This is a short chapter but I just gave you a very long one so . . .
This is another special chapter in my heart as it was written awhile ago. And it also deals with what House is going through right now. Please enjoy reading and post a review. Thanks.
38 – "Confused and rejected, despised and alone, I kiss isolation on its fevered brow" – "The Web" – Marillion
The air in the darkened apartment felt cool to House's face as he took off his helmet and stepped inside. He had turned down the heat once he had decided to live with Wilson again so he was not uncomfortable leaving his jacket on.
He flipped the light switch and looked around. The first thing his eyes were drawn to was the piano, covered with a large white sheet to save it from dust. He limped over to the instrument and like a matador flourishing his cape, flung the sheet off in one smooth stroke, arching it high over his head and throwing it behind him.
He promptly sat down on the bench and began playing, bits of various pieces at first, then whole compositions as he allowed his feelings and the music to surge through him, sailing through his mind, flowing through his arms and released, finally, through his dancing fingertips. The music was bitter yet sweet, profane yet divine. God how he had missed this instrument! How the piano resonated so deeply with and through him, as if they were one. The joy and the agony of expressing himself through the music that filled his apartment and that filled him as well, if only while he was playing, only for that moment in time.
As the last notes faded from hearing, he felt the wetness on his cheeks. He hadn't even realized he'd been crying, so possessed was he by the familiar sound of the keys. House knew that he had cried more since his release from Mayfield than in the whole of the first 50 years of his life.
When was this going to end? How long would he have to suffer? At least with a terminal illness, you could estimate the patient's time until the end. It seemed to him now that the limited time allotted in those cases was a blessing, could somehow make the subject's suffering bearable because at least there was a definite end to it.
But to House, there was no time limit. His torture might well go on until the end of his life, whenever that would be. And that thought was making his current circumstances completely unendurable.
He almost screamed aloud at the next flare up from his leg. House realized he was sweating but not from exertion. He was experiencing the cold sweat of fear, that this pain in his right leg was as great as when it initially had the blood clot. The idea that he had another infarction in the same leg was staggeringly profound; the pain felt just as bad and if it was, indeed, a recurrence, there would be no saving the leg this time. It would have to be immediately amputated at the hip.
He stood up with a great deal of difficulty and slowly limped over to his closet. Upon opening the door, the shoe rack holding his plethora of running shoes met his pain-filled vision. His shaking hand reached up and took the shoe on the top far right out of its holder and turned it over. The expected amber, white-capped bottle fell into his upturned palm.
House shook the bottle, satisfied by its muted rattle that it was nearly full. He looked at the bottle of Vicodin in his outstretched hand for some time, his old enemy, his old friend. He knew this was all life would allow him, temporary comfort, temporary relief, just like the music until it stopped. Just like his diagnostic cases until one went south. Just like Cuddy who had rejected him. And just like Cameron who had left him.
With that last thought, he popped the lid and raised the open bottle to his lips, not lowering it until every pill slid down his throat and he felt the empty bottle in his grasp.