Title: Intervention
By: Sy Dedalus
Rating: Somewhere between TV-14 and TV-MA. Contains naughty language, adult situations, adult themes, graphic grossness; no sex.
Paring: Gen (House/Wilson strong friendship)
Spoilers: Season One.
Summary: The missing scenes from "Detox" plus some. Wilson helps House as House faces himself and his addiction. Mostly hurt/comfort and angst.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to FOX and the producers of the show, etc. I'm not making any profit from this. Please don't sue me, etc.

Some of House's odd thoughts and the title come from The Beatles' "I am the Walrus," the lyrics to which belong to whoever holds the copyright (Michael Jackson?) and not me.

Chapter 34: Yellow Matter Custard

House jerked awake again and for a moment felt absolutely certain it was Thursday and the patient with lupus that wasn't really lupus was still dying of liver failure—he could picture the enzymes pouring through the patient's bloodstream in a miasma of green and yellow, the bright red blood cells streaming along with overworked, off-color shrunken white blood cells turning a beige-mustard, platelets that for some reason had taken on the color of decomposing eggplant, and cellular waste the uniform grey-brown of a landfill speckled like a jelly bean, as though all of it were projected on the ceiling above him, swaying psychedelically like the innards of a lava lamp—and someone bent into his field of vision in blurred, one-dimensional surrealist form, scattering the chaotic flow of damaged blood, and that someone looked like Wilson used to look when he was younger, and a voice to his right that sounded like Stacy said, "Greg," echoing, "Greg Greg Greg Greg" "Are you going to get up?" "up" echoing "up up up up?" and he smelled coffee and eggs and her just-washed scent that was also somehow spicy and then Young Wilson touched his shoulder and,

"Dr. House?"

Time sped forward, the world tilted over and then back like an inflatable doll that always righted itself with a dizzy drunken sway after you punched it, and then he was really awake and Young Wilson became the nurse from earlier for whom House felt an unexplained affinity, and his head felt like it was packed with cotton and that if he tried to stand up it would expand like a leaden balloon, becoming twice its normal size before sinking to the ground while his body stayed comically erect, and he felt like saying "crunchberries" so he tried to say "crunchberries" and,

"Are you with us?"

And then something made sense. Reality flung itself back at him as if attached by rubber band and splattered his forehead like jello, and remembering what had occurred and was occurring, he said with immense effort,

"Yeah."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Yeah."

The nurse's face changed: "wrong answer" it said.

"Where are you?"

Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye he wanted to say.

"Hospital."

The nurse turned.

"He's okay."

Another man came into view and smiled sheepishly. "Good," he said smiling. "I think we gave you a little more Demerol than we should have," he said. "You seem to have lost more blood than I originally thought."

House concentrated hard on saying what he wanted to say. Not corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday but That makes sense.

"That makes sense."

The man smiled again. What was his name? House couldn't recall and it didn't seem important, so he let it go.

"How are you feeling now?"

Boy, you been a naughty girl you let your knickers down. No, not that. That's a song.

Fucked up. Yes, but that wasn't it either. It was,

"Okay."

Did he really feel okay?

No. He really felt fucked up. But he also felt okay. And if he said he felt fucked up, this guy would probably inject him with some neutralizing agent and as weird as the dream/hallucination had been earlier and as difficult as it was to keep breathing and talking now, he knew instinctively that this was better than the way he'd feel if said neutralizing agent were to enter into the situation.

"Good." The man's smile became nervous. "Your, ah, blood pressure dipped for a second there…but you seem to be okay now."

The way he was looking at House—was he asking for a medical opinion? He seemed to expect something.

"Yeah."

"Good."

Was that relief in his voice? What the hell?

Then the man began rambling. "We're currently experiencing a nursing shortage and our best GI doc is out of town, so I've made some calls to people in your neck of the woods and I imagine you'd be more comfortable surrounded by your people…"

House didn't like where this was going. This guy wanted to transfer him. Didn't this guy stop to consider that he'd come to this hospital instead of the one he worked at for a reason? Apparently he had not.

House tried to raise his head from the pillow to give extra weight to the objection he was trying to force out of his mouth, but dizziness overcame him and he sunk back without having moved much in the first place. The action went unnoticed. He felt like he was falling backward into a chasm of immense proportion.

"…so unless you have any objections we'll monitor your for a little while longer to be certain that you're stable and the transfer is all set."

Again, the man seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He wanted to object—no, he didn't want to be shoved into an ambulance and driven to a place he'd been careful to avoid this morning—but at the same time, if this mistake with painkiller dosage was indicative the level of care he was going to receive here, he might not make it upstairs alive. He was too tired to argue anyway—this guy would want to know why if he refused the transfer and he just didn't want to deal with that.

He mumbled something that sounded more like an assent than a dissent and was pleased when no one said anything else. All around him the air became quiet.

Was it Thursday? It felt like Thursday. Next time he was conscious enough, he'd tell Wilson to go home and get a life. He was fine. He just needed to sleep for a while. Everyone knew he didn't sleep enough. Wouldn't this make them happy?

Limboing between waking and sleep, he dreamed again that Stacy was talking to him from just beyond his right shoulder, telling him he'd be okay and crying and choking, and the vision of blood he beheld this time was his own running rancid with the poisons of decaying muscle. He watched chunks of protein clog his own blood vessels and he felt like vomiting. He was horrified. This couldn't be happening again. It couldn't be happening again. Stacy was still crying, begging him to reconsider. Reconsider what? He couldn't remember. He couldn't speak. Everything seemed wrong. But he couldn't change it.