"GUESSWORK"

- Chapter Twenty-Two -

"Goodnight Sweet Prince"

The first thing that intruded into his awareness and cracked open the sealed vault of his conscious thoughts, was the resonance of a familiar chuckle. He grunted something pithy and profound in response … wanting only for the owner of the soft voice to come closer and show his face … he cracked open his eyes in anticipation.

"Mnfffh …"

He was experiencing dull persistent pain in his left hand, and in the foot on his bad side. He wondered, momentarily, why his crippled leg, which he'd been abusing for 600 miles on the road, did not hurt also. He knew he was lying flat out on his back, restrained by something as yet beyond his ken. His mind still swam in a sea of puzzlement that just didn't seem important enough to warrant more than a passing thought … and that seemed to be all he could manage to keep together right now.

There was no pillow beneath his head. He decided if he squinted his eyes a bit and stole a glance toward the foot of the bed, he could see the thing that encased his leg and swam gradually into sight, reminding him of the framework for a miniature roller coaster. Questions arose at last, and he decided there was information he didn't have that he needed to ask questions about.

He was so damned tired. It took a major effort just to pry his eyes open the rest of the way.

Above him, another pair of anxious brown eyes gazed down. Gregory House licked his parched lips and made an effort to pull a corner of his mouth into a smirk. He was not certain whether he had been successful, so he made an extra effort to find his voice …

"Th … thirsty …" He was aware of a quick hitch of breath and a rattle of something in a plastic container. Ice chips from a spoon moistened his dry lips and tongue.

"You're awake!"

"Nope. Talkin' in m'sleep …" One final effort, and his eyes opened completely to take in the rest of the face that went with the puppy dog eyes. "Hey … Wilson … you moron. Have a nice trip?"

"Hey, House. How are you?"

Gregg could feel the laughter welling up into the back of his throat. Sardonic laughter. Awww …dumb-ass Wilson … thinking he didn't know what the hell was going on …

"M'sleepy. Think they … slipped me a Mickey?" With great effort he took a deep breath and felt some of his more normal thought processes struggling to return.

He picked up his left hand and stared at it as though it might be a foreign object, temporarily attached. "Hurts," he said, almost as an afterthought.

He watched with detachment as Wilson turned to sit down on the edge of his bed and leaned across to take a closer look at the strange apparatus attached to his leg. He followed Wilson's scrutiny for a short time, but it took more concentration than he was capable of maintaining at the moment.

Wilson spoke in a low tone to someone else across the room, and House became aware of another person moving closer to his bedside. A tall blond man in white tee shirt and blue jeans walked up to the bed. House stared at him, trying to focus in with a coherent thought. He had seen this man before, but could not remember where. Or when. Could he have something to do with that thing on his leg?

He was having trouble making sense of their words. They spoke in lowered voices, and he was only picking up the P's and the S's, like before. He watched Wilson as his friend leaned close at his side, but Wilson's image seemed to be graying out … getting fuzzy around the edges. When Wilson reached across carefully to pick up his painful hand, House hissed through his teeth and snatched it away.

"No! Hurts!"

Wilson sat back and looked at him strangely. The frown returned … those deep vertical lines between the puppy dog eyes.

Worry!

House smiled in spite of himself, but he was just too tired to pay attention any longer. He sighed deeply and drifted back toward sleep. Remaining lucid right now just didn't seem worth the effort. He had questions. He couldn't remember what they were. No matter.

00000000

Kip Bernoski walked around to the other side of House's bed and checked the numbers on the two strange electronic monitors. He followed the wire leads from the base units to their originating points on the apparatus encircling Gregg's crippled leg, but stopped short of touching the slender wire-like frame that held the limb straight in almost the same manner that a trellis holds a grape vine. Wilson was reminded of wire cones like the ones that kept tomato plants from dragging the ground.

Kip finished his study of House's status and walked across the room to write a series of numbers in a spiral notebook. He looked at his watch for a slow march of seconds, and wrote another series of numbers, then put down the pen, nodded his head and looked over to Wilson. "He's doing well, Jim. The stringers are keeping his pain down, and I think he'll do well on the permanent treatment. I think we should leave and let him rest." He placed the notebook on the counter and walked back toward the bed.

"I need to make the rounds of #2 Lab, and the other hospital suites. You can walk along if you'd like, and we can talk. Of course, you're also welcome to stay here with him … if you'd rather do that … but he's going to be pretty much out of it until morning."

Wilson stole another glance at Gregory House, breathing deeply and looking relaxed and comfortable beside him. He paused for a moment, undecided, but then rose from the bed and walked softly to the center of the room. "He's … actually …not in pain, is he?" He asked.

Kip shook his head. "No. Not now. He's not. He'll be fine overnight. He'll be watched like a hawk by another staff doctor … Bill Bernard … who you'll meet very shortly. Bill will check the stitches and change the bandages on Gregg's hand … and do another treatment on his foot. Actually, Bill is the expert around here when it comes to the type of injury Gregg has done to his foot. It wasn't Gregg's fault … he didn't even know it was happening."

"You're telling me he really has a decubitus ulcer on the bottom of his foot?" Wilson asked. "Like we mentioned awhile ago."

"Yeah," Kip said. "I think they caught it in time to keep it from going deep into the muscle, but it could still be damned serious. His foot must have been in the same position on the footrest of that bike for hours on end. The tissue became compressed, and because of the poor circulation in that leg, there was decreased tissue perfusion, and that resulted in ischemia. It was like an accident just waiting to happen. It's going to take some time to heal. I don't want to put nanocites in there … or in his hand. It would be like swatting a mosquito with a baseball bat. Those little devils are patterned for much larger jobs. So we'll see how the two less serious injuries do on their own."

