DARKENED WINGS

Chapter 35

"Encore"

A MESSAGE FOR THE READERS From Betz88:

THIS ISN'T PART OF THE LAST CHAPTER, BUT I WANTED TO WRAP THINGS UP BY THANKING THOSE WHO READ THIS STORY THROUGH AND HONORED IT WITH SUCH POSITIVE COMMENTS. I WANTED TO TELL YOU THE REAL NAMES OF THE 'CALLOWAY BROTHERS', AND LET YOU IN ON THE JOKE:

GREGORY HOUSE AND JAMES WILSON. YEAH, REALLY!

I'M SURE I'VE TOLD YOU THAT I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE ART OF MEDICINE, ALTHOUGH MY RESEARCH FOR THIS STORY HAS FILLED ITS OWN LOOSE-LEAF NOTEBOOK. (THERE IS SO MUCH OUTTHERE ABOUT AMPUTATION. I COULDN'T BEGIN TO ABSORB IT ALL!)

I REALLY DO WANT TO GIVE A SHOUTOUT TO "HARPOMARX" … MANY OF YOU KNOW WHO SHE IS … FOR LENDING A SOLUTION TO A "LEG" PROBLEM.

SO. THE PLAY HAS ENDED AND THE CURTAIN HAS COME DOWN. BUT THE MUSIC BOX PLAYS ON. HERE IS THE REST OF THE STORY:

Time, they say, is capable of folding in on itself, thereby creating a vortex that will allow a physical body to go backward in time and relive part, or all, of a misspent life and make things right that once went wrong. I heard that somewhere, but I don't believe it. It might have worked for two guys named Beckett and Calavicci, but there's no proof.

Actually, I believe that if you just let time alone, it will level itself out and correct things that went wrong and reverse the bad stuff by allowing those who lived it to set it straight again, if they're so inclined. That way, time won't have to mess around folding in … or out … or around … itself.

So I heard. But I could be wrong.

Kyle and Kent Calloway left Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in January and moved together into Kyle's little four-room apartment in Etna, New Hampshire.

They had always known, together and separately, that they were better off together than they ever were separately. Conundrum? Yeah, but it made sense somehow. The time they'd spent apart from one another had been desperately lonely for both. Neither man ever wanted to be alone again, and there was only one solution to the puzzle: each other.

One of them planted a needle in a haystack, trusting that the other one would feed the hay to horses until he came upon the needle laying there sparkling on the ground. Then he would reach down, pick up the needle, and quickly thread it and follow the thread until it led straight to the whereabouts of the other.

They finally got it into their thick skulls that they were soul mates: the most important persons in each other's lives. Ever. Always had been, always would be. Period. Paragraph.

And that's how it worked out.

I TOLD MY FRIEND THAT I REALLY DID NOT WISH TO SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE AS 'KENT CALLOWAY'. KENT CALLOWAY NEVER EXISTED, AND I NEVER CHANGED MY NAME TO KENT CALLOWAY LEGALLY. THAT'S WHY I DRIVE AROUND WITH A LAUNDRY BAG FULL OF CASH UNDER THE SPARE TIRE OF MY CAR. I MIGHT HAVE TO MASQUERADE AS KENT CALLOWAY FOR QUITE SOME TIME, AND I COULDN'T BE KENT CALLOWAY AND USE CREDIT CARDS ISSUED TO SOMEONE NAMED JAMES WILSON.

'Kyle Calloway', however, did exist once; early in my life. He was never much of a friend. He was part of an experience from my kidhood that I'd rather leave back in history where it belongs. But I did tell my best friend about Kyle, and he was the only person I ever did tell.

My friend used Kyle for a purpose I would never have thought of, and it brought us together after a long time apart. My friend told me once that he could do without Kyle Calloway … and yet he actually did change his name to Kyle Calloway for the sole reason that I might come across it and track down the real person who had changed his name to Kyle Calloway just to lure me in. (Deep breath …) It worked.

Are you with me so far?

