Title: Patient

Author: zeppomarx

Characters: House, Wilson, Cuddy, plus the characters created for Priority's Exigencies and zeppomarx's A Gentle Knock at the Door.

Summary: House's minions find a new patient, one who is reluctant to allow House to treat him. Begins three months after the opening scene of A Gentle Knock at the Door. Part of the Contract universe, which includes DIY Sheep's intense and angsty The Contract, and Priority's sequel Exigencies.

Thanks: To priority and houserocket7 for encouraging me to writing this side story to A Gentle Knock on the Door, and for their faithful diligence in copy editing my sloppy prose.

Warnings, etc.: Generally safe, but references to torture, rape and major character death that has happened in the past. Some chapters are pretty angsty.

Disclaimers: You know the drill. Don't own `em, never did, never will. Wish I did.

This Chapter: While House remains under suicide watch, Rainie discovers the truth.

Chapter 21: Channeling Anger

The good news, they realized after running a few neurological tests — and it was very good news — was that House appeared not to have suffered any brain damage from his suicide attempt. The bad news was that because House had apparently not decided definitively that he wanted to live, the five doctors would have to continue keeping a close eye on him for the immediate future. They set up a rotating schedule, with Chase and Foreman each taking a night shift, because their schedules were more flexible, Devi taking the early morning, and Wilson and Cuddy alternating in the afternoon.

Chase took charge of scheduling House's pain medications, with Wilson gladly relinquishing prescribing privileges because it would allow him more time to tend to House's emotional needs. Chase was determined to treat House's extreme pain fairly, but keep strict control over his narcotics for the time being, not leaving room for any temptation.

Jacey Liu planned to meet with House twice a day, to address the anger and depression that had prompted his attempted self-destruction. Dr. Liu informed Cuddy that there were actually no legal repercussions against a patient who attempted suicide, which relieved all five doctors who felt they're put their careers on the line to protect House. She did agree with them, however, that it made sense to keep the information to themselves, that it would not be helpful to House's recovery if too many people were aware of what had happened or why.

Beginning from the moment that House had so abruptly left her room, Rainie knew something was very wrong. Unlike the way he behaved with most of the people around him, House had always treated Rainie tenderly, probably because of their mutual ordeal; this had been one of the few times his behavior was painful to her, and it was the unique occasion in which he did not return later to smooth things over.

Once Evan got her calmed down, she waited. And waited. And waited. But no news and no House. After nearly a day of staring vacantly at the walls and ceiling, Rainie Adler continued to remain silent. She had barely slept in the past 24 hours and had not been able to keep any food down.

Although she was the one who had been attacked, her most recent trauma was far too much like Greg's own horrific history. Her statement to Joe Roberts appeared to have triggered something dark and unpleasant in House, and even through her own anguish, she was perceptive enough to pick up on it.

During the night and the following day, an occasional nurse or aide wandered in to check her vitals, bring her food or adjust her covers, but she hadn't seen House, or Wilson, or even any of House's team in hours. Evan had shown up several times during the preceding 24 hours, as had Jacey Liu. But no Greg.

Almost a day after House's abrupt escape from her room, Wilson slid open the door to Rainie Adler's room and quietly entered. Still deep in her own agony, Rainie slowly turned her gaze from the wall and watched him tiptoe across the floor toward her. Examining his distracted countenance thoroughly, she nodded thoughtfully to herself. Her haunted eyes stared intently into his own.

"He's not coming back," she said, the first words she'd spoken in nearly 24 hours, her contralto voice low and shaky in her throat. It was a statement, not a question.

"N-noooo…," Wilson stuttered slowly, hoping it wasn't true. "That's not it."

Her direct gaze began to make him squirm uncomfortably. She seemed to be sizing him up, as she tried to get at the truth, prying beneath the façade he'd put on before entering the room. "No? What then?"

He didn't want to tell her—he hadn't intended to tell her—he didn't think she could possibly be strong enough to hear what had happened. And besides, he'd promised the others not to tell. But he hadn't prepared himself, hadn't come up with a plausible alternative to explain why House had disappeared and hadn't returned. He tried to bluff his way through. Bluffing was not his strong suit, and he should know by now that Rainie, the consummate journalist, had a highly attuned bullshit meter.

"You know Greg," he ventured, trying to impose a lightness to his tone that he didn't feel. "He's not great at dealing with his feelings. He needs to sort this out for himself."

"He couldn't stand it."

That at least had the virtue of being true. Wilson nodded.

"So what did he do?"

Wilson feigned confusion as his heart began to beat wildly. Had she figured it out? How could she have? "I'm sorry…? What do you m…?"

Rainie interrupted him, her heart beginning to beat wildly. "Oh, come off it, James. Your face betrays you. Something's happened." She appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Wilson's countenance collapsed. Damn the woman. While he couldn't bring himself to tell her the truth, he also couldn't think of anything else to say. So he just stood there, his emotions reflected starkly on his face.

