This is a crack!AU inspired by DreamsofSpike's "Dark Redux". Assuming I can keep it up, there's going to be one chapter per episode, based on the episode. Whee...
1.12 Sports Medicine
Greg's morning clinic hours were normally over by noon. But well before noon, Foreman had heard rumors via the ER nurses that made Cuddy's statement "Doctor House is in rehab," pretty unsurprising. "Doctor Chase, as the senior fellow, you're responsible for any cases referred to diagnostics: consult as necessary. For any decisions that require a department head's sign-off, Doctor Wilson has agreed to be responsible." In the tone of voice that clearly hopes for the answer 'no', Cuddy asked "Any questions?"
"How long will Doctor House be in rehab?" Foreman asked.
"As long as required," Cuddy said. "Two or three weeks."
The ER nurse whose sister worked in rehab had said the budgeted time for Greg to be detoxed from methadone and shifted on to a new regimen was two weeks. Foreman offered, making his voice calm and flat, "Would it be useful experience if each of us took a week taking responsibility for cases referred?"
Chase looked at Foreman. His voice was curiously dry as he said "Fine with me."
"I think that's an excellent idea," Cameron chimed in.
"Fine," Cuddy said. "Doctor Chase, you take responsibility for week one, starting today: Doctor Cameron, you take responsibility for week two, and Doctor Foreman, if there's a week three, you take responsibility then. If any of you have any difficulties, please take them to Doctor Wilson in the first instance, then to myself. Clear?"
This time, everyone nodded. Foreman stifled his resentment and hoped for three full weeks and a few days over.
Doctor Wilson had been standing at Cuddy's elbow with a blue file under his arm: when she left, he set it on the table. "Broken arm. Osteopenia. His bones are too thin to fix the arm."
Chase reached for the file: Foreman got to it first. The name struck him as an odd coincidence, and it wasn't till he was flipping through the pages and looking at the patient history that he realised it must be "Hank Wiggen?"
Chase shrugged. He had gone to the whiteboard and picked up the marker. "Cancer?"
"MRI and PET scan are both negative," Wilson said.
"how old is he?" Cameron asked. "Could be the osteopenia is early onset."
"Hank Wiggen," Foreman repeated. "Born 1977."
"And that's significant because..." Chase asked. He had written OSTEOPENIA - BROKEN ARM at the top of the board.
Wilson and Foreman traded looks. "Hank Wiggen," Wilson repeated. "Best pitcher the Jackals ever had. The bone s too thin to support the kind of surgery that would let him pitch again. But if we figure out what s causing the osteopenia, we can reverse the bone damage, then do the surgery."
"And someone can finally beat the Yankees," Foreman said.
Chase shrugged. "Don't expect me to know - where I come from, rounders is for girls." He grinned.
Cameron was frowning. "Wasn't he investigated for using drugs?"
"Yes, but he's cleaned up," Wilson said.
"He says he's cleaned up," Chase said, marker poised. "So what was his designated high?"
Cameron reached for the file and flipped through it. "No tox screen. We should run a check."
"Page me if you need me," Wilson said, and left.
"None of the usual suspects!" Cameron said, raising her head from the folder. "Age isn t right, in apparent perfect health before this incident, MRI and PET scan negative for tumors. Test him again, it s got to be cancer.
"Chem 7 also shows a poor kidney function. Now why would a guy in his twenties have a poor kidney?" Foreman asked.
"Cancer," Cameron said. "It first attacks the bones, and then the kidneys."
"MRI and PET scan negative," Foreman repeated. "If he had bone cancer we'd see some evidence."
Cameron's voice rose suddenly, surprisingly. "You want it to be his kidneys, because if it's his kidneys, then maybe we can treat it, maybe we can fix it. And if it's cancer, then he ll never pitch again. If this were a regular guy who came in and broke his arm lifting a box, House would've packed him up and sent him home!"
Foreman looked at Chase. Neither of them said anything. Cameron looked back at them both.
"I'm upset about him too," Chase said suddenly, surprising Foreman. "But you won't change anything by yelling at us."
"Don't you care?" Cameron asked Foreman.
"I think we should discuss our patient," Foreman said. "He weighed 175 his rookie year."
"Stop," Cameron said.
"Now he s 195 after playing a year in... Japan. Why?"
"He let himself go," Cameron said, but Foreman could see the curiosity in her eyes.
"Steroids," Foreman said. "The guy was a drug user, I'm sure he wouldn t have balked at pumping up through chemicals."
