"GUESSWORK"
Chapter Forty-Seven
"What Goes Around, Comes Around!"
Ultrasound brought the pocket of necrotic tissue out of its shallow hiding place in House's plantar fascia. Quick surgical debridement followed, and when it was over, healthy pink tissue was all that remained in or near the plantar area of House's wounded foot.
When he came out of the anesthetic for the final time, his only loopy comment was to gripe that his body was so full of antibiotics as to make it terminally sterile, and his starving pecker was going to think that it had suddenly turned into The Virgin Mary …
Wilson's only comment: "Very funny!"
Tyree Tolliver asked his mother what that meant. Shaniqua told him to, "Jus' y'awl never mind about that!"
The others, waiting in the recovery room at the time, simply snickered and shook their heads. Gregory House was going to be fine.
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The evening meal on Friday night turned into a banquet of rich stories about Earl Keirkgaard and his adventures at Paramar Clinic. His exploits were catalogued from the time of his original quest for their surgical technique, to his work with Lillian Chan and Kevin Bernoski and the nanotechnology breakthroughs.
Gregg House was allowed out of bed and into the wheelchair for the occasion, although he still trailed a wheeled stanchion from which dangled two IVs. His foot was heavily bandaged this time, but he no longer bitched about the pain.
Chalk one up for the good guys! Wilson thought.
Earl's favorite food had been spaghetti and meatballs, and Neeka had spent much of the day creating the sauce he had loved, preparing it with fond memories and tearful remembrances of her friend. When she served it that evening to the rest of his friends … both old and new … not all the watery eyes could be attributed to the onions and Louisiana Hot Sauce.
Someone asked House if he cared to share the words he had spoken in front of the casket at the funeral parlor.
A sudden silence fell over the gathering for a few moments, but gradually House looked up from his plate and silently surveyed his surroundings. He and Wilson would soon be on their way home, and logically this place and this experience would be a good thing to leave behind them. It had been a very long journey just to end up in the same place he'd started from. House cleared his throat and looked around the room. Their faces were questioning, not sure what his response might be. He no longer owed them anything, but a warm remembrance might be something Kip could use when he thought about his best friend in future years.
"Just said I wished we could have known each other a little longer, and I wished him a safe journey. And then I told him that he and I were lucky bastards in our choice of best friends … that's all …"
Beside him, James Wilson grinned shyly and bowed his head. Across the room at the other end of the table, so did Kip Bernoski.
Later that evening, Jim and Gregg informed their hosts that it was time for them to return home. As soon as House was fit for travel, they would return to New Jersey and go back to their lives there, and let the folks at Paramar get back to whatever was normal for them before he and Gregg entered upon the scene.
Wilson freed House of all his IVs and like restraints just before they returned to their quarters.
"Free at last," House quoted with a smirk. "Marty King …"
"Yeah, House," Wilson said with a sigh. "I get it. I got it the last time!"
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Saturday was a day for goodbyes.
Wilson wandered off with Bart and Lillian after breakfast, after checking with House to see whether he needed anything. House told him no, he was fine.
Kip disappeared later in the morning, and his colleagues looked at each other in puzzlement, wondering where he'd gotten to.
Gregg House, sitting by himself in his wheelchair for a change, gazed out one of the front windows at the cars parked in the lot outside, pursed his lips and shrugged, when a moment later, Shaniqua Tolliver asked him if he'd seen Kip.
Gregg was pretty sure he knew where the man had gone, but if he was right, then Kip Bernoski didn't want to be found, and Gregg would not offer any suggestions. He just said he hadn't seen him … which he hadn't.
House was in pain; not serious pain at the moment, but enough that he was not in a mood to be coddled by Wilson or touched by Bart, or teased by Bill. He needed, for a change, to be alone with his thoughts and try to figure out what the hell might be in store for him next. He sat by the window rubbing absently at his tender, aching thigh and staring straight ahead without actually seeing anything.
