Chapter 29: My Body is a Cage
Disclaimer: Hennessy and Collins are mine, but the rest belong to David Shore and the Fox Production Company.
The alarm beats for only a second before he hears Cuddy punch the snooze. She rolls over, no doubt wondering where he is. "House?" She asks. He smiles to himself, shifting under the bed so he can peek out beneath the bed skirt. She sighs and throws her legs over the edge of the bed, stretching her sleep worn muscles. He chooses this moment to launch his hand out and ensnare her ankle.
"Oh my God!" She shouts, head twisting around to see his hand. "What the hell?"
"Mwahahaha!" He lets out a maniacal laugh as he pokes his head out from under the bed, a goofy smile on his face. "Gotcha."
"Did you actually wake up early and hide under the bed just to scare the crap out of me?" She asks, both affection and exasperation in her voice. She looks beautiful, even just out of bed. He points at the alarm clock.
"Set an alarm and everything." He tells her. She rolls her eyes. He can tell she's suppressing a laugh.
"It's like dating a ten year old." She sighs. He makes a mock thinking look before he responds.
"God, I hope not." He replies with a smirk. She beams down at him and lets out a chuckle as she drops to her knees next to him. She leans in and kisses him deeply for a few brief moments before reluctantly withdrawing. "Now that we're down here..." He trails off.
"Hold that thought." She says. She pushes herself up off the ground with a slight groan.
"Seriously!?" He exclaims, feigning annoyance.
"I have to pee." She explains as she pads off to the bathroom.
"I'll wait. I brought a book." He calls after her. He really did bring a book. He pulls out the medical journal he had been reading before she woke up and opens to the page he was on. "Didn't know what time your alarm was set for." He elaborates.
"House?" She calls his name from the bathroom.
"You know, you could rent this space out down here. In Japan, that would be like a deluxe-" He jokes, but Cuddy cuts him off, a note of fear creeping into her voice.
"House, shut up." He hears the bedroom door open, and he scoots more of his body out from under the bed to meet her eyes.
"There's blood in my urine."
xxxxxx
"So there's nothing? No new fractures?" Wilson asked to clarify. Collins sighed, motioning at the scan of House's skull.
"You tell me. There's nothing there, only a very mild concussion. He should have woken up by now." She told him. Hennessy hovers nearby. Her area of expertise is the awake mind, so she is there as a friend, not a doctor.
"Then why hasn't he?" Wilson wonder out loud. Collins sighed.
"I can only guess that because of all of his previous skull injuries, his brain is a bit slower to come out of a state of unconsciousness. His pupils are reactive and equal, he's not in a coma - he's simply knocked out." She explained. Wilson bit the inside of his lip, running a hand through his hair.
"He could be out for days, couldn't he?" Wilson inquired. Collins nodded.
"Yes, that may well happen. Was House in a state of exhaustion before this happened?" She asked. Wilson nodded. The day had taken quite a toll on House, with his still shaky legs.
"That may have something to do with why he hasn't come out of it, yet. House has survived so much that a normal person couldn't that sometimes I don't like making assumptions or predictions with him, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say he'll be up by tomorrow morning... with luck." She said, looking tired. It was midnight now, and all the people who been there for the charity ball had left. Chase and Thirteen had gone home, with strict instructions to call them if there were any changes. Foreman was waiting for Collins, since he was her ride. He was currently in the doctor's lounge.
Cuddy had been a silent observer, barely speaking a word since House had been brought to the ICU. "Collins, you should go home." Wilson said gently. "We can handle things here, you look dead on your feet."
Collins looked like she wanted to argue, but slowly nodded. "If anything at all changes, call me." She ordered, a fierce look in her eye. Wilson held up his hands.
"I will, I promise."
xxxxxx
"Angio showed a clot in a branch of his mid-cerebral artery. We started him on streptokinase to break it up." Foreman tells him as he strips off his coat. "Although, maybe we should've just played a few rounds of Savagescape 2: The Revenge, because that's OBVIOUSLY the best way to make someone feel better." He lectures, coming around the couch to give House a disapproving look.
"If you keep talking like Wilson, your face will freeze like that." House admonishes, finally pausing the game.
"However bad you think you're going to be in that room, not being in the room is worse." Foreman says quietly. House licks his lips, not wanting to discuss the subject further. He came to Foreman's apartment instead of Wilson's loft for the specific reason of avoiding a speech on what he should be doing. Foreman sighs and sits down on the couch next to him.
"When she breaks up with you, you're playing by yourself." He picks up the player two gun and joins the game, and House welcomes the distraction.
They play through the first set of levels, and House has to admit that Foreman's good, almost a good as him... but not quite. Just as they begin to fight the first boss, House's cell phone rings. House flips it open, hoping whatever it is, it will be brief.