"That would explain the weight gain," Chase agreed. He wrote STEROIDS up on the whiteboard, followed by a ? "And the kidney problems."
"And the bone loss," Cameron said.
"We need to run a tox screen anyway," Chase said. "I'll go ask him what he s on and get a urine sample."
"I'll book another MRI and PET scan," Cameron said.
Foreman shrugged. "I'll set up the lab tests."
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
The rehab ward for slaves was long and wide, the beds with the waterproof stained mattresses spaced widely apart, each one with a set of four-point restraints and a belly-band. Doctor Moore and his fellow were waiting by the bed in the far corner: Wilson walked slowly down the ward. There were only three patients besides Greg: two of them were unconscious, the third, an older woman, was moaning quietly, her mouth open, her eyes glazed. Each patient had a nurse observing them: the ward supervisor sat at the far end.
It was the first time Wilson had seen Greg naked. He was waking from the coma: his eyes were twitching under his closed lids. The nurse observer was fastening him down, her hands brisk and impersonal as she cinched the bellyband and fastened the wrist restraints: Wilson was standing at his right leg. The scar on Greg's thigh drew his attention, and he bent to fasten the right ankle restraint, helpfully, and because it was somewhere else to look than the carved valley where a thigh muscle had been removed. He wanted to look at it: the deep helpless mark was doing something to his gut.
Greg's eyes blinked open. The nurse observer sat down in the chair beside the bed. Doctor Moore bent to peer into his face. "Greg, do you know where you are?"
Greg's mouth opened. He was whining with pain, tugging at the wrist restraints, his left leg trying to kick: he held his right leg still.
"Greg, it's Doctor Moore. Do you know where you are?"
"Hurts," Greg said. The word began and ended in a high thin whine.
"Do you understand where you are, Greg?"
"Hell," Greg said. He closed his eyes and turned his head away from Doctor Moore: Wilson saw tears leaking out from under the lids, and Greg swallowed and closed his mouth and tugged again at the wrist restraints. His back arched, but the belly band held him down.
"He's always like this," Doctor Moore said, to his fellow as much as to Wilson. "Until he's detoxed completely from the methadone, we won't be able to get him onto any drug regimen that requires even minimal cooperation. Hang a banana bag to keep his electrolytes balanced. Nurse, page me if there's any sign of respiratory distress."
Wilson hung back. The other three slaves had light sheets draped over them: Wilson looked at the nurse. "Cover him up," he said.
"I don't have any orders," she said.
"Fetch a sheet and cover him," Wilson said. "I'll stay here."
Greg was still tugging at the wrist restraints. He was swallowing and his head was twitching. He was crying, his breath coming in small huffy pants, disrupting the thin steady whine of pain. Wilson bent down and put his face close to Greg's. "You have to get through today," he said quietly. "Twenty-four hours, no respiratory distress, I'll get you on to oxycontin. I promise. Keep breathing." He lifted his head: the nurse was there with the sheet. Greg's eyes were open again, staring, twitching, as the sheet sank down over his body, covering the discomforting and enticing scar.
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
"Doctor Wilson: a word?" Doctor Simpson was already inside his office.
"Sure, how can I help?" Wilson tucked away his pen.
"I was on the diagnostics maintenance committee the first time it met to consider Greg's case. I resigned from it three years ago. I think you might find it useful to know why."
Wilson nodded, looking helpful and interested. He wasn't at all sure he did want to know why.
"I was sorry for Greg's situation. I attempted to be kind to him. My husband and I celebrate our fortieth anniversary next month," Doctor Simpson said. "Obviously we've both had our passages. But three years ago, at a fundraiser in the hospital, Greg sat down beside my husband and started to tell him about the sexual relationship that I was supposedly having with him. With Greg. In - obscene detail. My husband walked away from Greg, but very nearly walked away from me permanently: Greg had been very convincing in his claims that I was making use of him, and my husband - quite understandably - found that distasteful in the extreme." He paused for a moment, and went on at length "I think you should know: Greg's motivation for telling my husband seemed to be nothing but a kind of poisoned revenge for my kindness. If you value your current marriage - I would leave Greg to Doctor Moore."
Doctor Simpson stood looking at Wilson for a while. Wilson looked back. He wasn't sure how much value he did place on his current marriage, but he knew how Julie would react to Greg telling her Wilson was screwing with him.
