"The Light at the End of the Tunnel"
Chapter Fourteen
"Perjury Is As Perjury Does"
I was very conscious of sitting there holding my breath.
There was a lump that started to form in my stomach, and before I knew it, the thing was rising into my throat like a bubble through the water. Ready to choke me. I sat frozen in time; a tree in the Petrified Forest, horrified at what Cuddy might have to testify to, up there on the witness chair, in order to keep from perjuring herself.
Oh Christ! House was done for! His poor crippled ass was going to be sitting in a jail cell for the foreseeable future … and nothing anyone could do about it. He would die in there. It would be like taking a fierce wild animal out of its native habitat and penning it in a cage for the entertainment of human beings with a penchant for exerting their own superiority.
And then … just that quickly … House was back!
I found that I was able to breathe again.
He came stampeding through the door like a teenager crashing a pool party. No remorse, no regrets, no apology. He was just there. Jacket gaping, tie flapping. His uneven gait was ponderous. I could almost see the cane bending in the middle from the weight he had to place on it. But he was triumphant. His craggy face had that self-satisfied look that told me he had solved the puzzle.
Derek the fireman was out of the woods and on the mend … minus a few brain cells, but recuperating …
… and my "clunker" was probably back in the parking lot in one piece. Probably! I wouldn't know for sure until I saw it for myself.
And just that quick, I was pissed off at him all over again. My relief at seeing my friend back in the courtroom, willing to face the music, was instantly replaced by unreasonable mixed emotions that best friends often feel toward one another when one doesn't live up to the exacting expectations of the other.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to interrupt." He didn't look sorry at all. Just smug.
Judge Davis raised an eyebrow, half pained, half exasperated. "I hope you don't mind that we continued on without you ..."
"Said I was sorry …" The remark was thrown over his shoulder in his usual abrupt manner. "No need to be sarcastic …"
Yeah, House … right!
Lisa Cuddy looked up, staring at the cause of the sudden interruption in her testimony. She did not, however, seem surprised.
Vickers and Tritter had both whirled about when the door banged open and both gaped, speechless, as Gregory House continued to limp painfully to the defense table and lower himself into the chair.
House paused a moment to glance at me and check my mood … he probably caught me with my mouth hanging wide open. The smirk that played around in the deep recesses of his landscaped cheeks made me heave a sigh of relief. From the bottoms of my shoe soles and rising through my entire body, his commanding presence melted my sudden resentment into instant forgiveness for … whatever-the-hell I'd been grousing about inside my head.
Aw House …dammit … they're gonna lock you up and throw away the key for three hundred years!
Then I heard Cuddy say …
"He never got the pills."
There was contrived innocence on her face that only those who knew Lisa Cuddy very well could have interpreted.
Vickers was nearly apoplectic, and House's eyes were as big as saucers. I think mine were too.
"It's his signature!" Vickers insisted.
Cuddy was being a tad coy. "Dr. House did pick up a prescription, but it wasn't for oxycodone. Dr. Wilson informed me that Dr. House already tried to steal the medication
for his patient. That made it clear to me that Dr. House was in a particularly vulnerable and desperate state …"
My God! She realizes how much physical pain he was in …"So I went to the pharmacy and I swapped bottles. Dr. House only got a bottle of placebos."
She's lying! She's perjuring herself! For House!The next thing I heard her say, after the general hubbub that arose in the courtroom; everybody talking at once: "I guess I never expected it to go this far …"
Thirty seconds later it was over.
House was bound over to spend the night in jail for contempt, and the case was thrown out.
Judge Davis told him he had better friends than he deserved. He didn't argue. Even Tritter, in his calm, even manner, wished House good luck … and he hoped he'd been wrong about him.
We all knew he wasn't. Exactly. But that was neither here nor there.
House had another chance.
And the rest of us had another chance also; the chance to pause and listen to him when he tried to tell us how bad his pain was. And the chance to be there for him if he decided he could trust any of us … me, in particular … to talk to or confide in.
If he would ever allow himself to do so again. We would have to begin anew.
He was in the jail cell when we saw him next.
He'd removed the red tie, but he was on the bunk, sprawled on his back, head resting on a folded blanket, jacket and shoes still on. A bent elbow covered his eyes, but he heard us coming. Jailhouse gates have a very distinct clank and squeal to them when they open and close.
Cuddy and I stood looking in at him. He lifted his arm in a disdainful gesture and peered at us, then raised his head slightly in acknowledgment and sat up with a painful grunt. As he swung his legs over the side of the bunk, I noticed that the bum leg wasn't moving very well. He hid it deftly. They had taken his cane away again.
Cuddy was tired. She was a little put out with finding it necessary to have to lie for him.
"I'm surprised to see you're not spooning your way through the walls," she said. And she went on to tell him she owned his ass.
He did not protest, but nodded slowly in acknowledgment. Coming from him, it was the deepest form of apology he could possibly make to her, and she knew it. She left very shortly after her small tirade.
House knew I had his medication with me. When Cuddy had gone, he struggled up from the bunk and hobbled over to the bars to face me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the envelope with the pills, thrust it through the bars.
House reached out quickly. Opened the small brown envelope and dumped the meds into his palm. Throwing his head back, he gulped them as a starving man gobbles tidbits …
"That's … that's Vicodin!"
He conceded that it was. Voldemort had been smuggling it to him every day from the time he'd entered rehab. House was paying him well.
My heart sank.
"And nothing's changed?"
He shook his head and admitted calmly: "Nothing's changed."
I wanted to leave. Run. Let him sit and rot. Again. I turned away, hands over my face.
Tritter had said to me the night in my hotel room: "Have you ever trusted an addict?"
I had to think about that question at that moment. House was not an addict! He wasn't! He was a "cripple" … his description … who was dependent on drugs to control chronic pain. I had to remember that there was a difference. This was my best friend. He'd once told me: "I never lie!"
Oh yeah he did. But not about this.
I turned back and stared him in the face. "The apology … you didn't need to do that to make this work."
He almost smiled. Came very close. I could see it hiding there in the depths of his eyes. "Believe what you want!"
I stood looking at him. What was he trying to tell me?
He was trying to tell me that we both needed to apologize. He did need to let me know that he didn't blame me for all the hard times I'd given him … all the grumbling and cajoling and growling I'd done. He was saying that he understood what I meant, and I had been pleading, in essence: "Let me help! Won't you let me help you find a way to defeat the pain?"
I calmed down. I turned around and looked him in the eye again. He was sitting on the edge of the bunk, fighting that private misery and waiting for the meds to kick in enough to let him serve out his night in jail.
I knew he would go back to rehab … get on with the damn charade.
We were of a mind.
I said, "Good night, House … see ya tomorrow."
"G'night, Wilson."
The guard was waiting at the end of the corridor to let me out of the cellblock. The metal gate clanged open, but I paused a second to look back at House.
I saw my friend turn over onto his side in an effort to find a comfortable position on the narrow bunk. His right hand was on his painful thigh again, seeking to ease it.
His left hand was half under the grey blanket that cradled his head. Just before I walked out, a flash of red appeared, a length of silky material wrapped around the fingers of that left hand.
Emerging into the brisk afternoon air, I walked across to the parking lot to reclaim my "clunker", still by some miracle in one piece. I opened the driver's door and saw the extra key and the little magnetic container lying conspicuously on the passenger seat.
Another way he had of not saying "thank you".
I grinned to myself and started the engine to return to the hospital. I still had charting to do if I were to get away from there at any kind of decent hour tonight.
And House was playing some kind of obscure game with the red necktie again. I was at a loss.
What the hell is he up to? At least he's never boring!0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
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