2b/2c
Day passes into night, passes into day. Sunrise, sunset; time marches on, he'd said. Time marches on. Except—

She's beginning to believe nothing ever changes.

It's doubt, the distinct, sadistic twist of déjà -vu creeping into her aching muscles that reminds her: it's all there, all familiar; she's done this before.

Her hands clutch at her elbows because she doesn't know what else to do with them. Fatigue nips at her calves. She contemplates sitting (sliding down in a boneless puddle against the wall behind her; screaming; throwing something through the safety glass window). However, a comfortable sort of paralysis has settled, quicksand in the marrow of her bones, so she remains as is.

And there's no comfort in the familiar; she has an inkling of how this will end. (All things lead from order to chaos, but she merely moves from one moment to other; Allison, forever stuck in entropy.) Like always, she's here and he's there.

On the other side. Partitioned behind inch-thick glass and wire filaments, a jumble of limbs — arms and legs sticking off the sides; each erratic, rapid beep of his heart rate monitor, the watery gurgles of his brand-new chest tube, making the muscles in her jaw flinch.

Hodges, she recognizes, Smith, Grabinski and a pair of eyes she can't place, working between (twisted, bloody) broken ribs, re-inflating his collapsed lung, meticulously reassembling all those bits and pieces and leftover parts, and despite that, despite everything, all she can think at the moment is you bastard.

How dare he. How dare he self-destruct, fall apart and still claim fucking superiority.

(But)

Prevarication is one of the things he's best at. (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and House.) And how pretty those lies are, each wrapped in a tidy little bow. How easily he wields verisimilitude like a bludgeon; his shield, his gospel.

Stay out. Stay away. Don't look too closely.

It's funny and it's sad and it's pathetic, she knows. She tries, but only ever stumbles, with her big, brave words that he probably hadn't even heard.

(And if he were awake at this moment)

How he'd mock her.

You still think everything can be explained by a textbook. That if you study hard enough, read enough, all the answers will magically appear. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll even include a nice colored illustration.

Funny, how she'd unashamedly welcome that.

But all that happens is the door opens, Wilson shuffles in, eyes flickering up to the monitor. His otherwise immaculate shirt is mis-buttoned by a single eyelet all the way down. His tie is missing. Hair attacked from all sides, up, down, left and right, wherever his fingers have recently dragged. She doesn't remark on that, but instead takes a small step to the right as he takes the spot next to her.

"Any change?"

Unsteady fibrillation catches in her throat; a giant unswallowed egg. (trips and falls, tumbling over her words; she opts for the monosyllable)

"No."

"How are you feeling?"

She shrugs. Clutches her elbows tighter against her chest.

"You look tired." (And he looks like hell too.) "If you want to lay down for a while, I can stay and—"

Negative again. He didn't expect otherwise.

"We'll just keep standing here, then. They'll eventually find us...in a few weeks...dead from starvation."

The joke lingers, totters, and falls to its death on his tongue, but he doubts Cameron's even noticed. Not quite listening, not quite there; shoved in some quiet little corner of her head (dead babies, the Lupinos and her silence).

He wonders if he did her any favor then.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

He unhooks the second button on his shirt, still the stranglehold on his throat. It's the air, Wilson deduces, the antiseptic stench constricting his epiglottis.

Breathing heavily through his nose, he mentally reviews his schedule tomorrow: three referrals, clinic, the General Tumor Board, more clinic, and review. The numbers on his cell phone lie flat, flush against his fingers as he fiddles with the cover, snapping it open, shut; toys with the idea of calling Julie just to hear her voice. He'll tell her he loves her and he'll be there. And then say he won't be home tonight. Again.

Your eternal optimism is one of the charming things about you, Jimmy-boy. A pretty girl smiles. You fall in love. You marry her, thinking: this time, it'll be different; this time, it'll work. You fall out of love. A pretty girl smiles...

He closes the cover and drops the phone back into his coat pocket.

Patterns. Pathology. Everything eventually, inevitably, repeats itself. Nothing is random. He's spun in so many directions, so many different-sized circles, fractals and mirrors, his head feels like a Mandelbrot set.

"Where were you?" Cameron's voice startles the spiders in his brain; he blinks as they skittle back into familiar corners. "The first time," she clarifies, still staring through the glass. Picked up, from the man, the fine and familiar art of conversing without actually looking at people. "He never mentioned you. He would have, if—"

"If I'd been there?" It comes out louder, harsher than intended, a hollow shout in a room occupied only by that incessant, goddamn beeping. Wilson feels her shoulders flinch, the molecules in her body backpedaling, as her mouth begins to formulate an apology.

(She apologizes, endlessly, for so many things. House's nebbish little wallflower. Too nice, too sensitive, too compassionate for her own good.)

"You're right. I wasn't there. Chalk it up to my impeccable sense of timing."