"I didn't expect Greg to be grateful," Doctor Simpson said. "I didn't think I expected anything from him, except to do his job and cooperate with a reasonable pain regimen. I didn't expect what I got: wanton, obscene cruelty, to someone who had done him no harm at all."
Julie would be amused and disgusted both. Amused because she did find it funny - or said she did - when people were caught screwing around with working slaves. Disgusted, because - Wilson remembered the deep scar with a complex inward shudder - it was disgusting, to have your husband fondling an aging, crippled slave.
"I don't intend to get involved with Greg," Wilson said. "It's too late to step back from the committee at this point, but I'll bear in mind what you've said."
He didn't intend to get involved with Greg. He didn't intend to let Julie find out anything about his interest in Diagnostics.
But he did want to see him again. To see him without the gasping shuddering pain distorting his face. To see a lot of him.
He didn't intend to let Julie find out.
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
"Okay," Chase said: "Osteopenia, impaired liver function, impaired kidney function, his urine tests negative for steroids, and it's not cancer. So what's killing him?"
"Did you check his testicles?" Cameron asked.
Chase raised his eyebrows, looking amused. "No, should I?"
"Hypogonadism," Cameron said. "If he'd used steroids any time in the past five years, that could have damaged his kidneys."
"What about something environmental?" Foreman offered. "Arsenic, mercury, the symptoms could indicate - "
"His wife's fine, his coach is fine, the other players are fine, the camera crew doing the commercial are fine," Cameron said.
"We should check his testicles," Chase said thoughtfully, amusing Foreman. He suppressed a grin.
"If he has hypogonadism, and we can throw out the kidneys, then everything else adds up. The bones, the impaired liver function, could be caused by a breakdown of his adrenal glands."
"Addison s disease," Foreman said. "For which the treatment is - "
"Steroids," all three of them said simultaneously, and grinned at each other.
"But if it's Addison's," Foreman said, recovering, "the treatment would cause him to retain fluid. With the kidneys almost shut down already, he'll die."
Chase shrugged. He was still grinning, but the grin faded as he wrote ADDISONS on the whiteboard, and added underneath SMALL BALLS?
"I'll check his testicles," Foreman said. This time he got a swift and unexpected grin from Cameron.
"I'll run the test for Addison's," Cameron said.
Chase sighed. "I'll tell him and his wife what we think the situation is."
"We don't know," Foreman said.
"We know if we don't do anything, he'll die," Chase said. "And we know that if we treat for Addison's, he'll die unless he can get a kidney transplant. And we know that he's not a good candidate for a new kidney, unless he can find a live donor. I'd want to know."
The test for Addisons was inconclusive, and Hank Wiggen's wife wanted to give him one of her kidneys if she was a match. The only conclusive evidence was Foreman's: Wiggen's testicles were tiny.
Either Wilson or Doctor Cuddy would have to approve the kidney transplant: Foreman knocked on Wilson's door and went in. He was sitting at his desk doing paperwork: he listened to Foreman's summary of the situation, and nodded when Foreman said the wife wanted to be a live kidney donor. "I'll talk to her when the results come back. It'll be hard for her whichever way it falls out." He looked down at his desk again, dismissing Foreman with a nod, but as Foreman reached the door, Wilson said, "Doctor House is doing fine."
"What?" Foreman turned, startled.
"I thought you and the others might like to know," Wilson said. "Doctor House is doing fine."
Foreman shut his mouth tightly. If Greg was detoxing from methadone, "fine" was meaningless. All Foreman hoped for was that he wouldn't be back at work any sooner than three weeks from today. They were doing fine without him.
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
Wilson went home. He and Julie had dinner together. She told him about her day - three regular clients, one new one, a trip to the hairdressers for the oncology dinner on Friday night. Wilson told her about his day: the ward rounds, the Diagnostics maintenance committee, the new patient who was terminal, the temporary extra responsibility of the Diagnostics department.
Julie was always very sympathetic about the terminal patients, but she was irritated about the Diagnostics department. "It sounds like the kind of situation where you get set up to take the blame if anything goes wrong, and no credit if everything goes well."
"It's not quite that bad," Wilson said mildly. "All I'm responsible for is deciding if they need to take a decision to the Dean or if Doctor Chase can sign off on it. I will have a word with Lola Petrovian, though."
"Who's she?"
"Hank Wiggen's new wife."
"Oh." Julie made her sympathetic face. "Oh yes, I suppose you should. Poor woman. They were both drug addicts, weren't they?"
