Wow, now it's time for House's chapter! The long awaited House chapter! If you are still confused after this, everything will be made crystal clear in a few more chapters, howeverlong the story lasts after this.All these confessions have just flown by, I feel (well, except Wilson's chapter... that one had about two different drafts before I settled on the one I posted). Last night, I found myself working the ending of the story out in my mind, figuring out different titles and situations. Warning: I am going to make it kind of angst-y, kind of being an understatement of sorts...
Here we go!
House's Confessions
He sat in the dark at the piano, his bottle of painkiller resting on the top of the piano. It had been so many days since he had taken his medication. He almost couldn't taste the bitterness of the pills on his tongue, that bitterness that took away the pain as much as it promised to make it worse. He hadn't taken his pain medication for a week and his leg throbbed unmercifully. House didn't know why he had decided that the time to withdraw from the medication was right at the beginning of Mr. Deleyney's case.
The painkillers were the scabs that covered a thousand wounds, most of them self inflicted. It was his fault things were going wrong. All his fault... He should have helped Cameron up when she tripped and fell in his office, but he just walked away. He had been so frustrated with the world and Cameron had crossed his path. He should have held his temper in check when he was getting more and more frustrated at his motives being questioned and not grabbed Cameron's wrist. He had known he had not put enough pressure on her wrist to cause a major bruise, but he had not known that Cameron would paint the wrist in eye makeup and that Chase couldn't keep his mouth shut when it came to the benefit of dear Cameron.
He should have done something than marvel at the flowers in Mr. Deleyney's room when the patient had the cardiac episode; instead he had stood there like an idiot. If he would have gotten involved, Foreman wouldn't have lost the blood sample. If Foreman wouldn't have lost the blood sample, House wouldn't have found it, stuck behind the bedside table in Mr. Deleyney's room. He had known that the blood might not be safe to use, but had figured that the medicine he had put with the blood in the lab room would have killed off anything that was growing, contaminating the blood.
What had he been thinking, combining the medication with the blood? He would have been better off just taking a new blood sample and risk being caught. After all, if he had to give Mr. Deleyney the shot later, what was the point of risking-
House shook his head as his thoughts wandered as he looked at the bottle. His fingers tried to pick out a tune on the keyboard, but the chords sounded wrong, the notes harsh and too loud. His leg hurt even more as his concentration on the piano was doing nothing to help the situation at hand and House pounded his fist on the keys, the dull thump of the keys producing screams of anguish, the notes combining to make one hideous sound. House swore under his breath. If he couldn't scream in agony, why could the music? But, as he took his hands away from the piano to fold them in his lap, House realized that his actions had caused that consequence: just like his actions had caused the consequences at the hospital.
He was now fired. He had no job. He was going in tomorrow- No, he thought, looking at the clock, in a few hours, to go and clean out his office. He wouldn't ever see Chase or Foreman again, he wouldn't see Cuddy or Stacy. He would still talk with Wilson but knew that they would eventually grow apart. And Cameron. He wouldn't ever see her again. He almost preferred that he never see her again. She had a crush on him, he knew. Crush wasn't the right word, obsession was more like it. He recognized the weakness that came about her when he walked into the room, the self sacrifice she performed every time he was in trouble. The fact she had faked the large bruise was unusually out of character for Cameron, but House knew she was going to guilt him into apologizing; what had she expected, though? That once he saw the bruise, he would love her instantly, like it was some sort of spell she cast? That he would grab her and take her home that instant, to be his as long as he wanted? House sneered. He wouldn't love her. He could never love her. She was a wimp. She was weak. She wasn't the woman House wanted. He wouldn't ever want another woman after the failed marriage with Stacy. He loved neither of them.
He had wanted to live a life without painkillers, to live a life where he wasn't searching for the pill bottle every other hour, to grab a handful of medication and swallow the bunch all at once. House thought he could break the control his leg had over him. How foolish he had been. Because he couldn't stand the withdrawal symptoms, because of his own poor timing, he had acted irrational and cost himself his job. How foolish he was to think he could take control of his life. He was always in control at the hospital, over his team, his brilliance putting him one step above all others. But now, he didn't have that. Not any more.
He gave up the struggle with his own conscience and snatched the pill bottle from the piano top, grabbing a handful of the medication and swallowing it. House shook his head and shut his eyes, letting the bitterness the pills brought wash over him, feeling the bitterness the pills destroyed wash away. He was exchanging one thing for the other. In life, House knew, you couldn't have all you wanted that was good for you, but you could always have excess of the things that killed you.
Mr. Deleyney died later that night, his last breath taken while Cuddy was in the room. The wife cried, the younger children cried, but the eldest son remained calm and cold. There was now some unfinished business between him and the doctor that had caused all of this, the doctor who had killed his father.
I hope this was okay! I like this angle on House... I was watching an episode last night just to watch how he reacted to things and I realized that he wasn't really as gruff as he is made out to be; there are a lot of flaws in the marble surface he shows to the rest of the world, little glimpses of weakness that isn't normally found in the stories about House. It's all alright, though! I think I am babbling again...
Please read and review! I love it when people tell me what they think about a story! Thanks so much for reading and the last few chapters are coming up very soon!
