House was happy. As happy as can be a man still grieving the loss of a long, albeit stormy, relationship; as happy as can be a man still haunted by the ghost of a random shooter, who even now visited his dreams and occasionally plagued his waking hours. But it was enough. The pain was gone, or mostly so. At any rate, it was manageable.
The mind is a wondrous thing. It has only the briefest of memory for physical pain. The shortness of this sort of memory enables women to go through the intense pain of childbirth again and again; keeps us from sequestering ourselves in our homes, afraid scrapes, cuts and other results of a hazardous world.
House would never run again. He knew that. But he could walk unaided (most of the time); he could concentrate for hours without the veil of narcotics competing for his attention; without the intense pain as a constant distraction. It was even possible that somewhere down the line, he might play a game of tennis again. Or golf. These were simple pleasures. But when you've been denied access for years, the pleasure of even the thought of these things magnified to greatness.
House could look at a woman again, not seeing pity in her eyes nor furtive glances at his cane. Judging him for himself, not based on his disability. And patients, too, would see the doctor, not the cripple. Look at him with confidence, not look away with embarrassment for him.
The days became weeks. New patients came onto his service, were diagnosed and cured. House began to accept his new reality, his modest limitations and the great new freedom granted by some doctors in Germany. His colleagues stopped walking on eggshells around him, waiting for him to snap or fall, revert to type. He was no Marcus Welby, even now. But, then again, he never was. Nevertheless, the kinder, gentler Dr. Gregory House was the new reality for those who knew him.
He was still demanding of his team; he still suffered no fools or idiots; he railed at incompetence; scorned hypocrisy. He was still Gregory House, but some earlier, renovated version.
Wilson was the most surprised. Well, after Foreman, that is. "What is it with you these days, House? Lost your sense of humor?" They were sitting in House's office. Wilson sat across the desk from House, who played nervously with the red and white ball.
"What do you mean?"
"You. You've changed."
"Oh, where have I heard those words before?"
"No. It's not that I'm complaining. Believe me. But don't you think you're trying a little too hard at this 'being a good guy' game you've concocted?"
"It's not a game, Jimmy. I'm no less an ass than I ever was, only a pain-free ass. No pain; no drugs. Well unless you count ibuprofen…"
"Oh so you admit that the drugs messed you up."
"Oh here we go again. Look can't you just be happy for me and leave it alone?" House was now gripping the ball tightly. The tips of his fingers were white from the stress.
"You're taking nothing besides the IB? No antidepressants, anxiety meds, nothing else?" Wilson wondered why he was being so skeptical. Why he couldn't be less anxious about House's personality changes. "What about for you sleep problems, the vivid dreaming?"
"Give it a rest, Wilson. If you're so curious, break into my house and raid my medicine chest. What is it with you anyway?" House put the ball down, dismissing Wilson and ending the debate.
Wilson had seen it before. Patients, his own patients, suddenly feeling better because of a new treatment regimen that happened to work; coming out of a particularly nasty set of chemo sessions. The alleviation of misery, though intoxicating, was usually relatively short lived. This was the fear that lay unexpressed between them. He wasn't sure how to broach the subject with House. On the other hand, House probably understood a lot more than he was saying, and didn't need his closest friend—his only friend fighting against him.
House wasn't sure what bug was up Wilson's ass…or, maybe he was. "Look. I'm not going to crash and burn. Roll up into a little ball and cry for mommy if this doesn't last. I know that that's what you're thinking. I'm not one of your cancer chicks high on faith healers' words. If this lasts six months. Great. I'll re-do the treatment and I'll be good for another six months. It's in the literature. Booster treatments are common."
"Good." Wilson left, and headed downstairs.
"What do you think of House?"
"In which way, specifically do you mean, Dr. Wilson?"
"How he's doing. You're his doctor of record for the Ketamine. What do you think?"
"I think it's going according to plan, with several of the anticipated side effects. But those seem to be abating. The dreams aren't as disruptive; the hallucinations have pretty much disappeared. I think the desired effect's been achieved."
"What happens if it fails?"
"It hasn't…failed. It worked. Evidenced by the lack of cane, improvement in quality of life. He's even going to physio and wears a support brace around his thigh."
"That's not what I mean. You never asked me why I objected to his having the treatment done in the first place. It's not that I didn't think it would work. I know House far too well to think that he'd try snake oil. He did the reading and research before he came to us for help. I objected because I've seen far too many times in my practice, patients who get relief or remission only to have it fail after they've forgotten what it was like in the first place. When it comes back, they're not prepared. They crash. Hard."
"House doesn't have cancer."