"They met in rehab, I gather," Wilson said. "I don't really know any more about it."
His pager went off when Julie was brewing coffee: the test results were back for Lola Petrovian. Wilson called to confirm she was still in the hospital. "I need to go."
"How long will you be?" Julie asked.
Wilson hesitated. Whatever the test results said, Wilson supposed he could get the explanation and comforting over with inside an hour: and he could get to the hospital at this time of night in a 20-minute drive. But if he were legitimately at the hospital, he could spend an hour with Greg in the rehab ward without Julie getting suspicious. "Oh, a couple of hours." He glanced at his watch. "I'll be back well before 11." It was quarter past eight.
"All right," Julie said, and kissed him: unexpectedly, quickly.
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
Hank Wiggens's wife was enough of a match to be a good kidney donor: she was also pregnant. No pregnant woman would be accepted as a live kidney donor.
Telling her that was grimly like a good news, bad news joke: Wilson found himself wishing he could share that with someone. Julie would be shocked. Most people would be shocked. It wasn't funny, but it was too grim not to be funny.
And it was over with pretty fast: she wanted to tell her husband. Wilson found Chase, handed him the test results, and told him that if Lola Petrovian hadn't changed her mind by tomorrow morning, Wilson would schedule the transplant with Doctor Cuddy, and Chase should schedule the abortion.
Chase nodded to all that. "Going home?" he asked.
"Yes," Wilson said.
"Just if you were going to look in at the rehab ward," Chase said, and hesitated. He shrugged finally. "Tell Doctor House... whatever works."
"What?"
"Look, I don't know," Chase said. He sounded exasperated. "I like the guy. We need him. But he's not the kind of guy you send get well soon cards or teddy bears to, is he? Tell him about the case. If I know him, the hypergonadism might give him a laugh."
There was a curtain round the older woman's bed: the other two patients both seemed to be asleep: at the far end, Greg lay with the sheet off him, the nurse observer standing at the end of his bed. To Wilson, it looked as if she had moved back to that position just as he walked in.
The other two patients were unattended. Wilson noticed that just as one of the attendants backed out from the curtained bed, his cock out and his hand moving on it, and almost bumped into Wilson.
Wilson pulled back the curtain. One of the other attendant was on top of the woman, moving up and down: the third was standing by the bed, looking away, tucking his cock back into his pants.
"Get off her," Wilson said abruptly. He was aware distantly that his long-conquered stutter had come back, that what he said was more like "G-g-g-get off-off h-h-her" but the man on top of the woman grunted and his buttocks jerked obscenely and he came.
The woman was still in four-point restraints. The attendant stood up, leaning on her, and looked at Wilson. He was sliding off the condom he had worn and knotting it.
"Who the hell are you?"
"What the hell do you think you were doing?" Wilson said. He was still stuttering.
"What did it look like?" The attendant was grinning. His voice sounded lazily satisfied. "Perks of the night shift, you know how it is. What else were you here for?"
"To check on one of my patients!"
"This her?" The attendent glanced down at her, for the first time seeming a little disturbed.
"No," Wilson said. He shook his head. "You are all suspended from duty. Right now. Get out of here."
"All the patients in this ward are supposed to be under twenty-four hour supervision," the attendant said. He sounded disbelieving. "You can't just suspend us - "
"That - " Wilson gestured, "was not twenty-four hour supervision. All three of you. Out."
"But - " The third attendant, the one who had nearly bumped into Wilson, still had his cock out. Unbelievably, it was still somewhat hard. "The other two - "
"Get out," Wilson said. "Put that away, no one wants to see it." He turned away and went up to the nurse supervisor's desk: the man who sat there met Wilson's eyes with extreme nervousness. "Yes, Doctor Wilson?"
"Get me three attendants to work the night shift here, Make sure they understand the difference between supervision and fucking the patients, will you?" That came out with unexpected clarity, despite the stutter. Wilson stood still and watched as the supervisor's hands moved.
Cuddy had made clear she didn't regard staff making sexual use of the slaves as a disciplinary offense. Nor would Wilson, under ordinary circumstances, but these slaves were technically patients - and some of them could be patients from outside the hospital. And these attendants weren't offduty or on a break: they should be at work.
...and the supervisor should have stopped them. Wilson eyed him. Like the nurse who should have been watching Greg, and who Wilson now thought had probably been watching the action: he was culpable. Quite possibly, if he'd been taking bribes to keep quiet, more culpable than the attendants who'd taken part. That was Cuddy's business.
