Chap. 25
Friday
3.

He dreaded going into work that morning. It wasn't so much that for a third straight night he hadn't slept more than a few minutes at a time; that he couldn't organize his thoughts well enough to make the coffee he needed to get through the day without burning it (and it took quite an effort to actually burn coffee); or the knowledge that he probably looked like crap.

It was the way people treated him, they way they looked away when he entered an elevator or stopped talking around him in the cafeteria, like there was some sort of vacuum field around him. It was Cameron coming into his office, hesitant, unsure, and trying to offer comfort but then falling apart so spectacularly that he found himself comforting her. It was catching Chase staring vacantly out the window of the conference room then watching him bound to his feet the moment Wilson opened the door, as if to prove nothing was wrong. It was Foreman's deference. It was everyone else's pretence.

It was all so brittle, so artificial, and so wrong that he wanted to throw something.

Only one person didn't behave that way around him. The moment he entered the hospital lobby, he steered for Cuddy's office, before anyone could give him a sad look or an earnest smile.

He shut the door and leaned back against it with a sigh. Cuddy was on the phone, nailing down details. She glanced at him, nodded her head, and hung up the phone as soon as she could. She rose and went over to him.

"Wilson," she said, cocking her head. "Wilson."

"What?" he said. "I'm fine." And he was. This morning he'd remembered to shave. So what if he'd nicked himself three times? He'd even remembered a tie. Yesterday, to be truthful, had been a bit ragged. He'd remembered to button his shirt all the way up, but then he'd forgotten the tie.

She gave him a smile, a real one, and then reached out and began undoing his tie. He looked down at what she was doing. "What's wrong?" he asked. Wordlessly she held up the two ends of the tie. He'd knotted the tie so that the fat end was about eight inches long and the thin end reached down to his crotch. "Details, details," he sighed, trying to take the tie from her. She batted his hands away and finished reknotting it. But instead of backing off, she frowned, leaned in closer, and sniffed. Her eyes widened in disbelief and alarm.

"Have you been drinking?" she asked, forcing him to meet her eyes.

"No," he said. "Well, yes. But it's okay. I'm fine now." He had needed a glass of scotch to finally fall asleep in the early hours of the morning. Actually he'd needed two. But it had done the trick. He just hadn't counted on still being slightly drunk when he showed up at work. Cuddy pointed to the couch.

"Sit," she commanded. "And don't move until I tell you to." Then she buzzed her outer office and ordered some black coffee. Lots of black coffee.

* * *

"Mmmm," said Wilson sipping it with his eyes shut. "S'good. But I miss that scorched taste." He opened his eyes halfway and watched her going about her job. "How're you doing?" he asked after a few moments.

He saw the pause, the slight look of alarm, then she appeared to take an internal reading. "Good," she said. "I'm fine. Really."

He watched her a bit longer, answering the phone that never ceased ringing, noting things in files, typing on her computer. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Keeping busy. It helps."

Wilson shook his head. That particular tonic had not worked for him. He couldn't concentrate long enough to be any use to anyone.

"There's so much to do," Cuddy continued. "I'm still trying to track down his parents, and all the arrangements…" Her voice trailed off. In truth she felt like she was still waiting, the way she had waited that first day, leaning on the window after getting the phone call. The last two days had been filled with business, with arrangements, dealing with press, dealing with the needs of others: Wilson, House's team. The busier she was, the better she performed, the less time there was to be blindsided. But she knew it was out there. She could only forestall it so long, and she walked in dread of someone asking the wrong question at the wrong time—in the middle of a board meeting, say. She deflected Wilson's question with a question—always a good tactic.

"Are you okay with this?"

"No," said Wilson bluntly. He pushed himself to his feet. "No, I'm not. He's not dead. Not officially anyway. You—"

"I had to do something," Cuddy answered, hearing her own defensiveness. "The police can't make it official for six months, legally, but waiting that long…You know we have to do something now."

"And not waiting is like…killing him," he answered stiffly, and put down his coffee and walked out, wondering which one of them was in denial.

*****

Friday
4.
It was a scarf that did her in. A simple, innocuous red scarf she had worn last week, that was still hanging on the coat rack by her door. The same scarf she'd worn on her disastrous blind date, the one House had sabotaged. It caught her eye when she was deep into a phone call that had nothing to do with House—talking to LifeFlight about the construction of the new helipad—and she heard his voice—smug, insufferable, and just a tiny bit jealous-- as if he was standing directly behind her.

"You could have just left the scarf at home and told him you'd be wearing a look of desperation."

She would never hear that voice again. Never see House look at her with that mixture of little-boy mischief and grown-up lust that made her glad she wasn't hooked up to a heart monitor. In the middle of her sentence—in the middle of a word--her throat closed up as hard as if a hand had grabbed her by the neck.

She made a noise that sounded like "mmmff" and reached blindly for the disconnect button on the phone set. Then she stumbled to the private bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the lid of the toilet seat. The part of her brain that never really shut off told her she had only five minutes before LifeFlight called back and her assistant came banging on the door to find out why she wasn't picking up her phone. But for those five minutes she allowed herself to forget about everything else in the world except this one thing, this one thing she had lost.