Across the reception area, Neeka stole glances across the room at her "Baby Boy", but kept her distance and did not bother him. His face told her it was not a good time to intrude into his thoughts, and she respected him enough to let him alone. He had wheeled out of the breakfast room abruptly, perhaps thinking he had revealed too much about his final words to Earl, and needed to resolve his feelings of having broken a confidence to a dead man.
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On the other side of the building in the residence wing, the "missing man" kept himself busy packing Earl Keirkgaard's personal effects and mementos. In essence, Kip knew he was reducing his best friend's life to the cold and impersonal space of ordinary cardboard boxes. Not a fitting ending to someone as vital and alive as Earl had been.
Kip felt very vulnerable, sprawled there on his butt in the middle of the dark gray carpet of Earl's living room. All around him were strewn small remnants of Earl's essence: the pipe he smoked seldom, but kept because it had been his father's … a smattering of novelty key chains he collected because each one had a miniature carpenter's tool or a classic automobile as its charm.
There was a short stack of ancient 45rpm records of dubious origin, and another stack of old vinyl albums, pristine and still in their original sleeves. A pile of other trinkets and collectibles lay in a scattered circle around Kip Bernoski, each one with a story of its own and a plethora of bittersweet memories of a man who had taken leave of the world long before his time.
Kip paused in his gathering and thought again of Earl and the good times they'd shared from the day they'd first met …
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Gregory House lowered his chin to his chest and let the sorrow he felt color his thoughts with a soft layer of blue notes, a lingering melody unfolding in his mind without a shred of conscious thought.
Moonlight Cocktails.
His hands hovered above the armrests of the wheelchair as his brain fed his mind the fingerings to the song … and then he was playing it in the Key of D, for God's sake! He was seeing the keyboard in his head, his inbred perfect pitch scrolled the music across like a piano roll in front of his unfocused eyes. Two sharps … black keys and white … his fingertips poised above them …
And he heard singing … Russian national anthem …
Jonesy! Dammit man … get out'a my head!
House snapped out of his reverie and brought his head up, his mind slamming back to full awareness. No more dreamscapes! No more careening buses on busy city streets. No more underwater skirmishes or submarines in battle … and no more fantasy imaginings of a thing that could never be! He drew a deep halting breath and let it out through billowed cheeks. He would rather have the pain than submit to another surgery.
His hands went to the propelling rims of the wheelchair … and he pushed the big wheels into motion forcefully. Time to get the hell out of here and get moving.
Needing a distraction …
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Kip could hear Earl's distinctive laughter echoing in his head. He could see the grin that revealed two uneven rows of big, crooked white teeth. The curly blond Scandinavian hair, the billowed cheeks and the cleft chin. Earl's image floated in front of his eyes like a grinning specter, and Kip found himself having trouble focusing.
He opened his hand, exposing a tiny porcelain mermaid, full breasts at attention, poking out at the world. She was smiling seductively. The thing had come from a shelf in a bar in Honolulu six months earlier. The one time the two of them had taken a side trip in search of funding for the clinic. They'd let their hair down one night and gotten drunk as skunks. Later they "staggered" back to their shared hotel room like thieves in the night, whooping and hooting … a peg leg cripple in Bermuda shorts and some drunken idiot in a mechanical wheelchair …
Kip heard a movement from the open doorway behind him. He turned to look.
Gregory House sat in his wheelchair, looking the same way Kip felt. They sat and stared at one another for an awkward interval, not moving.
Ah … what the hell …Kip raised his arm and beckoned Gregg inside with an expansive overhand gesture. "Just cryin' in my beer here," he said. "C'mon in, man … you can have the other corner of my towel …" He held up a misty half bottle of Michelob in mock salute.
The wheelchair crossed the threshold and stopped. Gregg's eyes widened as he took in the surroundings. At the same instant he came up short, instantly recognizing Kip Bernoski's absolute and total vulnerability. He was as helpless as though he were naked.