"Yeah." He answers, not bothering to check the caller ID.
"House... it's me." He freezes. It's Cuddy. His gun falls loosely out of his hand, and Foreman pauses the game to look at him with concern. He doesn't respond, but he knows that she knows he's still there. "The imaging..." Her voice cracks. "The imaging showed enhancing masses across multiple lobes of my lungs. They're thinking I've got kidney cancer, and it's metastasized to my lungs." She sounds like she's been crying.
"Okay." Is all he can say. He finds himself hanging up on her, feeling more useless than he ever has in his entire life.
He explains the situation to Foreman. He knows what this means.
"She's dead." He whispers.
xxxxxx
Hennessy slept in one of the chairs in House's room, her long brown hair spread all over her face, and her mouth hanging open slightly. Wilson had to admit, she looked adorable when she was sleeping.
However, there were much more important things at hand. Although Wilson was mildly upset with Cuddy at the moment, he was starting to worry about her almost as much as he was worried for House. She sat in the chair next to his bed, gripping his hand for dear life, her stormy blue-gray eyes shining.
"Cuddy." Wilson said her name quietly. At first he thought she hadn't heard him, but finally she looked at him, her eyes lost and scared.
"I rejected him." She murmured. She moved her other hand to House's head, smoothing down his brownish gray hair.
"Why?" Wilson asked, still lost (and slightly angry) over her sudden change of heart. "Were you just playing him this whole time? You didn't really want to be with him? Just took pity on the poor, brain damaged-" He felt himself getting angrier and angrier. House had fought so hard for everything since the accident, and think he had almost had Cuddy back, and then to have his hope shattered...
"No!" Cuddy nearly screamed. "No, I wanted to be with him... I still want to be with him... just..." She blinked, and Wilson noticed that her lip was trembling slightly. "You know he's not the same." Wilson let out a heavy breath.
"Yes, I do. And so did you. Why did you give him hope with-"
"I didn't know." She defended, her voice raw with emotion. "I thought... I mean, I knew he was different, Wilson. I thought he was still House, though." Wilson simply raised an eyebrow at her, indicating for her to elaborate. "When we kissed, I realized that he's not House. Same body. Same genius. Different man." She let out a sad laugh as a tear leaked from one of her eyes. "More functional and reliable, ironically, but..."
"You loved the old House." Wilson stated. "But now..."
"I feel like I'm betraying who he was before. Everything we had." She put her head in her hands. "God, Wilson, this is all my fault. If I hadn't left him in the first place, he wouldn't be here. None of this would have happened. He wouldn't have tried the experimental rat drugs, he wouldn't have tried to perform surgery on himself in his bathtub, and he wouldn't have discharged himself early and gotten hit by a semi." Her small body shook, and he closed the distance between them and rubbed a hand on her back.
He understood her guilt. He remembered how he felt after Amber. If he had done just one or two things differently, she wouldn't have died. It was that thinking that nearly destroyed him, not to mention his and House's friendship.
"I can't love him when I'm already in love with someone else." She mumbled through the tears.
xxxxxx
He has to be there for her. He cannot let her face surgery - and possibly death, alone. Yet he can't bring himself to abandon his glass of scotch and leave his apartment and go to her, like any other man would. He is not strong enough. He wishes he was.
There is only one way he'll be able to go to her, now. To hold her hand and comfort her. He shakily lifts himself from the couch, both dreading and anticipating what he is about to do.
He walks into his bathroom, his eyes firmly glued to the mirror. There is no need for theatrics this time. He lowers the mirror from the wall, and reaches into the alcove behind it. There are two vicodin bottles there. Feeling a sickening sense of deja vu, he removes one of the bottles. He doesn't need many. Hell, with how long he's been clean, one will probably do.
Showing remarkable restraint, he unscrews the cap of the first orange bottle and removes a solitary pill. He hesitates for only a moment before he dry swallows it.
He isn't doing it for him, he's doing it for her. He wants to be what she needs.
xxxxxx
"So he just screamed and then threw his head back against the wall?" Cuddy whispered after nearly an hour passed. She had cried for a long time, Wilson offering what silent comfort he could, but now she seemed so worn she couldn't muster much emotion at all. They were both drained.
"Yeah." He confirmed. "That's what scares me the most. I have no idea what that was about. It was like he was having a... fit, or something."
"We haven't seen him under extreme emotional stress since he woke up. Maybe the brain injury went deeper than we thought." She voiced what he been worrying about for the past several hours.
"The worst part is, he figured out what was wrong with Raiven. If we had had just a few more minutes, he probably could have saved her." Wilson told her, running a hand through his hair and holding back a yawn.
"What did she have?" She asked. He could tell she was trying to distract herself from the unconscious man in front of her.
"Muckle-Wells syndrome." He informed her.
"God, that's rare." She observed before furrowing her brow. "Except..."