Well, the due process of changing one's name legally is almost as tiresome as waiting for a customized prosthetic leg to be manufactured to spec by Guian-Kanu Electronics Company in Los Angeles, California; about as far away from Etna, New Hampshire as you can get without crossing over a lot of water.

But that's not the point. 'Kyle Calloway' wasn't sure he wanted to change his name back to his real name, because he had that black cloud hanging over his head. As far as he knew, there was still an outstanding warrant out there for his arrest on a number of nuisance complaints. He'd been threatened with imprisonment once on a slew of trumped-up charges and fled to some island in Never-Never Land. He'd sneaked back home for treatment of a badly injured leg, and been told he had to serve out the sentence … to be locked up and abused by galoots.

He ran. (Well … limped.)

Did he really want to be Gregory House, the inmate? Hell no!

Then, 'Kent Calloway', alias James Wilson, looked up the case that still rested in the dusty police archives of Newark, New Jersey and Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. The case had been dropped years before due to lack of witnesses and lack of evidence. End of story.

Or it should have been.

'Kyle Calloway' alias Gregory House, finally petitioned to get back his birth name.

And we waited.

Yep. Us.

Wilson and House, House and Wilson: The Bobbsey Twins of PPTH.

Ironic, huh?

His wheelchair arrived by messenger van the day after he was discharged from DHMC. He began exercising his leg and his stump the same day. Did pull-ups in the bathroom 'til the pipes rattled, and leg-lifts in the bed until I had to change the sheets and straighten the mattress. He clomped around with the 'G.I. Joe leg' once a day until his sore wrist slowed him down and he had to change from ice-pak to heating pad just to keep moving.

Sometimes I would prop his crutches outside the front door so he couldn't find them. Just to force him to rest. Sometimes he would be so exhausted that he would take to the wheelchair for hours at a time.

He was impatient on both counts: the new leg and the name-change papers.

Killing himself by degrees didn't make time move any faster, and I wasn't comfortable with time-warping.

Gradually he found a way to make time for things as they came and stopped trying to force changes that couldn't be changed. His old version of the Serenity Prayer wouldn't work anymore: ("God grant me the balls to change the things I can't accept, and the strength to deck anybody who doesn't do stuff my way.")

He began to take pride in his appearance again. The neat beard and mustache took shape on his face and filled in the lines that had once screamed "pain". His hair grew longer and curled delicately about his ears. The facial bruises paled and his skin became tanned from being outdoors in the sun. His wrist returned to its full strength. He got out all his blue jeans and wore them with the right pant leg tied in a knot below the knee. He only used the cutoffs when clumping around in the sunshine with G. I. Joe.

He got his desktop out and began to work on the second Diagnostics book.

We got word from Ed Thoreau that an "autopsy" had been conducted on the crippled leg taken from "Kyle Calloway". Its blood vessels were clogged with plaque that restricted blood flow. Further examination had uncovered two small tumors forming near the foot and two more just above the knee. He had been divested of it at exactly the right time. It had gone into the furnace two weeks before.

"It wouldn't have worked out with you being my brother," House teased one night after we'd come back home from an excellent dinner at the Inn.

"Not much family resemblance," I agreed.

He shrugged. "Or we could've said: 'Same dad, different moms'."

"One Jew, One Gentile, huh?"

"Yeah … like Mary and Joseph! Never mind. It just wouldn't've worked."

He was hem-hawing around for some reason. I got in his face and demanded that he say what he thought; what he meant.

He shrugged again. "I been thinkin' … there's some stuff we've got to iron out."

"I'm listening."

"This place is too small."

"Uh … I don't think I can move out yet. You still need help. You can't stay here by yourself, and I …"

"Wilson!"

It seemed awkward, all of a sudden, to be yelled at with my real name. I stared at him.

"I don't want you to move out, dammit. I don't ever want you to move out. Don't you get it? I don't want to be without you. Ever again. Do you want me to explain it to you in more graphic detail? I will, if that's what you need."

