Krawiec's pager beeped loudly just after he finished his metaphoric bit of advice to House. "It appears that I am needed elsewhere," he said smiling. "Do let the nurses know if you have any additional withdrawal symptoms or any side effects from the medication. I'll be leaving soon, at 7, as will Clarence, but Dr. Cho will be here tonight and I believe your nurse tonight will again be the inestimable Jeanette."
House, who was a little disappointed that Krawiec was leaving, reached out in a what some might have seen as an uncharacteristically friendly gesture to shake the older doctor's hand. "Thank you," he said quietly.
"You are most welcome. I'll be keeping an eye on you," Krawiec said giving House's hand a firm, steady shake in return.
Krawiec felt particular empathy for the patients like House, the patients who had so-called co-existing conditions. Under the barbed, defensive, and occasionally, so they had been warned in the intake documentation, offensive exterior Krawiec saw a terribly lonely, truly frightened, very sad man who was not really in touch with why he was there. But, he was getting there. Krawiec made a mental note to go upstairs and talk to someone on House's case management team about the counselor who been assigned to be House's therapist. Krawiec thought there was a better choice.
Kutner stood near the window smiling out at the pink sunset-stained sky. House looked up at the ceiling. "Are you leaving now?" he asked the hallucination.
"Do you want me to leave?" Kutner responded, turning to face House.
House continued to stare up at the ceiling for a few minutes. He reached over cringing and peeled up the Tegaderm bandage that covered the IV catheter and then quickly pulled the IV out of his arm. He carefully stood, a bit unsteadily, grabbed his cane and went to the door.
"Where are you going?" Kutner asked in a completely shocked tone.
"Getting out of here," House answered.
"House," Kutner responded, "it's a locked ward."
"Where there's a will, there's a way," House said listening carefully at the door before opening it a crack to peek out into the hallway.
There was a commotion past House's room at the far end of the hall. Based on the number of medical personnel rushing around in and out of one of the rooms there was clearly a medical emergency. It was the perfect opportunity for him to escape made more perfect when the double doors to the central hallway unlocked and then propped open by EMT's pushing a gurney.
House made a hobbled dash for the doors. Once he made it out into the central hallway he knew he had to do two things: find something to wear other than a Mayfield gown and robe, and find a way out of the building other than the main entrance/exit. A short way down the hall from the detox doors was a door marked: STAIRS. If he could get down to the basement, he thought, he might find some clothes in the hospital's laundry facility and also possibly where he could get out without being noticed. He headed for that door, found it to be unlocked and managed to close it quietly behind himself just as the EMT's and Mayfield staff came noisily out of the detox ward.
The stairwell was long, steep, narrow and dimly lit. It was times like this that House was literally painfully reminded of his own disability. He hooked his cane over his right elbow and clung to the thickly painted steel pipe handrail with both hands as he made his way down. Fortunately he only had to travel from the first floor to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs he could hear the noise and feel the heat and humidity of the laundry.
House pushed the heavy door open and stepped into the basement. He stayed in the shadowy end of the hallway and watched the doorway to the laundry room. A stocky guy pushed a rolling cart of clean, folded bed linens out of the laundry room and down the hall towards the elevators at the far end. House waited until the elevator doors closed and went to the laundry room door. A woman stood with her back to the door loading blankets into a huge washer. Tons of laundry, but no clothes in sight other than a small stack of hospital gowns and robes. Damn.
Well, House thought, he'd just have to go like this. He walked past the laundry room looking for an exit. There had to be a fire exit somewhere down in the basement. Eventually he looked down a dimly lit hallway and saw the red glow of the emergency exit sign. As he got closer he saw, much to his great disappointment, that the door had an alarmed crash bar. If he opened that door the building fire alarm would sound. And then, to his relief when he finally reached the door, he discovered that someone, probably a smoker sneaking out for smoke breaks, had disarmed the bar and blocked the door open using a folded washcloth.
