Chapter 5

"A Friend of Yours …"

Marty Owen put down the wire-bristled dog brush and patted the bench at her side. "C'mere, boy," she said softly.

Across from her, Baxter looked at her suspiciously, looked down at the brush and looked up into her face again. He licked his chops and whined faintly, but did not move from the spot.

Marty laughed softly and patted the bench again. "Boy, you sure are a chicken," she said. "Don't you feel a lot better now that you're bathed and combed? It's gotta be more comfortable than the way you were yesterday. You turned out to be a very handsome fellow, you know that? Doctor Wilson will be here in a little while, and he'll hardly know you. You don't even look like the same dog."

His head tilted from side to side, small eyes watching every move she made, ears cocking, then folding back against his skull. He sneezed explosively, and a front paw came up and rubbed at his face. There was fuzz in his nose and it tickled. He stared at her for another moment, and sneezed again.

Marty giggled.

Bernie stepped out the doorway into the kennel run and saw the two of them sitting there; two stubborn children making faces at one another across a breakfast table. He grinned and shrugged broad shoulders, pointing at the beautiful brown dog sitting in the sun and gleaming like a new penny. "He's a pretty animal," Bernie said. "He's going to belong to a crippled man … the one the police rescued from the field the other day."

Marty nodded. "I know. He's gonna love Baxter. Baxter already loves him. He saved Dr. House's life."

"That's why I came out to get you," Bernie continued. "Think you can coax him out to the waiting room? Dr. Wilson is here."

"Really? Ya hear that, Bax? … you're finally gonna go home!"

He barked. Threw his head in the air and barked three times. Loudly. Answering barks echoed back from the kennel. Then he got up and walked across to where Marty Owen sat. Laid his muzzle in her lap. Marty put her arms around his ruff and hugged him. He really was a beautiful animal. And a smart one. Dr. House would be happy to have him. Reluctantly, she got to her feet, causing him to step back a step or two.

"C'mon, Bax! Time to go meet another friend of yours."

He followed her eagerly, back into the kennel, through the cage area where other dogs barked another greeting at his passage; barked their farewells.

Marty fastened his new leash to his brand new shiny chain and lead him proudly into the waiting room out front.

There were a few people sitting there, but it was easy to figure out who Dr. Wilson was. He was the only one without a dog or cat beside him or on his lap.

The young doctor got to his feet with a smile of surprise. Marty could not believe how very handsome he was. "Is this … the same dog that was in the culvert the other day?" His genuine surprise and delight was music to her ears. His smile was gentle; soft. His voice the sexy purr of a movie star … but educated, modulated.

Marty blushed so furiously that she could feel every freckle turning bright red. "Yeah, this is him. There was a collar buried in his fur, and it had part of a name on it. I think his name was 'Baxter" once … in case you guys want him to keep that name … of course, you really don't have to …" Marty knew she was babbling. Caught herself and shrugged self-consciously. "How is he? Was he hurt really bad? Is he getting better?"

Wilson smiled and thought for a moment. He did not care to reveal too much to this room full of people, but the newspaper story had assured that people were indeed curious. "He's … better," Wilson said cautiously. "His leg is hurt, and he has a broken hand. But he was very lucky, and he'll heal in time."

There were murmurs of sudden interest in the waiting room, and Marty Owen grinned. "I'm so glad to hear that. Just wait 'til he sees Baxter!"

James Wilson smiled again, thinking warily of what Gregory House might think of this whole arrangement. Wilson had no idea if Gregg would remember the incident at all. He was liable to go through the roof when he was told he had just become the proud owner of a big brown mongrel dog!

Dr. Wilson knelt on the floor and held out his fingers for the dog to sniff. He made no sudden or threatening moves; did not want to frighten this animal which he had been sent specifically to round up.

"Bring the mutt!" House's final words before he'd finally lost consciousness while they were loading him into the ambulance.

Wilson's only response: "Your wish is my command!"

Baxter stretched out his neck to sniff at the fingers, then apparently found them to be friendly. The long pink tongue came out and chanced a lick. Then he sat down on his haunches and grinned a doggie grin. His teeth were no longer yellow, but white. Marty had brushed them while he had tried to eat the toothpaste and slobbered on her hands.

Marty handed him the leash and the dog went to him easily. Sat down and began to pant. The people in the waiting room were unusually quiet. Watching.

One of the men finally had to ask. "Is this the same dog that led the police to where Dr. House was lying hurt?"

Marty and Dr. Wilson both nodded. "He's the one." Marty said. "Now he's going to go live with the man he rescued."

"If his muzzle was a bit longer and his ears tipped forward a little, he'd almost look like a purebred collie," one woman offered. "He's a lucky dog. Will you be taking him home to the crippled man?"

Wilson smiled indulgently while cringing inside. He was glad House wasn't here to hear this. He'd have practically bitten the poor woman's ears off!

