Chapter Twenty-Five: No One's There

"You and me, we have no faces,

soon our lives will be erased,

Do you think they will remember,

Or will we just be replaced?"

The hospital was buzzing with activity when Chase, Masters and Foreman entered and set to work on the patients that they'd help rescue, but had maybe been too late. This wasn't just a case, not a bunch of text on a chart or an interesting backstory. This was Amber, and House, and Wilson.

God, Wilson, Chase thought to himself as he wheeled the unconscious man, in a stretcher, into the ER. He would have to get ready, and fast – looking at Wilson, it was obvious that surgery was going to be necessary, and the quicker the better.

He tried to take stock of everything that was going on around him. Wilson was the most critically injured, but House and Amber would need treatment, too. What the hell had that house of horrors been? More than that, how had a man he'd seen around, a man he must have talked to once or twice at least, gone so wrong?

Chase wasn't sure he believed in pure good or pure evil, not since he had left the seminary, but if there really was pure evil it would have to look something like that basement. What had gone so wrong in Lucas' head, and was it something that could have happened to any of them?

But now was no time to get bogged down in philosophy; now was the time to prove that all his life, all his training had purpose. He would save Wilson's life and he would worry about all the rest later. There was indeed a lot of "all the rest"… if Wilson survived, that was.

Chase didn't know if the hospital, if House and Cuddy, would be able to sustain it if Wilson didn't make it.

He slowly slipped off Wilson's clothes, trying not to let it feel like as much of a violation as that first assault must have been. He had done this more than once; it wasn't as if treating rape victims was unknown to him, but this was a man he knew. A man he was supposed to be an equal with – wait, not even that. He was supposed to be below Wilson, really, if he thought about it – he was still just a House underling even with all the training, and somehow in this moment, he was okay with that. Because it had taught him something about how to try, desperately, to handle this without losing his mind and falling apart.

Chase steadied his hands. He would do this right.

He didn't have any other choice.

"We're going to be able to release you."

The words floated into House's ears as he slowly looked around the room. Had he been sitting there for long? Had he been thinking, sitting, moving or had he just woken up out of nowhere? He wasn't entirely sure and for that reason, this lady doctor – who he didn't even really know, just some boring doctor at the hospital with brown hair and a slim chin – probably shouldn't have been making any sort of noise about releasing him, but he wasn't going to correct her because he wanted to go the hell home.

He sleepwalked through signing a bunch of papers and ignoring the instructions to use a wheelchair to get out to his car, which wasn't even in the parking lot of course (but he hadn't told them that) and at the least have someone come get him. Before he could leave, he had to figure out how Wilson was, how Amber was, whether Lucas had gotten away and was going to come back and finish this thing once and for all when House wasn't ready for him.

Had he ever been ready for him?

He didn't have to wait that long to find out about Amber. She was beside him seemingly in a flash, appearing from nowhere and slowly trying to rise from her own wheelchair. House thought to himself that she seemed to have recovered pretty quickly from a stab wound to the stomach – the Cutthroat Bitch must have been even more resilient than House had previously suspected.

"Hey." Amber spoke first, and House looked over at her, raising a hand with what felt like monumental effort.

"Hey," he replied.

"Going home?" she asked needlessly, and House gave a disinterested nod.

"They want me to call a cab or something," he mused, and she shrugged.

"We could just take the bus. One runs by here."

"How would you know?" House had tried for some kind of spite in there, just so he could be angry at someone or something while Wilson's life hung in the balance, and even past his life, his mind and his soul and his… ever being normal again, ever being able to get back to the comfortable stride he had once had. Amber shrugged.

"My car broke down a couple of times while I was battling for a place in your elite team," she replied dryly. "Figured I couldn't exactly call out on you, could I?"

"Maybe we should stay here," House said suddenly. "I mean, Wilson might…"

"Wilson is going to be in surgery for the next few hours," Amber corrected him. "And after he won't be up to seeing anybody for a while. I hear Chase is doing his surgery. You trained him, didn't you? So trust that you trained him well enough and go ahead and leave Wilson in his hands."

"Not sure that I'm comfortable with that."

"Nobody asked what you're comfortable with," Amber retorted, slowly rising from her wheelchair and taking House's hand in hers. "Let's go home."

"Saving my life again?" House asked sarcastically. She shrugged.

"Who even knows anymore?"

Foreman sat by Wilson's hospital bed as he slept, dosed up with enough painkillers to knock out a horse. He didn't know what would happen when he woke up, but he knew that he should see someone he knew when he opened his eyes.

He opened up a magazine, flipping through it but not really reading it, and waited.

* KoRn, "No One's There"