Title: Hex
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Drama
Pairings: No specific pairings - Friendship
Summary: After "treating" a patient for a serious condition, Dr. House starts to exhibit the exact same symptoms himself. But it's nothing he can medically cure with a perscription - It's demonic possession.
A/N: Greetings House fans! This is my first attempt at a House fic; you could say I was inspired by reading all of yours. With most of my other fics, I would just sit down and start writing and then soon loose inspiration and never end the story, but this one I have all planned out and have been doing so for a week. I'm going to try to make this a long one and I hope you all enjoy it. Oh, and we all love reviews and I'm no different:)
Hex
"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."
- Oscar Wilde
The rain pitter-pattered against the window pane and he stared out towards the street.
"What is the point of a mail man." Pause.
"Nobody even likes mail. All mail is bad, even those fancy Christmas cards with the prancing deer on the front from Barbara Jones, the slut in high school who you wanted to stab. You know why people like to exchange Christmas cards? Because they like to brag about themselves. 'Oh, little Billy is only ten years old, but he's reading at a 56th grade level! Little Susie just won the spelling bee world competition! I dyed my hair blonde, lost one hundred pounds and now I look like Britney Spears! My husband, the model-turned actor-turned musician, and I have great sex for hours, everyday! And before I end this novel about my awesome life which is better than yours, Merry Christmas - I hope you get into a car accident during the holidays and they need to fly in a famous plastic surgeon to sew your face back together, but he won't be able to do it, because you're too ugly, Ha Ha!'" He regripped the cane that was standing between his legs and kept his gaze fixated out the window.
"And if it's not Christmas Cards coming in love colored envelopes, you're getting bills. Bills for necessities that society thinks you need, bills for not paying your bills on time, and even more bills for ignoring the bills for not paying your bills on time. The next time you see Barbara Jones, tell her instead of sending you a shitty card with mating deer on the front, slip in a ball of cash, a bag of cocaine, or rather a bullet and a pistol-"
"Why are you telling me all of this?" His rant was interuppted and House snapped out of his stare from the window. He turned his head to the left and raised his eyebrows at the female patient wearing the ugliest green sweater he had ever seen in his life.
"Well I assume you either A, send and receive these holiday greeting cards I speak of, or B, your name is in fact Barbara Jones, and if that is the case, I don't apologize." He tilted his head waiting for her to pick a choice and drummed his fingers over the cane impatiently.
The woman in the puke green sweater that needed a good lint cleaning stared at him as if he was about to start singing and dancing, or jump up and do something equally insane.
"We've been sitting here for twenty minutes and all you've done is stare out the window and talk about mail. I have to go home to make dinner for my children, and all you're doing is wasting my time. Now can you tell me what's wrong with me?"
House almost snickered at all the possible jokes he could start off with. Keep the middle aged mother there all night long, going through lists of what could be wrong with her. He would start with the sweater.
Instead, he groaned softly and stood up and shuffled to the other end of the room by the door to Exam 1.
"Now you know what it feels like," he simply said and leaned heavily on his cane, watching her.
"Excuse me?" Uh oh, the woman was starting to get fiesty.
"You have EMD, Exotic Newcastle Disease," he said simply and waited for her reaction. He knew that disease was only found in birds, but he also knew that she would have no idea and would go into panic.
The woman took a deep breath and looked down at her pudgy hands.
"I..I knew it. I should have come in earlier, shouldn't I? Oh what am I going to tell my children - Oh dear..How much time do I have?" The woman was close to tears.
"About five minutes, quick! Tell me your dying wish!" He couldn't have been more sarcastic, with his eyes bugging out, and his apathetic attitude.
Her face cut from sorrow to angry in a matter of seconds and she glared at him. Took her long enough, he thought.
"Why you - I'm going to sue-"
"You're a hypochrondiac. Go home. Make that pot roast for your three children. Turn on the news and make fun of people dying in train wrecks like the rest of us. Nothing is wrong with you." House rolled his eyes and opened the door to flee the scene.
The woman held out her arm for him to stop.
"No, wait - but my throat is still sore!" Her right hand went up to her throat and she massaged it gently.
"So have a cup of tea." House perscribed as he limped from the room. "And change that ugly sweater!" he ordered loudly. "We do live in a society," he added grumbling under his breath.
He hated the clinic. That should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever been to a clinic, really. Snot. Crying babies with snot, yelling children kicking the vending machines with snot, parents shaking hands - after touching snot. Snot was gross. People were gross.
Dr. Greg House limped away from the patients and flipped up his left wrist. Only fifteen minutes until he was free. Free to do what? Why go home of course. Go home to what? Shut up.
It was no secret. Okay it was, but he knew the truth. The depression bug had nabbed him and for the whole week he had been sitting and staring out the window wondering what was the point of anything. Christmas cards had just been one of the many random things to pop into his head to criticize. Putting down people was his own way of boosting his self esteem, which was on it's way down the toilet and to the bottom of a septic tank. He would never admit it though. Not for a billion dollars. (Or maybe he could lie his way to the billion dollars..)
His leg was bothering him again, and he slumped down into a chair out of site from hospital personnel. After popping a vicodin, he planned on going back up to his office and counting down the very second to five o'clock. House had just taken the pill canister from his jacket pocket when a shadow appeared into his vision. He looked up expecting to see only one person, and was proved right. He was always right.
Lisa Cuddy looked at her own wrist watch and down at House with an amused look on her face.
