A/N: I don't know if I have technical information correct in this bit. If not, please don't hesitate to tell me. I'd really appreciate it.
I.
When Wilson next opened his eyes, he had a Foley.
While the Foley was certainly not his most important concern, it was, at the time, the most pressing. Beside the fact that he hated the things—the immodesty which came with them (somebody had to set it up, didn't they?), the fact that they were a bit more uncomfortable than he usually found tolerable, and the way they effectively restrained his mobility—a Foley could have meant only one thing, and that one thing was the one thing he definitely did not want.
A Foley meant that he, James Wilson, was in hospital.
Given, the admission sounded a bit foolish coming from an oncologist, but Wilson had not been in hospital for ten years, since he broke his leg in two places skiing with some college buddies, and he did not intend to start the practice again soon. It was not so much a phobia as it was an incredibly severe dislike. Wilson considered himself a fairly private person—well, except when he was drunk, but House was the only one around then—and if there was one thing besides good food that you could not have in hospital, it was privacy.
And on top of that, Julie would kill him.
At this, Wilson shifted his eyelids from half-shut position to panic mode and began making a very credible effort to sit up. He got his head about three inches off the pillow (what were those things stuffed with, rocks?) when he realized something both rather alarming and very important.
He, James Wilson, was not only in hospital—he was tied to the bed.
Wilson twisted his hands quietly back and forth for a moment, trying to test his restraints. Sure enough, his wrists were bound by thick leather straps to the bed rails, and he could do little more than flex his fingers. The rough edges of his bindings chafed against the wrist he'd recently sprained; he sighed and, in annoyance, stopped resisting. In hospital and restrained. He began to feel sympathetic for the patients who actually required restraints; in truth, he'd experienced few things more degrading. It was when he waggled his feet back and forth beneath the blanket and found his ankles were bound as well that the reality of the situation began to sink in. He could not get up, and he had no idea why. If this was the current punishment for being late, a Foley and a set of restraints, why wasn't House suffering too? He shut his eyes and was about to indulge himself in pretending to be somewhere else, far away from wives and Foleys and bindings and House, when he heard a voice.
"Dr. Wilson?" it said. "Are you all right?"
Wilson, of course, knew right away who it was—one of House's fellows, in particular one by the name of Allison Cameron. He sighed to himself and, with more than a little reluctance, pried open his eyes once more. She was standing by the door smiling at him. He could tell by the look on her face that the façade was rather flimsy, and he wondered what bad news she had found out and whether it had anything to do with why he was bound to the bed.
"I'm fine," he said, though he felt far from it. His wrist ached, he couldn't move, he felt sure he was bleeding through the bandage on his shoulder, and the bruise he'd noticed earlier was throbbing away in full glory. In addition, he was currently wearing a hospital gown, and Allison Cameron was… staring at him. Did he miss something?
"You gave Cuddy a real scare."
"What happened?" Wilson asked.
Cameron smiled weakly and made a few hand gestures in an effort to decide exactly what she should say to that. Wilson essentially filled in the blanks for himself—something bad had happened and she didn't want to tell him about it. He tried to mentally retrace that morning's activities; he remembered arriving, missing House's bike, running into Cuddy, coming up with a lie which should not have come true but somehow, by some cruel twist of fate, did anyway… and then nothing until the Foley. He was fairly sure that, provided he were motivated to, he would be able to remember earlier events, but he worked so hard for blissful ignorance most of the time that he didn't mind indulging in it when he actually had a proper excuse. He sighed—he was supposed to have seen a patient that morning, but the whole three-hours-late deal pretty much screwed that up.
Cameron was still grinning at him.
Wilson liked Cameron—he wasn't interested in dating her (he was not quite as much a player as House or the hospital rumor mill made him out to be), but he felt a strange kinship with her, and she was oddly fascinated by him. She was, by no means, the only one who found his friendship with House odd, but she was one of the few who found it intriguing. And as if that weren't enough, Wilson personally believed Cameron preferred to like everyone anyway. He did not have a close friendship with her but a sort of acquaintanceship; it was true that House was his only real friend (after all, that was all he had—a job and a stupid, screwed-up friendship), but if he were to have a second, he thought she'd be a pretty good candidate.
