Summary, disclaimer, etc. in chapter 1.
Glad you guys liked the last one so much. Thanks for the reviews! This one is shorter and not as much fun. Sorry.
Sunday
March 2000
House sighed to himself, hands behind his head in the dark room. Awake. He must've slept if he was awake. That was an improvement. And he was in bed too. This was the first time he'd slept in his bed in over a week. New apartment but same old bed, as empty now as it was five years ago. He preferred sleeping on the couch where he could watch television but he had to admit that the bed was better for his back. The darkness, though, waking up in it and automatically reaching out with his left hand and…nothing, was difficult to bear. It wasn't depressing—he'd found that taking Vicodin regularly numbed him in more ways than one—but he did feel something. Nostalgia. Regret. Loneliness. Something.
Sunday. Useless Sunday. No work, no PT. Nothing he needed or wanted to do. Wilson took him grocery shopping every other Saturday. Someone cleaned his apartment once a week. Everything from the move had been unpacked and put into place over a month ago. Nothing at all to do.
He didn't even want to get up. He was comfortable. Just warm enough, feeling pretty decent physically. Getting up and moving around would strain the muscles on his right side. His leg would start aching and little firebolts from confused, misfiring nerves would shoot up his side. Nothing good would come of it.
But he had nothing good to do in bed either. As recently as last Christmas he couldn't stand being supine any longer than was absolutely necessary. Too much time on his back staring at a variety of ceilings. Lying down had become irrevocably associated with pain: it was the reason he'd lie down in the first place and it kept him on his back longer than he wanted.
But now lying down meant relief for sore muscles and…not much else. Even when he'd been forced to lie down by pain, there was always the possibility that something might happen…because she was there…and sometimes something did happen. Those were good days. But she wasn't here anymore and she was never going to be here again. He didn't want her here. No. He didn't. Not at all. She would only be upset and angry and miserable and no, he didn't want her back. No.
No.
He reached for his pills, shook one out, and swallowed it whole without thinking. For months he would wait until his leg started to hurt before he took one, but since she'd been gone it had become easier to take one before the twinges got out of control. And anyway, he rationalized, he was supposed to take them like this, before pain took over. One every six hours. Forty milligrams per day. So what if he'd taken one four hours ago. It was March and it had been snowing outside last night. If he ventured out, he'd need the extra protection against the cold. But he'd already taken it. Excuses didn't matter.
He sighed again and shifted slightly under the covers. If he could avoid dreaming, a few more hours of sleep would be grand. But if he dreamt, especially the one where he met her on the street years from now and begged her to take him back, for just one kiss, to touch her again just once—no, then he'd have to get up.
Because he didn't want her back.
He didn't.