CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Questions and Answers

Cuddy and Wilson watch House—and he watches them. He's trying to fight off the effects of the meds Cuddy's just administered; he wants to know what's just happened, why they're so upset. But every time he manages to formulate a coherent question, one or the other of them shushes him, saying they'll talk later, when he's comfortable again. He wants to talk now, and Wilson is unhappily aware that he's becoming even more agitated.

"House, don't fight it so hard. Just go with it." House glares at him, but Wilson notes that his eyelids are at half-mast. "It's okay, pal. We're right here, and we'll still be here when you wake up. Just take a little rest, let the morphine do its job; we won't leave, we can talk later, everything's fine…." He lets his voice drone on and on, murmuring assurances, insisting on rest, until finally House acquiesces and allows his eyes to close, pulls in a deep breath, and surrenders to sleep.

Wilson rolls the reclining chair over to where House had fallen, and he and Cuddy are able to return him to it easily, without causing him any apparent discomfort. Cuddy spends a few minutes getting a set of vitals, jotting them down, straightening the office. She doesn't look at Wilson, doesn't say anything as she works. She looks miserable.

"Cuddy, talk to me," Wilson finally says. "Something more than that note is bothering you. I don't think that you still believe it was meant as a suicide note, but you're still upset."

Cuddy meets his kind, inquisitive eyes with her own guilt-filled ones. "I never should have left him. It was a stupid thing to do." She holds up a hand when she sees that Wilson is about to interrupt her, and continues, "Yeah, I know it was only five minutes. I know there was no choice. I even know that junkies go through this every day, alone, without physicians to monitor them. But I also know that they die alone every day, too."

Wilson doesn't try to argue with her; he's already had the same thought, and he's come to terms with it, understands what could have happened, has taken comfort in the fact that it hadn't been any worse than it was. He knows that Cuddy will have to work through that process herself. And he knows she will, so he leaves it alone.

"I stopped by to see Foreman on my way to House's place," he tells her. "I wanted to settle something with him. He said a pretty cruel thing when House collapsed yesterday, and House heard him. He pretty much called House soulless. I needed to know why. I went there prepared to do battle with an arrogant sonofabitch, and I left thinking how unbelievably lucky we are to have him on our team." He laughs at Cuddy's confused expression, and settles in to tell her all about the insightful conversation the two men had shared.

When he's finished talking, she looks as awed as he'd been. "He was up at 3:00 in the morning, trying to help House?" she says; her own view of the young neurologist is undergoing the same transformation that Wilson's had. "It makes sense now," she continues. "He doesn't loathe House, he loathes his condition. That's pretty amazing. No wonder he was so quick to believe my story; it just motivates him to search harder." Then she laughs. "Can you imagine House's face if he knew that Foreman's pulling such a big one over on him?" Wilson laughs too, and a bit of sadness lifts from them both.

---

It's been over an hour, and House has stabilized. It's time to talk. They hate to wake him, but they have to know, and they're aware that he's anxious to explain it. Cuddy puts a hand on his shoulder, gently says, "Wake up, House. We're ready to listen." She rubs his shoulder until he responds.

House rouses reluctantly, but appears aware and rational. "How's the pain?" Wilson asks.

House considers. "Tolerable. What the hell happened?"

Cuddy explains the phone call, her brief absence, meeting up with Wilson on her return, and how they'd found him clutching the paper. How they'd been certain it was a suicide note. House is listening keenly, focused on every word. When Wilson hands him the small piece of paper, he studies it for a full minute before he looks up at them.

"I heard the phone call. I heard you leave. Then I had a visitor—"

"You couldn't have, I locked—" Cuddy starts to interrupt, but Wilson puts a hand on her arm and shakes his head almost imperceptibly.

House continues, "I made a deal with him. My soul, in exchange for 24 hours without pain. He left. There wasn't any pain. I got up and wrote the note." He looks at Wilson. "I just figured you'd think it was a stupid deal." He looks down, silent a moment. "I didn't mean to scare anybody. Sorry," he mumbles. Then he looks up and begins to speak again, his voice intense. "I walked the halls for a while; they were empty, I didn't see anyone. Then I went out onto the grounds and watched the sun come up."

He sees the look that Wilson and Cuddy exchange, turns his head to look out the window and sees that the sun is just rising now. He nods to himself, as if that confirms something. "Then, I wanted to go home, so I came back here to try to find my keys. But my leg started to hurt again. Then it spasmed. My guest returned, said that our contract had been breached because someone had prayed for my soul." Neither House nor Cuddy see Wilson's eyes widen. "I cried out, I guess, and then you were here." He stops talking, and they can see that he's in diagnostic mode.

After a moment he says, almost as if he's lecturing a class, "The phone call was real. Cuddy's leaving was real. And the note is real. Nothing else actually happened. The morphine caused a waking hallucination. Wasn't just a dream; there'd be no note. I incorporated reality—Cuddy's call and departure—into the hallucination. I must have been subconsciously thinking about what Foreman said when I went down yesterday, and I turned it into my reality. There is no logical time continuum during hallucination; an hour can take a minute, a minute can last a day…."

Cuddy and Wilson both flash back to the extraordinary lecture he'd given to a class of interns a year ago; he'd used his own infarction as a teaching case. He's doing it now, too; same clinically detached tone, same coolly analytical demeanor—he could have substituted "the patient" for the word "I" and they'd have thought he was discussing an interesting case. Last year, however, the raw hurt that had been in his eyes had been evident to those closest to him—Wilson, Cuddy, his team. The same look they see now, and they know how much this formal objectivity is costing him.

He sighs, and his eyes go distant for a moment, and they think that the meds and the weariness are pulling him back under. Then he focuses again. "It was good," is all he says.

All the thinking, talking, analyzing, has worn House down, and he leans his head against the pillow and closes his eyes. It appears he's going back to sleep, and Cuddy stands to get the BP cuff. His eyes open immediately. "I'm not finished. There's one more thing."

He looks at them both, a firm, resolute gaze, and says, "I did not plan to kill myself. But just so we're all straight here, if I ever do decide to go that route, I won't mess it up." He turns his head to Wilson, locks eyes with him; "And I will arrange it so that you are not the one to find me. I may be soulless, but even my cruelty has boundaries."

Both his friends look as if he's just punched them in the gut. He smiles almost gently, trying to take some of the sting out of his words. It doesn't work, and he's sorry, but he wants them to know that he is the only one responsible for his own life. Or death.

"And before anyone starts making any plans for a cozy cocoon in the psych ward, I do not currently have suicidal ideations. I do not have a plan. I do not pose a danger to myself or others," he rattles off the answers to the pertinent questions on the standard psych intake form. "Satisfied?"

Wilson and Cuddy look sadly at each other, both realizing that he means every word, that he's thought about this in his patented, reasoned way, that he's quite sane. And they know that if this man decides that death is what he wants, or needs, no one will be able to stop him. The only comfort that either can take is that, clearly, he's also decided that now is not the time.

"I need to sleep now," he says. He closes his eyes and allows himself to float away.

Wilson turns to Cuddy. There are tears in both their eyes, and each pretends not to see the other's fear. Then Wilson reaches out, and they hug for a moment. As they turn together to regard their battle-worn friend, Wilson puts a hand on her arm. "We need to talk," he says.