SUMMARY: Pain is a strange bedfellow, and it had been his bedfellow and mistress for nearly eight years.
A/N This was originally written as a one-off, but turned into a series of linked short stories set post No Reason, most of which could stand alone, I think.
Part II: Breaking Up is So Hard To Do
House came back to work ten days after he was shot, looking haggard and thin. He moved slowly and claimed he tired quickly, even though with each passing day he looked less and less haggard. In fact, he began to look almost healthy. But each day he quit early, leaving promptly at 3 or 4.
"I've got a note from my doctor and everything," he would say to Cuddy, if she accosted him on his way out.
His mood was strange, hard to judge. Neither Cuddy nor Wilson could get a handle on it. All Wilson knew was that he wasn't renewing his pain scrips with anything like the frequency he had before. There was a kind of subdued happiness that he seemed to be doing his best to keep from showing. He didn't want to talk about what had happened to him: he did his job, and he went home. Period.
The thing is, he didn't actually go home. Wilson figured this out one day when he left at a time that was unusually early, for him, because he had a 4:30 appointment with his lawyer. House had left long ago, but when Wilson got to the parking lot, there was House's bike in its usual spot.
Wilson spent the next three days trying to figure out what House was up to, and how he could find a way to tail him after he left his office. But no matter how he tried he couldn't think of a way to follow House-especially into the elevator-without House cottoning on to what he was doing. It was driving him crazy.
One day, several weeks after House had been back, Wilson was lining up for dinner at the cafeteria. He had a difficult case and was working late, as he often did. It was always easier to grab a bite in the hospital than to go home and come back. As he slid his tray along the cafeteria line, he suddenly found himself listening to a conversation taking place behind him. You didn't have to be a genius to figure out who the two women were talking about.
"He smiled at you? Are we talking about the same guy? The guy who once called you a, what was it, a Nazi something?"
"A 'sadistic Nazi slave-driving power-hungry tyrant,' if I remember correctly.' Yes. The one and the same. But that was a couple of years ago."
"The guy's always been an arrogant prick, everyone knows it. What happened-they do a personality transplant on him when he was under?'
"I don't know. All I know is, he's been coming in every day for a couple hours ever since he got discharged. Doesn't talk much. When I work with him, he's just focused on what he's doing, but he did actually once smile at me."
"Who'd have thought getting shot could do that for a guy?" continued the second woman. Wilson pretended to hesitate over what salad to select, stalling for time, causing the line to back up behind him. "Hey, maybe I should arrange for my boyfriend to get shot in the gut."
The other woman laughed. "Well, I'll say this much for him. He works like a maniac on the weight machines and on the bars."
"Why's he there? For the gunshot wound?"
"No. I think he thinks he's going to walk again. He's lost a lot of the femoris rectis but he thinks that if he can build up the remaining quadriceps, and pronate the foot so that the weight is distributed more to the muscles on the other side, he can walk more or less normally. He's got Simpson making him some sort of orthotic insert for his shoe."
"What are the odds of that happening? Him walking?"
Wilson, who had reached the cash register, fumbled for his wallet, buying time to try to hear the answer to this question. But whatever the answer was, it was non-verbal. A shrug? A thumbs-down? As he walked away he glanced over his shoulder at the two women, recognizing the older one as a physical therapist. She laughed and said something to her friend that he only caught a snatch of: "...never noticed it before but he has the bluest eyes, for a guy."
The next morning Wilson showed up at the Diagnostics room early. He had a case he wanted to talk over with the team, but mostly he wanted to find an excuse to talk to House about what he was up to. He'd been worried all along that House had unrealistic expectations following the ketamine experiment. The overheard discussion had confirmed his worst fears.
At 8:30 promptly House walked in on them as the team sat discussing the latest Diagnostics case. He slung his backpack and helmet on the conference table and walked over to the coffee machine.
"Well, look who's turned into the early bird," said Wilson. House generally didn't show up till nearly 10 most mornings. The pain in his leg prevented him from sleeping well, with the result that it often required ten hours of tossing and turning to achieve four hours of real sleep. This morning, however, he looked rested and chipper. He looked, in fact, as Wilson studied his expression, somewhat like the proverbial cat that had swallowed the proverbvial canary. Something was definitely up with House. But what?
'It's a vicious worm-eat-worm world out there," replied House with that strange smug look.
It wasn't until House sauntered over to the white board, coffee in one hand, the marker in the other, that anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary. Before anyone could find speech, he turned around, an expression of mock surprise on his face as he surveyed the four, all of whom were looking completely gobsmacked.
"Where's your cane?" asked Cameron finally, breaking the stunned silence.
"That's why I hired you," said House triumphantly, pointing to her with the marker. "For your brilliant powers of observation. It only took you--" he glanced at his watch-"five minutes."
"No, seriously," said Wilson, rising to his feet. "Where's the cane?"
House held his arms out in a broad shrug. "You know what they say: no pain, no cane. Now, can we get on with the differential diagnosis? Or do you need more time for staring and stupid questions?"
