?"

"House, I don't know for God's sake! You just had two major surgeries in the same area in less than twenty four hours. The incision is big. It's going to ooze. A few little red stains are nothing to worry about and you know that. You need the heparin or else you'll throw more clots. Give it a rest. When the nurse comes in, if you're asleep, which you better be, I'll ask her what the last PTT was. But I'm not going to bother them now just because you won't let it alone."

House thought about it a minute, then slyly made an awkward move for the IV pump to pull it close enough to him so he could read the dose history stored in the machine's memory. "1200 units per hour," House muttered.

"I can't stay on this forever. I just had an arterial anastomosis that bled, and a huge hematoma. What a trade off. I need the heparin because of the clotting in the first place, but I risk bleeding to death now if the anastomosis rebleeds. Or if I get an ulcer. Protamine is the antidote for heparin, but if they have to give me protamine, I risk throwing more clots. I need to know my last PTT."

Wilson begrudgingly got up and went out to the nurse's station. "I hate to bother you all about this. You've been so good and he's not the easiest guy to deal with. He wants to know his latest PTT. He's asked like about a billion times. He thinks he's on too much heparin. Trust me, he's not going to let this go. Could you please look up his latest labs? You might as well tell him all of his labs, 'cause he's going to want to know."

The nurse came in cheerfully with a stack of lab printouts. "You're on 1200 units an hour of heparin. We check PTTs but we also check Anti-Factor Xa levels – Heparin Assays – every six hours. These are all your labs. Your last Factor Xa was 0.41. That's the first one that has been within therapeutic range, so the dose stayed the same. If the next Factor Xa is within normal range too, we will leave you on 1200 units an hour and cut down on the blood drawing to once a day."

House looked at her narrowly. He'd always professed the belief that nurses weren't much good for anything other than butt wiping, but then again, he'd never had to rely on nurses for meeting his every little need. Thank God he didn't know any of the nursing staff at Princeton General. These people knew their stuff and, he had to admit, might have something to teach his fellows. First, though, a test was in order. A pop quiz, if you will. "So what's with the red oozing through on my dressing? Should I worry about that?"

Again, this nurse responded quite differently than any he'd ever met at PPTH. Perhaps he'd browbeaten and cried Wolf at the nurses at PPTH too many times. None of them wanted anything to do with him. If he'd asked the nurses at PPTH a question like this, the chances of getting any kind of answer were pretty slim. So far, though, every nurse he'd met at General seemed to be completely unafraid of and unthreatened by his nurse-unfriendly reputation. Her reply was "Not at this point. Some oozing is expected. The original incision had to be reopened and enlarged. As long as it's just a slow ooze and nothing else is bleeding, we'll just watch your aPTTs and heparin assays. You know there's a wound vac there, right? The wound vac is to prevent another hematoma from forming. If there is any more notable internal bleeding, it'll collect in the wound vac and we'll spot it right away. The wound vac is fine. There's a little bit of bloody fluid in it but nothing to worry about."

House smiled to himself. Operation "Test-The-Nurse" was a success. If his departmental budget included any nursing positions, he'd hire these folks in a heartbeat.

Wilson cracked a smile. "Ok, so now that you're going to STOP obsessing about the heparin, don't start looking for something else to obsess about. Go to sleep or else I start singing Barry Manilow's 'Mandy' until you shut up."

House closed his eyes, quite happy in the temporary respite from pain that the epidural provided. Within a few minutes, the gentle snoring coming from his bed was proof enough that he wasn't just pretending to sleep anymore.

Wilson had too much on his mind to be able to go back to sleep; even if he went back home, which he knew he should, it was doubtful that even a romp in the sack with Sam would tire him out enough to get a decent amount of sleep. Even if she wanted a romp in the sack with him, it wouldn't be like it was when they were first married, anyway. His relationship with Sam had been on the rocks for some time now. He knew that relationships were always a two way street and it always took two to make and two to break a relationship. He and Sam had not been intimate with each other much lately; more because he felt like Sam didn't trust him. Not that he hadn't given her reason to mistrust him, but still, wasn't there some way to prove that he was being faithful to her now? Wasn't there some way to prove to her that he'd changed his cheating ways? Would Sam always and forever more see him as a cheating bastard who could no longer be trusted? He'd like to think that he could earn her trust again. He just wasn't sure how long he'd have to be faithful before she really believed him. And frankly, he was beginning to doubt that she was worth the effort. All this time spent with House was sure to raise Sam's suspicions again. On several occasions in the past, she'd actually come out and asked him directly if he had ever cheated on her with House. Wilson had to admit that while he and House were really just close friends, it was interesting that Sam would think there was more to this bromance than just friendship.

Wilson found that the more he thought about it, the more he enjoyed knowing that Sam must be at home stewing over the fact that Wilson obviously was more interested in supporting House than he was in saving the relationship with his own wife.

Wilson found himself staring at House's sleeping form and wondering how much House's life was going to change as a result of the disabling surgery. He wondered what was going through House's mind. Not that House would ever bring it up himself, but surely he must be concerned about more than just the heparin dose. It was so typical of House to obsess about numbers but when it came to feelings and emotions, he would just clam up completely. House must be scared to death. If I bring it up to him, though, he'll tell me to go to hell. If I leave it up to him to bring the subject up, he never will. I wonder if he has any idea what kind of an uphill battle his rehab is probably going to be? I wonder if it's occurred to him that the disability might be permanent? Geez, the guy needs to talk about this. I wonder if any of that has even occurred to him yet. So far all he talks about are the numbers. The heparin dose, the lab results, his heart rate, his blood pressure. Things he can see. Things he can measure. I've been his friend for all this time and even I have no idea how to talk about feelings with him. I mean, guys don't talk about this touchy-feely stuff, but the only person whom he ever would have talked about this stuff to was Stacy and she's obviously gone now. So how do I do this?