"What?" Wilson dragged over a chair, finally sitting down after standing for so long.
"House's patient, the bankrupt real estate developer that was lying to his wife, isn't that what he had?" She asked. Wilson thought about it for a moment. That was the patient House had right before the charity gala, the one...
The one that died. Oh my God. He replayed his conversation with House in his mind, and with a force that hit him like a brick wall, he realized that the conversation they had after Raiven's death was shockingly similar to the one they had after Bert's.
"Cuddy!" Wilson gasped. "He must have had another memory!" Cuddy paled as her eyes widened. "Listen, there's four common denominators. House lost a patient. There was an event going on. You and him were having problems. Then our conversation. They must have jogged his memory, so he remembered something while he was awake instead of when he was sleeping!"
"That doesn't explain why he freaked out, though." Cuddy said, not seeming entirely convinced.
"Maybe it was sensory overload, having it while he was awake. I'm not sure about that, but this makes sense - he must have remembered something else, I'm guessing what happened after his patient died last year." Wilson theorized.
"Wilson." Cuddy murmured, looking at House and seeming to hold back another sob. "You do realize what happened just a few days after that?"
Wilson was drawing a blank. "Well, it was last March, so... oh." He looked at House's unconscious form. Even knocked out, he held an anguished look on his face.
"He... he might be remembering the break up."
xxxxxx
Looking back, he may have known before he even opened the door that it was the end.
He hears a soft knock on the door, so he knows it's her and not Wilson. He opens up the door, a soft smile on his face. He is practically blissful, and he has been since the news that she was fine. The relief hadn't dissipated, even over twenty four hours later.
Then he sees the look on her face, and his heart drops like a stone. She wastes no time.
"You took vicodin." It's not a question. Hell, it isn't even an accusation - it's just a statement of fact. A lifetime ago, he may have denied, but in that moment he knows that he cannot lie to her anymore. "When you came to my hospital room that night, you were stoned."
He looks away from her for a moment, trying to think of a response. Anything that could change the look on her face. The one of miserable resignation - the look of someone who has given up, and partly hates herself for it.
"How did you know?" He asks. She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"How did I not know?" She seems to direct the question at herself, not at him. "How did I make myself forget for months that you're an addict?" The words sting. The illusion that she accepts him for him is shattered. He turns away, unable to look at her. "My subconscious was trying to tell me you could never get through this without drugs." He paces, trying to think of a rebuttal - an apology, anything that can make this better.
He places a fist against his forehead and sighs. "It was a one time thing." He tells her, and he means it. If she will look past this and give him another chance, it truly will only be one time.
"It's not about the pills, House. It's about what they mean." She responds.
"I was scared because I thought my girlfriend might die." He defends, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice.
"No." She says, sending an spear through his heart. "You don't take vicodin because you're scared. You take it so you won't feel pain. Everything you've ever done is to avoid pain. Drugs, sarcasm, keeping everyone at arm's length so no one can hurt you." Now her words hold a hint of accusation. She closes the distance between them, stopping just a few inches away.
It hurts that she doesn't believe him. He was scared - no, scared isn't the word for it. Terrified fits better. He needs her. What hurts more is that she thinks he is so one dimensional, just an addict trying to hide from pain. That is how highly she thinks of him.
"As opposed to everyone else in the world, who goes looking for pain like it's buried treasure." Maybe she's right. Maybe he does hide behind his sarcasm.
"Pain happens when you care. You can't love someone without making yourself open to their problems, their fears." She says. "And you're not willing to do that."
She doesn't understand that what she's saying is exactly what he's done. He has opened himself up to her more than anyone... ever. But she doesn't see that. How can't she see that?
"I came to be with you!" He says. He did it for her, he took the vicodin for her - so he could be there for her when she needed him.
"But you weren't with me, not really." He feels his eyes stinging.
"I wanted to be." He whispers.
"Well... that's not enough." His heart clenches so tightly he can barely breathe. No. No, this can't be it.
"I can do better." He assures her.
"I don't think you can. You'll choose yourself over everybody else, over and over again, because that's just who you are."
He wants to argue. He knows it's not who he is. He wishes she knew that too. However, he is locked in place, unable to refute her words. Her eyes are glistening as she reaches up to cup his cheek. "I'm sorry."
He snaps back into motion, and words fly out of his mouth.
"No, no, no, no. Don't. DON'T." He pleads.
"I thought I could do this." She says, her eyes glistening.
"Don't. Please don't." He is begging her, and normally that would make him sick, but right now he doesn't care. At all. He just wants her to stay. She puts a hand on his chest.
"Goodbye, House."
She leaves him standing in the doorway of his apartment, his mouth hanging open slightly. He watches her walk away, and there's only one word he can think of to describe how he feels in that moment.
Empty.