"Yes," he finally said. "I am." He got to his feet and walked over to the counter. Paid the healthy vet bill, got a receipt. He accepted the leash from Marty Owen a last time and reached across to take her hand.

"You've done a beautiful job with … Baxter," he said. "Thank you. I'm sure Dr. House will keep the name. I'm going to tell him it was your idea. Marty, right?"

"Yeah, that's me … Marthann Owen. Thanks, Dr. Wilson … and good luck." Marty almost swooned as he let go her hand and turned to leave.

Bax followed him obediently out the door.

Wilson looked in the rear-view mirror as he drove back toward Princeton, only to find it blocked completely by the large, shaggy body. Sometime in his life, Baxter had certainly ridden in a car before. He was watching out the window with an innocent kind of animal joy. His tongue hung from the side of his mouth and his ears worked back and forth like the gears of a fork lift.

Wilson wondered what Lisa Cuddy would think when she got home tonight and found a big dog wandering around her fenced-in back yard. He could certainly not turn Bax loose in his apartment, and he doubted very much whether House would appreciate dog hair all over his place either. There were a lot of things that still needed to be worked out with this strange undertaking. Only one thing, at this point, was certain:

Wilson had delivered the goods!

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The silver Dodge Ram's powerful Michelin tires grabbed the miles in front of it, and threw them, screaming, behind it with the power of a badger digging a burrow. The two people in its cab were riding quietly now, each lost in thought, each wondering what they would find when they arrived at their destination, still a little over a hundred miles ahead.

John and Blythe finished off the thermos of coffee about twenty five miles back, and were as calm now as they could possibly be. They looked across at each other from time to time, and their eyes met, held, and then moved away again toward other vistas. If they spoke now, tears might not be far behind, and so they played it safe, listening to a quiet Classic Country station. George Jones offered his rendition of "Don't Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes", and they smiled at each other … remembering Perry Como's version of it from the days when they were first married.

Blythe let her body undulate with the motion of the big truck as it rode the uneven pavement like a yacht rode the ocean waves. She leaned the back of her head into the headrest and tried to clear her mind of the constant worry over her brilliant, tortured son.

Jim Wilson had told her that Gregg would recover, but she'd detected an undertone in the timbre of his gentle voice that suggested there were things he was holding back. Jim watched over his hurt friend unobtrusively, covering his concern with a veneer of sarcasm and cynicism that almost equaled Gregg's own. He would not be caught dead pitying Gregory House, but he was there, like a rock, if Gregg stumbled. Blythe admired him and was grateful that her son had such a friend. Not many people were so lucky to have someone as loyal as Dr. James Wilson.

The country station began to play "Elizabeth" by the Statlers and then segued into Mel Tillis and "Coca Cola Cowboy".

She sighed and stole a quick look across the seat to study John's face. He was still guarded and flinty eyed with determination. That old "don't-let-them-see-you-sweat" Marine attitude was so deeply entrenched in his makeup that he still stiffened up whenever there was a situation that touched his emotions. If you were hurting, you sucked it up. You acted like a man! "Ten-Hut!"

Such hogwash! She closed her eyes, wondering what he was thinking …

Blackjack knew she'd been watching him.

(He almost always thought of himself as "Blackjack!" The nickname was a badge of honor, and he wore it like a shield, even now).

His wife had always watched him; always gauged his moods by the look in his ice-blue eyes. Told him so, too! The eye thing was one of those distinctive physical traits he'd passed down to his only child. By the time Gregg was an adult, however, he had gone his father one better; his stare could have bored holes through concrete!

John House sometimes suspected that he and his son were more alike than they were different. That suspicion on his part created a lot of tension between them, because it made John uncomfortable. Like his father before him, Gregg had long ago picked up a propensity to play devil's advocate at every turn. No matter what the question or the discussion or the argument, Gregg would lie in wait for a stance to be established on one side or the other, and then dig his own entrenchment deep on the opposing side. He was good at it; better than John was, and it honed his mental and verbal skills to a whetted edge. At some point during Gregg's teen years, his intelligence approached critical mass, and he even began to intimidate his own father.

Not something Blackjack would choose to admit: not even to himself!

Colonel House had not been around much for his son's major milestones while he was growing up. Blackjack was in the skies over the Sea of Japan when Gregg took his first steps at the tender age of ten months. He was on TDY in the Middle East when the boy lost his first tooth. He was flying sorties in South Viet Nam when Gregg graduated from kindergarten and began first grade.

Most of the time Blythe and the boy lived in authorized military housing when Blackjack had to do tours of duty in Italy or Spain or the Far East or some other exotic locale. But sometimes the dangers of his job did not allow them access to foreign lands, and those were the times they remained stateside while their husband and father became a shadowy stranger for months at a time.

Sometimes John House viewed his encounters with his son in inches and feet. Every time they managed to make a new connection, Gregg seemed to have grown another inch or two, and moved further away from him a few more feet. During his service "in country" during the Viet Nam War, Gregg grew an astounding six inches. After that, every departure brought further estrangement. Then they didn't know each other anymore.