(You fall in love. You get married. Your best friend enters the hospital; leaves two weeks later, a quadricep short.)

White noise fills Wilson's pocket, his cell phone buzzing a path of voodoo from hip to head; numbers fill up the display, leading the path back to home. Pick up. It's easy.

(You fall out of love)

"That's why you're here now. Why you've been there ever since."

(How many times are you going to go running when he calls?)

How many times? Ever since. Sounds like a long time. Feels like forever.

He watches the blue digital lights flicker a little while longer, the phone obstinately vibrating in his hand, before tucking it away again.

"Where else am I going to be?"


At some point in the night, Foreman and Chase also slip in, each alternating positions at the window. Both mutter useless and encouraging things, she thinks; he thinks. It all fuzzes together in an incomprehensible mess. Static and white noise.

It's not until hours later that it's over. Hodges, turns, pulls his mask down and grins, giving the observation room a hearty thumbs up. There's a ripple, three men sigh, their combined tension slowly dissipating.

"Just so you know. House—it's going to be...difficult. For the next few days."

"Because he was such a ray of sunshine before." Foreman almost smiles. Almost.

"Regular walk in the park," adds in Chase. "In Beirut."

"You haven't seen anything yet. Don't be surprised when—" Wilson glances over. (Cameron, still at the window, staring out into the emptying operating bay, on some vanishing point in the needles and blood and sponges and tubing; pieces left over on the operating table.) Looks back. "Just be prepared to take a lot of friendly fire. With a few Bouncing Betties thrown in for variety. He's going to say some things he doesn't mean, and a lot of things he does."

He turns again as the door clicks shut. Just like that, Cameron is gone.


She's there, of course. Perched among the waiting room chairs, a cup of coffee resting on the seat nearby, she glances up from the paperwork in her lap. Feeling particularly uncharitable, Cameron considers the coward's option of quietly retreating, hiding until she's gone, but it's too late.

"How did it go?" the ex asks. House's ex. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-love of his life. (It's still a little strange to think of him having an ex-anything. Life before the leg.)

"Why aren't you with your husband?" Just a little more spite than intended.

Stacy, however, seems unruffled. "It's a general unspoken rule that only lawyers can answer a question with a question."

"That wasn't a question just then."

"Lawyers are also notorious for lying."

"Lawyers and patients." Lawyers and patients and doctors and...

"That's everybody, then, isn't it?" And there's something about Stacy Warner that's painfully clever, and it makes Cameron alternately (unspeakably) jealous and ashamed.

"He's been moved to ICU," she manages to mutter. "It's going to be touch and go for a few more days."

There's a nod. A sip of coffee. "Never much for the small gesture, is he?"

It's not about you. (but she suspects that's at least partially untrue)

"I...did some research. Wanted to see if maybe..."

"If there could have been another way? If something might have saved his leg? If it could have turned out differently? If I'd just waited. If, if, if, and if."

It's not about...

"After four days, debridement wouldn't have been an option, it would have been a necessity." She glances down the hallway. Empty. "The chances of him regaining even partial function of his leg after—"

"More medical mumbo jumbo. Speak without the obfuscation, Dr. Cameron. In my place, what would you have done?"

It's not...

"As a doctor, I'm obligated to accede to the patient's wishes."

Where the hell is Wilson? Foreman? Even Chase would be a welcome distraction from this little waiting room torture-park of being relentlessly cross-examined by the constitutional lawyer.

"You didn't answer the question."

It's...

Cameron wants to laugh. Hysterically.

(Twenty-one. Him, dying. Her, expected to know. Everything. Books, journals, everything she could get her hands on, she read, studied; he got sicker.)

"It's not what he wanted."

"Are you even capable of a straight answer? What. Would. You. Have. Done?"

"I don't know!" She breathes through the fingers pressed to her mouth. (Missed something, something she should have seen, should have known. Didn't know enough. Never knew enough.) "But it wasn't my decision to make. And it wasn't yours either."

At last, Stacy seems satisfied.

"Oh, he certainly has you trained well, hasn't he? Everything right or wrong revolves around the holy word of Greg. Just one more question." Features shift subtly, as she asks, "Would you rather be right or good?"

"I think I read this on a Meyers-Brigg personality test once. Are you going to tell me I'm an ISFP now?"

"Suddenly so defensive. Why is that?"

"I'm not—"

"You just crossed your arms." Silence. A sigh. With a rueful shake of the head, the lawyer twists her mouth up into a sharp little edge. "Greg would rather be right."

"He usually is."

"Yes, he usually is. And that's his biggest lie of all. The truth is, in the end, he got to live." She raises her coffee cup in salute and, behind the smile, Cameron spots all the little hairline fractures. "He got to live and he never has to admit he was ever wrong."


TBC