"Bradycardia," the surgeon barked. "Atropine!"
A nurse slapped the syringe into his palm and he plunged the needle into James's exposed chest, all the while looking down at the abdominal bleed. "Get a clamp on that. Ileocolic artery. And keep pushing blood."
Wilson's face was deathly pale, his heart rhythm dancing on an ever-shrinking stage.
"Come on, Dr. Wilson. Don't leave us now," Klipspringer growled.
Once upon a time .
Wilson opened his eyes.
He wasn't in the convenience store. He didn't think he was in New Jersey. He wondered if he was really anywhere at all.
A bird chirped above his head.
He was in a forest, sitting with his back against a tree. His feet were bare; he wiggled his toes and felt grass tickling his heels. He was wearing an old pair of jeans, and a comfortable old t-shirt that proclaimed "SRV New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival". He'd stolen it from House ...
He remembered seeing House, his eyes suspiciously wet -- saying he was sorry. House? Sorry? James knew he was dreaming again.
Sunlight filtered through the trees, making dappled shadow patterns on the ground. The air was cool and fresh, scented with pine and cedar. Birds sang, and he could hear the skittering feet of small animals in the underbrush.
Where am I this time?
"Teresa?"
A soft laugh from nearby. "Not Teresa, Jamie."
A man stood a few feet away, hands at his hips, smiling. Blond hair, falling across his forehead. Pale blue eyes, alight with sardonic humor.
His older brother, David. His lost brother.
David looked nothing at all like the last time Wilson had seen him. No filthy clothes -- his brother was also dressed in blue jeans and a worn (but plain) gray t-shirt. No combat boots from the Army/Navy surplus store -- his brother was barefoot like himself. He didn't smell like a goat -- James remembered David's unwashed stink, and shivered.
He recalled his conversation with Teresa Pasqale and Tyler Orozco in the WaWa convenience store, wondering at the implications.
Am I dead? Is David dead?
David smiled, and James knew that familiar, life-affirming grin from when they were little boys, brothers looking out for each other in a WASPy Bergen County suburb.
"What do you think, Jamie? You think I'm dead?"
In a few steps, he had crossed the space between them, and folded his long legs to sit next to Wilson. He leaned in close, eyes narrowing in a pretend-leer. "Well?"
James stared at his brother, looking for ... what? Madness.
We're dead. The dead know everything. Teresa's voice, in his head.
David's gaze didn't waver. James took a deep breath, and felt some long-held bond, stretched too far for much too long, break within him.
"Yes. Yes, I think you're dead."
David leaned back, his expression unreadable.
"Rabbits out of hats, Jamie. Rabbits out of hats."
There was nothing else to say for a while.
James remembered.
David, his straw-blond hair and pale blue eyes so different from the rest of the Wilson clan. Fat Uncle Ronnie, joking at every family gathering that there was a Cossack in the Wilson family woodpile, while their dad, Leo, waved his hands in the air, trying to shush him.
David, undeniably brilliant at so young an age, off the charts on the standard IQ tests, unable to express himself, in fights at school, grounded at home, growing more and more unhappy day by day. The frightening diagnosis at sixteen -- prescriptions of ever-more powerful drugs that seemed only to dull his brother to the point of plodding depression.
The last time he'd seen David -- on a filthy street corner in a neighborhood full of bums and broken people, James trying to reach inside his brother just one more time.
David had turned his back; walked away even as James shouted at him to stay.
Now they were here ... but where was here?
He leaned his head back against the tree ... so tired ...
More neurons firing. Stupid random associations, caught in a goddamn loop in a brain starved for oxygen. A nightmare I can't wake up from. An event horizon in a string universe, a rock in the fucking timestream ...
"Let's do the time warp again," David said helpfully. "You left out the Tardis and the holodeck,"
James looked sharply at his brother. David's eyes were innocent of guile.
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?"
His brother grinned. "You're the big-shot wonder boy -- figure it out for yourself. You've got a little time, if you pay attention."
A spot of color -- Wilson looked down.
David's shirt was different. Royal blue, with "The Clash Akron Civic Center 1982" in garish yellow across the front.
"Cool, huh?" David said, and without James even really seeing it the shirt was different again. Dark green, with "Talking Heads CBGB".
James closed his eyes. "Stop it," he whispered.
Silence, then David's soft voice.
"Jamie, I'm just trying to keep you awake."
Wilson jerked, his head snapping forward. "I am awake," he mumbled. Of course I'm awake -- except I'm dreaming -- or I'm dead -- God, this is so fucking surreal.
"I know it is," David replied. "But you shouldn't go to sleep."
"Why?"
"Because you might dream, and it's not time yet."
Time for what? Wilson wanted to ask, but didn't.
His brother leaned close and reached behind James's right ear. "Abracadabra!" he said, and showed Wilson the gold-colored coin he now held in his fingers. On the face of the coin, a duck-like bird with a thin bill paddled serenely in a woodland lake. It was a loonie -- a Canadian dollar.
Wilson groaned. Great. I'm stuck in interspatial limbo with the Amazing Kreskin.