"He tried to kill Tritter, didn't he?" With her journalistic persistence and innate stubbornness, she wouldn't let him off the hook, and now she was venturing far too close.

His eyelids flickered, and he glanced away involuntarily. Sighing, he tried once more to avoid telling the whole truth and nothing but. Perhaps part of the truth would be sufficient.

"Not exactly. He thought about it," he replied. "He was angry enough to do it, but no… he didn't actually try." Maybe that would be enough. And again, it was true, so he didn't have to attempt a lie he knew she'd see through.

Watching her process his words, Wilson prayed. It was an impossible situation. First, do no harm… and he didn't want to harm her by telling her that the man who had paved the way for her own recovery had been unable to stay steady for her, that he'd found his own emotions so insidious that he'd tried to end his life.

A long silence ensued as the two watched each other think. Finally, Rainie broke the silence.

"I-Is he coming back?"

Unsettled, Wilson watched her bruised and swollen eyes fill with tears. How could she be so attached to his broken friend that the thought of not seeing him again would bring her to this? Suddenly, the dam broke, and he couldn't help himself, despite his promise to Cuddy and the others to keep the truth inside their circle.

"I'm sorry, Rainie," he started, his own eyes beginning to tear up as his words spilled out. "He locked himself in his office and took an overdose of Dilaudid." At her horrified look, he quickly added, "We got to him, though… barely in time."

He could see her chest rise and fall as she absorbed the news. Her eyes flickered past him, to the wall, to the ceiling, across the room, and then, back to him.

After regaining control of herself, she exhaled and asked, "Where is he? I want to see him."

Wilson shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said. "He's not… he's not in a good place emotionally."

"Well, duh," said Rainie with her usual bluntness, seeming to gather strength as she spoke. "After trying to kill himself, I wouldn't think he would be. Don't underestimate me, James. And don't patronize me. You know how that pushes my buttons."

Stunned, Wilson just stared at the small, battered figure in the bed. Her response was completely unanticipated. He'd expected her to be shattered, but instead she seemed, if anything, annoyed. As an oncologist, he was used to gently breaking bad news, couching it in carefully worded platitudes to ease the blow. But as a journalist, Rainie Adler dealt in the hard truth about people and their behavior, and maybe hearing the blunt truth was what she needed so she could process and understand what was happening around her… not dissimilar to the way House probed for the unvarnished truth in medicine.

"I…I didn't mean to be condescending," he mumbled. "I… I-I just didn't know if I should tell you."

"You did the right thing," she answered, trying to sit up straighter in the bed. "Give me the details. I need to know… I need to know what happened."

Wilson came closer, gently placing his hand on her shoulder in what he knew from experience was a reassuring manner. She continued to make disconcertingly direct eye contact, and his resolve crumbled. He told her how they'd found him, and what he'd said. Occasionally, she interrupted with astute questions — how many pills had he taken? Were they sure there were no physical aftereffects? How did he seem to be doing now? Was he going to try again?

Finally, after about 20 minutes, she seemed to have made up her mind about something. "Take me to him," she said, pushing herself up, gasping a moment in pain before dangling her legs off the edge of the bed. "Now."

Realizing he was standing there with his mouth hanging open, Wilson snapped his jaw shut and nodded. What's the worst that could happen? he thought, then the doctor in him took over. "You shouldn't… you need to rest."

Again, she sized him up. "I'll rest later," she said. She waited, as Wilson stood, frozen. "Come on, James! If you won't help me, then dammit, I'll crawl there." At that, she began sliding off the bed, her bruised and deformed legs clearly unable to carry even her slight weight.

Wilson reached out a hand in the universal symbol for stop. She paused, but continued to stare him down. Based on the past few months of observing her climb out of the pit of despair, he had every reason to believe her when she said she'd crawl to his room. "Wait… please, wait. I'll help you. Let me get a wheelchair," he stuttered. "I'll be right back."

Half expecting to find her slithering on the floor when he returned two minutes later, he was pleasantly surprised to find her still sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning back so her arms supported her slight weight. After helping her into the chair, he took a deep breath and rolled her down the hall.

When Wilson wheeled Rainie into House's room just a few doors down the hall from her own, they found Devi sitting quietly in the corner, reading a journal. House was lying on his bed staring blankly at the wall, mirroring what Rainie herself had been doing only an hour earlier.

"Devi, could you give us a few minutes?" Wilson asked, gesturing toward the door. Nodding, Devi quietly slipped out of the room and slid the door shut behind her.

Once she'd left, Rainie inched closer to the bed. "You idiot!" she called out abruptly, startling House out of his reveries. His face jerked toward her, registering surprise. "You selfish son-of-a-bitch! How dare you!"

He looked past her to Wilson, who shrugged as if to say, What can I say? Wilson saw House's expression transform from indifference to anxiety to irritation.

"You told her!" House yelled at him suddenly, looking betrayed. "How could you tell her?"

As Wilson tried to figure out the best way to respond, Rainie jumped in. "Not his fault!" she stormed, on a roll. "I wormed it out of him. And don't change the subject, you moron! How could you do this? How could you?"

