- Chapter 25 –
"Wheelchair Brigade"
"House!"
Gregg dragged his attention away from listlessly pondering the tiles on his ceiling long enough to turn his head in the general direction of Wilson's voice from the open doorway. "What do you want now?" He growled.
It was early in the morning, and his coffee hadn't been delivered yet. He'd been awake for several hours; general body aches nagging him long before sunrise. He'd been too stubborn to push the button though, but was more than ready to whine his plight to whoever darkened his doorway first. He might have known it would be Wilson: Wilson in old blue jeans, grungy sneakers and one of House's collection of odd tee shirts, this time the treasured dark blue "WHO" shirt. James's shaggy hair hung over his forehead and his brown eyes were bright. Even his enthusiasm though, couldn't mask the concentration of effort that clouded his expression.
House was about to hit the roof to bitch about the shirt, but then he did a double take, and an adrenaline rush of alarm traveled down his spine and accelerated the pain in his shoulder and leg by about ten degrees. "Wilson?"
James was not in the wheelchair today, but plodding along haltingly on a pair of arm canes that looked about to throw his skinny ass onto the floor. One laborious step at a time, he approached House's bedside and halted with a much-too-wide grin of success on his face. Sweat stood out on his forehead from the strain of movement. "Yeah? What? Did you want something?"
"Are you planning on joining the Flying Wallendas? Or do you just have a death wish?" House watched his friend's wobbly approach in trepidation, entertaining thoughts of becoming madder than hell with Wilson's carelessness. "You're still not ready for those things, Goddammit!"
Wilson's grin just got a little wider and he shrugged, not easy under the circumstances. "Change is inevitable, wouldn't you say?" he said with a knowing wiggle of his eyebrows. "Those of us who live in the present accept change when it presents itself; those of us who live in the past tend to … well … sit in hospital beds growing calluses on their arses, with their gimpy legs propped on piles of pillows, refusing to allow anyone to come near them. A-a-and … they sit around all day with their arms in slings and their minds in the gutter, bored out of their freakin' skulls …"
"Wilson, what the hell are you talking about, you prick? You know I can't …"
"Yeah … I know. And if you could get out of that bed, you'd kick my ass, right?"
"You got that right!"
"Well, what would you say if I said I could actually help you do the first part of that?"
"What?"
"MiGod, House … for an intelligent man, you can be exceedingly dense. I came to offer you a chance to get the hell out of that bed for awhile."
"What? How? Wilson, you are so full of shit …"
Wilson, however, could see the frown of concentration taking over the mobile features, the mental juggling of pros and cons and the weighing of added pain in exchange for a possible change of scenery.
"Billy's right outside, House … and he has something for you." Wilson's sense of "gotcha!" went up another notch. "Come on in, Travis!" He called out in the direction of the corridor.
They heard it before they saw it. The big motorized wheelchair whirred around the corner of the doorway and whined across the floor with Billy Travis at the controls, his grin even wider than Wilson's, if that was possible. "Ta da!" He gushed as he switched off the motor and climbed out of the contraption.
House's mouth was already open, but Billy hushed him. "Shhh!! Hush, Man! Wouldja kindly keep quiet until I go outside and get Jimmy's chair?" He sprang to the doorway and disappeared into the corridor. Came back in an instant pushing the small, lightweight wheelchair Wilson had been using for a week or so. "There ya go, Jimmy."
Wilson sank into it gratefully and Travis stuffed the arm canes into the carrier in back. "Just making a point," Wilson smirked.
House snorted. "Yeah! You're lucky your … 'arse' … didn't end up on the floor!"
"Gregg?" Billy was serious when he turned around to talk to them both.
That was the moment the breakfast trays arrived. They decided to forego everything but the coffee, and the trays disappeared again.
"Gregg, would you like to get out of that bed today?"
"Oh Christ, yes! Is the Pope Catholic?" But …"
Billy had been ready for the "buts". "Do you trust me not to hurt you?"
House nodded. "Yeah. I do." He grabbed the only cup he could reach and took a swallow of coffee, bracing himself for whatever was next.. "Yummy! Hospital coffee!"
Years before, when House had first suffered the infarction, he and Wilson had already been friends with Bill Travis. Bill was a nurse, one of the best at his job and one of the most compassionate people they knew. Bill had taken over the custodial care of Gregory House from the time he'd been admitted, screaming in pain, to the hospital's emergency room.
