Chapter 10
"Subterfuge"
Lisa Cuddy looked up as the door of her office opened and three people walked single-file through it. She'd been on the phone to one of the E. R. nurses and the latest news about James Wilson had been less than encouraging. She hid her dismay behind her professional face. She thanked the woman, hung up the phone and stood to greet them. "You must be the Wilsons," she said pleasantly.
They were a handsome couple in their mid-to-late fifties, the father a grey haired older copy of his physician son. His wife was half an inch taller and fifty pounds thinner, her dark brown hair sprinkled with silver, her eyes the same shade of brown as her son. The younger man was "Jimmy's" brother, obviously.
Lisa reached her hand across the edge of the desk as she moved from behind it to greet them. The older man grasped it in a brief, firm handshake and indicated those with him. "Dr. Cuddy, I presume. This is my wife, Claire, my son, Tom." The other two people nodded courteously, but it was clear their thoughts were elsewhere.
Cuddy scanned their faces and smiled tentatively. "I have some good news."
But her inner voice cried: Liar!
Their anxious eyes pinned her to the wall. "James is out of surgery. They've taken him into the intensive care unit, but he hasn't regained consciousness yet. I was talking to the O. R. nurse when you came in, and they say he has a very good chance to come out of this with about seventy-five per cent normal mobility." Lisa found herself clenching both fists out of sight behind the folds of her lab coat with the intense effort of maintaining a stern face.
When the woman on the phone said "… seventy-five per cent", her heart had come up into her throat. What could have been the odds that her two very best doctors … the finest, most gifted physicians out of the hundreds working at PPTH … would both be physically disabled in their lifetimes? It just wasn't fair. Not to them, not to her, not to the hospital.
Mrs. Wilson was reaching toward her, drawing her attention. She met the woman's worried eyes, so much like James' own. "Please, Doctor, what does it mean … 'seventy-five per cent'?
Cuddy led them to the long, mustard-colored sofa in the middle of the large room, gestured for them to sit down. They did, one at a time. She moved to one of the two chairs across from them, seated herself and shored up her composure, then began.
"You must be aware that James was instrumental in saving the lives of about forty school kids when he swerved away from their bus. When he did that, he pulled directly into the path of a refuse-container truck traveling in the opposite direction, which also had to swerve to avoid the bus. When they both did so, they hit head-on.
"The impact sent James into the steering wheel, and his legs were pinned under the dash." She purposely avoided mention of the engine entering the cab of the truck. "The bones and muscles of James' legs and feet were badly injured, and it broke his wrist as well. He is fortunate to be alive, but it is possible he will not regain full use of his legs. You need to be prepared for that. That is what is meant by 'seventy-five per cent'."
"Will he ever walk again?" The question came from the younger man.
"I'm sure he will, but we can't be sure yet how far his recovery will progress. I'm sorry."
She had said the same words to Frances O'Neill, Gregory House's mother, years before. History was dangerously close to repeating itself.
On the other hand, House had indeed walked again!
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House was still in the old wheelchair, and Billy Travis was still at his side. They were now in the corridor outside the ICU, having followed the medi-bed with its silent cadre of guardians as they pushed Wilson slowly through the door into the sterile unit and another team moved him to one of the cubicles where monitor hookups and life-support systems awaited.
House was not happy that no one would clear him to go in and sit by James' side, although he knew very well why it had to be this way. No street clothing was allowed, and no one with a cold or any sign of infection, and certainly no wheelchairs from the wards.
He needed to be close to his friend, needed to touch a hand, an arm, draw a finger gently across the bruised, sleeping face and prove to himself that Wilson was still breathing. He could feel his frustration rising, feel the blood pounding in his ears and the adrenaline rush pulsating through his body, spiking the pain in his leg. Wilson could not possibly know he was there, but it made no difference to House.
House would know that House was there!
Billy could sense his friend's need. He'd known Gregg almost as long as Wilson, and the signs were unmistakable. The vein in Gregg's forehead was pulsing wildly, both fists clenched and the blue eyes smoldering beneath bunched brows.
He considered one other option, but was not certain whether Gregg was up to it.
"Hey … Boss?"
"Huh?"
"Uh … I have an idea that might get you in there with Jimmy … but if you ever rat me out, I'll have to break your face …"
The blue eyes cleared as the man in the wheelchair turned his face instantly upward at full attention. "How? Tell me! What must I do? I really need to be in there!"
Billy grinned conspiratorially. "First, we need to get over to the women's locker room." Even as he spoke, his big hands were grasping the chair's handles, turning it around, heading back the way they had come.
"Women's … ? Locker room? Do you have any idea how long it's been since I was in a hospital's female-employee locker room?"
"Yeah, probably. You were still in rehab, so it was about …"
"You've got the memory of an elephant!"
"Yeah, Man … I know!" Billy grinned at the memory. They sailed down the hallway.