The woman was lying still, her head turned to one side. Her chart said she belonged to Castle Pharmaceuticals and was here to be detoxed from Vicodin. Wilson picked up the sheet from the floor and put it over her, and briefly checked her vitals: her pulse and breathing were elevated, but not to a dangerous degree, and when Wilson checked her chart, the stats had been within the expected norms last time they were taken.
Wilson checked the other two patients: one of them also belonged to Castle Pharmaceuticals, the third had only a surname listed as his owner. Someone's personal property. Greg was the only patient who was hospital property. That clarified the situation. Wilson walked down the ward to Greg's bed. The nurse was sitting next to it, her eyes studiously bent on the screens that displayed Greg's vital signs. Everything there looked normal.
Greg was silent: his eyes were wide open. He was tugging at his wrist restraints, but it seemed to be reflexive. He was staring at Wilson. His mouth was closed. His lips were chapped and dry. The skin around his eyes was red and puffy: he had been crying. Tears were still sliding from the edges of his eyes, glazing the tender skin. Wilson picked up the sheet again to put it over him, and stopped, staring down at Greg's body.
"Cracked ice," Wilson said. He looked up at the nurse. "His mouth's dry. He can have ice. Go get him some."
"Yes, Doctor," the nurse said professionally, and went.
Wilson looked down at Greg again. The bellyband was off, but then Greg wasn't really struggling any more. The stains on the mattress were old, but then Wilson had seen for himself that they used condoms. Wilson leaned closer, checking the fastenings on the ankle restraints. Greg stank of fear and pain.
"Did they ..." Wilson began, and realised he had no notion how to ask. What to ask. A slave wasn't able to judge if a free person's sexual use was unauthorized or inappropriate. That was common sense. He knew that.
Greg husked, almost soundlessly, "Can't say". His eyes flickered sideways. He tugged, again, at his wrist restraints, a feeble jerk. "Time?"
Three new attendants came in at the same time as the nurse came back with a cup of cracked ice. Wilson nodded. All four of them were looking nervously at Wilson.
Wilson glanced at his watch. "It's ten past ten."
He went back to his office, called Cuddy's office to leave a message on her voicemail, and spent over an hour composing an e-mail. He did not make reference to Greg at all, except to in passing to justify how he had stopped by the rehab ward. He had to keep within bounds: he had seen that three of the attendants - the three he had sent off duty - had been involved, and he could give reasonable justification for believing the supervisor should have stopped them. There was really nothing more he could say.
He didn't get home till close to midnight. Julie was in bed, apparently asleep. They didn't talk.
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
"I fired the three men you saw making use of the Castle Pharmaceuticals slave when they were supposed to be working," Cuddy said. "The supervisor is getting a warning that goes on his permanent file. I will not authorize an investigation - the last thing I want is to find out officially how many other staff may have done something similar in the rehab ward. As it is, I'm going to have to apologize to Castle Pharmaceuticals, and probably agree that staff can go on one of their scuba-diving 'lecture' junkets. They won't care if their slaves got used, but I agree with you - when they're not hospital property, we can't have staff behaving as if they were."
Cuddy said all this as briskly and impersonally as an email. She was watching him.
"What were you doing in the rehab ward in the night shift?"
"Checking on Greg."
"Did you have any reason to suppose he would need... 'checking on'?"
"He's detoxing from two years of methadone, and in extreme pain. And as it turned out, I can't be sure the nurse who had been assigned to watch him actually had her attention on him, not on the ... other activities."
"He is hospital property," Cuddy said. "The same issues don't apply to staff making use of him as they do to slaves who are in the rehab ward as, effectively, our patients. But if it were to turn out you had visited the rehab ward to make use of him, and in doing so you'd got three staff fired who were there to do something very similar ... well, it could dilute the message I intend to send by firing those three."
"I was checking up on him as my patient," Wilson said, with dignity. He could justify it, too: he hadn't actually laid hands on Greg last night. What he might have meant to do, if the situation he'd found hadn't put him off: well, no one had to know about that. Besides, he hadn't planned to have sex with him. Not while he was detoxing and in pain. But a scar removing that much muscle implied muscle cramps in the remaining thigh. Massage therapy was indicated.
It really was.
"Hank Wiggen's been diagnosed with Addison's," Wilson changed the subject. "Treatment will destroy his kidneys. His wife wants to be a live donor. I was here last night talking her options over with her."