Now, he was angry. "Oh, so I'm selfish?" he asked, twisting in the bed to face her more directly. "It's none of your fucking business! None of your business what I decide to do with my own life!" He glared at her. "You're only angry because I yanked your lifeline out of the way."

She paused, considering, as Wilson watched on, almost bemused—feeling a bizarre sense of glee as the two of them hashed it out. Rainie Adler pissed off was a wonderful sight, and Wilson was hit with the realization that she might be the only one who could actually get through to House right now. Everyone else—Wilson included—was tip-toeing, too afraid of upsetting House to confront him. Rainie, whose experiences were so like House's, was the only one brave enough to get angry with him, and the only one whose anger didn't terrify him.

"Yeah, damn straight. My lifeline… huh! I've been looking up to you, knowing that if you could recover, maybe — just maybe — I could, too. Boy, did I pick the wrong role model!"

His eyes turned cold. "You sure did! I don't need that kind of responsibility. I'm not your fucking guidance counselor!"

She flushed red, rolling closer to his bed and plopping one bandaged hand on the covers near his feet. Furious, he kicked her hand off the bed, ignoring her wince of pain, and started to turn back to the wall.

"Oh, no you don't!" she snapped, rolling forward, grabbing his arm and yanking him back around. "You don't get off that easily! What were you thinking?"

For a moment, Wilson thought House was actually going to strike her, and he moved forward rapidly to intervene if House decided to lash out. But instead of becoming violent, House shrugged her hand off of him as the two glared at each other for what seemed like five minutes… and then, unexpectedly, House's shoulders drooped in defeat.

When he spoke, his voice was low and full of emotional pain. "I-I was so angry, Rainie… I was just so angry."

This time when she placed her hand on his arm, he allowed it to remain. "Look, you bozo," she said affectionately, her voice adjusting to his change in mood, becoming soft and sympathetic. "Let's be constructive about this. Instead of killing yourself, why not use that anger to diagnose the bastard? Then let's take what I overheard, plus the evidence that Evan and I have collected, to get him thrown away like the trash he is. That way, you retain your standing as a world-class diagnostician and at the same time, we both get our revenge for what he's done. Does that work for you? `Cause it sure works for me."

For a moment, Wilson thought House hadn't understood what she'd said, that his mind was so disrupted by emotion and drugs that he couldn't comprehend her words. Then, all of a sudden, he began to laugh, a deep, throaty chortle that erupted into a full-blown guffaw, the kind Wilson hadn't heard from his friend since long before his imprisonment, perhaps since before the leg injury so many years ago.

To Wilson's utter astonishment, House turned toward her, nodding his head as he muttered in her ear: "Yes… yes, okay. Works for me." He looked up at Wilson, who once again stood with his mouth open. "Get my team in here. And see if you can find a whiteboard."

It was several hours more before Wilson collected his wits enough to remember his conversation with Tritter the day before. As soon as he did, he contacted Joe Roberts at the FBI to tell him about Tritter's apparent confession. So much had happened in the interim that he was completely floored to find out that the FBI had had enough time to identify and round up the four punks who had trashed House's home and attacked Rainie. When confronted by a team of FBI agents, two of them readily confessed, implicating Tritter in order to gain plea bargains. The other two seemed ready to crack at any moment.

"Michael Tritter," said Joe Roberts half an hour after speaking to Wilson, as he fastened one handcuff around Tritter's right wrist with a satisfying snick as the other snapped around the bedrail, "you are under arrest for conspiracy and abetting in the commission of criminal acts, in the breaking & entering, and vandalism, of the home of Gregory House, and in the rape and aggravated assault of Rainie Adler. In addition, you are charged with 24 counts of police misconduct in the cases of Gregory House, David Amberson and 22 others, over a twelve-year period. You have the right to remain silent…"

"B-but you're FBI," sputtered Tritter, interrupting the reading of his Miranda rights. "What are you doing here?"

Roberts regarded him coldly, vaguely fascinated that Tritter neither denied nor admitted the charges, but went right to the jurisdictional question. "Because, Det. Tritter, anything criminal pertaining to Dr. House and Ms. Adler is considered a federal matter. Plus one of your young goons crossed state lines to do your dirty work for you, which also makes it federal." He paused for effect. "In addition, we have considerable evidence that the Princeton Police Department may be fraught with corruption; the FBI was brought in by Princeton Chief of Police Durante to investigate. I have a warrant here from Judge Minton to search your belongings and your home and office for evidence."

Tritter just blinked at him. He was screwed and he knew it.

After Roberts finished reading Tritter his rights, he informed the policeman that, given his medical situation, he would remain at PPTH, handcuffed to his bed, until such time as he was well enough to stand trial.

An FBI agent was posted outside Tritter's room, allowing no one access to the detective without an okay from the FBI and without an FBI agent present, effectively ensuring that Tritter would be unable to plan anything else that might endanger House while the doctor got back to the work at hand—diagnosing Tritter's rapidly deteriorating condition.