Thanks for all the reviews - much appreciated!
Am not entirely sure about this chapter - I've been struggling with it for days. It's kind of a fill-in scene I guess but it needed to be written.. am hoping I've got the tone and the voices right. Please let me know what you think...
In Self Defence – Chapter 9
Gregory House was awoken by the sound of an insistent voice. He awoke groggily and for a moment he was confused, unsure of his surroundings, and then he tried to move and a spike of hot pain served as a sharp reminder. Oh yeah. Hospital. Shit. He groaned slightly, gritting his teeth as he waited for the flare of pain to slowly subside.
"Wake up, House."
He flinched away from the intrusive voice, frowning sleepily. The brief stab of pain was receding and the lingering after-affects of strong pain medication left him feeling drowsy and dislocated, his limbs heavy and his mind feeling like it was stuffed with cotton wool. He rather liked this oddly muffled sensation, he had a strong suspicion that harsh reality was not going to be pleasant and he was happy to put that moment off for as long as possible. As long as he didn't move he felt fairly comfortable and could quite happily just drift back off to…
"House!"
A hand on his shoulder.
"Come on, House."
He tried to express his desire to be left in peace but it came out mumbled and slurred, his voice thick with sleep and opiates.
"Leemeelone.."
"No can do, my friend. Come on, wake up."
The voice brooked no disagreement. House grumbled fitfully, his comfortable sleepiness rapidly dissipating.
"You've got about 30 seconds before I set Cuddy on you…"
House's eyelids felt like they'd been glued shut but he finally dragged them open, squinting against the sudden light to find James Wilson standing over him with a mischievous grin on his face. "I thought that might do the trick," his friend commented smugly.
House eyed him balefully, his mind still lazy with sleep and narcotics. He felt too woozy to come up with a clever response to that and conversation in general seemed like an awful lot of effort so he decided not to bother, his gaze sliding past Wilson and focusing on nothing in particular. His head felt incredibly heavy and all he wanted to do was just let himself slide, let thoughts and consciousness slip away…
"House? Hey, you ok?"
A note of concern in his voice and when fingers snapped in front of his eyes and forced him to focus he saw the levity of a moment ago had left Wilson's face.
"You with me?" Wilson frowned down at House from his vantage point hovering anxiously over the bed, one hand fumbling in the pocket of his lab coat for the ever-present penlight. House lay passive and still, feeling pleasantly numb, while Wilson shone the small torch in both his eyes, the bright blur of light burning into his retinas, flicking away, blinding him for a second, then flicking away, in and out, in and out… He felt oddly disconnected, thoughts slipped away from his grasp, sand in his fingers, ripples on the water. He floated.
"Greg?" Wilson's voice was definitely worried. "Do you know where you are?"
His eyelids felt heavy. He wanted to be left alone. Wilson looming over the bed; staring at him. Stop staring. Asking pointless questions. Hah. Stupid questions. Of course he knew where he was. A hospital is a hospital is a hospital. Green ceiling, green walls; green is the smell of antiseptic in the air, is the beep of the monitors. Hospital sounds green. He was a stone thrown into the water; ripples expanding outwards and he was sinking…
Movement was an effort, conscious thought took energy he didn't have.
But Wilson wouldn't stop staring and there was fear in his eyes. Fear was green – green like hospitals. Everything was green today. It took all his concentration to make his lips move, to form a word, and even then it came out slurred and drowsy. But the word chased the green taste of fear from Wilson's face and that was a good thing.
"Nnhosptl" House mumbled.
"Hey." Not Wilson's voice. Someone else. Hospital doors make an odd little "hussssh" sound as they swing open. "How's he doin'?"
Wilson turned away as the door hussshed closed. No more staring. Good.
Voices at the foot of the bed, fairies at the end of the garden. Imagine, a man who created the most intelligent fictional character in history believing in… Voices were talking. Taking about him?
"He's a little woozy. It's the meds - pupils are slow to react."
"When was his last dose?"
Voice was familiar. His mind put a face to the voice but it was a moment before his scattered thoughts could connect a name to the face. Foreman; Four man; Sign of Four; Sherlock Holmes; Conan Doyle; fairies at the bottom of the garden; voices at the bottom of the bed.
"…Should be coming out of it soon…"
"…CT scan is booked for 9.00am…"
"…neuro checks…"
"…Cuddy mentioned memory loss?…"
The voices were making his head hurt. Too many words; too much to follow. Concentration made his head spin. He shifted restlessly and tremors of pain cut a swathe through the fog. Air escaped him in a sigh that was not quite a groan; a tight, sharp sound, a sterile, green sound, green like the ceiling, green like the walls, green like the air in this room.