Cuddy nodded. "Is she sure?"
"Very," Wilson said. "When the lab ran the tests, they also discovered she's pregnant."
The expression on Cuddy's face changed. "But then ... she can't be a donor."
"She wants to have an abortion," Wilson said.
"Oh. Are they sure it's Addison's?"
Wilson shrugged. "Apparently all the symptoms fit. The test was inconclusive, but that's usual with Addison's... they checked again for cancer. There's nothing. It's Addison's or it's something inexplicable."
"What are your thoughts about Greg's pain regimen?" Cuddy asked, changing the subject again.
"I thought oxycontin. One dose every 12 hours. Also, I want a PT specialist to examine his leg."
"Won't work - he won't cooperate."
"With the PT specialist?"
Cuddy half-laughed. "Not willingly, but we can fix that. We had him on Vicodin at one point. It was quite successful in managing his pain, but he's an addict - book-keeping found out he had two doctors writing scrips for him who were both unaware of the other. He was using it to get high. Doctor Simpson tried to get him into a counselling program, but that failed. We need something that he won't be able to abuse."
"I wasn't proposing we let him manage his own scrips," Wilson said. "Have him get one dose at the beginning of his morning clinic duty, and a second at the beginning of his evening clinic duty. I want to get him on oxycontin today while he's in rehab, so we can establish its effectiveness."
"Have you talked about this with Doctor Moore?"
"Moore thinks the extreme pain should taper off in a few days as his system gets used to doing without opiates."
Cuddy shrugged. "Get him on the while he's on it, give him all the Hank Wiggen case notes. See if he can come up with something his team haven't thought of before Lola ends up having an abortion."
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
On a regular basis, Greg would take the oxycontin orally. But for this initial experiment, Wilson injected it. And watched, feeling something he did not care to name, as the lines in Greg's face smoothed out. The desperate, reflexive tugging at his wrist restraints slowed, stopped. Greg lay still. His eyes were still fixed on Wilsons' face.
Wilson dropped the syringe into the sharps disposal unit - on this ward, it was sealed - and unfastened the restraints. Greg's right hand went to his thigh the moment it was freed, pressing and rubbing against the muscle around the great scar. He did not move otherwise, not when his ankle restraints or the belly-band were unfastened.
"Let's get you out of here."
The nurse said - early shift, not the same one as last night, but with the same wary look - "Doctor Moore needs to sign Greg out, Doctor Wilson."
"Doctor Moore's aware that Greg's being transferred," Wilson said. Greg was sitting up, his hand still on his thigh, staring at nothing. Doctor Moore would be aware as soon as he read this morning's e-mail. Wilson tucked an OR gown round him, pushing Greg's arms into the sleeves. "Help me get him into the chair."
The wheelchair wasn't sized right for a patient with Greg's length of leg, but it was the best Wilson had been able to scare up on less than an hour's notice. Greg's head literally wobbled back and forth as the nurse and Wilson folded him into it.
Wilson detoured to avoid going past the Diagnostics box. He shifted Greg from wheelchair to sofa. The last time Greg had sat there... he had slipped down to sit on the floor and offer Wilson a blow-job to get him out of going to rehab.
Greg seemed to be thinking something of the same thing: he croaked through a dry mouth, "What do you want?"
"Read these," Wilson said. He put a bottle of water and an emesis basin within reach, and saw Greg glance at them. "You can have ginger ale and crackers in an hour."
"What's this?" Greg looked down at the pile of case notes.
"Osteo - "
"Young man?"
"How did you know?"
Greg reached for the bottle of water, opened it, swilled some round his mouth and spat into the emesis basin. He sounded very tired. "If he s an old man, osteopenia would just be a fact of life, you make him comfortable, send him home. So he s young, which means it s most likely caused by cancer, but you want me to look at the notes because you don't want it to be cancer, you want me to find something else."
"MRI and PET scan were both negative. Twice. Your team's been working on this case for days."
"What do they think it is?"
"Read the notes."
Greg began to leaf through the first few pages. "Hank Wiggen," he said. "Well, that explains why Cuddy let you break me out of here. She'd give anything to beat the Yankees." He still sounded confused, but as Wilson watched, he read with more focus. After an hour, when Wilson produced the promised ginger ale and crackers, Greg said "Addison's." He picked up two crackers at once, stuffed them whole into his mouth, and crunched down in a splatter of crumbs. "The treatment for Addison's will trash what's left of his kidneys, and he's not a good candidate for a transplant, which means he needs a live donor. What's the matter, can't find a fan willing to lose his organs so Hank Wiggen can open against the Yankees?"