Travis had known Gregg almost as long as Wilson had, and knew what a handful he could be. Also like Jim Wilson, however, Billy had never raised his voice, never treated the older man with anything but calmness and concern. Never demanded from Gregg anything he couldn't deliver, and certainly never patronized him. He had given him "lip" and a hard time instead. Called him "Hey You!" and "Boss Man" much more often than the respectful title of "Dr. House", and it had somehow hit the right chord with Gregg's outrageous sense-of-"weird".
After a time, House had come to trust the huge man with his life and his physical safety. Travis was one of only two people in the world he would allow to touch his crippled leg. Now William R. Travis was a Nursing Supervisor, and respected by everyone he came into contact with. And Gregg trusted him now, as he had always trusted him before.
"The first thing we're going to do is get a protective sock on that foot!"
Gregg's eyes widened and he was almost ready to protest.
"You trust me, right?"
House nodded.
"Okay then. I know how sensitive your foot is. Norm Lyons told me about the nerve damage that still needs to heal … but you can't go out in the corridors without some kind of protection on your foot. I can't let you. So. What I'm gonna do, is put a diabetic sock on you. Soft as eider down. It might be uncomfortable at first, but it'll work."
Powerful dark hands pulled a plastic bag from a pocket of his scrubs and held it up. "May as well use the pair. Let me put one on your good foot first, okay?" Billy was already tearing open the bag. He slipped the large, soft white sock over House's left foot with a flourish, and patted the ankle in reassurance. He went around the bed and lifted the blanket.
His skin was beginning to lose some of the dark bruising, but still looked exceedingly painful. "Ready?" Billy lifted House's leg gently until his foot was free of the pillow. He slid the sock on in a practiced motion that Gregg hardly realized until it was finished. "There you go! You okay, Boss?"
House pulled a crunched face and hissed a long intake of breath. Other than the initial pain of contact, his foot was fine. He slumped against the upraised back of the bed and blew out the breath he'd started to hold. His face cleared. "My God! It didn't hurt! Travis, you're a miracle worker!"
"And you, Dr. Gregory House, are a big sissy pants bag of wind!" Billy grinned. "Are you ready to take a walk?"
"Oh yeah! Get me the fuck out of here!"
Travis turned to Wilson. "I'm gonna lift him, Jimmy. I have to be careful with his shoulder, so could I get you to hold his leg and keep it straight while I get him settled? Then just hold it while I lift the leg rest. We don't dare jar him or bend his knee. Okay?"
Wilson knew that, but welcomed the reminder. Gregg's leg could not withstand any kind of lateral movement. He wondered if it was even safe to take him out into the hallways. Billy, however, was the expert at this, and if Gregg trusted him, then he did too.
Travis lifted House bodily, cradling his uninjured side to his chest as though Gregg were an ailing child, and settled him into the deep cushion of the plush chair. Wilson held the leg straight, while Travis lifted the lever that brought the automatic leg rest to a level where Wilson could just remove his hands from beneath it. House was ready to go.
Wilson handed Travis the blanket and reached up to unhook House's Foley line and bag. They attached the bag to the side of the big chair and covered everything with the blanket, hiding the Foley and tucking the blanket around him. "House?" Wilson asked. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." Standard answer. Wilson had heard it a million times before. They both had!
At least!
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They had a stepladder. They had workmen's gloves. They had flashlights and baseball caps to combat the cobwebs. And they had a plastic garbage bag so full of old currency that it looked more like a balloon.
They felt like children on an Easter Egg Hunt; like partygoers pinning the tail on the donkey; like treasure-map holders digging like hell where the "X" marked the spot.
And they were laughing like a couple of idiots.
Nola and Oscar could not keep themselves from giggles of excitement. They were up to their elbows in rusty water pipes and abandoned heat ducts. They extended their arms to the armpits under the rafters and beneath old floorboards to pull out ancient paper grocery bags filled with bills of all denominations except ones.
A box of plumbing elbows yielded more than $70,000 in cash, stuffed between their threads. Loose stones in the wall behind a set of empty shelves revealed another stash of over $1,120,000 in stacked, banded bills. God only knew how much more was squirreled away … or where! They were both tired, but exhilarated, and they knew they really should quit for the night.