"Yes! Freedom!" House whispered loudly as he exited the building. Squinting into the dark he realized that he was at the back of the building next to the loading dock. He also realized that he could see his breath and wearing only a gown, robe and slippers he started shivering. He turned around, re-opened the fire exit door and went back inside.
It took Mayfield's detox staff a 45 minutes to realize that House was missing from his room due to the chaos surrounding the patient who coded while detoxing. Clarence had gone into House's room on his way out at the end of his shift to tell House that Krawiec had recommended that he be released to the rehab the next day and found the bed empty and the patient nowhere in sight.
The security guard who spoke with the detox staff said, "He is almost certainly still in the building, because he didn't walk out the front door and we'd know if he opened an emergency exit. It shouldn't take us long to find him. We'll check all of the storage areas in case he's after drugs."
"He won't get far," Krawiec added. "Even if he did get out of the building he is wearing only a gown, robe and slippers, and it's cold tonight. Plus, some of the medications we have been giving him will be starting to wear off." Krawiec ran his long fingers through his unruly silver hair.
"Do you really think he's after drugs?" Clarence asked Krawiec when the guard left to start a sweep of the building in search of House.
"No," Krawiec answered, "he's running away from something, not to something." Standing in the middle of the central hallway just outside the detox doors Krawiec turned slowly, carefully scanning the environment. He smiled when he saw the basement stairwell door. "Clarence, before you leave please call Dr. Coughlin at home and tell her I think it might be time for her to meet her new patient. I'm going to retrieve our runaway."
"House?!" Krawiec shouted into the basement hallway. "I know that you are down here. Well, I assume that you are since this was the most logical route of escape."
House, who was still shivering, but no longer only from the chill of having been outdoors, stepped out of the shadows of the long dark hallway to the fire exit. "Drugs are wearing off..." he said through his chattering teeth.
"How's the pain?" Krawiec asked as he walked towards House.
"It's... OK..."
"OK, we're going to take the elevator back upstairs and get you back on your meds, but before we do I want to say something." Krawiec's tone was paternal, slightly exasperated and a little bit annoyed.
House nodded. He should have known better than to try to take off at the end of the day when he had last received the medications that controlled his withdrawal symptoms and pain in the morning.
"You are here of your own free will, House. I know that your friend brought you here, but you were not committed by the courts, so I assume that you chose to come here. Yes?" He waited for a nod and then continued. "That means that you can leave if you want, but you should do so through the front doors. If you want to leave I will make sure that you get some Bupenex before you go, and we'll get you your clothes and call someone to come get you. Is that what you want?"
House looked down at his slippered feet. In a way he felt like he was being treated like a spoiled child who got caught breaking the rules. In a way he felt ridiculous, because he had essentially behaved like a spoiled child and did break the rules.
"No," he said softly, "I... do... want to stay."
Krawiec threw his arm around House's shoulders and said, "Good, I am glad. I want you to meet someone..." and then walked with House to the elevator.
Back upstairs in the detox ward House received his medication and then was informed by a program administrator that he was officially warned for rules violation and that any additional rules violation would result in expulsion from the program. Even though his shift had ended two hours before Krawiec stayed in the room with him the whole time House was being reprimanded and continued to stay after the administrator left.
"Don't you have a life?" House asked somewhat irritated. Wasn't this whole situation humiliating enough. Did he really need a personal babysitter?
"If by that question do you mean do to ask if I have a family, then the answer is yes, I do. However, I do not have someone waiting for me at home right now. My wife, may she rest in peace, died two years ago."
House felt like a heel, but said nothing.
"If you wonder why I am still here, it is because I am waiting for the person I want you to meet. I asked Clarence to ask her to come tonight."
"Oh?" House was apprehensive about this.
"Her name is Dr. Darcy Coughlin. She is a psychiatrist on staff here. She will be your rehab counselor. In light of your recent... misadventure I thought perhaps it might be best if she came to meet you tonight." Krawiec leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.