Lying on her back and keeping her leg straight, Rainie tried to lift her right leg up. In theory, she was supposed to be able to lift it about a foot up off the bed and hold it there for ten seconds and then gently set it down. In practice, she could barely lift it at all, lucky if it raised an inch, and it hurt like hell just doing that much.
She tried again. A little better this time.
"You're doing fine," said Claudia DuBois, the physical therapist du jour. "Try it one more time, and then we'll move on."
With a grunt, Rainie strained to lift the leg. It went higher this time. Her stomach muscles quivered as she tried to hold the leg in the air. She lasted about four seconds before the leg crashed back down on the bed.
"Who'd have thought something so simple would be so hard?" she panted, out of breath.
"I know," said DuBois sympathetically. "We've got to strengthen those muscles. Next time, I want you to try to raise and lower it slowly—better workout for the muscles. Now roll over on your stomach."
It took an effort, but eventually Rainie was able to roll over.
"Now, lift your leg back and hold for a count of ten," said DuBois. "Same routine, and then we'll try the side."
Once her exertions were completed Claudia DuBois gave Rainie a massage, followed by heat and ice. At the end of every session, Rainie was so exhausted, she slept for an hour or so.
After that horrific night, Evan struggled with himself. His instinct was flight, to get as far away from those painful thoughts as he could. But the caring, reasoning part of him knew he couldn't do that and live with himself later. So he began coming to the duplex more often, instead of less, and on his own did a lot of research into PTSD treatments, trying anxiously to prepare himself for whatever might come.
When, on a Thursday morning, as he sat at his desk at work, he got a call from Jacey Liu, he was surprised.
"Evan, it's Jacey Liu, Rainie's psychotherapist."
"Hi. What can I do for you?"
"It occurred to me the other day that perhaps you and James Wilson might be interested in setting up some sessions to talk about your roles as friends and caregivers for Greg and Rainie. I've already talked to Dr. Wilson, and he suggested next Wednesday at two in my office at the hospital."
Interested? Hell, yes. Evan was a firm believer in becoming as educated and as prepared as possible in every situation. Nothing would please him more right now than to be able to pick Wilson's brain for a while. And being able to talk about his own feelings might not be a bad idea either.
"Good," said Jacey. "Next Wednesday then."
When Rainie came through the door of House's room, she found him sitting up in bed, a breakfast tray perched high over his legs, his laptop on the tray, tapping away at the keyboard.
"What's up?" she asked.
"Email from Chase about a case," he said, not elaborating.
As a working journalist, she knew nothing was more disruptive to the writing process than conversation. She waited until he was finished before speaking.
"You'll be going back to work soon, won't you?"
He looked thoughtful.
"Probably," he said. "Part time. Will that be a problem for you?"
Now she looked thoughtful.
"No… no. I think it's good. You need to get back to work, and I guess I need time to myself to figure some things out."
What she really meant was time to think when House's intoxicating presence didn't overwhelm her.
"So it's good?" said House, glancing at her briefly as he sent his email to the printer on his dresser.
"Yes, it's good."
Jacey Liu had been right. The nightmares got worse, and the flashbacks got worse. As the weeks went by, both of her patients were increasingly agitated and upset. Although she had prescribed paroxetine for their depression and anxiety, and clonidine for their nightmares and sleep problems, both House and Rainie remained angry and frightened and skittish and depressed.
But they were going to talk about it, whether they wanted to or not. And once they'd talked about it, she would help them learn coping techniques.
For now, Jacey decided to bring her two patients together for group therapy, especially as she'd had no particular luck with them individually. It was a very small group—just the two of them—but their experiences and their reactions were so similar, perhaps in a directed group, they could help each other as much as they seemed to be doing one on one through their everyday interactions.
The problem was, they weren't buying it.
"No," said Rainie.
"Not a chance," said House.
But Jacey Liu was adamant.
