"GUESSWORK"
- Chapter Twenty -
"Looking for the Good Stuff"
He felt like a bubble. A big freaking bubble …
… like something released reluctantly by a huge creature from the depths of the ocean, rising to the surface and buffeted by water currents in the same manner a red helium balloon, freed from careless childish fingers, might waft upward, caught by a sudden swirl of updraft on its journey to the clouds.
He was pain free, light in mind and body, drifting languidly somewhere between the "here" and the "there". No hurry. Relaxed, comfortable, content to remain limber in the manner of a wet washcloth left behind after all the water has drained from the sink. Unhinged and unlimbed.
He could feel the comfort of clean linens against his back and his legs and his buttocks and his head. From time to time he caught a waft of bleach and ammonia and Irish Spring. Medicinal, antiseptic, clean and fresh …
… And a tinge of something else, redolent of the first whiff of a box of sterile gauze or a roll of adhesive tape, newly opened.
Whuff! Blick!
His eyelids were heavy, unwilling to open for the present, and his mind was at rest, void of anticipation or curiosity. All he wanted at this moment was to allow whatever was here to stay here and claim him as its own. Let it lull his senses as the breezes played with the red balloon and the ocean currents sparred with the slowly rising bubble.
Harmony. Pianissimo.
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, savoring whatever portion of cloud he might be cocooned within, letting every pore absorb the tactile sensations being offered him freely by whatever … whomever … might be so inclined to indulge him. It was so nice, so perfect, and so destined to end when the clock-of-all-things ticked over another second …
It stole upon him in tiny waves, whatever it was that was coming his way. It changed his breathing patterns in miniscule increments, and he knew his moments of rapture were going to end very soon. Just like the fifteen minutes of fame every human being was supposedly granted by Providence …
He began to feel a tightness, a tension in the skin on the back of his right hand. Like a pinprick that made his breath hitch, and then gone. And then again. And again. And still again. It wasn't going away. It did not cause him pain, but it was a small discomfort. Just an annoyance. An IV was taped firmly in place there. He realized it when he tried to make a fist.
His other hand was coming alive as well. As though he had thoughtlessly touched his palm to a hot wire. Waves polluted with radioactive waste, lapping persistently at the shore. Again and again and again. Like a light switch being turned on. And off. And on. He was experiencing slow electrocution as he observed from a distance.
His breath hitched. This was not an annoyance anymore. It was pain.
The pain had caught up with him and he could feel the popping of the bubble, the fading away into the wild blue yonder of the red balloon …
He moved his head, and something unfamiliar raked gently through his hair, making him flinch, giving him gooseflesh. There were voices, far away. Whispers so low that all he could catch were the S's, the hissing sounds and the slight popping of the P's. He caught the word "suppose".
That raking sensation in his hair persisted, fingertips across his scalp, an easy, massaging, caressing, scratching; not unpleasant, he thought. Even a little familiar. His return to pain faded into the background for a moment, and he rode the waves of tactile pleasure.
Then it came to him. A name.
Stacy?
Encouraged, he opened his eyes.
Not Stacy! Not unless she had recently acquired a very deep, charbroiled suntan, dyed her hair orange and had put on at least forty pounds.
"Uh-oh …" He said. Because his lips just would not form anything else yet.
The face of the woman above him smiled down, and she took her hand away from his hair. He stared at the bright red nailpolish and the orange fright wig and the fire-engine red sundress, and wondered if he was going into sensory overload. He closed his eyes again, allowed himself a deep breath, and stared again. He was not dreaming. She was still there, and the backs of her hands were now caressing his face tenderly, and the feeling was certainly not unpleasant. He leaned into it and made an effort to return the smile.
She was looking away from him now, lifting her gaze to someone across the room, the source of the whispers. Her voice was like southern fried chicken, and sweet as the honey in the hive. He found himself hanging on it. Dangling from it. Swinging beneath it!
"Kip? Look … our baby boy is awake. Don't y'awl think it's time to fill him in a little about what's happenin'?"
What? "Baby Boy?"
Gregory House could feel the return to awareness spreading through his body in a series of angry waves. A moment of nausea gripped his gut for a heartbeat. Then it passed, and he could focus, not only on the footsteps approaching, but also a couple of electric motors and the all-too-familiar thump-step-thump of at least one pair of crutches.
He frowned.
"Baby Boy"?
A tall, blond-haired, green-eyed body builder walked over to his bedside and looked down at him with raised eyebrow, in curiosity and amusement. "I certainly hope you're Gregory House," the man said in a casual manner. "Otherwise, we just spent a little over two hours shaving, medicating, patching and scrubbing the wrong dude!"