"I … I …" I felt embarrassed and incoherent. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"I don't know! What do you think I'm saying?"

He hurried on without giving me a chance to answer. "Wilson, this place is too damned small."

"Are you asking me for an answer to the problem?"

"No. I have the answer."

"Well for God's sake, man, spit it out!"

"I'm going to put it up for sale. Add another garage in the back and sell the whole she-bang."

"And you're going to live … ? Where?"

"Someplace of our choosing."

"'Our?'"

"Yup. You and me. Always been you and me, Wilson. Even when it wasn't. Even those five years when we never laid eyes on each other … when we blamed each other for stuff that didn't mean crap. When we finally got sick of it and moved on. I remembered the stuff you said to me, and the times you tried so hard to save me from myself. But it turned out wrong and things blew up. I guess that's why I left town and never told anybody I was going. I took a long hard look at who I was, and tried to fix it. I fixed some of it, but I still have to fill in the rest.

"Remember when you told me I needed to tell you I'd be there for you? Well, I might not have been there for you all the time then … but I'm here now, and nothing's gonna change that.

"Remember when you said I needed to tell you your life was worthwhile?

"Well, it was. And it is.

"And you wanted me to tell you I loved you?

"Well I did. I do. I always have. There!

"Now I'm telling you we need to put this place on the market and look for something bigger. Give us something to do until all the thumb twiddling is done. I want something with an indoor pool. Maybe a room with exercise equipment. Doesn't have to be a mansion. Nice place in the country somewhere close to work.

"Open concept for the nights when I'm tired and sore and need to use the wheelchair instead of the 'Calloway Leg'. A big kitchen that we can work in together. A place where you can hang all your movie posters, and a seating area with a TV where we can lounge around in our underwear and drink beer and eat pizza and watch old movies. Just not old Christmas movies!

Room enough to give my mom's piano a place of honor. I might even play it sometimes. Nice bedrooms with big beds and places to put the stuff we love.

"Oh yeah, by the way, you're now on the oncology team at DHMC if you want it. If you'd rather switch to something else, Ed'll take care of it. Or if you want to go out and sell paintings on street corners, I'm okay with that too.

"Are you up for any of that, Wilson? If you have another idea, I want to hear it. I'm not the boss of this. We have to do it together …"

For long moments I was silent. My head spun. He had just calmly said to me all the things I had wanted to hear for an uncounted number of years. Overwhelmed, I dropped my eyes and took a deep breath.

I talked him out of his obviously well-thought-out plan with one simple question:

"Why can't we have both?

"You bought that apartment and turned it into a place that accommodates disabled people. That was extraordinary. If you sell it, it's liable to be turned into condos for people with lots of money. Why don't you keep it? Run it. Move out and rent your apartment to another disabled person. You'd probably make a pretty decent landlord.

"Just an idea …

"And by the way, there's a farm for sale on the back road to Lebanon. Maybe we could go have a look at it sometime. And yeah … I'd love to be an Oncologist again. I wouldn't be very good as a painter. And also … I love you too. Always did. Always will."

His change-of-name papers arrived the first of March. He looked through them, shrugged, and tossed them aside. Never to see the light of day again.

(Why wasn't I surprised?)

"Now I gotta go through all the crap of changing my drivers' license, my car registration, my post office address, my home address, all my credit cards, my insurance papers … ah shit."

(And on and on and on …. into the middle of the night.)

Two weeks later we got a call from Ed Thoreau:

"We have a large box here from L.A. We were wondering if you gentlemen might have time to come in to the clinic this afternoon for a fitting and a brief run-through … and afterward, maybe a celebratory meal at the Watson Inn?"

Ed closed his phone with a snap because of the whooping and hollering on the other end of the line.

He was laughing his ass off.

"I knew who you were from the git-go, Big Guy," Thoreau said as he inserted Gregory House's healed stump into the specifically fit cup of the sophisticated-looking titanium leg. "Just because you showed up here with a pretty face and bright red crutches, you didn't fool me for a minute. I'd already read all your books and studied your articles in JAMA. And talking to you for five minutes in my office sealed the deal."