"We're doing this now. It's time," she said firmly. "You can't keep putting it off."
The first session began awkwardly, with resistance from both of her patients.
"Do you have any idea how much I hate this crap?" said House, belligerently. "Do you really think that dredging up all of this…" He gestured, as if the past were laid out in front of him on the coffee table. "…is going to do anything except upset us?"
Jacey let him vent, and then went ahead anyway.
"I know it's uncomfortable, and I know it's painful," she said. "But I also know it works, whether you want to believe it or not, so we're going ahead."
She started slowly, asking them to talk about the first moments when they realized something was very wrong, when Thompson's evil first entered their lives.
"I'm not doing this," said a petulant House, turning his body away from her so that it nearly faced Rainie on the other side of him on the sofa.
Jacey wondered if House's refusal would affect Rainie's willingness to talk.
Her other patient sat quietly, thinking it through.
"I am," said Rainie, finally. "I don't want to—I'm literally terrified—but if I can't explore it here, with two people I trust, I may never be able to."
House looked at her.
"Are you sure?" he asked, genuinely baffled. "Why would you want to put yourself through this? You know we're never going to get over it, never going to recover from it."
She waited a moment before responding.
"Maybe not," she said. "But we're thinking about it anyway, all the time. We're having flashbacks and nightmares. We're afraid to go outside. We're terrified when we hear loud noises or if someone moves too quickly. If it's going to affect the rest of my life, then at least I'd like to have as much control over it as I can. If I choose to talk about it here, with you, then I'm controlling it. And I really need to have some kind of control."
House stared at her for a very long time. Then he gave a quick nod in that abrupt way he had of acknowledging when someone else's argument had convinced him.
"Fair enough," he said.
Good, thought Jacey.
Taking a deep breath and looking down toward the floor, Rainie began.
"It started a couple of weeks after I realized what was actually going on."
Jacey wasn't sure what she meant. "Could you explain?" she asked.
"Yes, sorry. I'd been doing research on Greg's case for about a month when I suddenly figured out…" She exhaled slowly and tried again, more detached this time. "The man I was researching, Greg House, was supposed to have gone insane and killed one of his employees."
She looked at House and their eyes met.
"But the facts didn't add up. It just didn't make sense. One night, I had an epiphany. I realized he couldn't possibly have gone insane. He had to have been abused. Some kind of horrific abuse had brought him to that moment when Dr. Cameron was killed."
Jacey glanced over at House, who was looking intently at Rainie with a startled expression on his face.
Rainie went on.
"It was apparent to me that whoever was abusing him must also be holding something over his head. Otherwise why would he have remained silent about it, even through Dr. Cameron's murder and his own imprisonment? If I was right—and I was sure I was—if he was the victim of that kind of abuse and being threatened in that way, I knew he couldn't have killed Dr. Cameron either."
House felt his stomach drop.
"How did you know? How did you figure it out?" he asked, his raspy voice a whisper. How could this woman—who hadn't even known him then—see what people who had worked with him for years couldn't see?
She swallowed before answering.
"I just knew," she said, shrugging her shoulders, recalling the epiphany she'd had that night in the newsroom. "Nothing else fit the facts. It had to be abuse."
As they sat quietly for a moment, she looked at him compassionately, then picked up where she left off, in the same detached tone of voice.
"After I figured it out, I felt compelled to find out who was abusing him, and why. Who could hate him enough to murder someone else and allow him to be imprisoned for the crime? I delved into his case files, looking for an answer. By then, I knew he'd been rude to patients, offended other physicians, and over the years had alienated a lot of people. I also know he was in constant pain and was considered a drug addict by some.
She kept her eyes away from House, talking about him as if he were a case file and not sitting next to her on the couch.
"But I also knew from talking to a lot of his patients that he would do anything, even if it bordered on the illegal, to save them. A man like that couldn't have intentionally killed anyone else."
She spoke unemotionally, as if reciting from memory.
