Chapter 12
A/N I know that the tainted blood incident happened after the 97 seconds episode, but for the purposes of my story I needed it to happen before 97 seconds. So yes, I had to change the season 4 timeline around a little to suit my purpose.
11:10 AM Day 2
Although the morphine had helped a little bit, Lisa was still trying to calm House down. He was still crying, but had stopped banging on the bed rails. Some of the agitation was gone. He had written "Where?" on his little white board several times. Lisa could tell it hurt him to write, but she was glad he had this method of communication.
"Do you mean, where are your parents?" Lisa wrote.
"YES" House wrote with frustration.
Just then, Blythe came back in to House's room, freshly composed and with a smile on her face. Wilson was right behind her, staring straight at Cuddy as if to say Come out here; we need to talk.
John's absence was conspicuous, and noticed by everyone in the cubicle.
Blythe didn't say anything about where John was.
Blythe thought her son looked exhausted and needed to sleep, so she took the board from House's trembling right hand. He banged the bed rail again and gestured that he wanted it back. Lisa said "Blythe, don't take that away from him again. I don't care if he's sound asleep. Leave it where he can reach it."
House wrote "Dad?"
Blythe wrote "He had to step out for awhile." She didn't want to go into any specifics and House didn't look like he wanted to hear any more, anyway.
House started coughing, setting off the alarms on the respirator. Millie, the respiratory therapist, came in to suction his breathing tube and help him get rid of what he had to cough up. House kept coughing, and his lips were turning a little blue. Millie gave him extra oxygen. His coughing fit eventually stopped and he closed his eyes to rest, utterly exhausted. Millie gave him a breathing treatment with medicine to ease his breathing. Millie explained that House's right lung was full of fluid, and that she was going to be giving him medicine through the breathing tube to help clear his airways every couple of hours. She explained the nurses would be suctioning him pretty often too, to help get the stuff out of his lungs.
House couldn't stay awake for more than about five minutes at a time. He seemed to be sleeping, albeit not very peacefully, and had stopped coughing for the time being.
Cuddy and Wilson stepped outside of his cubicle. Blythe remained with her son.
Cuddy's eyes said it all. What happened?
Wilson softly answered her unspoken question. "John bugged out on us. He won't even talk. He left the hospital. Actually, if he hadn't left on his own, I'd probably have called security and had his ass kicked out. He's still in town, but he's at the Holiday Inn. He's furious. The whole time we were in the waiting room, I was talking to Blythe, because John wouldn't say anything to me. John was staring daggers at me. I think he looks at House and sees failure; maybe he looks at his son and sees someone who's hell bent on self destruction and doesn't know how to help. Maybe he blames himself for the state House is in right now. I really don't know.
I do know, however, that House isn't in any condition to deal with him, so I guess it's best that he's not here."
Cuddy and Wilson walked back into House's cubicle.
12 Noon
House was coughing again, only this time the breathing treatment Millie was giving him didn't seem to be helping as quickly as the earlier one did. Cough, cough, cough… the respirator alarm blared, House bit down again on the breathing tube in a panic, and everything else started alarming. House, obviously, was completely oblivious to all the noise. All of this happened when he was on a pretty high dose of hourly morphine. He should have been much more sedated that he was, with this much morphine on board.
Miller ordered extra sedation, and as much as everyone hated to completely knock him out, they really had no choice. His day shift nurse gave him Ativan 2 mg IV – no help. Five minutes later House was trying to pull out every tube in his body, burns or no burns. Valium 5 mg IV was tried next, and it really just took the edge off. His battered body couldn't take any more agitation. They gave him more Ativan and finally succeeded in completely knocking him out. Unfortunately in the process, they had no choice but to restrain his arms, which meant that his communication line had been knocked out too.
12:15 PM, Day 2
Miller met with Wilson in the waiting room and saw for himself exactly what Cuddy, Wilson, and the rest of House's team had been up to out there. He saw the white board and smiled. Now THIS looks like something House-like, he thought.
Hepatomegaly. It hit Miller like a ton of bricks. I've been going through his records for how long, now? At least 12 hours? So has my team. So did Lewis, briefly. Why didn't we think of this earlier. Duh – we had more important things to do, like get his heart beating…
I even saw a little of it on his chest x ray this morning. Liver failure?
How long had House been on Vicodin? Miller didn't even know about the alcohol history, but when he saw the white board, Wilson filled him in. House's medical records indicated when the Vicodin was first prescribed, but House was taking much more than the 40 mg a day originally prescribed. His medical records held no indication that he was actually downing at least twice that amount, and had been for years. Wilson felt a little guilty, like back in the Tritter days when he ratted House out to Tritter. He felt like he was ratting House out yet again, but then Miller needed to know what he was dealing with. House was easily downing at least a fifth of bourbon a day, on top of all the Vicodin.
Then there was another issue. Wilson suddenly remembered the tainted blood incident.
"I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it or not, but recently House's team had a patient that had a possibly bad blood transfusion. I won't go into details about the patient but House needed to prove to them that the blood wasn't tainted. His team didn't want to do this, but House forced their hand. He made them give him the possibly tainted blood, all in an effort to prove that the blood was fine. He had a mild transfusion reaction. Kutner tried to help him, but House waved him off. Apparently he had developed a fever and some chest pain. If I remember right, I think Kutner told me that House had told him that he'd had a lot of transfusions in the past, that this fact would make him susceptible to a transfusion reaction, to just leave him alone, that he'd be alright. Since House wouldn't let his team do anything, they put some stuff in his coffee. They drugged him. I know, it's nuts. When he was out, they did a liver biopsy, a kidney biopsy and a lung biopsy. I was stunned that anyone would need to biopsy anything on House. I checked on House and he was a little short of breath and still running a little fever, but otherwise Ok. I was concerned about him but he kept telling me he was Ok, and refused any help. I looked at his biopsy results because I get copied on all biopsy results. I didn't know what the team was looking for. My immediate reaction was to look for cancer, and I didn't see any signs of cancer.
The lab might still have those tissue samples if you need them."
"Oh, my God," Miller said. Wilson continued to look a little bit like he wished he hadn't had to say what he did.
"We need to check his liver enzymes ASAP. I saw what I thought was a slightly enlarged liver on his chest x ray this morning. I could see the upper part of his liver pressing against his diaphragm. The blood might have had nothing to do with it but certainly alcohol and Vicodin could figure into all of this. I had no idea he was downing that much Vicodin and I had no idea he was drinking alcohol at all. He's not jaundiced, but jaundice doesn't always show up early in the course of liver failure, if that's what he has," Miller said.
"We've been drawing cardiac enzymes all along and they do show that he's had more heart damage. If there's liver damage too, that might explain why the drugs aren't working very well. We'll get a set of liver enzymes first, and then if they come back elevated we'll probably have to scan his liver. The problem is, he's not stable enough for a trip to radiology for a CT, PET or MRI. I'll let you know when the liver enzymes come back. We'll do a bedside Doppler ultrasound of his liver, too.
I'll check with the lab to see if they still have the samples, and if they're still viable enough for us to use.
And at some point in the near future, we're going to need to get psych involved."