Across the room, Joe Garrett was removing the protective plastic cover from the wide-gray-band's control module. That piece had been made specifically for Kyle Calloway of Etna, New Hampshire, and that name was embossed on the inside of the band. Its serial number was "ONE".

Greg was perched on the edge of a gurney in one of the rooms he'd passed, supine, on the way to the operating theatre. Somehow it looked a lot different from an upright perspective.

James Wilson sat on a stool in the opposite corner, watching closely. His eyes were a little more shiny than usual, and he held onto the edge of the stool as though to move an inch would have thrown him to the floor.

Hazel Braddock stood beside him, hugging his shoulders and muttering to herself: "James Wilson and Gregory House. I don't believe it!"

Joe walked up to Gregory-House-Kyle-Calloway and passed the control band to Ed Thoreau. House, for the moment, in his underwear of course, (he was used to it by now), balanced on his crutches nervously.

Thoreau seated the band into position and clicked the contacts together. The red indicator light blinked on and off a moment, and then glowed steady. A series of clicks and whirrs began the short sequence to activation. House's body stiffened as he felt the jolt of ticklish power.

Ed held out a hand in caution. "This unit is not at all like the last one. Take just a few steps with the crutches until you're sure of your balance. You use the crutches for a week. When you've practiced with them and learned how to maneuver, you can switch to a cane. After another week … if you can walk with confidence and there is no residual pain, then try it without the cane. Don't push it … and don't get impatient. You may experience additional phantom pain for a while, but it should disappear quickly.

"Have Kent … uh … sorry … James … walk with you as a safety precaution. I want you back here for a checkup in exactly one month. May tenth. Mark it on your calendar. If you're good to go, then your butt is finished loafing and I'll expect you … both of you back to the daily grind!

"Walk!"

Greg walked. Slowly at first. Placing the crutches carefully, finding a balance with a limb that worked.

The new leg was quiet. No buzzes, clicks or whirrings. It didn't make a sound. It was the same color as Gregory House's other leg. No one would know he wore a prosthetic unless he walked around in a bikini and someone saw the wide gray band with the tiny red light. Even then, they still wouldn't believe it. What they would believe was that it was part of a new fad … and soon everybody would walk around with a gray band around their thighs … a gray band with a little red light.

He was cautious. Even a marvelous leg like this did not afford him sensation in foot or knee or in any area above that, except where his stump met the junction of body-to-metal. He had to get used to that. He had to learn to walk by instinct and trust the prosthesis to support his weight in a natural manner so he could avoid watching the ground instead of where he was going. This was very different. He had to adapt. The leg would tire him out, and he had to accept that reality also.

He was on his crutches, but walking at last, when they all went for dinner at the Watson Inn. Ed Thoreau, Joe Garrett, Hazel Braddock, Greg House and James Wilson. They were served by Lily Chamberlin and Jake Wills and Joey Brown, who still had a tendency to call them 'The Calloway Brothers'. But it was okay. The circle was unbroken.

I'VE BEEN WATCHING HIM EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS NOW. I'VE SMILED AND I'VE LAUGHED AND I'VE WIPED TEARS FROM MY EYES WHILE HIS BACK WAS TURNED. HE FINALLY PUT THE CRUTCHES AGAINST THE WALL BESIDE THE BED WHERE THEY'D BE HANDY WHEN HE WAS ESPECIALLY TIRED, OR WHEN HE NEEDED 'EM AT NIGHT.

FOR A WHILE HE USED A CANE. A FANCY BROWN ONE WITH A DERBY HANDLE AND A GOLD BAND NEAR THE TOP. I REMEMBER HE HAD A COUPLE OF THOSE, WAY BACK WHEN. THEN HE PUT THOSE AWAY TOO. FAR AWAY. HE LEFT THEM AT THE ETNA APARTMENT BUILDING, WHICH NOW HAS FOUR TENANTS AND A NEW GARAGE-STORAGE SPACE OUT BACK.

