(Bicycles and Blues)
All things considered, it was a good day. House had been behaved enough, or maybe not behaved enough but just good enough, to warrant heading the diagnostics department. Heck, the department had been practically nothing before his impeccable skills rocked the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital administrative board. He'd learned quickly how incredibly dull the clinic was, and thought that maybe he'd be cut some slack if he just cleared out the waiting room in under thirty minutes.
But no, it just prompted his superiors to put him on clinic duty far more frequently. It wasn't until he declared the clinic a psychologically hazardous zone and refused to go that they realized that his particular talents could be used in other ways. The official move was about to begin, and his fresh, new department was about to open. He even got his pick of offices in the Lucas wing.
Yes indeed, it was a good day. But it was five o'clock. The only thing the day had left to offer was home, a celebratory scotch, and television. He strolled merrily from the clinic, the nurse giving him a dirty look as he went. He was officially free, and there was nothing she could do about it, so he simply smiled at her and started down the stairs flaunting this fact. Waiting for the elevator simply wasn't as effective an exodus. It was fall, and the sun was starting to set sooner, but this little tidbit was of no interest to House at that moment as he hopped into his car. Up the ramp. Pay the guy. Fiddle with the sun visor...
The lower sun became an issue to him then, as it made it marginally trickier to spot traffic and so on. It was no problem, his rolling stop at the exit gave him enough time to see that there were no cars headed his way, and he started out into the street. The events that happened next didn't quite register until several seconds after the fact; just as he came into the street, so did another, less vehicular-shaped something and reflexively jumped on the break. There was a brief 'skree', and a faint thump, and his car jerked to an abrupt halt. House sat there blinking against the sun, stopped part-way into Morrison Drive. At first, he was consciously unaware of what occurred, but a tiny little voice in the back of his mind quickly informed him.
Greg, it disclosed. You just ran over a doctor, Greg.
In a flash, he recalled seeing the man crossing the street, and running him down just before stopping. He'd been going maybe eight miles an hour, and the other doctor had crashed against the hood before sliding off the side to the pavement. House practically leaped from his open window in his rush to get out of the car. The man he hit was still lying on the street by his car, having landed so that House couldn't see his face.
'Ten thousand, and no harm done.' House said quickly as he stepped over him to get a front view and assess the extent of the victim's injuries. He saw that the man was still awake, if somewhat disoriented. It looked as though he'd landed mostly on his forearm, tearing his sleeve and resulting in some scrapes as well as his largest, cushiest muscle which, while probably bruised, was no big deal. He seemed otherwise alright, he was already sitting up.
'What...?' He asked somewhat confused. No head wounds. Probably just as idiotic as everyone else working at the hospital.
'Is that not enough? I'm not sure how high I can go, but I can check my budgets, cross-reference with my bank records... check over your financial need based on the length and extent of your medical care... we could make an evening of it.' House was plenty familiar with the standard settlements. Not only due to the fact that he dealt with some car accident patients who were suing their perpetrators, there had been a number of his patients who were less than satisfied with his bedside manner and felt that money was compensation enough.
'Uh...' The other doctor looked up at him, stunned. House watched as the realization sounded slowly, almost so slowly that it caused House himself pain. Naturally, if you're in a car accident, the first instinct is to sue. He seemed fairly plain overall; short brown hair, brown eyes, but he could appreciate that the opposing gender might find him significantly more appealing. There were, however, two blatantly off-putting factors. His loud blue-and-green-checked tie, and of course the All-Purpose Pocket Protector which was a slightly different shade of white from the coat it was on. Even so this fellow seemed fairly young, and as such he should have been up-to-date with various lawsuit trends. Suing was cool, popular... House resisted the urge to scratch his irritated occipital lobe as he watched how achingly slowly this idea seemed to be sinking in.
In actual fact, the other doctor, James Wilson, wasn't at all stupid, he just wasn't expecting to be hit with a car at that particular moment, and really couldn't focus on questions regarding finance.
'Come on, come on! Someone might call the cops if they see this, and trust me, that's expensive territory.'
Wilson stood carefully, more because of the oddly crazed driver-turned-defendant than because of his actual injuries. His day was quite the opposite of House's; it was the first anniversary of Scott's disappearance, and the call from his weepy mother that morning wasn't an excellent way to start the day; in his office mail-box, his wife Emily had quite casually stashed the papers legally necessary for divorce. Her x's had already been signed, and she left him with instructions on a post-it note to sign them and send them off before Friday. What's more, he'd lost a patient just before the weekend, and though that was something he'd had to deal with before, it was just another thing that contributed to his mood.
And to top it all off, deranged people were hitting him with reasonable amounts of steel.
He understood well enough what was being proposed, it just seemed absurd. Usually the first concerns in a car accident were, 'are you alright?', 'somebody get some help', or some equivalent and not 'how's ten thousand for you?'. This guy seemed absolutely out to lunch.
'I'm fine.' He said cautiously, in case this set off some random tangent that defied the laws of psychology.
'What kind of fine?' House said, staring him down.
'Not one that I'd pay a magistrate to outline.'
