Chapter 21: Reaching Out
The black mood had remained all morning. Chase had joined him for lunch, and he could sense the concerned looks the younger man kept sending his way. He couldn't concentrate on the goings on in Genoa City, and he mentally counted down the minutes until the credits were over and the other man would leave.
Chase was almost out the door, when he finally asked, "is everything all right?"
"Fine," he snarled, instantly regretting the anger in his reply.
Chase hesitated, and then ventured, "is there anything I can do to help?"
House shook his head, staring at the floor until he heard the other man leave. He knew it wasn't Chase's fault. It didn't help that they didn't currently have a patient. They'd been so efficient at clearing patients that the team was scouring the clinic and the ER for interesting cases. He couldn't even find solace in his piano, having used up his allotted time this morning, when he must have started at least fifteen different pieces, but abandoning them after only a few measures. He was sick of playing video games, and none of the 15,326 songs on his iPod fit his mood.
He finally picked up the laptop computer that was sitting on the coffee table. He opened his web browser and logged on to the discussion group. He's created a username a few weeks ago, but he'd never done anything but lurk and read the posts.
He hesitated, and then clicked the button for Start New Thread. He looked at the box for Thread Topic. He finally typed in Hi! I'm new. It seemed sufficiently girly, even if it was far from original. There were at least five similarly titled threads on the first page alone.
He moved his cursor to the message box. Now what? He decided to follow the format most seemed to be following. As of today, I am 27 weeks and 2 days pregnant. It's an extremely high-risk pregnancy because it is an abdominal ectopic pregnancy. That means the baby is outside the uterus no need to mention that he didn't actually have a uterus and the placenta has attached itself to various organs in my abdomen. I have been on bedrest for the last 5 weeks. I am 42 years old, ok so he'd shaved a few years off, and this wasn't a planned pregnancy. He snorted. Now that was the understatement of the year. Might as well lay it all out there. My doctors hope that the baby and I can make it until 34 weeks. The baby was given about a 1% chance of surviving, and there's a chance I will die as well.
If that wasn't bad enough, I suffer from chronic pain. Vicodin is the only thing that is really effective at controlling the pain, but it isn't good for the baby, so they've switched my meds to something better for the baby. Even still, my kid has 2 days of detox to look forward to, if she survives to delivery. They say it will be painless, but how the hell can they be so sure?
Some days, I just feel like I am lying here, waiting for the next piece of bad news, or for something to go wrong.
He looked at the screen. God, it looked so depressing spelled out in black and white. He hesitated, and then moved the cursor to click the box to post the message. He stared at the screen. What had he been thinking? He moved over to one of the celebrity gossip pages and tried to convince himself he was interested in the trials and tribulations of Paris Hilton. Then he downloaded more music for his iPod. He was about to shut down his computer when decided to go back to the discussion group. There were already six replies to his post.
The majority of them were useless expressions of sympathy, but one post caught his eye. It was from a woman pregnant with her second child, but what was interesting was that she also suffered from chronic pain. She even took the time to detail the meds she had been on for both of her pregnancies. When I was pregnant with Jason, several of my friends were pregnant at the same time. They were all eating organic food and staying away from anything that could possibly be harmful for the baby. I could see the look on their faces every time I would take a pill. It didn't matter what my doctor told me, I still felt like I wasn't doing the right thing, and I worried about the effect on my baby. Jason is now three years old, and is a bright, active little boy. You'd never guess he was a drug addict the day he was born. He went through the two day detox, and it didn't look like he was in pain. Three days after he was born, I was able to take him home.
He smiled and then clicked on the last reply – Edith, who was also on extended bedrest, and who suggested knitting as a way to pass the time. House snorted – not in this lifetime. After some consideration, he clicked and began typing a reply to all of the posts. When Wilson returned home a few hours later, he was surprised to find House in a playful mood, yesterday's incident apparently forgotten.