"Thought you could hide from me? You still have twelve minutes left on your shift," she crossed her arms, holding a file and stuck out her leg. Her 'power pose'. House was quivering and dying in his chair from fear. Although not quite. He popped two pills, and returned the canister to his pocket. He chewed them slowly, leaving a large silence before he spoke.
"Dr. Cuddy, have I ever told you the story about when I was a boy, and I had my little miniature cane, and there was this girl at school whose name was Liza Muddy, and I didn't like her one bit-" House played around with his cane, swinging it from right hand to the left as he spoke.
"House-" Cuddy sighed, amused by what he was trying to do.
"-And one day she came up to me and was being mean, quite like you're being right now in fact, so you know what I did? I took my itty bitty cane," he raised the cane and anchored it under his arm as if he were holding a machine gun, bottom facing out," took careful aim at Muddy's face," House pointed the cane at Cuddy," and-"
"House!" She flipped up her wrist again and sighed when she noticed that whole charade had wasted two more minutes of his clinic duty. She loved torturing him with this, and would make him work till the last second if she could. "There's a patient in Exam 2. You go see him without a fight and then you're done for the day."
House placed his cane back in an un-crazy position and rested both hands on top. He tilted his head to the right and stared into space considering her offer.
"Orr.. I could just sit here and stall you for another twelve minutes and leave the guy with the snotty nose in there for you," House mused and gave her a smug grin.
"What if I offered no clinic duty for four months?" Cuddy smiled expecting him to leap from his chair and sprint to Exam 2.
Jesus music played throughout the clinic and the lights went dim. Halleluja chorus angels stepped out from the side and began to sing beautifully as his eyes went in wonderment, and excitement. A natural high. He was God.
Actually he was just sitting there with his mouth hanging open. Cuddy was waiting for the drool to slide down his chin from the salavation.
"Are you serious?" She couldn't possibly be. If she was - House was convinced he was having a heart attack.
"No, but there's a lollipop in it for you if you do," Cuddy smirked at the rate his face fell as he aged another ten years.
He muttered something under his breath about Muddy being a meanie and stood up straight back onto his cane. She thrust him the file and grinned at her success. House was no match for her. She was woman - hear her roar.
House limped away, head down looking at the floor.
Just as Cuddy was about to leave, House called out, "Oh by the way, you might want to take that toilet paper off your shoe that you've been dragging around - I don't think that's very hygenic!"
House put his hand onthe door to enter Exam Room 2 and about fifty visions of who could be inside flashed through his mind. An elderly man, complaining of knee pain: painkillers, next. A middle aged man screaming and yelling for the pain to stop: drug addict, next. A snotty child and his mother who cried too much: fluids and rest, next. All boring, boring, boring. If he handled any more of these insignificant cases, he was going to blindly induce some sort of disease on himself and take the case.
He entered the room to see a young man sitting inside and scratching the back of his neck. House shut the door, leaned his cane against the wall and flipped open the file. Time to tell him he needs to get back on the herion and he won't itch so much.. he thought to himself, watching the kid scratch his skin off.
"Jason Adler. Eighteen years old. Born in a barn when you were two years old and raised until you were thirteen. You like romantic walks on the beach and rollercoasters that don't go upside down," he pretended to read off the chart he was holding.
The kid looked at him with a weird look on his face and stopped rubbing his neck.
"It says all that?" he asked confused.
"No," House limped two steps closer to him and closed the file, "but by the look on your face after mentioning the word 'rollercoaster' I'd say that statement wasn't false." He put the file down behind the kid.
The kid said nothing and wiped some sweat from his forehead.
"So what seems to be the problem?" House went into doctor mode and started studying the exterior of the guy, mentally writing down all symptoms he could spot without the patient even saying anything. Fever: check. The guy was sweating buckets. Flushed face: check. The fact that it looked like the kid was going to blow chunks: check. Rollercoasters had been the key.
"I just feel like crap," the kid said in response and didn't look House in the eye, but more so at the floor. The corner of House's mouth almost went up in a smile. Now if more people would just say that from the beginning. 'I just feel like crap'. What a wonderful and certainly not vague description.
"Care to enlighten me with the definition of 'crap'?" House almost went to look at his watch again, when the kid started breathing heavy.
"I think I'm going to puke," he closed his eyes.
House leaned over and gave the kid a container from a counter. He stood and watched the kid ralph into the plastic bucket and wished he almost had what he had. He could tough out a few days of a stomach bug and would gladly trade off his leg for it. But noo, he got the short straw in life, always.
"You my friend, have the flu," he took the barf bin away from the kid and tried not to look at the mess as he put it back on the counter. He was glad he wasn't a nurse. The kid wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and House went back to the file he had put down earlier. There was a fly on it. He swatted his hand at the bug and it flew up and started going in circles.
"I feel really weird. My whole body aches and I get these dizzy.. spells." He wiped at his forehead again, his eyes closed.
House clicked his pen, mumbled, "mm hmm" and was about to write down FLU in big bold letters when something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
The kid's hand had twitched. And it wasn't a little one either, it had been a full on jerk.
"Do that again," he tested. Who knows, maybe he had been swatting that damn fly away, or an imaginary wombat.
The kid turned to look at him slowly, his eyes not quite following. "Huh..?" he asked, confused again.
House wasn't even looking at his face now, but at the kid's other hand. The one that hadn't invisibly slapped anyone. It was resting on his right thigh, wrist pinned down and the hand flailing.
He dropped the file again and clicked on the pen light he kept in his pocket. He shone it into the kid's eyes.
One pupil was bigger than the other. Bingo.
This kid had a brain tumor.