"GUESSWORK"

- Chapter Forty-Six -

"Picking Up the Pieces"

Earl Keirkgaard was buried Thursday afternoon. Paramar Clinic closed its doors in order that everyone who knew him could attend the viewing and the funeral.

His casket was plain and unadorned. His small, simple will stipulated that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the ongoing work of his colleagues. The clinic was his only beneficiary.

Earl had been a man alone, without family, except for those he spent his life with, and the patients he cared for. The funeral home was full to overflowing, and that in itself gave mute testament to the fact that one's chosen family was at least as lasting as the ones with ties only through blood.

Kevin Bernoski looked very different out of scrubs and into sports jacket and slacks. He stood around on the outskirts of the funeral parlor, head down, hands in pockets, looking as though he were trying to make himself as small as possible. In this matter, he was not very successful. One after another, every member of his staff, professionals, technicians and menials alike, kept a discreet eye on him, and biding their time, offered quiet support in pairs or threes, sharing cherished stories of Earl Keirkgaard and his work and his sunny personality and his wry sense of humor.

A few feet away, Bart Kirkpatrick and Lillian Chan made themselves inconspicuous in a corner of the room where Lillian kept an eye on Kip and reported everything she saw to Bart.

Bill Bernard and the Tollivers stayed close to the entrance and greeted those who wished to pay last respects. Earl would have been embarrassed at the hushed atmosphere, the dimmed lights and the lack of joking and laughter.

The viewing had only another fifteen minutes to go, and a local minister was moving silently among the mourners, offering a few words of condolence, shaking hands and getting ready to close with a brief service, according to Earl's Lutheran upbringing. The man looked around the room for Kip Bernoski, seeking to check with him as Earl's listed next-of-kin. Kip was nowhere to be seen, and the minister was puzzled for a moment …

There was a rustle of heavy draperies near the entrance from the hall into the viewing room, and the mystery of Bernoski's disappearance was solved. Kip stood still beside the doorway, gently holding the curtains away from the opening.

James Wilson, in dark suit and tie, pushed one of Paramar's heavy-duty wheelchairs carefully through it and into the room. Gregg House was bundled up like a very ill small child. The right leg rest of the chair was extended all the way, and he was enfolded to the waist with a light blanket. He wore a black turtleneck shirt with, possibly, only the boxer briefs beneath it, although that didn't really matter. No one would see them anyway.

Wilson pushed the wheelchair slowly to the alcove where Earl's casket stood solemnly beneath a pool of subdued light. Neither man spoke, but paused to look down at the serene, forever-sleeping face. Earl would never feel pain again.

Around the room, heads came up, and the clergyman frowned for a moment at the pause.

Then he realized who the man in the wheelchair must be. He had not yet been invited to approach, and so he did not. Instead, he studied the pinched face of Gregory House and wondered why the man had decided to attend, and what had moved him to get out of a sickbed to be here …

His answer came in a moment of unexpected movement. House indicated with the fingers of one hand that he wished to move closer to the casket. Wilson and Bernoski maneuvered the wheelchair so that one of its large wheels was almost touching the raised base of the bier. In that same instant, House reached out with his opposite hand and placed his palm on the while taffeta of the snowy pillowing. His head dipped until the expression on his face was not visible from anywhere in the room.

He spoke a few quick words for Earl to take with him into eternity, and grasped the snowy padding in a quick squeeze. He then indicated that he would like to be taken away from there with alacrity.

Wilson nodded to Bernoski and spoke a few words of his own to the blond doctor. Then he pushed Gregory House across the room and slowly, back out the door. Behind them, the roomful of people stood mesmerized, momentarily frozen in place.

"Let us pray …" said the minister, finally.

Twenty minutes later Earl Keirkgaard left for his final journey on Earth.

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Three men from the Paramar maintenance staff assisted James Wilson in lifting Dr. House into the front seat of the freshly detailed Escalade. Gregg was tight-lipped and silent on the way back to the clinic, and Wilson drove slowly, not wishing to jar his friend's still-fragile body.

