John and Blythe House had volunteered to sit with their son during the 8am to noon shift. It wasn't easy to convince Chase to give a pair of laymen responsibility for monitoring a man who was out cold and wired to computers that tracked his every breath, but Cuddy insisted. The cabal in charge of this experiment needed time to attend to their regular duties, she said; the morning shift offered the best odds that help would be on the way the moment the Houses called for it, and Chase really needed to get off his high horse and uncurl his fingers from this case a little.
The Houses arrived half an hour early, fully equipped for their vigil with magazines, books, and a needlework project (hers). Blythe House entered the room briskly, a brave smile on her face, but at the sight of her son she halted, the smile draining away. "Oh," she said, and put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears.
Cuddy put a firm but gentle arm around her shoulders and turned her back out into the hallway. John House followed, looking stormy.
"He looks like he's...dead," Blythe whispered. The tears began to overflow their banks.
"I know it's a little frightening at first," Cuddy said softly, handing her a Kleenex, "but believe me, he's doing fine."
"You've got him wired like a Christmas tree," boomed House pere. "Just how dangerous is this little experiment?"
Cuddy drew a breath. "Try to remember that he can probably hear you," she said evenly. "He might even open his eyes from time to time and look at you; he did it a couple of times earlier this morning. It's nothing to be alarmed about, in fact it's a good sign, but it's important to remember that ketamine can induce hallucinations. You don't want to say or do anything that might make them worse."
Blythe pulled herself together and they reentered the room. Blythe's attention was drawn to the computer monitor, silently running through the slideshow Chase and Cameron had produced from the boxes in the filing cabinets and images "borrowed" from fansites for House's favorite TV shows.
"Oh, look, John, it's Greg with the catamaran. Remember how he loved that boat?"
"He didn't love working on it," John growled, but his face softened as he regarded the image. "He was a born sailor, I'll give him that. He almost gave us heart attacks, the way he'd fly across the lake on that thing."
Chase entered the room with a sheaf of lab reports and a vial of medicine. He greeted the Houses and turned to Cuddy.
"Nothing showed up," he told her, "but I'm going to draw more bloods around noon just to make sure."
"His temperature's gone down," Cuddy pointed out.
"If it goes up again, then," Chase said impatiently.
House, rousing briefly, kicked the sheet off his feet, exposing what looked like very thick stockings. His father was appalled.
"You've got him in pantyhose?" he asked.
"They're compression stockings," Chase explained. "They help to prevent blood clots from forming in his legs and moving to his lungs." He moved to the IV unit and injected something from the vial into the line.
"What are you giving him?" Blythe asked anxiously.
"Anti-ulcer meds," Chase said. "You notice we've got the head of his bed elevated, too. It's to prevent acid reflux from pushing into his lungs—it's standard procedure to avoid ventilator-acquired pneumonia."
"I never knew sleeping could be so dangerous," marveled John.
"It's not, really," Chase said quickly. "But we want to avoid problems if we can." He handed John House a slip of paper with the number for his pager. "Don't be shy about using this," he instructed him solemnly. "I'll be around the whole time, and if you need to talk to me for any reason, give me a buzz. It doesn't have to be an emergency; call if you just want to chat."
"That goes for me, too," Cuddy reminded them. She and Chase departed, leaving the House family alone.
Blythe set out the magazines they'd brought and fussed with the contents of her needlework kit in preparation for settling in for the morning. Her husband approached the bed and stood gazing at his sleeping son's face.
"You really did it this time, kiddo," he said ruefully. "I used to wonder what you could do to top the leg. I should've known you'd think of something."
Blythe spoke sharply. "John."
He winced and turned. His face suddenly looked very old to her. She relented.
"Would you get me a cup of tea, dear? You know the way to the cafeteria, don't you?"
When her husband had left, Blythe pushed a chair close to the bed and sank into it. She picked up her son's free hand in both of hers and held the palm to her lips, then pressed it against her cheek. She brushed the hair from his forehead and kissed that, too.
-0-
I had to wait until you were unconscious to do this. You never liked me to kiss and hug you—even as a baby you pushed me away, so busy learning about the world, so anxious to get on with the next adventure. It was just you and me back then. Dad was in Germany then. We would have been with him, but I had such a difficult pregnancy, he wanted me to be near my family and the good hospitals where they lived, not taking my chances in a military hospital. We made it through the delivery all right, but I was told there would be no more children.
Maybe that's where it allwent wrong—if I could have given you some brothers and sisters, you wouldn't have had to carry all of our parental expectations and anxieties by yourself.
As it was, Dad decided not to spend another tour away from you and miss any more of your growing up. For one thing, he didn't trust me to raise you the way he thought a boy should be raised. He first saw you when you were six months old. You were a strong-willed baby, so energetic and curious about everything. You couldn't crawl yet, but you could pull yourself around by your forearms and roll from one side of the room to the other, and you didn't like to be interferred with when you were exploring. If I picked you up you would bellow like a bull and try to wriggle out of my arms; once or twice you tried to scramble over my shoulder like a cat to get free. You were so strong and wiry, I was always on the verge of dropping you.
Dad frowned when he saw this happen and stepped in to take you away. You roared, wailed, stiffened and pushed with all your might, but Dad held on grimly and eventually you wore yourself out and hung, defeated, in his hands. By that time I was in tears, too.
"He has to learn, Blythe," he said.
"He's just a baby!" I protested.
"This is the perfect time to start nipping bad habits in the bud." He sounded so sure of this, and I was so exhausted from trying to keep up with you by myself, that I let him take over.