But when they passed through the room that housed the old fire-system sprinkler risers, an inquisitive hand thrust down the maw of one of them brought out a bouquet of dusty hundred-dollar bills.
My God! Where will it end?
They finally had to quit and brush each other off so they could go back upstairs without looking like coal miners or oil wildcatters. They burst into the dining room from the basement, dragging the full-to-bursting black plastic garbage bag, still laughing like idiots and stomping through the door as though they were arriving with boots packed with snow.
Nikki Asdza and Chas Kehoe sat at one of the tables eating their dinner and enjoying coffee and conversation when their filthy colleagues appeared out of the dim side of the room and bust into the circle of light near the center.
"What the hell?" Chas exclaimed. "You guys look like you been working in the Kentucky coal mines!"
"Nola? Oscar? What in the name of the Great Spirit is going on?" Nikki's eyes were wide as saucers.
They did not speak at first. They did not trust themselves to say anything coherent. They dragged the dirty garbage bag forward and plopped it on the floor near the table. Finally, Nola brushed a fringe of hair out of her eyes and smiled sweetly. Oscar was grinning like a hyena, but he was willing to allow Nola to say whatever smart-ass comment came out of her mouth.
Nola gestured to the bag dramatically. "Uh … I think we just paid off Sonny's mortgage! Tomorrow we'll get him central air. The day after that, maybe we can order a new elevator. Then … who knows?"
They were going to keep it quiet until Sonny returned, but it was impossible to contain, and it was a windfall that screamed to be shared. And so they told the story of Fenton Koury and his strange life and legacy. With Chas and Nikki looking as though they'd just been hit over the heads with baseball bats, Nola and Oscar made the pronouncement that they were hungry.
They ate like lumberjacks and headed for the showers while Nikki and Chas stared, open-mouthed into the huge, gaping garbage bag.
Far into the night, four people burned the midnight oil and sat with twenty-three spiral-bound notebooks, asking questions. Was this money legal to keep? Did it belong to Rez Hospital? Could they deposit the cash into a bank without Federal intervention or investigation? If so, the Federal income taxes would be staggering!
How much more loot was stashed in and around where this had come from? It was like manna from Heaven … or Strange Medicine straight from the realm of Injun Magic.
After all this time, would there be any way to trace its origins? And if so, did they have any obligation to return any or all of it to the descendents of those from whom it had been originally stolen? Questions, questions! They needed answers. Answers! Thank the Great Spirit … Sonny and Rema were on their way home!
Sonny would know. If he didn't, they would have to hire a lawyer. Maybe the whole damned law firm.
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Gregg became tired very quickly. He had been able to traverse the corridors in the monstrous wheelchair for an hour or so, but after that his pain began to intensify from the constant vibration of movement, and it drove him back to his room to lie down and pay dearly for his taste of freedom.
Billy lifted him gently back to bed with Wilson's help, in a reverse action of an hour before. A shot in the butt lulled him out of his pain-filled fog and he slept immediately.
"No more than a half-hour next time," Wilson said, searching House's face for any last trace of pain. Gregg's features were smooth now, and he was comfortable for the time being. They pillowed his leg carefully, and made certain his body was positioned in such a way as to take the most pressure off his shoulder. The sling on his arm was bunched, so they eased it off, placing his hand carefully across his abdomen. They rehooked the Foley and covered him to his shoulders with the blanket, making certain its weight did not touch his foot.
They left the white socks where they were. It couldn't hurt. "I'm staying here with him," Wilson declared. "I need to be here when he wakes up." He met Billy's soft gaze stubbornly. He was tired himself, but that didn't matter right now. "I don't want to go back to my room. I wouldn't stay there anyway."
Billy smiled. "Hey Jimmy … you're preachin' to the choir, Man!"
"Sorry."
"No biggie … I'll send somebody in here with a better chair. He's not gonna wake up for a couple of hours, and you can't sit in a damn wheelchair that whole time."
Wilson nodded. "Thanks." He returned his attention to Gregory House and only half noticed when Billy left.
The recliner arrived fifteen minutes later, and he switched himself into it with more ease than he'd expected.
It was almost October. Days were a little shorter and nights were a little cooler. It was an early dusk. James Wilson settled himself more comfortably, propped his feet up and turned his face toward the bed.
He catnapped. When he wasn't catnapping, he was checking on House.
Housed slept the sleep of the innocent ...
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