Alright, maybe this guy wasn't such an idiot. That was a pretty snappy comeback, but maybe he'd just gotten lucky, or he heard it somewhere before. 'That's crazy talk. Name your settlement.'
'Enough to pay for a restraining order.'
Twice lucky... Who was this guy, anyhow? House's gaze flicked momentarily to the ID pinned to the other doctor. Dr. James Wilson, M.D..
Oncology.
'Right. Well, been nice chatting.' House got back in his car, and Wilson couldn't help but notice him fumble quickly with the keys in his hurry. 'We should maybe do it again some time. It's excellent when the people I run down don't want or need anything. What do you think, next week same bat time, same bat channel?' He waved and took off before Wilson could muster a reply.
'Did that really happen?' He asked aloud to himself once House's car was out of sight. His scraped hand and back end still hurt, so it must have. He shook his head and continued to the bike rack across the street, trying to puzzle out who that person could have been. Someone on staff? A patient? Visitor? The latter was more likely. A patient may not have been so preoccupied with being sued, and a doctor would have helped him off the pavement at the very least.
Wilson sighed as he freed his bicycle from its confines and mounted. Thoughts of the absurdity were already leaving his mind, and he recalled that weather reports kept mentioning the conditions turning. It was fall, and that might be the last day he could ride his bike that year. He may as well enjoy something.
oOo
House jerked awake, unaware that he'd even fallen asleep until he was fully aware of his surroundings again. Oh. Wilson's place. Right. He sat up properly and stretched It was a nice apartment. Quiet colours, reasonable décor...
The front door closed. That explained it; it was probably Wilson's return that woke him. House turned to look at him. He looked completely plastered, and in no good way, making House sincerely hope that he'd not used anything that had wheels. Even a car mechanic's trolley would have been dangerous to pedestrians and street rodents in his state.
Wilson didn't acknowledge him, making his way to his room with a slight stagger. Wilson's articulation always suffered the most though. It was definitely his most complicated conscious function and those often became most difficult when drunk. Wilson never had very good balance to begin with, so walking rarely became a problem. House himself tended to find it difficult to make connections in his mind, as well as talk and write at the same time.
House again refrained from saying anything as Wilson vanished into his bedroom without even taking off his shoes. House was amateur in these situations, and didn't feel like making things worse at this point in time.
You're resentful, a pain to get along with, exploitative, but strangely the only person who's stuck around for any length of time. Keep it up.
That was a tricky statement to interpret. Assuming the last part wasn't sarcasm, it didn't really make much sense. Though House took advantage of Wilson as a friend, somewhere he always wondered why Wilson would want to put up with him. He said himself- House was acerbic, anti-social, and every other synonym. He wouldn't even want to be friends with himself. And yet... Wilson had been almost surprised at House's commitment to him, even as House was skeptical about Wilson's.
The statement implied that House was as much his only friend as he was House's. This was another thing that made very little sense. Wilson was the nice guy. Everyone was supposed to be friends with him. Granted, everyone did like him, but when was the last time he'd passed time with any of them? He'd taken Stacy for dinner on occasion, but they'd been friends before House started dating her. Even so, they weren't the closest of pals. Wilson had taken a nurse out to lunch once, but he claimed that was because she was having a hard time. In summary, he had few people he spoke to afterhours, and was ending his third marriage. What the hell kind of karma was that? A great, caring, giving person for some reason didn't get what was coming to him. He should have a wife, just one, first marriage and all, maybe some kids, and a whole posse of friends to go drinking with, maybe golfing, and everything else under the sun.
Maybe there was somehow more to it... After all, House didn't even know he had two brothers until recently, and they'd known each other for years. House had met his parents, and while that was a pleasant evening, it seemed somehow superficial. No one talked about anything but current events, and everyone was polite in a strange way, as though it had been the first time they'd ever met and it had nothing to do with House being there.
Maybe it did... maybe the only reason they all kept up the courtesy was because he'd been there. House couldn't recall Wilson ever having gone to dinner with his family since.
He stood and checked in on Wilson. Getting sick while lying on your back tended to lead to disastrous results. He was on his side on the bed though, back facing the door, still wearing his coat and shoes. This had the potential of getting completely out if hand. If Wilson went crazy, then House would have to go crazy as well, and drive everyone else crazy in turn. It would be a disaster to say the least.
House swung by the kitchen to get some more tea, more for the fact that it was better when his hands were occupied while his mind was. There was never anything good on television at four in the morning anyhow. It was a Friday night-slash-Saturday morning, and it didn't seem like a good idea to go home and leave Wilson with his misery for the weekend. This whole situation didn't quite sit with House. He'd always been uncomfortable in most social situations, and the only ones he really wanted to do anything about were when it involved Wilson, or those years ago when it was Stacy. For her it was usually House's doing when she was upset, and it would be Wilson who would talk to them separately so they could continue as though nothing at all had happened.
Everyone should want him as a friend, everyone female-inclined should want him as a husband, but here he was with only his job and one rotten friend.
He really wanted to know what Wilson got from all this. He really did.