Even when they did come together and the Marine officer attempted to exert his place as a parent, Gregg was no longer listening. He'd already heard all the "Gung Ho" speeches about integrity and honor. A hundred times over! He didn't want to hear his absentee father lecture him again on military fitness, or personal hygiene, or keeping his personal "quarters" cleaned up.

He turned a deaf ear when harangued about "policing his underwear drawer", or getting another "Gawdamn" haircut.

("You look like a gawdamned Old English Sheepdog!")

("Oh yeah? Well guess what! I'd rather look like an Old English Sheepdog than you!")

Moppy haired Gregg wanted to be left-the-hell alone by this strange man in a Hallowe'en costume! He retreated to his medical books and his sports teams and his piano. If his hair dragged across his shoulders, so-fucking-what? It was his hair!

Some of their bitter arguments still bothered John House to this day. A black wall of silence had grown between them. John wondered if his crippled son still hated him so …

All his failings as a father came back to haunt Blackjack House while the miles passed by beneath the big Dodge pickup. He had many reasons why his life had played out in the manner it had; many excuses for all the times he was not there: Service to one's country. Being where he was needed (that one was questionable indeed!). Patriotism. But when it came down to cases, Marines did not make excuses, and it all boiled down to one thing: Danger! John House's existence had thrived on danger and excitement. Living in some soap opera "wedded bliss" and raising a little kid did not do it for him.

Up There!

High above the Earth, surrounded only by blue sky and a fragile metal shell, causing his adrenalin to pump through him in constant overload was almost better than sex. Better than having all the money in the world. Better even, than a good woman at his side, and a little son who adored him.

Regrets! Regrets for being an adrenaline junkie. Regrets for being a young, danger-addicted fool!

Now that he was older and the glory days far behind him, he had pause to reflect on the responsibilities he'd run away from as a young man. But as far as his ongoing relationship with his son was concerned, it was what it was. Now he had to chew it up and swallow it, and hope that one day he and Gregg could come to one accord and find a way to put aside their differences.

Worse than any peril he had ever placed himself into as a Marine pilot, John's greatest moment of horror came when he first visited Gregg after the thing that happened to his leg. Medical jargon was way beyond his ken, and no matter how often the infarction was explained to him, even in layman's terms, John didn't get it. "Infarctions" were life-threatening things that happened to people's hearts … not their legs!

That Gregg was in desperate pain was obvious. Standing in the corridor outside his room and listening to his son scream in agony was not only too horrible for John to listen to, but it made him feel embarrassment for Gregg. No Marine would allow himself to be reduced to that kind of cowardice.

Another regret John still held in his heart!

Blythe had thought nothing of going in there and squeezing Gregg's hand during the worst of his pain when Stacy couldn't stand it any longer. She would stroke his brow and whisper to him those things that only a mother could articulate. It didn't matter whether he could hear her or not. She did it.

All John could do was stand there with his guts in a knot and feel embarrassment … embarrassment! … for Gregg's inability to contain his screams. During those hours before his second surgery when they tore out most of his leg muscle, he had been reduced to a human being's lowest common denominator; a feral animal in the throes of death, keening out its life forces in final violence and humiliation.

John could not believe that he had been so unfeeling, or more accurately, so feeling that he'd had to cut those emotions off; revert to his Marine training, because he couldn't handle what was happening to his child. Perhaps he had been embarrassed, not for Gregg in his uncontainable pain, but for himself in his inability at the time … to allow a feeling to break through the façade. Suck it up! Be a man! Don't let them see you sweat!

Blythe had no problem letting her emotions show. She had wept, not on his, her husband's, shoulder, but on the shoulder of young Jim Wilson, her son's best friend. And in the meantime, Blackjack House, pride of the Marines, stood stiff and controlled and alone in the middle of the corridor outside his terribly ill son's hospital room.

He remembered glancing at Dr. Wilson's face, above Blythe's bowed head, and catching the gleam of wetness in the compassionate dark eyes. For a moment he felt almost absolved of his rigid formal stance. Those eyes told him in a fleeting instant, that the man understood his reluctance. If he let go of his fierce grip on his emotions, he would be reduced to a huddled mass, weeping in the nearest corner.

Wilson knew, and he did not rat him out. John had never found a way to let the man know he'd been grateful for that. And he had never mentioned it to anyone. Neither, he believed, had Wilson!

John House sighed and tried to reconcile himself with all the mistakes that had gone before. He would not chide his son for having to use a handicap parking space. He would not stare at the cane and make remarks about "two legs". He would not tease him about not having a "chick" on each arm. He would just be glad that Gregg was still alive!

He chanced a look across the seat of the truck, and found that Blythe was looking at him quizzically and smiling that "smile" she had that always bugged the hell out of him.

He smiled back. They were ten minutes from Princeton.

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