Mind Over Matter
House is laid back in the armchair, dressed for visitors but not being the model host, for he stares at the slow flow of cream colored curtains that dull the light from outside, his mind in the virtual world of potential beginnings.
Across the coffee table, across the room entire, two strangers wait at the sofa patiently, wordlessly. Cujo is at his feet, facing the guests, beautifully glistening coat flowing in colors of molten caramel and menthol candies. The animal can sense his nerves at the presence of strangers, and so keeps them in its sights at all times, a quiet warning. Big brown eyes skip between them like a switch, left, right, left...
By the general dimming House gauges the afternoon has passed, his little brown world of wood, leather and cloth now outlined in sunset's amber tint. It is a quiet, absentminded nirvana he revels in, sheltered by the brick and mortar of earth, warmed by the setting sun and soothed by a slight draft. The naturalness of it all is a stark contrast to the hard grays of prison, of its stuffy, cold damp. He hesitates to venture in the discussion, for it will inevitably lead in the direction of bitter-sour memories.
More than elements, it is the people that make him most at ease, and on the edges of his field of vision he can just make them out: Wilson leaned on the kitchen doorjamb, Cuddy seated at the small desk, Stacy in the nook of lobby, and last but not least, Clarence in the corner once occupied by the piano that now holds Cujo's daytime bed - an odd link between the two seven feet large, living, breathing, warnings.
House breathes out a lengthy inward sigh. Since the introductions nearly an hour before, he hasn't spoken anything of importance, practically nothing if one discounts the forced pleasantries. He can feel eyes on him, and not just from the reporters, impatiently curious of what he has to say.
"No photos." He finally speaks, and even then not to the blond photographer lady but the room in general. "No audio recordings. No questions on torture methods." Brightest blues turn to the reporters, irises fading to white through the narrow ring of old, ravaged corneas. "If I volunteer any info, don't take it as permission to dig deeper. Ask whatever you want. I don't promise answering."
"Whatever you say." The balding man holds his hands up, distancing himself from any implications to the opposite.
For a moment he is amused by their Laurel and Hardy appearance: blond woman with long, scrawny features, right down to the nose, paired with a plump, dark haired man. He watches the man lean a bit closer, elbows on knees, arms rubbed together in thought.
"Why?"
"Why what?" House frowns. "Why did he pick me, or why did I agree?"
The man, Rock or something like it, smiles innocently. "In that order preferably."
"You wouldn't be a world class reporter if you didn't already know the first… " House sighs, "Do you have a family?" He returns with a question.
And everyone in the room understands.
House glances between his own, de-facto adopted family, but only briefly. "The truth is… I had no idea he'd go that far."
"There has been talk of awarding you. Medals, honorary titles… Medical associations, various levels of government… What are your thoughts on that?"
His shrug is indifferent, lethargic. "I haven't done it for rewards. Wasn't even supposed to mention it." He looks at his right hand studiously, freed from its cast prison only hours ago. Form corrected, it's a small sliver of hope, yet trying to stretch it out makes him wince nigh imperceptibly. The limb settles back in his lap. "I've done enough as a doctor. Rather be rewarded for something I did than something I suffered through."
Quiet, awed admiration comes in the form of understanding nods from the reporters and an occasional proud smile of caretakers.
"What are your plans? Rumor has it you've returned to practicing medicine? Is that true?"
"I've offered my ideas on a case. I will keep doing it. Nothing else is in plan."
"Forgive me for saying this but consults weren't in your plan either and yet…"
"If anything changes you'll be the first to know." House dismisses him.
"All right - Thompson's murder." Falls the bombshell. "Four months and no leads. Any ideas on who it might have been? Do you want the perpetrator caught?"
House blinks at the question. For all its expectedness, and all the time he thought of it, he is still short of a definitive answer. And than he realizes. "I wasn't freed because he was killed. If it was a mob fight, don't care. If it was someone like me, my respect and best wishes to the perpetrator."