At the moment, helpless and bound to his own bed like a patient in the psych ward, he remembered telling Cameron "You'd be surprised what you can live with," and he felt the truth of his statement finally hit home. He was surprised by what he could live with—and he guessed she was, too. Everyone had their secrets, right? Everyone lied.
"Did I faint?"
Cameron nodded. Wilson suspected she was pleased by the relatively mild question. "Collapsed right in the clinic," she said. "The janitors will be digging your papers out of the air vents for weeks."
"My papers?"
"Your briefcase broke," Cameron said. "The fall was probably too much for it."
Wilson knew Cameron would really have appreciated more avoidance, but, for his sake, he had to get back to the topic at hand. "Why am I in bed?" he asked, "if I only fainted?"
"It was, uh," Cameron began, "a bit more than that. You see—"
Luckily for her, she was cut off just then by a direct, rather imposing thudding noise on the door to the room. It was a loud noise, so Wilson instinctively flinched a bit. He knew what was making this particular loud noise, however, and so did Cameron. She stood back a foot or two and the door swung open.
"I haven't taught you well, have I?" said House. The expression on his face, if what was there could have been called one at all, was utterly unreadable. Wilson was completely caught off guard. He blinked.
"Huh?"
House turned to Cameron and leered at her in a particularly suggestive fashion. She sighed, sent another cheery smile in Wilson's direction, and took the hint.
"Bye, Cameron," he said, wondering if a sort of lopsided four-fingered wiggle counted as a proper wave and doubting it but trying anyway. Once the door was shut, House turned back to him and maintained a blank stare which went on until something caught up with Wilson, exhaustion, embarrassment, injury, who knew, and he closed his eyes.
Big mistake.
"Fainting's a real girly thing to do, you know," came a voice about four inches away from his nose. "I thought I taught you better than that. Did you at least get a chance to look up her skirt? Otherwise, you lose, dude."
Wilson's eyes sprang open about halfway through the first sentence; he let out a frightened squeak and reflexively strained a bit against the restraints, but the pressure on his wrist was too much. House's eyes narrowed rather dangerously. Wilson did not really consider that a good sign. "Sorry," he said, "cheated on the test and all that. Learned that from the best though. And as for the skirt, I'm—" he stumbled over the word "—married."
"You know," House groaned, "I never thought I'd even think this, but—"
"Oh, please, House, this isn't the best place to propose—"
"We might actually have to—"
"Wait for Aspen, much more romantic that way—"
"Talk," House finished, then sucked in a very large, very exaggerated gulp of air as if the word had simply been too much to get out. "Damn it, I need a drink."
"Look," Wilson said, forcing himself to be serious, "while I'm tied to a hospital bed probably isn't the best time for anything—"
"Oh, I can think of something—" said House, leering at Wilson in a particularly suggestive fashion, which Wilson found highly disturbing but chose to ignore in favor of more important discussion.
"Let alone talking," Wilson spat. "Since when are you Mr. Rogers anyway? And why, damn it, am I chained to the damn bed?"
Wilson didn't think he'd ever seen House drop his gaze before, but he did. There was, surprisingly enough, silence for a moment. Then, "Apparently, Wilson, you're suicidal."
If Wilson hadn't known the message was serious simply by its contents, he understood the weight it carried by the fact that House used his name. House hadn't called him anything other than "you" in years. But the "suicidal" part was enough for him. He shut his eyes again and wondered how he'd ever get out of that one. On second thought, he wondered why they believed he was suicidal in the first place. The Boy Wonder oncologist with a less-than-perfect life? It was enough to send half the nurses into shock.
In the air vents above Wilson's head, the form which had been the first to fly up there continued silently on its journey.