David grinned, walking the coin back and forth across the knuckles of his left hand. A magician's trick, but one that House used also to exercise and strengthen his long pianists' fingers.
House ... he'd been sorry about something ... what was it?
His brother walked the dollar coin across his hand once more, then caught it on his thumb and flipped it forcefully into the air.
James's eyes followed the golden flash as it rose, flying much higher than it ever should have -- until it disappeared abruptly in a blur of wings and black feathers.
Wilson gasped.
"What was that?"
David hadn't even looked up.
"Crow. They like shiny things."
A bird called, a gurgling konk a ree! sound close by. James licked his suddenly dry lips. Red-winged blackbird. His thoughts were moving very slowly. Must be a marsh nearby, like when we were kids.
"Right you are. Guess all those "nature" merit badges in Cub Scouts paid off." His brother looked away. "You were always better at that than me."
"I ... I wanted to be a veterinarian."
David smiled.
"I know. Must be why you secretly like Steve McQueen." The smile widened at the look of astonishment on James's face.
"Still think I'm dead?"
It took a long time for Wilson to answer.
"I don't know."
His brother reached out and pulled another loonie from behind James's ear -- his left one this time.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
James watched quietly as his brother did magic. He was hesitant to append the word "tricks".
David changed the dollar into a dime, then a copper penny. He laid the penny in the palm of his left hand, closed his hand into a fist, and opened it to reveal a tiny brown egg. He gently covered it with his right hand, then lifted that hand away from the pinfeathered chick on wobbly legs. One more pass, and an adult bird looked at them, black eyes like tiny buttons. The tail stuck almost straight up from its small body, and the feathers were a soft russet brown.
House wren, James thought sleepily.
"Yes. Stay awake, Jamie," his brother said softly. "Work with me here."
The wren cocked its head at them and took flight.
"What now?" Wilson asked. "Straw into gold? Water into wine?" It was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open.
"Jamie. You need to talk."
James squinted, trying to follow this conversational turn.
"Talk about what?"
There was a look of exasperation on his brother's face. "Not what -- him. You two need to talk."
"Why?"
"Damn it, Jamie, don't be so dense! You were like this as a kid, avoiding the subject all the time, never facing anything head-on."
There was a short silence. When David continued, his voice was gentle.
"These are your dreams, Jamie. You're partly right; your brain is telling itself stories, casting shadows on a cave wall while the rest of your autonomic nervous system takes a little vacation. You know why you were in that convenience store, and it had nothing to do with a beer run."
He looked steadily at James, blue eyes into brown.
"You're playing games with each other. Constantly, so you never have to tell the other person your true feelings. You're both leading half-lives -- emotional cripples who can't see the truth even when they look in the mirror."
David's voice was very low.
"You don't want to end up like me, do you?"
His brother had conjured another dollar, and was rolling it across his long (pianist) fingers.
"I missed everyone at the end. I regretted all the things I'd never said. You think I enjoyed that?"
James felt his throat tightening, and then there were tears and he couldn't stop them.
"Am I dead, Jamie?"
"No." James was crying openly now. "You're not dead, you're up here," putting both hands on his head, "you're up here and you'll never be dead."
His big brother pulled him close as Wilson's racking sobs shook his body.
"Shhhhhh, it's okay," he whispered, and James felt David's warm breath next to his ear. "Just remember, bros before hoes, Jimmy. Third time's the charm." A gentle brush of lips against his cheek, and he was gone.
Wilson sat under the tree, tears drying on his face. He was exhausted beyond measure.
A flutter of wings, and James looked for the wren, but it was the crow next to him, holding something in its beak. The large bird studied him for a moment, then took a couple of awkward crow-steps forward.
James held out his hand, and the black bird dropped something small and metallic into it.
Wilson looked at the object closely. It was a jagged, lumpy disc, heavy for its size and barely the circumference of an American dime. It took him a moment to identify it as a bullet that had taken a rough trip through a human body.
The crow took another hop-step and opened its beak.
"Blip!" it said. "Blip! Blip! Blipblipblipblip blip blip blip blip blip blip ..."
"Come on, Dr. Wilson. Don't leave us now," Klipspringer growled.
The OR monitors burst into life, and the surgeon relaxed just a bit. James's heart was beating slowly but steadily.
"All right, then," he said, addressing the unconscious man on the table. "Glad you decided to stay with us for awhile."
Klipspringer took a step back and grimaced as his foot slid.
"Okay, everybody ... careful steps until we can get the floor cleaned up." He looked down. "It's a little slippery in here at the moment."
Glancing up at the observation balcony, he saw Dr. House there and gave a little thumbs-up sign.
A curt nod was his only response.
Asshole, Klipspringer thought, and turned back to the job at hand. No wonder Dr. Wilson is his only friend.
In the balcony, House slowly lowered himself into his seat again, having just lived through the longest eight seconds of his life. He drew a deep breath and rested his head in his hands, trying to wrestle his emotions back under control.
Something glinting, by his right shoe. He picked it up and rubbed off the floor dirt and lint to reveal the regal profile of Elizabeth II.
Someone had dropped a Canadian nickel.