He rolled his head to the right and they were waiting for him, expressions guarded, faces wary. Smiles pasted tightly over concern. Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three.
Foreman had taken charge. The neurologist wanted to do his own neuro checks. House wanted to sleep. His head was starting to ache and the pleasant lethargy was slowly slipping away from him. The cold, clinical reality of consciousness was creeping up on him and it was not a pleasant feeling. The last thing he felt like was chatting. He let his head loll back over to the left.
"Hey. Stay with us, House"
Foreman's turn to lean over the bed. Everybody standing around him, staring down at him, talking about him, over him, poking him, prodding him, drugging him, while he lay here trapped, a prisoner of his own frailty. He remembered this. He hated this. He wanted to get out of here.
Foreman was poking him with questions, needling him with irrelevancies. He wanted to be left alone. His pulse was pounding in his head. Don't want to be here. Don't… want.. to.. be.. here…
"House? Are you ok?"
Wilson frowning down at him. Foreman reaching over to shine a penlight in his eyes. Why couldn't they leave him alone! He felt as though he was suffocating, could hear his breath rasping in his chest as he struggled for air, and every breath brought a familiar sting of pain.
Wilson's voice. "He's confused. Is it just the meds?"
He flinched at the touch of a hand on his shoulder and instinct told him to fight back, to break free, to get out of here. The IV line in the crook of his elbow pinched painfully as he lashed out with his left arm, knocking the hand away, heaving himself up from the mattress.
"House, no!"
He was unprepared for the pain. It crashed over him in a tidal wave that drowned out sight, hearing, thought. Every muscle in his chest and abdomen screamed and fiery agony raced up and down his rib cage. He couldn't even cry out, his breath was stolen by pain, ripped out of him in a low gasp of agony. The strength drained from his limbs and he fell back against the mattress, his head swimming, black spots crowding in at the edge of his vision.
It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.
"Dammit, Greg!"
He gritted his teeth, eyes squeezed shut, and tried to focus on Wilson's voice, anything to distract him from the awful, sickening throb of pain. Anger and exasperation weighed heavy in his voice.. and did nothing to hide the tremor that spoke of worry and fear.
No more numbness now, no more pleasant drifting. His nerves were singing with the fire of fresh, new pain. He held himself tensely, breathing shallowly as he waited, hoped for time to dull the sharp edges of the pain, allow it to fade into the background. He became aware of Wilson's hands firm on his shoulders, pinning him to the mattress. He wanted to laugh. Last thing he felt like doing right now was moving. Pain had chased away the fog in his head and he had been right on the money – reality was a rotten place to be right now. He ached all over. He concentrated on controlling his breathing, feeling the painkillers still in his system blessedly beginning to take the edge off the pain.
Foreman was talking over his head, discussing him with Wilson.
"It could be related to the concussion. Pupil reactions are fine though – a little slow but that's from the meds. Is he oriented?"
Wilson blew out a sigh of frustration. "I don't know," he admitted. "I haven't been able to get a clear answer out of him other than that he knew he was in the hospital."
Even with his eyes closed House knew Foreman would be nodding in that oh-so-serious way of his.
"We need to do the neurological checks before we take him down to CT," he decided.
House had had enough of being discussed and talked over like some ignorant clinic patient.
"I'm fine." His voice sounded tired and shaky but it worked. Pain still thrummed through him, trembling his muscles, fading slowly, too slowly. He didn't bother opening his eyes.
"Hey. You had me worried there." The relief was evident in Wilson's voice.
House cracked open an eye to find Wilson looming over him, a relieved smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "How you feeling?" he asked.
"Like crap."
There was a snort from Foreman, "Now there's the House we know and love."
House turned his head slowly, not wanting to aggravate his growing headache, and favoured his subordinate with an icy glare. "I have no desire to know about your kinky fantasies concerning me, Foreman," he sniped sarcastically. "Now, I believe you mentioned something about performing neuro checks?"
Foreman rolled his eyes in a familiar gesture of exasperation and House felt mildly pleased to have re-established the correct order of things to their relationship; me boss, you not. If he were honest with himself, he hadn't been facetious in his answer to Wilson – the intense pain of movement was slowly subsiding but it left behind an overall, generalised ache that seemed to encompass most of his major muscle groups. His head was throbbing quietly and he felt really quite ridiculously weak and shaky. No sense letting Foreman see that though – it was enough that Wilson was hovering about like a concerned mother hen, he could do without mothering by members of his own team.