Rocky makes a perplexed face, but only mildly. "Would you have-"
"Yes." House's word is dead certain, impersonal. The calm detachment in which it is uttered fills the room with icy silence. "I'd never torture him." The latter comes as a rising thermal wind, releasing the audience of the unnerving spell.
The journalist clears his throat, preparing to push his luck. "If I may ask… How did you get out of it sane?"
"I had to." He shrugs as if it's obvious. "The body is more resilient than most people think. World war one trench soldiers, when under heavy shelling, would just fall asleep. Right in the middle of all that noise and detonations. The mind knew it could not ensure physical survival, but it could ensure psychological."
"That's what happened to you? You went catatonic?"
His smile is melancholy all over. "They forbade it. That and dying. It was a thing of telling their wishes. When the guards wanted me loud I'd put on an act of agony at first plausible level of pain. There was no point in enduring more than necessary. When they wanted to vent on me but have me stay quiet I'd withdraw into myself."
"What do you mean?"
"It's an altered mental state. Sleeping but not. Like dozing off on the passenger seat with the radio on, you can hear music but you don't listen, it has no effect, leaves no trace."
Heads bob in silent understanding.
"I'm guessing it was different with the lawyer." Rocky ventures further not without sympathy.
"He couldn't be fooled." House admits with a nod. "There were moments the pain was so intense my pulse and blood pressure were short of a heart attack or brain aneurysm. If I didn't normalize them, I'd die, and than Thompson would make good on his end of the deal."
"How did you manage that?"
"National Geographic."
The audience stares bewildered.
"There was a show on those face piercing freaks. Figured if they could do it… Once I was able to dull agony to discomfort they couldn't hurt me with pain. Nothing they threatened with had effect. So I was freed from fear also."
'Except the conditioning techniques.' His subconscious reminds of the shocks, drug cocktails and recordings run over and over for days.
Clothes wide over a thin frame hide a long, bone-chilling shiver.
Reading the hint of fear from his subtle expression, Rocky offers a return to lighter subjects. "Care to share your technique? I'm sure a lot of pain sufferers would like to try it out."
"Pain is worse when resisted. You have to go in headlong and curious about it, like a lab rat with intriguing phenomena. You have to want to study it, in detail."
Confused faces look back at him from all around.
"The Inuit have a hundred words for snow." His words make little sense to the audience. "Doctors have a hundred terms for pain."
In a split second his flaw of deconstructing human experience away to mere hollow biochemistry becomes a glaringly obvious stoic strength. The man that was only moments ago a victim abused into fearful reservation transforms before their eyes to a serenely detached survivor.
"What about psychological torture?"
"All torture is psychological." He states deadpan, as if he never got an inside perspective. "Some more directly than others."
"That's where you draw the line." Rocky proves his astute reputation.
House nods.
"Is there anything they could have done that would break you?" The man takes his chance none the less.
House turns to the hall for a long while, lost in memory. "Like a twig." He lets out on a breath.
One cough to shake off the swell of emotion and he's back to studying the floor between them, a blur of complex burgundy and white geometric patters on the Oriental rug.
"They must have known it, though, because they didn't go along with it. They never pushed too far, the trick was in doing it, not in getting it done. It would have been mercy, letting me snap." He can feel eyes boring holes in him, their minds on edge for explanation. Not knowing which would be worse: having to live with friends knowing or silently wondering, he decides to go for ambiguous. "All they had to do is give me the cane."
He glances from face to friendly face but can't make himself establish eye contact from shame. All reason in the world could not have spared him the guilt, and the knowledge makes him stare dully at the ground. "I'd be a drooling vegetable and you'd all be dead."
Cujo takes the moment to stand, sliding the muzzle in his lap. House offers the animal a scratch behind the ear, grateful for the distraction.
A moment later, without anyone needing to voice it, all present know the talk is over. In hushed voices Stacy, Cuddy and Wilson usher the reporters out, thanking them for their cooperation, while Clarence just comes to stand reassuringly behind the old man, big palm a comfort on his shoulder.