"His wife's a match, and she wants to give him one of her kidneys."
"What's the problem?"
"She's pregnant," Wilson said. "They'd been trying to have a baby since they met. Now she wants to have an abortion so she can be a donor..."
Greg laughed. He wasn't very loud, but he sounded genuinely amused. "So I got oxycontin because Cuddy's sentimental about rugrats?" He looked down at the notes. "She shouldn't have the abortion. He's probably going to die anyway."
There was an abrupt knock at the door. Greg flinched and his hand dropped to his thigh.
"If it's Doctor Moore, I'll tell him to go talk to Cuddy. She had those three guys from last night fired this morning."
"I'll blow you both if I don't have to go back." Greg said it with a shit-eating grin, but his eyes flinched away, and he dropped his head to look down at his lap.
"Come," Wilson called.
"Doctor Wilson," Chase said. "Can you speak to - " He broke off.
Greg looked up. Wilson rubbed the back of his neck. Greg and Chase were looking at each other: Greg was expressionless, Chase looked dumbfounded. "Doctor House," Chase said at length. "Good to see you. Tachycaridia. His heart s beating too fast, then it's bottoming out. Not responding to treatment. And I think he's hallucinating. It's not Addison's. Don't let his wife have the abortion." He ran out of breath and stared at Greg again. "Sorry. How are you, Doctor House?"
Greg's mouth twisted. "Wrong room." He looked at Wilson. "How long have I got? What dosage did you give me?"
Wilson told him. "Should last you twelve hours." Wilson glanced at his watch.
"More like six. Who's running Diagnostics?"
"I am," Chase said, simultaneously with Wilson. They looked at each other.
"Can you get Foreman and Cameron in here?"
"Why don't you come through to Diagnostics?" Chase asked.
"Too conspicuous," Greg said. "I'm supposed to be in the repair shop."
After a moment, Chase shrugged. "Will do. Can't hurt," he said to Wilson. "We now have no idea what's wrong with him."
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
"I thought you were reporting to Doctor Wilson," Foreman groused. Then he saw who was on Wilson's sofa. The slave was wearing an OR gown, and his collar was conspicuous against his bleached throat. He hadn't been shaved for days. His bare legs stuck out casually, skinny, white and hairy: he had a bundle of notes on his lap.
"Doctor House," Cameron said, sounding so very sorry that Foreman thought he saw Greg wince.
"Wrong room," Foreman said briskly. "What is he doing here? Isn't he supposed to be in rehab?"
"He's out of rehab on my authority," Wilson said.
"And we're here on my authority," Chase said. "What do you need to know, Doctor House?"
"I don't know," the slave said. His voice was croaky. He sounded awful.
"This is a waste of time," Foreman said. He saw Greg glance, helplessly, at Doctor Wilson.
"You can let me be the one to decide that," Chase said. "This week. Doctor House, what do you want us to do?"
"Tell me things," Greg said. He sounded fumbling and wearied. "Tell me one thing you didn't put down in the notes. I read everything that's there. Tell me what isn't there."
Foreman glanced sideways at Chase and Cameron, both of whom were looking at Greg in bewilderment. Chase cleared his throat. "Okay. Er. He's a baseball player."
Greg shrugged and pointed at Cameron. "Your turn."
"His wife loves him?" Cameron said, sounding uncertain.
Foreman looked from one to the other. This was absurd. "He doesn't have many visitors?"
"What do you mean, 'not many'?" Greg said.
"Foreman's right," Cameron jumped in. "His wife and his coach. No one else visits."
Greg pointed at Chase again.
"What?" Chase thought about it. "Oh. He refused to let me have a urine sample. He didn't seem to realise I could get it from his cath bag. Said it was a trust issue."
Greg pointed at Cameron.
"I don't know," Cameron said. She sounded upset. "I don't understand what you want."
"Anything you remember you didn't write down. Anything. Come on, I'm working to a deadline here."
"He didn't want his wife to have an abortion. He said you can't trade a child for a kidney. It s murder. I agreed with him," Cameron said at length, almost tearfully.
"Okay." Greg pointed at Foreman.
"I write everything down," Foreman said. He was angry. "This is a waste of our time."
"Something you remember about his wife, then. Or his coach. Something."