The same three men had followed the big SUV, and when it pulled up in front of the wheelchair ramp at Paramar, they once again lifted Gregg gently into the chair. Wilson unlocked the front door with Kip's key, and opened the entry of the ramp. The three men assisted in pushing House inside, then nodded goodbyes and left to return for Earl's funeral and interment.

Kip and Bill had allowed House to return to his and Wilson's quarters after lunch on Tuesday afternoon. The unrelenting pain in House's leg had begun to taper off in the middle of that night. For the first time in three days he was able to get a decent night's sleep.

By the next morning he had ceased to whine, ceased to bitch and ceased to rail against everyone and everything. He was physically and mentally exhausted and his depleted body looked small and ill beneath the covers of his big bed. But his disposition had taken a turn for the better. The strangeness of the phenomenon sent everyone into different paroxysms of alarm.

It took House himself with a few well-chosen words to bring it all to a halt.

"Shut up, willya?! I'm fine! Don't you people ever agree on anything?"

That same night, Bart Kirkpatrick stayed by House's bedside very late with his soft and tender hands once again on Gregg's shoulders. "Jimmy is going to begin helping you exercise your leg," Bart told him. "If your pain is really easing as much as you say it is, that's wonderful … but if you're hiding anything from us, it will show up soon enough, and you know I'm telling the truth. Chronic pain has a way of letting us know who's boss, and we'd rather you didn't try any macho stuff here …"

House got the message. He looked across the room and caught the watchful eye of James Wilson, sitting quietly on his own bed. He knew Wilson would be able to pluck a falsehood out of the air with no more effort than taking a deep breath. He sighed. "I'm not kidding. But the whole truth is … the pain is still there …" He held up a quick hand to stall sudden inhaled breaths and waylay anxious questions.

"Whoa … whoa … whoa … get the bright lights outa my eyes here! I'm not trying to get out of the exercises. I know I need them so I can begin to walk again. The pain from the surgical removal of the bugs was really a bitch from Saturday to today … but now that's slacking off. What's left is pretty much what was there before … maybe even tamed down a little from that. I won't know for sure until I can walk … and that won't be for awhile. My foot is still too sore.

"What is strange about it is that my leg keeps trying to go into spasm … and then it stops. Before I came here, I used to get the creepy-crawlies about once or twice a day. Today it hasn't spasmed at all. I'd say it's probably the residual aftereffects of the nanocites. I'm not bitching … I'm just hanging back to see which way it's gonna go this time. Okay?"

House looked from one man to the other, taking note that they both stared back at him with veiled skepticism: both the blind one and the sighted one. He sighed again. Deeper. And glared. They could think whatever they wanted to think. At the moment, fortunately, Wilson was not giving him a hard time, and that was about as close to another miracle as he could get for one day. He was sure he would pay for his friend's silence later.

Bart Kirkpatrick's warm fingers sent relaxing sensations into the nerves and muscles of his back and shoulders, and suddenly he began to feel very sleepy.

Gregg's eyes closed and his breathing evened out as consciousness left him and sleep overtook his senses. In his dreams he could feel soft breezes and see white clouds overhead. He'd experienced these dreams here before, and they were far preferable to dark visions of a big, beautiful dog dying under the front wheels of a bus …

Bart Kirkpatrick stepped back from the bed and dropped his hands to his sides. He turned his attention in the direction of James Wilson and spoke softly: "He will sleep now, even though he is still in some pain … and I must go." He smiled. "I'll see you both in the morning … figuratively, of course …"

He melted silently out of the room and into the corridor. His steps were graceful and sure. It was almost as though he could see exactly where he was going in his mind …

James Wilson looked after the old man with a puzzled expression. Saint Peter! Saint Peter was on his way back to guard the Pearly Gates … perhaps to open their portals and admit Earl Keirkgaard …

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Gregg House did not sleep long. By 1:30 a.m. he was restless and tossing, moaning and beginning to thresh about.

Across the room, Wilson had been dozing; ever vigilant and sleeping with one eye open. He'd been over it and over it in his head about the lack of leg spasms House had reported. If that was indeed the case, James was happy about it, but something at the back of his mind kept telling him the lack of symptoms was but a harbinger of things to come. When the spasms returned … and they would return … the percussions would be like miniature earthquakes!

