"GUESSWORK"

- Chapter Ten -

"Pain Is My Friend"

Coffee!

All he could think of was how badly he needed a cup of coffee.

But there were other things he had to take care of first. He could not leave evidence behind that would point to his presence there. Did that mean he was becoming paranoid?

Probably.

He pulled the dirty jeans and shirt back out of the waste can and tossed them onto the rumpled bed. Both items were too far gone to keep, but surely there was a dumpster around somewhere where he could chuck them. He tossed two empty Mountain Dew cans into the trash, and a wad of napkins left over from the God-awful pizza of last night. His stomach was unsettled and his hands were a little swollen this morning. They hurt, and it was difficult to make fists. It eased a little as he flexed his fingers.

He knew it was from the damn medication. That crap just was not compatible with him, nor he with it. It did nothing to calm the anger in his leg, but it did make him feel half dizzy and slightly headachy.

He had to remind himself again: One day at a time! I will not take drugs today!

He sat on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, and stuffed odds and ends of his belongings back into the backpack. Earlier, he had removed the five one hundred dollar bills from his saddlebags and used a cross of duct tape to tape the money inside the gauntlet of his left driving glove. That, combined with the cash he'd already squirreled away in his boot, made him feel a little more secure about carrying such a large amount of money on his person.

Gregory House eased himself into the leather motorcycle jacket and zipped it up. Felt in the right-hand pocket for the twenty he'd folded in there. He pulled the backpack into place and flexed the muscles of his shoulders until it settled into the small of his back.

The keys to the bike and the motel room were in the other pocket, and he looked around the bleak space to make sure he'd left nothing behind that could identify him. He figured the discarded jeans and tee shirt didn't count, but he left them on the bed for now, and got ready to push the bike back outside.

He grasped the cane in his right hand. Levering himself upward, he took his weight fully onto the left side and waited until the other side allowed him to move without grunting in pain. It was a tossup: bite his lip til the blood ran again, or beller at the tops of his lungs.

He refused to beller.

The bike stood sentinel across the floor at the foot of the bed. He'd had to move it in the middle of the night so he could get to the head. Now, it would be nothing, if not difficult, to maneuver it to a point where he could fit it back through the door of the room and into the parking lot.

House stood still for a time, letting the remaining muscle in his thigh get used to taking part of his weight without support. His leg didn't like it and the cramping spiked for a moment until he backed off again. He waited, biting down on his lower lip where there was already a set of teeth marks from last night.

"Ow! Fuck!"

It was already nearing 7:00 a.m. and he needed to be on the road again. He felt no urge to hurry. The people at his destination knew he was coming there, and the timeframe was wide open. He'd made it that way on purpose.

Just as he'd bided his time with the articles on Ketamine, and not mentioned them to anyone, neither had he mentioned the JAMA article, mainly because the experimental trials it spoke about were just that: experimental.

A few months back, he'd emailed a dude named Kevin Bernoski, a doctor at an obscure research clinic where the trials were being conducted with the use of nanocites. It had peaked his interest even more when he found out that they were doing preliminary work with chronic pain sufferers and were looking for volunteers.

At the time, he'd been suffering breakthrough pain. The Ketamine injections had failed him after he'd been so sure he was home free. The pain was even worse the second time around, and he was unable to convince anyone how bad it really was. His drug use was becoming an obsession, and he was more and more desperate for some means of relief. Everyone who knew him thought he was an addict.

Including Wilson!

And Wilson didn't really know what to think. Wilson had tried desperately to help him, even as his own desperation accelerated exponentially … and the two of them had nearly blown a leaky friendship that had survived more hits than an old battleship for more than a decade!

And here he was. He had not told Wilson. Again. In his head, he saw Wilson at wit's end, going to pick him up at rehab, only to discover that he'd flown the coop four hours earlier without a word to anyone except the sign-out guy.

In a way, House regretted that. James did not deserve his constant disregard, his anger: again, born of the pain. One of these days he was going to push it until it did break … and then he would have no friends. He wished there were another way.

He thought of the red silk necktie, still rolled up in his backpack, and the night Wilson had given it to him. He remembered the utter confusion on the cherubic face when he'd made that half-assed apology.

"Cherubic"?

He had just called Wilson "cherubic". He was losing his marbles!

Gregory House shook his head and straightened his body, coming fully back to the present. His leg had tamed down a little, and his hands felt a little less swollen. The pills he'd swallowed when he'd awakened earlier, were at least taking some of the edge off.

He gathered himself and grasped the handlebars of the Repsol, maneuvering it backward, around the other side of the bed. He'd tossed the cane onto the bed, along with the driving gloves and the helmet, near the old jeans and shirt. He would need both hands for this maneuver.

Using the bike as a crutch again, he wove its length further back, around the corner and through the door of the motel room, out into the parking lot. He was aware of stares of curiosity and incredulity from passersby, although no one made a comment or offered to help. He lowered the kickstand and hobbled painfully back into the room to finish gathering his paraphernalia. When he pulled the door closed behind him and straddled the bike, it was 7:15 a.m., and he still had to turn in the key. He found a dumpster and disposed of the jeans and shirt.

At 7:30 a.m. House sat at a booth in a noisy 24-Hour Coffee Shop, chugging on the biggest cup of fiery coffee they offered, and munched on a Danish so big that it reminded him of a cow flop like the ones he'd seen as a kid on Aunt Sarah's farm. His leg was a misery, and there was no comfortable way to sit, but he lived with it because he had to, and knew it would numb up with cold when he got back on the road again.

He hit Route 95 South awhile later, and the pain settled into his existence the same way he'd settled into the saddle. Cold wind gusts buffeted the shield of his helmet, and the bike humped with the wind shear of bigger vehicles sharing the highway with him. Very soon he would be into Virginia, and it would be, hopefully, a little warmer. The pain kept him alert. It was becoming his friend …

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