Author's Note: I'm on a roll with this killing House thing.
Carrie's down in her basement all toe shoes and twinned
With the girl in the mirror who spins when she spins
From where you think you'll end up to the state that you're in
Your reflection approaches and then recedes again
--The Counting Crow's "St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream"
Conversations are sometimes filled with silence. Silence—the one thing people try to avoid with conversations (irony). Some people, though, find silence an amusing conversation within itself. So many intricacies fill the quiet—only the truly learned can every decipher them. Words have the power to destroy people, to conquer nations, and to capture the imagination, but sometimes the loudest conversation of all is the one spoken without words.
2
It had been a year and the day calendar in her room still read "Tuesday, June 8, 2004" on it. It was his Bush-isms calendar that he had brought over one day and never picked up again. She changed the days faithfully—with each rip of the paper she was reminded of the enticement of the coming night.
She had stopped ripping on the eighth, though, when Wilson called her from the hospital. His voice had been drawn, terse, and full of unshed tears.
Get down here quick, Allison. It's almost over.
She arrived as fast as she could and when she saw Wilson's face she knew it was over. She had collapsed in his arms, crying piteously over a man with whom she had just made love with for the first time. It was a butchered cliché she knew, but her heart broke into too many pieces.
A year had passed. She quit working as a doctor—too many dying people for her to stomach. She became a recluse. Her hobbies included watching the bills stack up, dodging tax collectors, and ignoring weekly knocks by Wilson on her door. Foreman, Chase, and Cuddy had given up after she hadn't returned their phone calls, but Wilson was steadfast in his determination to get her to open up the door.
She did go out. One needed food and other necessities. She did have a job—minimum wage at a CVS far enough out of town, so people she knew wouldn't see her. It paid the bills and kept her fed with a salad every night.
She barely troubled herself to shower anymore. Grief, she noted, took away the luxury of caring about oneself. She had experienced it before—with her husband—but this, this was something different. The build-up of scum, grease, and dirt on her body were the only things that propelled her to shower.
And now, it was Wednesday, June 8 (a year) and she was listening to Wilson knock on the door. She squeezed her eyes shut and looked at the pill bottle in her hand. She had found an old supply of his Vicodin while she had been cleaning yesterday. They were a good year and a half old—their job as a painkiller was diminished, but they most certainly could function as another killer.
She unscrewed the cap—damn Wilson and his pounding! She dropped several of the pills on the ground as her hand shook. The incessant knocking was too unnerving. He knew how to get to her—he knew today was going to be terrible.
"Go away!" She screamed with a ferocity that scared even her.
The knocking continued. She frantically emptied the bottle onto her hand. Sweat marred her normally pretty face. Her hair was pasted to her skin and the black sweater she wore was not conducive to keeping her cool in the June heat.
She wondered if this was how House felt when he stared at the pills. Confusion ran rampant through her brain as the booming bursts of noise coming from the knocks made her want to strangle Wilson. How hard could it be? She needed to take as many as she possibly could—end this strange, miserable life.
She contemplated Wilson as her hand moved closer to her mouth. She had not seen the man in a year. He had hugged her gently in the hospital (he was an excellent doctor—bedside manner one of the best in the business), and he offered her as much support as she needed. She hated herself because she didn't need to sap another man's strength—she didn't need to lose another man. The answer to all his offers were no.
She cried and berated herself (the hand moved closer). She had no right to grieve for him for this long. But it was a compounded sadness, she rationalized—her grieving period for her late husband had been short—two weeks. This was owed time.
The hand touched her lips. The pounding stopped and she instinctively dropped her hand. The tensing in her shoulders had stopped and her hand muscles had fallen limp. The rest of the pills scattered on the floor as she looked blankly after them. She stood up and was about to bend down to pick them up, take them, and end the deed, when she noticed a small breeze playing with her greasy hair. She swiveled around to find Wilson standing there. He had a beige windbreaker on, his hair was mussed, and he had a worried look on his face. She moved backwards like a trapped cat.
He didn't say anything, just moved to the floor where she had dropped all the Vicodin. He dropped to his knees and started by righting the bottle. He dropped each pill in one at a time. She bit her thumbnail and kept her arms snug around her body—defensive stance number one.
But she noticed something as she watched Wilson painstakingly pick up each painkiller. His agile hands dropped one in after another, but she couldn't help but notice the single drop of water that dropped from his eye after he finished picking them all up off the floor. He squatted and wiped gently at his eyes before turning to face her once again.
Words were simply superfluous—the look he gave her was so heartbreaking that defensive stance number one turned into God-I'm-so-sorry pose number three. His eyes said the words that he would never be able to say: they took my best friend away from me…please, don't let them take you, too.
He turned his head back to the floor and stood up slowly. He pocketed the bottle (for his own use?) and started to head for the door. She couldn't speak—her larynx refused.
She ran up to him and tapped him on the back. He turned around to look at her. She thrust her arms around his torso, buried her head into his nylon windbreaker, and started to cry. He breathed in the oils of her hair and let himself give into the pressures that had been boiling inside of him all day. He cried.
As she cried, she knew with a certain sense of finality the first thing she would do when she left the embrace with Wilson—
A calendar needed to be changed.