"She's hot," Chase said.
"Probably not relevant, but worth knowing." Greg was still pointing at Foreman. "You don't write everything down, no one does. what do you remember?"
"The coach has clubbed fingers," Foreman said suddenly. "I saw him taking a pill. A fresh prescription, a full bottle." He felt it like a light on inside him, burning out everything else, even rage. "Digitalis! We should have had the patient on suicide watch. I bet he stole the digitalis pills and OD'd on them. That explains the heart rate, the hallucinations - it's still Addison's."
"Good!" Greg was sitting up. "Now we're getting somewhere. It better not be Addison's, I won't be able to sleep tonight. What about his wife?"
"What about his wife? She's pregnant, they met in Japan, they're both in AA," Cameron said. "I wrote it all down, I took a full family history."
"Is she short-sighted? Does she have a cold? Is she color-blind? Is he color-blind?"
"No," Chase said.
"Yes," Cameron said. "She had a cold, a few months ago. She has anosmia - she can't smell."
"What about him?"
"He can smell," Foreman said. "He says his room smells like the men's room at Veteran's Stadium. He's right."
"His fault," Chase said. "Last time I tried to take a urine sample he spilled his cath bag all over my pants."
"She was an addict too," Greg said.
"She's been going to AA for over six months," Cameron said. "She wants to get pregnant. She isn't on anything."
"Not now," Greg said. "What was she on? Why is Hank Wiggen so scared of a urine test if the last time he took steroids was five years ago?"
"What?" Cameron was staring.
"Cadmium poisoning," Greg said, simultaneously with Chase.
"How could they have gotten exposed to that much cadmium?" Cameron said.
"They'd have to be living on polluted groundwater," Foreman said. "We should check their home. They can't have been eating enough to do that kind of damage. It would take steel and batteries for breakfast."
"Grass," Chase said.
Greg grinned, an obnoxious grin for a slave. "They were smoking it. She stopped, he went on. And if he was getting high enough to kill him, he wasn't just rolling a single joint to relax at the end of a long hard day. Test his urine for THC. Bet you find enough of it for his piss to get you high if you drank it."
Cameron made a revolted noise. Wilson rubbed the back of his neck. Greg leaned back in the sofa. "Go find out," he said, just as if he were Doctor House. Foreman looked at Chase.
"It's your responsibility," he said, making it clear he was talking to Chase.
"Let's go find out," Chase said. He nodded. "Thank you, Doctor House."
*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*
Doctor Moore sent two security guards. Wilson loaded Greg back into the too-small wheelchair and had the security guards push him back to the rehab ward: he waited for long enough to page Cuddy, and walked with them. Doctor Moore was waiting in the rehab ward.
"He's functional," Wilson said flatly. "He just proved that."
"I wanted him completely detoxed from methadone. He was still incoherent this morning."
"He was in pain. I got him coherent with oxycontin. I got him functional with oxycontin. We can continue that with regular doses."
"It's not a long-term solution."
"It works," Wilson said. "I got Cuddy's permission for today: why don't we go talk about this with her now?"
"Fine," Moore said. He jerked his head at the two security guards. "Get him back to the bed."
They pulled him up out of the chair and all but lifted him off his feet; he was limp between them as they moved him down the ward.
For a moment, it looked as if they had dropped him: Greg had fallen to one side before Wilson realized he had swung himself to one side, literally jerking himself out of their grip, and landed on hands and knees, scuttling towards the bed with the Castle Pharmaceuticals slave. It happened fast: they were both pulling their batons and heading for him as Greg hauled himself up by the foot of the bed and leaned over it. "Last night," he said, in a voice so loud and carrying it was audible by the door. "They were fired. All three of them. This morning." The security guards caught up with him and one of them brought his baton down across Greg's hands with an audible thud: they had him in an under-arm grip and were hauling him back down the ward.
"Coherent and functional," Doctor Moore said. "I see."
"Hey," Wilson said, catching his breath. He went past the bed Greg had gone to: the slave in it had her head up, her eyes open, looking past Wilson, down the ward: at Greg.
The security guards had pulled off the gown and were fastening him down. One of them hit the side of his head with his open hand, pushing him down on to the mattress.
"Okay, that's enough," Wilson said. He checked Greg's hands: not broken, but bruised. Wilson couldn't pretend Greg didn't deserve it. That outburst was going to make it that much more difficult to justify the regimen to Cuddy.
TBC