While the two men talked, the door across the room swung open to admit two other men whom Wilson had not yet met. One of them was a wiry man, stocky and tanned, with salt-n-pepper hair, and wearing aviator-lens glasses. He reminded Wilson of a WWII pilot. He was clad in jeans and western boots, and his left arm ended just below the elbow. In its place, a spidery stainless steel grasping mechanism was attached to what remained of the limb. He brandished it like a sword.

Wilson stared for a moment, and the man returned the stare with a friendly challenge. Then he grinned disarmingly.

James grinned back. Beside him, his taller, thinner companion moved along beside him, close to his right shoulder. This fellow was in his late seventies if he was a day. His hair was silvery white, and lay on his head in almost iridescent waves. His snowy beard and mustache were meticulously trimmed. His eyes were large in his face, and were almost as blue as Gregg's. He wore white scrubs and a tee shirt on his skinny frame, and his feet were clad in sandals.

James thought: Saint Peter, for cryin' out loud! A gentile warrior! He could almost hear, inside his head, at least a half-dozen snarky comments from the mouth of Gregory House.

Kip beckoned the two men further into the room, indicated Wilson at his side, and began to make introductions. "Boys, I want you to meet Dr. James Wilson, Head of Oncology at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Wilson is the friend and colleague of Gregg House.

All three men nodded at each other again.

Kip continued. "Jim … these guys are kind of like Laurel and Hardy. Where you see one, you usually see the other. The gray-haired dude in the denims is Dr. Bill Bernard, best hand-and-foot man in the business, nano-tech expert, computer hacker and lab rat. The old fart with the Santa Claus hairdo is Bartholomew Kirkpatrick, psychologist, psychiatrist, brain bender and all-around Wizard of Oz. Without these two, this place would be up the creek in a heartbeat."

Dr. Bernard rolled his eyes and snorted with derisive laughter. "Yup," he said sarcastically, "reckon the whole place would just go up in smoke without me'n Bart on the job." He held out his right hand and Wilson pumped it firmly.

The older man rolled his eyes with dramatic aplomb and sighed the sigh of someone heavily put upon. "Yeah, Bill," he drawled. "An' you couldn't find yer butt with both hands if I wasn't there watchin' out for ya!" He too held out his hand, causing James to stare again. The outthrust hand was ten-or-so degrees off-center to the spot where Wilson actually stood.

Bart Kirkpatrick was totally blind.

Wilson sidestepped to his left and grabbed hold of the slender fingers. "I'm … really honored to meet you both," he said.

Bart smiled, and his craggy face transformed into a kind, grandfatherly expression that would have charmed birds out of the trees. "Nice recovery, Dr. Wilson," he said with quiet amusement.

Wilson reddened, a little embarrassed. "You had me totally fooled," he admitted.

Bernard shifted his focus to the bed that enfolded Gregory House. He was already at work, moving away to check wires, monitors, write up his own medical updates and make sure House was taken care of. His older colleague, who gauged his proximity by the sound of his voice, followed him closely.

"How's he doing?" Bernard asked Bernoski with narrowed eyes.

"As you can see," Kip replied, "he's out like a light. I think he's gonna take to this procedure like a duck to water."

Bart Kirkpatrick, who had moved close to House's bedside, stood motionless, listening. His soft, blue-veined hands lay curled on Gregg's right shoulder. "This man is 'out', as you say, Kip. "But not 'like a light'. His breathing is too rapid. He's in pain. Probably from the hand and foot wounds. Can we up the morphine drip a couple of milligrams?"

Kip felt, rather than saw, James Wilson go tense beside him. "Of course," he said. "Check it out, will you, Bill?"

Bernard was already moving toward the IVs. He removed a small key from his pocket, unlocked the plastic door on the pump, pushed a few buttons and relocked the door. Kirkpatrick was still bent over the bed. After a pause of about thirty seconds, he straightened. "He's okay now."

James Wilson stiffened beside Kip Bernoski, eyes intent on the changing numbers on the digital readout. When they stabilized, he relaxed. How did the old man know? Was he some kind of psychic? He watched the two men walk away toward the rear counter, a bit puzzled, but choosing not to mention it. Yet.

Kip led the way out of the room and turned right into the corridor. "Those two," he said with respect, "came here as volunteers eight months ago. Bart was in a nursing home … ready to spend the rest of his life in the old rocking chair. One day he heard two nurses talking about Paramar, and what we do here. One of them heard we were looking for a psychologist to help out with some of our trauma cases. Bart called us a day or so later. I went over there to interview him, and we got along right away. A week after that, Neeka and I picked him up … he was packed and waiting for us … and he's been here ever since.

"Bill … Bill was Bart's first client. Bill got mixed up in a hostage situation at a branch bank a few years ago. Three guys robbed the place while he was in there. One of the customers, an older woman, got hysterical … started screaming … and one of the robbers shot her dead. Bill jumped over a counter to see if he could help, and one of the bastards turned an Uzi on him. Took his arm off like it was a dead tree branch. They patched him up at a trauma center … but he was a doctor, for God's sake … and he kind of lost it for awhile. Anyhow, he ended up in chronic pain, and nothing his doctors could do for him. He heard about us, got curious and came on over to check us out.

"Now he's a doctor again … and a damned good one. He let us put him under and let the nanoprobes do their jobs. He was the third to have the experimental surgery … and today he's mostly pain free, and a great addition to the staff.

"He and Bart are great buddies. Bart straightened out Bill's head, and Bill became Bart's eyes. We were fortunate all around."

Kip grinned and continued down the corridor.

"C'mon, Jim … let's go mind the store!"

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