Once they got home and House was settled comfortably on the couch, Wilson decided that if they were going to talk about all that had happened, now would be the best time. Dr. Lane had somehow manage to get House to agree to take an anti-depressant – though for how long, Wilson wasn't sure. They'd filled the prescription on the way home and House had glared at the bottle of tablets the whole way home as they sat in his lap.

"Are you actually going to take them?" Wilson asked.

"I don't really have a choice, do I?" House replied, giving the bottle another evil glare as if he could cause them to spontaneously combust just through the power of his stare.

"Well, I did think you'd agree to take the script, but flush the tablets and just ask for a new one when they should have run out," Wilson admitted and then instantly regretted it because the last thing House needed was ideas on how to get out of taking the anti-depressant. He reached out and grabbed the amber bottle away from House's grasp. "Don't even think about it."

"You're the one that suggested it!" House protested. "Anyway, it's not like I need them, is it?"

Wilson looked House dead in the eyes, he was returning to his old self, but Wilson still stood by his earlier thoughts – that House would benefit from some drug therapy for a while to help him get over the last hurdle of depression that had haunted him since the night of his fall. "You want me to be honest?"

"Would I ever expect anything different from you, Jimmy?"

"Then, yeah, I do, House. You're better than you were a few weeks ago, but I think a little drug therapy would help you get back to where you were before the fall. Mentally, I mean, not physically."

"Yeah, nothing is going to get me there physically."

"Come on, House, it sucks, but you can still do your job, you'll just need to get used to life in a wheelchair rather than using the cane. The plus side is that your shoulder won't play up half as much as it used to. Your liver seems to prefer the morphine to the Vicodin and Cuddy said that next month you can stop seeing Dr. Lane and come back to work and terrorise your fellows the way you used to."

"Yeah, but still, it has all changed, hasn't it?" House said, casting his eyes down. He rarely showed this side of himself to anyone – even Wilson – because he felt that being vulnerable made him seem even more of a cripple than he already was. Wilson felt honoured to be allowed to see him like that, well honoured and sympathetic at the same time. If he could, he would go back in time and change what had happened to House because the man did not deserve all that had happened to him in the last few months. Being crippled by an infarction that went ignored for days was hard enough to deal with. The Ketamine failing and the fall and the second infarction seemed to be all too much for the man to cope with, but he had. Still, it didn't mean that Wilson wouldn't change it for anything, even if it meant suffering from it himself.

"You need to choose a wheelchair, House," Wilson said, changing the subject in hope to bring out the sarcastic, callous man that House usually was. Though the way he had acted proved to Wilson that even if House didn't think he needed the drug, he did. At such a low dose he wouldn't be on them for long, just long enough for him to learn how to deal with all that had happened and somehow carry on his life as before.

"They all suck. Cane's are far sexier. How am I going to be able to look down Cuddy's top if I'm at waist height?"

"I'm sure you'll find a way," Wilson replied, hiding the smirk. He leaned over and started flicking through the various catalogues that Cuddy and he had collected since House's hospital admission – all of them showing various wheelchair designs.

"Gimme one," House said, referring to the catalogue Wilson was holding. "I may as well resign myself to my fate of always sniffing people's arses on the subway, never being able to see over the counter and always being picked last in the hospital basketball games."

"Okay, we don't have a subway, all the counters at the hospital are lowered for people in wheelchairs and you never play on the basketball teams – you say you're too competitive to play with those losers."

"True, true, but God, Wilson, couldn't you let me just wallow in it for a while?"

"No, my job as your best friend is to make sure that you don't wallow in it. At all."

"Couldn't you at least feel sorry for me and make me some ice cream or something? I dunno, do whatever it is girls do at sleepovers. You should know, you've probably been to enough of them."

"I could braid your hair?"

"I was more concerned with the eating of sugary foods."

"House, you've already consumed enough sugar today to keep a small country going, I don't think you need anymore."

"Hey, I'm a doctor, I can honestly say that the human body needs sugar, it's one of the four main food groups."

Wilson rolled his eyes at House, who just looked at him and smirked, before popping the cap off his severdol bottle and downing one tablet – without water, which always pissed Wilson off.

"Meh, they don't taste the same as my Vicodin."

"Nope, they wouldn't. I wish you'd take them with water, House, they get absorbed into the body better then."

"I know, I did take that class too, y'know, what with being a doctor and all."

"I know, just wish you'd act like one sometimes."

"You reckon I can get a wheelchair with flames up the side?"

"I'm sure we could ask the salesperson about that. You want me to make an appointment for you?"

"When?"

"Tomorrow, I'm still on leave and the sooner we do this, the sooner you can go back to work. I know you're dying to think of reasons to get out of clinic duty."

"Hey, people don't want a sick doctor."

"So you tell me."

"It's true," House said, raising his eyebrows at Wilson. He yawned and Wilson gave him a careful look.

"You want some help getting to bed? We still have to do your evening P.T."

"Can't we skip it?"

"No, we can't. You know that if you don't do it…"

"Yeah, yeah, save me the lecture. I already know. God, you'd think you were the only one with 'M.D.' after your name."

Wilson carefully lifted House back into his hospital issued wheelchair and wheeled him to the bedroom, once he'd lifted House onto the bed; he went and got him some water so he could take his first dose of amitrypline. Which, surprisingly, House took without so much as a mutter. Maybe he agreed that he needed them, but Wilson knew it would be a cold day in hell before House actually admitted that to anyone.