The doors to the RN–LPN (Female) locker room parted before them and Billy sped them through, turning left through the cement block dogleg. Mid-shift, it was empty and echoing. "Think you can walk all right?" He asked his passenger.
"Yeah, I think so," came the reply.
"Good." Travis handed Gregg his cane, which he had placed in the trough at the back of the chair for the sprint through the halls.
House took it, looking momentarily puzzled. "Now what?"
"Now," Billy told him, "we turn you into a nurse-lady. Simple, no?"
House's head snapped about, lip curling. "We do what? I get to dress in drag?"
"You heard me. Quit asking dumb questions! You gotta get out of that chair, go into one of those stalls, take your clothes off and take a shower … just as damn hot as you can stand it. In the meantime, I'll go on the other side and get you a 'girlie' suit and leave it on the bench. What size shoes you wear?"
House frowned, suddenly getting what his partner in crime was up to. Then, for the first time in many hours, he smiled. "Twelves. Now I get it … you're gonna sterilize me!"
The big man grinned back, shook his head. "Yeah … manner of speaking." Billy snapped on both brakes, watching closely as House gathered himself to rise. A quick intake of breath from Gregg told him this would not be a cakewalk. "You okay, Boss?"
House pulled an exasperated face, but answered quietly. "I'm fine. I think my knee just gave me permission to bend it again."
"I take it that's a good thing?" Billy's voice choked up for a moment, but House ignored it. He had enough on his plate at the moment.
"Yeah. Help me up, will you, so I can figure out where my balance is …"
Travis placed both hands beneath Gregg's arms, lifting slowly as the lanky body came out of the chair. He handed him the cane as he stood for a moment, searching for a fulcrum. He turned with effort and Billy frowned, watching him move away, his foot twisting at the ankle and dragging the floor as his faltering gait faded away to the nearest shower stall.
Ah Jesus, Gregg! What a freakin' dirty trick life has played on you two guys!
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Gregory House, M. D., presented an image reminiscent of a six-foot-two, skinny pink Barbie doll. Chewbacca in drag! The 'girlie-suit' scrubs were ill fitting; pants too short, surgical gown too full on his thin frame, and the generic white sneakers slowed him down drastically as he tried to get used to walking in them.
The 'sweetie-pie' surgical cap on his head hid the mop of grey-tinged hair, but reminded Billy Travis of a pink WWI flyer's helmet with strings attached. The cane, which he'd scrubbed down with alcohol, moved in cadence with House's halting rhythm, and was mostly hidden by the folds of the gown.
They walked slowly together, back in the direction of the ICU, and as they approached, House pulled a surgical mask and rubber gloves from the pocket of the gown. They stopped in the anteroom to Intensive Care while Gregg tore the mask and gloves out of their wrappers and fit them carefully. The mask completely concealed the doctor's trademark two-day growth of beard.
Other medical personnel assigned to the ICU spared him no more than a passing glance, and Gregg knew he'd gotten away with … whatever-the-hell he'd just gotten away with.
"You're on your own from here, Boss. I can't go in there 'til I scrub down and change, but first I've got to work second shift. I think there's a stool with wheels on it in the corner by Jimmy's bed. Last time I looked, it was in there somewhere. Be careful, and I'll see you later tonight. He touched House briefly on the shoulder, then turned and left.
Gregg walked through the door and let it whoosh closed behind him. He scribbled his signature on the clipboard at the entry in a scrawl that would be legible only to a pharmacist. The stool was exactly where Billy said it was, and he commandeered it quickly, breathing a sigh of relief as the stability of his leg fluctuated for a moment.
Wordlessly, he rolled to Wilson's bedside and sat very still, watching his friend sleep. Then he closed his eyes in a flush of delayed adrenaline rush. James was still with him. He rolled slowly around the end of the bed and up along the other side, checking the IVs, the morphine drip, the snowy mounds of bandages.
He found himself staring at the smashed legs. Both were swaddled in heavy absorbent padding with elastic bandages coiled around and around loosely. Both legs were lifted off the surface of the bed in not-quite traction. The left foot was the worst of all. House had known the full weight of the truck's engine had landed on it. The only consolation was the fact that both of Wilson's hips and pelvis bones had somehow escaped injury.
All the worst damage was from his femurs down. It might be a week or more before the swelling was reduced enough to put his legs into casts, and there still remained the critical surgery to reduce the multiple fractures and insert plates and pins to hold the fragments together.
House's eyes continued upward across the light bandages from the emergency abdominal surgery, to the swollen face, the disheveled hair, the long dark eyelashes resting on the bruised cheeks. He winced at the relentless pounding in his leg from not being able to elevate it, but at that moment there were other things so much more important than that. He reached up to the edge of the bed and did as he'd seen himself do in his mind's eye an hour ago: he curled his fingers very gently around the contours of Wilson's left hand.
"We're going to get you through this …" He murmured.
Hey God! You there?
For Gregory House, the outside world had ceased to exist.
He knew nothing … felt nothing … but James.
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