House looked over the ring of faces that surrounded his bed. The blond's words had not quite sunk in yet. Everyone within his field of vision, however, was disabled in one way or another. Suddenly he felt like one of the most able-bodied people in the group, and not so damned much out of place anymore.
"I'm Gregory House," he stated quietly. He continued to survey present company, eyes raking across the plethora of mechanical appliances within view.
The big blond guy had to be Kevin "Kip" Bernoski … but who the others were he had no idea. Patients? Volunteers? Staff? There were at least ten crippled people standing (sitting?) around.
He decided that the big black broad beside him looked healthy as a horse, and from her bearing she probably carried a lot of weight (Oh … way to go, Gregg!) in this goofy-looking corporation.
The others? There was another burly blond in a mechanical wheelchair, looking at him with a serious expression on his face. A second wheelchair held a diminutive Asian woman with a round, pretty face and sparkling black eyes. She controlled her chair with a mobile switch on a paddle beside her chin.
Goddamn! She's freaking gorgeous … and she's a quadriplegic!
The last person to catch his attention was a husky black kid who looked a lot like the gawdy broad. "Junior" used rackety aluminum arm canes with sports stickers all over them, and dragged his legs when he walked. But at least he walked! From the look of him, House guessed he was a victim of Cerebral Palsy.
"So who are you?" House asked the kid.
"I'm Tyree," said the boy. "This here's my mom." He thrust his jaw in the big woman's direction, which brought a lopsided grin in return from House.
"I would never have guessed," he replied.
"Well, Gregory House," the big blond said, "I suppose you've guessed that I'm Kevin Bernoski. Everybody calls me 'Kip'. We spoke on the phone some time ago." At Gregg's nod, he went on. "The big dude here is Earl Keirkgaard. He runs our Lab #2 and hangs out with that mutt over there …" Kip turned and indicated the big white dog with the missing front leg, looking lazy and sprawled out in a corner. "That's Bobby … and you'll be seeing him around."
Earl nodded a greeting, and House nodded in return as well as he could from his position flat on his back.
Kip turned to the Asian woman beside Earl, who rolled in a little closer and smiled down at House with a friendly twinkle in her eye. "You wouldn't know it to look at her, but this is Lillian Chan … and she plays a mean piano!"
House frowned in consternation at the piano reference, which made absolutely no sense at all. The others could not help laughing at him, and he took notice that the crowd was beginning to thin out, now that the excitement was over.
"What?"
"You will see, Dr. House, that our boss is quite a jester." Lillian said with a lilt in her voice.
"Last but not least …" Kip continued with a grin, "the lady holding your hand …"
House looked down, and was surprised to find that the big woman was indeed holding his hand, heavily bandaged under layers of white gauze. Her touch was gentle, and he could feel the warmth through the bandages. He looked from his hand to her face, and saw nothing but bright amusement and silent compassion …
"… is Shaniqua Tolliver, mother of 'Typhoon Tyree' over there, and ruler of this magic kingdom. We have others on our staff, technical people mostly. You'll meet some of them later.
"Right now though, you need to get some rest and begin to recuperate. There is a deep laceration in the heel of your hand. We had to clean it, stitch it, and load you up with antibiotics. Your right foot has developed an ulcer that is going to take a lot more drastic day-to-day treatment. You won't be walking for awhile. We'll go into that stuff tomorrow … but what you need right now is sleep, sleep, and more sleep."
House looked from one new acquaintance to another until he had nodded gravely to each one, then back to Kip. "Thank you," he said. "I'm not experiencing the mind-draining pain that I'm used to … for the first time in months, and I feel almost … human."
Beside him, Shaniqua smiled, then spoke to Kip in a lowered voice. "Aren't you going to tell him about … ?"
Kip shook his head as though reminding himself of something important, but sadly missed. "I guess I forgot in the heat of the moment …
"Dr. House, there is a man waiting in the office out front who says he knows you. In fact, he tells us he's your best friend, and he's been trailing you all the way from New Jersey.
"Know anything about that?"
Gregg House closed his eyes and allowed a tiny smile to quirk upward at one corner of his mouth.
Shaniqua nodded at the others. "He knows, all right!" She said. She returned her attention to House and touched his hollow cheek with the back of her hand.
"Is it okay with you if we send him back? We need to let him know what's going on with you. Okay? He's a little worried about you, and he's been here almost from the time we brought you in …"
House sighed heavily in relief. Wilson! A bet with himself, long made and now finally won, caused him to struggle to keep a straight face.
"Yeah, you can send the pest back if you want to …
"… otherwise, I'll never be rid of him as long as I live."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
97