"No, but with him, I think it may even be worse. He's beginning to come out of that hardened fortress, beginning to live again. It's like he's been climbing uphill for eight years and has finally reached a plateau, a place to rest and regroup. What if he falls all the way back down the mountain? Do you honestly think he'll have the energy to climb another mountain?"
"You suck at metaphors, Wilson. House deserves a little peace. This was his hail mary play. He had nowhere left to go. More like he was on a cliff, to use your metaphor, getting closer and closer to the edge. This pulled him back. Besides, it's working."
"Just so you know what my objections were, and still are. I just don't want to see him destroyed by this."
Wilson stood to go. Cuddy said nothing. House would not be destroyed by this. She wouldn't let it happen.
When Cuddy arrived at House's office, he was in the midst of an animated discussion with his team at the white board. She sat in his Eames chair and listened to the debate. It would almost seem to an outsider that he was just writing on a board everything said by three opinionated doctors. That he was the conduit for their discussion and nothing more.
She knew better. This was teaching at its best. House was the perfect example of the Socratic Method he was so fond of. He listened, filtered their ideas and asked pointed questions when the discussion down. He prodded and asked more questions. He wrote down much of what they said, but not all. He batted aside ideas that didn't fit, helped them massage ideas that might if they looked at them through a different prism. They thought he was being dismissive; he understood that he was teaching them to be better doctors. Better critical thinkers. Excellent diagnosticians. If they really paid attention, she thought, they might even pick up a few pointers what it means to be a real healer. But that wasn't something you could teach. It was something that you were or weren't.
She'd had her gripes with House. He could be outwardly arrogant and annoying to deal with. But upon closer observation she saw that he his arrogance was only for public display. He knew he hadn't all the answers. He questioned himself at every turn, at every judgment. It's why he lost so few patients that others had long ago given up on. His personality was abrasive. It was clear that he disdained everyone and hated everything. Until you managed a peek into a patient room, with House sitting at a bedside reading poetry, or talking softly and soothingly to someone who was desperately ill and needed to make life and death decisions that no one should have to make on their own behalf. Until you heard him play Bach or Beethoven. Or saw his eyes in despair as he peered helplessly into a patient room watching from afar as that patient slipped away.
Cuddy had witnessed all of those things over the years, she just hadn't realized it until now, thinking back, wondering where the cynical Dr. Gregory House had gone these past few weeks.
The DDX appeared to have ended for the moment and House's team scattered out of the conference room and onto their tasks. Cuddy stood, embarrassed that she'd been eavesdropping on them, sitting in his easy chair.
They hadn't spoken much in the past couple of weeks. Not avoiding each other, just not crossing each others' paths. They'd met in the hospital corridors; she'd observe him walking with his staff, talking to Wilson. She could see, easily, that he was progressing well; that the pain was under control. He seemed to be doing well. Physio reports showed improved tone in the muscles tangential to the scarring and increased strength. His wounds were healing.
"Cuddy." House was a bit taken aback to see her standing in the middle of his office.
"Hey. How're you doing?"
"Good. So what brings you up here?"
She was suddenly shy. Why was she here, she wondered to herself.
"I just…I wanted to know…I think you might be ready to return to your clinic duties. Your injuries seem to be healed…"
"That's not even close to the truth. That's not why you're here. Wilson been talking to you? Because my guess is that as soon as he left my office, he made a beeline to yours."
"Why do you say that?"
"He afraid I'm going to crash. I'm not…"
"That's not why I'm here," she interrupted. House tilted his head, puzzled. "I have to start my next round of injections tomorrow, if I'm going to try… Can you administer…?" The implications of this question had taken on greater significance and emotional risk than they had two months ago.
"This is the third round. Last month my OB did the injections. I have to admit, her technique is more practiced, but she halfway across town. You're more convenient. Would you mind…?" There was more to the question than the matter of a simple shot.
"If you start the injections tomorrow, you'll be…"
"If I'm going to do in vitro, the procedure will be done in…"
"I can count, Cuddy." Now it was House's turn to be shy. He had no way of knowing whether Cuddy even remembered their evening together, what they discussed. She had been pretty tipsy. Well, more than tipsy. He wasn't sure how to bring it up. "What about a donor?"
Cuddy was crestfallen. A donor? Hadn't he agreed that… House watched her eyes and her reaction. "I thought…?"
"I didn't know if you remembered. To be honest, you were pretty pickled. Or prettily pickled. Or something like that. I didn't want to presume…" He looked down at the floor.
"As I recall, the one thing we hadn't decided was the 'how.'"
"Ah. That." The question was there. Inevitable and imminent. But not something that could be decided standing in House's office in the middle of the afternoon.