Maybe that was the mistake. From that day on, your relationship was a constant battle; for the upper hand on his side, for the right to do things your own way on yours. But I honestly didn't see any alternative. You were already such a challenge at six months, I couldn't imagine what you would be like once you hit the "terrible twos." As it was, even your father's best efforts couldn't keep you out of trouble. He told you not to rush up to strange dogs, and at age five you went up to the meanest dog on the base and nearly got your nose bitten off. He told you not to climb the rotted branches of the old apple tree in the backyard of our place in San Diego, and you did anyway and broke your arm. He told you to make your horse walk back to the stables after a ride out to the pyramids in Egypt, and you immediately kicked the animal into a headlong gallop that ended when it jumped over the gate into its corral and you fell off, cracking three ribs and breaking your collarbone. He warned you not to take the little 14-foot sailboat we had in Florida out of the marina on a stormy day, and you sneaked out anyway, lost control of the boom, and wound up in the hospital with a concussion.
Looking back, I think that two things came of those injuries. One, you became fascinated with hospitals, doctors, and everything to do with medicine, even needles—you never cried when you needed a shot. Second, you grew to hate having anything go wrong with your body.
I remember taking you back to kindergarten after the dog bite. Two little girls were walking towards us in the hallway, and when they saw your swollen, pieced-together little face, they began to giggle. "His face is sewed on," one whispered to the other.
Well, I never would have thought I could harbor evil thoughts about a five-year-old child, but I hated that little girl for being so cruel to my son. And you—you seemed to shrink into yourself, you looked so ashamed. After that, you couldn't bear to have your injuries pointed out and discussed, as if they were visible proof of failure. That day in the hallway I tried to explain that the girls didn't realize how hurtful it was to be laughed at, but you weren't so sure. "No," you said, "they're just mean. And they never liked me anyway."
You seemed to think a lot of children didn't like you. I wasn't so sure. You were a handsome little boy, athletic and imaginative, funny and bright, but you were impatient with children who couldn't keep up with you physically or mentally, and you had a tendency to pick up friends and drop them the minute you found something more interesting to do. Children will only put up with that kind of treatment for so long. We moved every two years, so you always had a chance to start fresh, but within weeks we'd hear from your teachers that your classmates had decided you were stuck up and "superior."
We heard from your teachers all the time. Every marking period brought the same parent-teacher conferences and the same refrain: "Greg is bright and could make top grades, if ony he would apply himself." In between report cards there were notes home and the occasional telephone call. You never got less than a B-plus on a test, but you never handed in homework. Your papers were praised for the depth of your research, the clarity of your writing, and the originality of your ideas, but you lost points because they were handed in on scrap paper in an almost illegible scrawl—you had written many of them on the bus the morning they were due. You were teaching yourself physics in sixth grade and calculus in seventh, but your grade point average hovered around a 2.5.
You seemed to regard your deficiencies as too trivial to correct. "If my paper was that good, why does my handwriting matter?" you would grumble. You were outraged when you lost the science fair competition in ninth grade. Your exhibit was startling and very advanced—I certainly didn't understand it—but first prize went to a boy whose entry demonstrated how a volcano worked.
"Greg should have won," the high school chemistry teacher confided to us, "but the rules said the exhibit had to be accompanied by a neatly-printed poster explaining it, and he neglected to make one."
"I wanted to make an oral presentation," you explained to us later. "No one would have understood anything I put on a poster anyway. It made more sense to demonstrate it and take questions afterward. I can't believe they picked Norman Elwood 's dorky volcano just because he made a stupid poster and I didn't."
I saw your point. Maybe Dad did, too, but he sided with the judges: "Rules are there for a reason, Greg. Next time, try doing what you're told instead of expecting the world to make an exception for you."
Was that the problem? I know you have a reputation for bending and sometimes breaking the rules. I know you've lost jobs because of it. Sometimes you do manage to bully people into making an exception for you, and it seems to have helped you in your career. But what about the rest of your life?
-0-
John House returned with the tea and, seeing his wife lost in thought, set the cup on the counter and settled into a chair as quietly as he could.
-0-
I've been watching the slideshow on thecomputer screen here. It's run through the same pictures at least twice now, and I can see that most of them are from television shows or magazines about motorcycles and sports. Besides the one of the catamaran, there are only a few pictures of you, all in a professional setting, and none of anyone I recognize as a friend. I know it upsets you when I talk about your personal life. I am proud of what you've achieved as a doctor, but I think of you as a whole person, not just a specialist in diseases. You have these colleagues, who seem very fond of you, but they must have lives of their own. You have us, but we won't be around forever. Who will you talk to when you go home at night? Who will take care of you when you're ill?
Why won't you at least talk about these things? I just learned yesterday from that nice black doctor that Stacy spent six months working here at the hospital last winter. She was working here when we stopped by on our way to Europe, and you never said a word. You barely said a word when she left you six years ago. "It was a mutual decision," you told us, your face as hard as stone. You were together for five years. I could tell how much you loved each other, and I prayed that you would recognize the wisdom of some middleclass conventions and marry her. "I guess Greg's not the marrying kind," Stacy told me once. She's married now, and you're alone. You must have some feelings about that.
"Mom, I'm fine. I'm just very busy." That's your reason for everything, isn't it? It's why you don't seem to have anything else going on in your life, it's why you don't return my calls for days, it's why you always look so thin and tired. I suppose you could be telling the truth. I know a doctor doesn't have a lot of time to himself. But I can't get over the feeling that you're in some kind of trouble, and that you'd really rather risk dying than tell me what it is.
-0-
There was a light knock on the doorframe and Cameron entered the room, her eyes sparkling. Wilson followed close behind.
"Dr. Wilson is going to sit with him for a minute," she told the Houses, her voice bright with excitement. "There's something you two really have to see."