"Once I realized he had to be innocent, I had to find out what had happened—who could have done such a terrible thing to this man? It became a puzzle I just had to solve. I knew the person I was looking for not only had a grudge, but also had to be seriously unhinged, and almost definitely wealthy and powerful."
The elephant sitting on House's chest was particularly heavy today; he couldn't breathe. Rainie's dispassionate description of how she solved the mystery of his case engulfed him. While he was wrestling with his feelings, she continued.
"I reviewed every case, and I couldn't find anyone who fit my criteria. Finally, it dawned on me. What if it wasn't one of his former patients?"
Jacey heard a sharp intake of breath from House. She avoided looking at him, but she knew Rainie had his complete attention.
"So I started looking through cases that had been referred to him, ones he had refused to take, thinking his refusal might be the cause for the grudge. Eventually, I came across the file for Robert Thompson's daughter."
Her voice grew quieter as her story became more personal.
"The next day, I called Thompson, and told him I was working on a story about the House case. Something in his reaction… made me think he might be the one. I-I don't think I gave anything away, don't think I said anything about trying to exonerate Greg, but it didn't matter. The man was insane.
"A few days later, as I left the front of the Times building, a man came up to me on the sidewalk. He knew who I was. On 43rd Street, anything can happen and no one will notice, and no one did. In a very conversational tone, he said that if I wanted my daughter... to stay alive… oh, God...!" A crack in the armor. "…I'd better come with him and do what he told me to do… and drop my investigation of the House case."
She paused, realizing she was headed into dangerous territory.
"He and a couple of others took me to a warehouse in Jersey…"
Jacey heard another gasp from House.
"They explained to me exactly what they were going to do. That if I wanted… Jeff and …Evie… to be safe, I would have to agree to… their terms… They showed me the contract."
A long pause.
"I signed it."
It was getting harder and harder for Rainie to talk, her words jutting out around short breaths.
"That first day…" She drifted off into memory, the present fading away as the past took over.
"Go on," said Jacey, softly. "What happened that first day?"
Rainie glanced up, then looked away again. She took a few deep breaths, trying to settle herself down before continuing.
"…All of a sudden… one of the men hit me hard in the face. I landed on the cement floor. They… they yanked me up, and dragged me toward a table…"
Suddenly, Jacey heard House's voice, speaking urgently in a tone she hadn't heard before.
"No, don't," he said tersely to Jacey. "Don't make her tell this part."
Jacey searched his face. He obviously knew what came next. Either he was trying to protect Rainie from her painful memories, or himself from having to be reminded of his own.
"Rainie?" she said. "Do you want to stop now?"
Rainie said nothing, just continued to stare. Finally, she shook her head.
"No. I'll go on."
She paused again, swallowing and blinking a few times before she spoke.
"…The table… had rings drilled into it… it seems so ludicrous to say it… as if it were a cheesy horror film… they… they chained me to it, face up. I remember one of them saying, 'Smile for the camera,' forcing my head toward a… oh, fucking Jesus!" She closed her eyes and choked back a sob. After a long pause, she continued, her voice growing quieter until it faded away. "…a camera on the wall… they lifted my skirt... and then one by one they… raped me… all three of them… raped me…"
It was too much. Her chest began heaving with sobs, as she dropped her face into her lap.
Jacey looked up at House. His eyes were bottomless blue wounds, looking just as they'd looked the day he'd cried with Rainie all those weeks ago in the hospital. His breathing was short, as if he couldn't quite catch his breath.
She knew, he thought, devastated. She figured out what happened to me. She knew. She had to have known that solving my puzzle was dangerous… could lead her into the same lair… and still she went forward with it. It cost her everything to try to help me… And still she did it…
Rainie couldn't go on, and, after looking at House, Jacey decided to let his story wait for another session.
"You're safe now, Rainie. Here, with us, you're safe," was all she said.