HE HAS MORE PATIENCE NOW THAN HE EVER HAD BEFORE. HE'S CHANGING A LITTLE EVERY DAY, AND I KEEP PINCHING MYSELF TO PROVE I'M NOT LIVING WITH A DOPPLEGANGER. I'M CHANGING TOO, BECAUSE HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO IS WORKING AT BECOMING THE PERSON HE WANTS TO BE. HE SMILES A LOT MORE, AND I'M BEGINNING TO BELIEVE HE MIGHT EVEN BE HAPPY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE. I LOVE HIM UNCONDITIONALLY, JUST AS I DID ALL THOSE YEARS AGO, WHEN EVERYTHING I DID TO TRY TO HELP ONLY MADE THINGS WORSE. THANK GOD, I'M FINALLY GETTING OLDER AND WISER. WE BOTH ARE.

We bought that small farm near Lebanon and remodeled the house ourselves. It took a long time. A year. It's backed up against a green hillside where the trees hug the house like the Jolly Green Giant would hug his own child. We ride to work together every day. I still have the VW and he still has that damn old Dynasty. They're parked together in the barn. It's kind of like having pictures of both our mothers on the piano …

But there's a brand new SUV in the driveway that's equipped with hand controls. Those are the only remaining testaments to his disability. Except when he uses the wheelchair or crutches in the house in the evenings.

He has found that it is a chore, this whole idea of walking with a prosthetic leg. Even now it makes him weary after a long day at work, travelling the hallways and corridors and checking on patients and tests and conferring with colleagues. He doesn't mind consulting now, and his contemporaries seem to like conferring and joking with him. He smiles more because he doesn't do clinic and neither do I. We are specialists and Ed has other doctors to attend to walk-ins.

We are both tired when we come home, sometimes late in the evening. He heads for the bedroom, removes the leg and hits the wheelchair. He cleans and lubricates the leg and tends to his stump. Sometimes I give him back massages because he is still finding his way with this whole new method of existence. He has mellowed. Is mellowing. We find that we are happy with this new, modern hospital, this new town, this new life.

The second bedroom has become the guest room. We sleep together in the larger one. It just feels right. We spent too many years kidding ourselves, and the truth is much easier to accommodate.

We're both better doctors now than we've ever been. I'm less of a nagger; learning the art of quiet support. He's gentle, caring; sometimes even soft-spoken. A gentle doctor with a stroke of genius: picture that in the persona of Gregory House. I am constantly astounded, and it's an embarrassment of riches. Sometimes I miss the acerbic misanthrope he used to be. But I can tease it back if I want to, if I pick at him long enough.

Sometimes in the evenings he plays the piano. We have friends in, and he's no longer nervous about people seeing him on crutches or in a wheelchair. No one stares at him in pity, and no one patronizes him. (Ed Thoreau tells him to get-the-hell up and go get his own damn beer!)

When House talks about Monster Trucks, Ed's fourteen-year-old son, Jerry, is all ears. Joann Thoreau gets on with Hazel Braddock as though they've known each other all their lives. In a past life, maybe they have.

Things are beginning to level out. There are no more instances of drug-induced blackouts; no more panicked trips to the hospital with House moaning in pain in the seat beside me. When there is pain, it's only the physical complaints of two older men who are learning the complexities of advanced middle age. We can handle it.

Life isn't a charade anymore, because we've moved out of the darkened wings. We're very good together, because we work at it. We take nothing for granted and I've never been so close to real contentment as I am now.

I had always thought that the measure of a man lay in his marriage with a good woman. But that's not necessarily true. I've finally discovered that a good man sometimes fills the bill even better.

'The play is the thing' and it has earned rave reviews.

I came inside awhile ago to get supper started.

He'll be in shortly.

Right now, he's outside somewhere nearby …

In the sun.

Jogging.

******** THE END ********

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