He submitted to Foreman's examination meekly enough; answering questions about who he was, where he was, what year it was, what month, what day… things got a little confused around about there. He remembered waking in the night, the nausea, the awful pain as he had vomited helplessly into a bowl. Beyond that things got a little fuzzy. He made a good guess at the day by simple extrapolation and Foreman seemed satisfied with his answer. House frowned. The effort of concentration was doing nothing to improve his headache… or his memory.
"Your vision seems to have cleared up." Wilson noted casually as Foreman completed his exam and left to check that CT was ready for them. House grunted, not really feeling up to a whole heap of conversation right now. He could feel Wilson's gaze coolly assessing him and House knew he wasn't fooled for a second.
"How's your head?"
House closed his eyes for a moment; his head felt heavy, aching, the pulse pounding in his temples. He sighed.
"Awful." he admitted.
Wilson's expression chastised him for not having mentioned something earlier. "I'll get you something for the headache," he told him. "Something that won't knock you out quite so much."
House grimaced and, with an effort, raised his right arm from the bed to rub at the ache in his temple. He winced when his fingers met swollen, tender flesh.
He hoped Wilson didn't hear the tremor in his voice as he asked, almost plaintively, "What happened, James?"
Wilson had dragged an armchair to the side of the bed and he sat leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He looked tense, tired. "You don't remember anything?"
He guessed the frustration was evident on his face because Wilson didn't wait for an answer before continuing.
"We don't know exactly," he said. "You were missing from the clinic, you weren't answering your pager.."
He threw House a grin that was equal parts exasperation and despair. "Everyone thought you were playing hooky."
House would have smiled at that were it not for the look on Wilson's face. There was a tight, pinched look to his youthful features that spoke of trauma, of shock and fear, of hours spent sitting beside a hospital bed waiting, just waiting. He'd seen that look on Wilson's face before. He swallowed.
"It was Cuddy who found you."
House's eyes widened at that.
"She was on the warpath, vowing to hunt you down." Wilson gave a short laugh that had little to do with humour. "First place she checked was the exam rooms and she found you on the floor…" he looked away, his words tailing off as his voice cracked slightly.
House couldn't think of a single thing to say.
"Jesus Christ, Greg – you scared the living daylights out of me!" Staring at the floor, Wilson's voice was hot with anger and hurt, raw with the fear and shock that had been bottled up inside him since a nurse had walked into his office and ripped the ground from under his feet with a few short words.
House watched wordlessly as Wilson tipped his head back and blew out a long breath, his eyes closed, slowly and deliberately letting the tension drain from his body. His voice was soft, quiet, as he said, "When I walked into radiology and saw you… saw what he'd done to you…"
He raised his eyes to meet House's gaze and the fear still lingered in those warm brown eyes.
"You've got a contusion to your right temple and a concussion – so far symptoms have included blurred vision, nausea, disorientation, confusion and memory loss."
He seemed to take some comfort from slipping back into familiar medical terminology, his voice gaining strength as he listed clinical details, his eyes never leaving House's.
"You got fractures to the fourth, fifth and eighth ribs on the right side and one hell of a lot of blunt force trauma to the chest and abdomen."
The pinched look had faded from Wilson's face and he just looked… tired. Drained.
"Only you know what happened in that exam room, and you can't tell us," he sighed. "All I know is the room got trashed and you got the crap kicked out of you."
House was silent, digesting this information. Hearing the facts recited didn't make the events any more immediate, any more real to him; the hole in his memory remained stubbornly blank.
He looked up at Wilson and hated to see the fear and sorrow in his friend's eyes, hated that he'd been put through hell because of him. God, if it had been the other way round, if it had been Wilson lying here…
"Were the police called?" he asked gruffly.
Wilson nodded. "For all the good they can do. There's not much to go on and if you can't tell them anything…"
There was a hint of mischievousness in House's voice as he interrupted, "Have they looked into the possibility that Cuddy hired someone?"
He was pleased to see Wilson's face struggle with frustration, disbelief and exasperation before, inevitably, the smallest of grins began to tug at his mouth.
House kept his face straight and his expression innocent as his friend's smile widened but when Wilson began to laugh quietly, shaking his head in disbelief, he couldn't keep an answering grin from his mouth.
When Foreman stuck his head round the door to announce that CT were ready, he found them chortling like naughty school kids, House laughing even as he winced, his hand pressed to his ribs.
TBC...