Week Twenty-One:
Five-O'Clock Guy
House had his eyes shut, and he may have been dreaming but wasn't quite sure. He was laying back on the desk in his office, with his cane leaning against the side of the desk.
It had been a surprisingly mellow day so far at Princeton-Plainsboro, maybe as some sort of test to see what trouble he would get into when left to his own devices and not given a task.
He was disappointed to find that he lacked the necessary energy for such shenanigans, as of the last week or so. He knew what that meant – that the bad things that were happening were progressing.
But were they progressing faster than Cameron's crazy miracle pregnancy? Probably. It was all going to end up being for nothing in the end, House was quite sure, but it was interesting to see the woman work, to try to piece out exactly what she seemed to be getting from this bizarre Hail Mary pass of an idea.
If this were anyone else, he would say that she had her own reasons for the whole plan and anything she might say otherwise was a way of deluding herself; that was human nature. But with Cameron, maybe it wasn't all so clear. Sometimes she did things for reasons that didn't entirely make sense at first glance. She had walked out on Chase and on House too, blaming House for it all – but now she was back. Normally, House would have blamed the whole thing on some failure Cameron must have run into back in Chicago – wasn't that the only reason people went home again?
Otherwise, they kept running until their feet fell out from under them. It wasn't like House was going to go back home, even now. He wasn't going to tell his parents (or his stepfather and mother, technically) about any of this.
They could find out from his obituary – what good would it be to tell them and let his mother come around and start sobbing? To let his father, such as he was, act like he cared when he never had for so many years? None of it was worth it. He wondered why he bothered to tell his patients that they were going to die at all – it would be more merciful to just have the grim reaper come and scoop you up out of nowhere and whisk you off to wherever.
Whatever the hell people wanted to believe in.
What did Cameron believe in, really? She wasn't waiting to get rewarded by some all-powerful somebody in the sky; she'd said she was an atheist… House hesitated to answer "too" to that sentence, quite sure that no one had perfected cynicism with the same exact panache as he did.
What was it about Cameron, or was it anything at all? Was he as bad as everyone accused him of being; did he use people for his own amusement to avoid getting close to them?
At the very least, he wouldn't have to worry about it much longer. It would be as utterly meaningless as anything else in this utterly meaningless world, whether he ended up with some kind of unintended spawn coming into the mix or not. His mother would be happy, at least – hadn't she been going on the other day about wanting to have grandchildren one day?
Maybe she sensed that things were coming to an end, that things were coming to a beginning too. He'd been told that parents somehow had that sense, that it was some sort of evolutionary mechanism.
If he lived, would it could into play with his own…
There was no point in thinking like that. Not now, not ever.
It was weird to think of someone having a baby that looked like him, though. That was a thought that kept creeping into his mind, not with pride exactly but with an odd, experimental curiosity. Would this kid have his personality, too? Would he be a tiny cynic, walk with a tiny limp?
House rolled off the desk and let out an annoyed sigh. There was no use in wondering about things he wouldn't be around for – it was like continually musing about what would happen the next time Halley's Comet showed up.
He'd have to find something to do. He couldn't sit around here all day like a hamster running in a wheel.
But maybe, just like the hamster, he didn't have much time left to figure it all out.
Cameron could remember being younger. Specifically, she could remember being a college kid and having some much wide-eyed idealism that people might think her eyes were about to fall out of her head.
She had been a different person then, but she didn't know if that Cameron was better or worse than the one who was staring into the mirror now.
Which one would be better for the baby? That as something she needed to start thinking about sooner rather than later. She had been able, at the beginning of this plan, to visualize this small being as a vessel, a means by which to reconcile everything about her and House that she hadn't wanted to deal with.
But now… she let her hand travel down between her breasts, to rest on her stomach. Now, it all meant so much more, and she wasn't sure she was ready for that.
She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes.
She wanted to visualize herself out of all of this, on the other side of this thing, as if that could make it a reality. She had believed that once, that if she could see it and dream it, then she would be it. Those days were gone, and the reality felt harsher with each given day, and it seemed as if any move she could make was the wrong one.
She needed to talk to House, to get him to understand… but to understand what, though?
She walked back to her bed and collapsed down on it on her back.
The dreams would come tonight, but what would they bring?