Author's Note: I've been really busy (finals, etc.) these past couple weeks, so I haven't updated. MJ—sorry about the screwed up facts, I started watching House late, thus I didn't see Cursed. Thanks for correcting me, though.
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
The door he stood in front of was painfully average and that's what hurt him the most. The knob was a fake gold—it was tarnishing, showing the silver that lay beneath. He could feel his leg start to twinge as he realized he had been leaning on it for a few minutes longer than it could hold. He shifted his weight back to the cane and his other leg, allowing relief to materialize briefly as he reached for the Vicodin. What pained him the most, though, was the fact that Allison Cameron lived behind this average white door and she was not an average woman.
And Cory Lind had not been the average man, he remembered. Today had not been an average day. People died (not unusual—he worked at a hospital), people fell in love, and babies were born (he had to throw that in—the inevitable certainties of life.)
He walked in because he needed Wilson. But Wilson left abruptly with a sigh. House cursed silently at Wilson's abrupt departure and looked at the man on the bed. He was shriveled—he looked small, but House's eyes were drawn to the blue specks emanating from the wrinkled face.
"I've been waiting."
"For what?"
"For whom. I've been waiting for you."
"You're not my case."
"You're sicker than I."
House heard the sound of John Lennon floating through the space between the door and the floor. Imagine somersaulted, waltzed, and leaped through the air to reach his ears. He leaned his head against the door; he told himself he was listening to the music, when he was really listening to her.
"I lied to myself, too. Love is funny, you know. It's a concept—it's intangible, different for every person. Love—"
"Is a waste of time, as this little charade is also quickly becoming."
"—Love is an idea, and I can say, minutes before I die, that I am firmly enamored by love."
Lind's blue eyes had twinkled and he coughed several times. House made no move to offer him water or to help him.
"Five years—get over the wounds. Soul mates come and soul mates go. We settle for the best we can. Fate plays with our minds and drives us to insanity if we let it. I've fought with it for too long now—it's finally caught up to me."
House contemplated his options as his head lay against the door. Leave and keep his reputation in tact or stay and make a fool out of himself. Easy the choice seemed, but the romantic inside was not going down without a fair say in the issue before him.
"I'm going to die."
House had cringed inwardly at Lind's blatantly morbid statement. The time of the comment was 5:45.
House heard the glass shatter inside the apartment. He strained to listen, but he was almost sure that a woman had also screamed. House started knocking on the door as a reaction; screaming women meant trouble. He banged with his fists. No one answered.
"My time of death will be at 5:50."
House had watched as Lind's body started to quickly deteriorate. House remembered looking at the time—5:48.
No one was answering the door, so House banged on it with his cane. If this didn't get her attention then he didn't know what would. When he gained no response from the pounding, he did the next best thing. He searched for a key.
"You're a good man, Dr. House, but a dying one."
There was a table nearby, for decorative purposes, he assumed. He clawed through the fake flowers in the fake Ming vase. He found no key, but his eye did catch on something nearby. It was a little line in the wood. He ran his fingers over it and knocked on the polished top. It was hollow. He pressed down on the lined spot, and it sprung open. There was a key to an apartment. House grabbed and prayed on Lind's dead body that he had the right one.
Cory Lind's eyes had been the last part of him to die. Even as the rest of his body shut down, his eyes sparkled vividly, fighting against the oncoming inevitable infinity. House knew that a dying man was more alive than any of the people who had recently paid visits to him.
The key fit into Cameron's lock and he opened the door. Her apartment was dark except for a light shining from what he presumed to be the kitchen. He limped as fast as his leg would let him to the kitchen where he found Cameron curled up in a ball, blood from her finger leaving a red trail on the yellowed flowers she clutched.
"Jesus, Cameron. Get up."
"Go away."
House stood straighter.
"Goodbye."
Lind's last words were gasped out and his blue eyes closed. The end had come; death had been gentle. House had not moved to save a patient. He had stood and not uttered a sarcastic comment; he let the silence stifle the life out of the man. He had moved to Lind's medical chart and wrote the time of death: 5:50.
"You're bleeding."
"No shit, Sherlock."
"Cameron, get your ass off the floor, you self-pitying moron. How old is that flower?"
"Twenty years. Get out of my house you crippled bastard."
"You saw Lind, too."
"I saw her. Yes…yeah, I did."
"Her?"
"Yes. Cory Lind, female, 45," Cameron told him as she started to pull herself up into a sitting position.
"Really?"
She shot him a look and he grabbed the cloth that was lying on the counter. He let himself fall to the floor next to her.
"Here."
He took her finger and wrapped the cloth around it. She watched as he worked.
"Thank you," she whispered.
And there they sat, among the shattered glass, among the shattered remains of their lives. Both were thinking of Cory Lind. Cameron closed her eyes first and House watched her rhythmic breath. Her breathing lulled him into a lucid state. He couldn't fall asleep, though. A small discrepancy bothered him—
Cameron thought Lind was a girl.
The next day, when he arrived at the hospital, he checked the records for a patient with the name Cory Lind. Much to his surprise, he learned that Cory Lind had never been admitted to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
So, at the end, I hark back to the beginning. If I see blue, do you see blue? Can't you see red? If I see something that you don't, does it exist? Six doctors—relatively sane—saw six different patients in Cory Lind. Six different patients—four males, and two females. Some were African-Americans; some were Caucasian. Some were young; some were old. Each doctor saw a different patient—a different color.
Did this patient exist? On the day of Cory Lind's death, there certainly was a patient going by the name of Lind. Yes, the person existed enough to make six people question themselves.
Chase saw a man badly beaten by the trials of paternal alcoholism. Foreman found a hardened, successful man who came back from the dredges of society. Cameron witnessed a woman hurt by love. Cuddy observed a woman suffocated by society's demands. Wilson remembered old secrets and forgotten loves when he talked with Lind. And House saw blue eyes much more alive than his.
They saw what they wanted in Cory Lind. They saw what the needed. They picked their favorite color in the rainbow and chose to see that one in the gray.
House was right—they were more damaged than any of them could ever imagine.