Wilson threw back his covers and stood up quickly. House was awake, the glint of his eyes visible in the dim light. The fingers of his right hand were beginning to crawl, crab-like, toward his right thigh.

For some reason Wilson knew that, had he been able to bend his leg to any extent, the finger-crawl would continue on down past the knee, down across the calf and end at House's foot. It was not the leg that bothered him the worst, but the damned foot!

It occurred to Wilson suddenly as he sat and watched, if there might be a buildup of necrotic tissue in House's foot. Beneath the apparently healing skin of the ulcer, an escalating infection might be the cause of House's continued discomfort. The idea could not be discounted, and he was suddenly angry with himself for not thinking of it before. Obviously House had not thought of it either, but the man had enough on his plate …

Silently James padded across the room and lowered himself onto the edge of his friend's bed. He grasped the trembling fingers within his own and brought Gregg's hand across to rest against his chest. "Hey …"

Too-bright eyes met his own with a moment's suspicion, and House stared at their joined hands. "I figured I would hear from you later! What are you doing?"

"Just trying to keep you from hurting yourself. I'm thinking you might have a more serious problem than we realized. The ischemia in your foot may have caused tissue damage and maybe even necrosis. I'm going to ask Kip and Bill to do an ultrasound-assisted wound assessment in the morning … and maybe use ultrasound waves to separate possible necrotic tissue present from healthy tissue."

"I don't want anymore surgery! I'm through with all that." The blue eyes radiated finality.

Wilson pressed his fingers firmly to House's cheek, silencing him. "Please, House … your foot pain isn't going away, and we have to find out what's causing it. We've given it enough time to heal on its own, but it hasn't. An ultrasound will localize the problem, and then we can do surgical debridement quickly, and remove the dead tissue with little pain to you."

"No! It's healing. Bedsores are a pain in the ass … it just needs more time." But his insistence lacked the power of persuasion that characterized House's usual stubbornness. Inside the stack of pancakes that comprised his multi-layered brain, House was processing the idea …

Wilson smiled down at his friend gently and allowed himself to release the death grip he'd been maintaining on House's fingers. House met Wilson's eyes briefly, but did not withdraw into himself or turn away from the contact. He looked indeterminately sad.

"I understand how you must be feeling about this," Wilson said at length. "It hasn't been a very profitable experiment for you, has it? Six hundred miles in blinding pain … surgery that finally gave you release … then more surgery resulting in more pain because we were all afraid for your life. Now we find that the surgery wasn't even necessary … and not only has the original pain returned, but there's more heaped on you to cope with. House … I'm so … sorry …"

Gregory House sighed deeply and leaned back against his pillow. "Not your fault, Wilson. You were trying to help. You always try to help … and we don't always give one another the benefit of the doubt. I keep suspecting you of imposing your will on me … and you think I'm a drug seeker who wants only to get high …"

Wilson nodded, suddenly feeling vindicated. House understood! "You're right about that," he admitted. "Maybe it's time the two of us decided to give each other a damn break!"

House smiled fleetingly and nodded. "Done! Now could ya please stop babysitting me and let me get back to sleep?"

Wilson rolled his eyes, but his mood had gone from despair to hopeful in just a heartbeat. "Then you'll let them do the ultrasound tomorrow?"

A sigh.

"Yeah …"

Wilson went back to his bed and pulled up the covers.

Across the room, House spoke once more before silence washed over the darkened room.

"Wilson … I need to get-the-hell home!"

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hi Everyone. As you're probably already guessed, my Internet connection, constructed of "stone knives and bearskins" (a reference to Mr. Spock there) finally gave up the ghost last Friday night. Therefore, you didn't get the usual updates at the usual times.

We arrived home this evening, and here is Chapter 46, which should have been posted Saturday.

Early tomorrow morning I will give you Chapter 47, and continue uninterrupted (I hope) to the end of the story.

Thanks for hangin' in!

Bets;)

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