After David's funeral, the next few days were spent in a fog. Or maybe it was a few weeks; I couldn't keep track anymore. I was sleeping too much until David started to invade my dreams and then I didn't want to sleep anymore and couldn't without a sleeping pill or three. I wasn't eating enough and lost a good ten pounds before Greg noticed and forced waffles on me at breakfast and pizza at dinner. I may never eat pizza again.

The grief released its stranglehold and soon I was just feeling sad and angry and empty.

A memory switched itself on, a memory from just after David graduated high school. Hiding in the back of my mind all these years. I had no idea what suddenly triggered it, if anything. He told me that the day he knew he didn't have to go back was the happiest day of his life. If he had to do it all over again, he just would have dropped out and got his GED because high school was an enormous waste of four years. He had a GPA of 3.8 and graduated seventh in his class. I was of course puzzled and asked him if high school was good for anything. Surely he learned something during his time there. I was joking around, but he wasn't. He told me he had learned three things: guilt, shame and humiliation. He never spoke of high school again.

Apparently my brother had a secret or two or twelve. I needed to talk to my mother again and ask her a few questions. But right now it was after midnight. I'd have to fit in the phone call tomorrow evening before Greg shoved another meal down my throat.

Greg had been strangely quiet about the whole David situation, offering a few words of comfort at oddly random moments. The man could talk and talk and talk until his vocal cords burst, but now his conversation was limited to making his trademark snide comments aimed at whatever movie he happened to be watching. I shouldn't have been surprised when he wanted to talk just as my sleeping pill was kicking in. He could have waited until morning but that would have been too easy. It could have just as easily been my newly skewered point of view. When the wonderful diphenhydramine wave rolls in, everything seems weird and out of place.

"How's my Jimmy doing?" he asked, at least polite enough to keep his voice down as he edged closer and indulged his favorite pastime of running his fingers through my hair.

"Your Jimmy just wants to sleep," I mumbled, vaguely wondering through the thickening drug-induced fog flowing over me if I had formed a coherent sentence.

"There's one thing I want to know," he said, sounding faint and distant, as if he were talking to me from the other side of the apartment. "Have you forgiven your brother?"

I had just enough time to answer, "There's nothing to forgive him for," before another wave crashed over me and pulled me under. Good night.

As I sat at the breakfast table, staring at a mound of waffles I was going to choke down or die trying, it occurred to me how much my admittedly bizarre relationship with Dr. Greg House had veered off the course I had so carefully plotted out many months before. He always struck me as someone who needed looking after; his self-destructive streak can spiral beyond any control if he isn't careful. A man who was brilliant doctor, who could save everyone except himself. That's all still true, mind you, and I keep an eye on him whenever possible. However, this is the second time when Greg has had to take some extra-special care of me. The irony has hit me over the head with a frying pan. The man I set out to take care of was now my keeper. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"You were talking in your sleep last night," Greg said in a languid voice, like he was announcing we were out of cheese and cereal and wanted me to run to the store.

"Really?" I looked up and frowned. "What did I say?"

"I don't know. You were mumbling, I couldn't understand you. But you woke me up, obviously."

"Sorry."

"Nothing comes between me and my beauty sleep," he grinned. "Wake me up one more time, you and your nocturnal mumblings are going back to the spare bedroom."

"I'll see what I can do," I said with a shake of my head and roll of my eyes, then dug into the waffles. Apple cinnamon. Yum.

"Thank you," he replied with another grin. "You're looking more chipper today. Gained some of that weight back. All that midnight babbling clearly didn't disturb you."

"You talk in your sleep, too." I so gallantly informed him. "I should make you sleep on the couch."

He didn't seem surprised by that not-so-stunning revelation. "Do I say anything interesting?"

"Not really. Mostly incoherent mutterings with an occasional real word or two thrown in–'what...why? Just shut up.' Things like that."

"And I wake you up?"

"You have a few times."

"You never said anything about it."

"Am I supposed to? Should I wake you and tell you to shut up and go to sleep next time?"

"That's not a good idea."

"That's exactly what I thought. That's why I never said anything. It would have just pissed you off."

"You know me so well," he said, then plowed into his pile of waffles.

I cleaned my plate without protest, and hoped the rest of the day would go well. A good day, or at least a half-way decent day would soften the blow of the dreaded phone call to Mom and the bad news I knew would come out of it.