The man sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by piles of clutter and junk. He was wearing raggedy cutoffs and a raggedy tee shirt … and one sneaker. Lying off to the side, crossed in the middle and looking like an old Maltese cross, a pair of aluminum crutches took up half the space of odd accumulation and scattered memories.
"You're not wearing your leg …" Gregg said unnecessarily.
"No shit Sherlock!" Kip growled. "Wanted to say goodbye to my friend on something like common ground." He took a swig of the beer and peered at House languidly.
"Want me to leave?"
"Nah! You had the cojones to figure where-the-hell I was. The others'll just let me alone 'til I get this out of my system. There's beer in the fridge if you want one …"
"I'm sorry about Earl."
"I know. We all are." Kip raised his head and looked House in the eye. "Remember what you said last night at supper … about you and Earl picking the right best friends?"
House frowned. "Yeah … why?"
"Thanks. I needed to hear somebody say that. You're a blunt bastard, House. I knew it from the beginning, I guess. But you're an honest blunt bastard … and not everybody appreciates that. But I do … I wanted you to know ..."
"Thanks."
"Welcome. Can I tell ya something?"
"Yeah."
"The night before he died, Earl and I sat here in this room, shooting the shit and playing poker. I cleaned him out. I was going to take the money and take us both out for supper and drinks some night. Now it'll never happen, and I'm sorry about that. But your name came up … yours and Jim's."
House's interest intensified. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Kip looked down at the carpet, suddenly unsure whether or not to go on. House was staring a hole in the middle of his forehead.
"I asked him if he thought the two of you were … 'together' …"
"You mean … as in together-together?"
"Yeah."
"What'd he say?"
"He said no. I trusted him, so I believed him. "Are you?"
House blinked. He was very familiar with the concept of believing-not believing. It was almost the same as like you-like you. Had even toyed with its connotations from time to time. But the truth, for him and Wilson had always been: "no".
He shook his head, letting a snarky smile steal across his mobile features. "Huh-uh. Sorry to disappoint you. I like tits and he likes pussy … so I guess it wouldn't work out between us … thanks for asking though!"
The two of them sat together for another hour with bottles of beer in their hands, and made a toast to Earl Kierkgaard for being right. They laughed in the manner of men who laugh when they are remembering good times with best friends … and thinking with the "little brain": the one far removed from the bigger one in their heads.
Bernoski looked House in the eye and held up his bottle in a final toast. "I'll miss you, big guy … and I know how you feel about more surgery on that leg of yours. I'd be done with it too. I hope things work out for you, and I'm really sorry about what happened …"
House snorted a breath through his nose. He'd been rubbing his thigh and hadn't even noticed. "Wasn't in the cards … so to speak. Not your fault, Bernoski."
He set his empty beer bottle on the end of the coffee table and reached for the drive wheels. "I'm going back to the room now. Need to take my meds and have Wilson take a look at this foot …
"For what it's worth … what I said at supper last night was as much for Wilson as it was for you. You're free of pain, Bernoski … but I'm luckier than you. I still have my best friend. I got the better bargain." He swung the chair around and left the room; left Kip Bernoski to his memories.
"I get the message!" Kip called after him, but Gregg was too far down the corridor to reply.
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"Ow! Fuck! You digging a sewer, Wilson?"
"No … hold still! I'm not hurting you!"
"You are so hurting me! Damn!" House hissed a breath through his teeth.
Wilson paused to give House a moment's respite, knowing his six-year-old was in pain. The swelling was slowly receding from the latticework of new butterflies across the arch of his friend's sore foot, and he had no doubts the area throbbed greatly. But the application of the antibiotic wash was necessary to combat infection. (How many times had he said that during the past two weeks?) He dabbed on a thin-combo layer of Bacitracin, Neomycin and Polymyxin, spread it over the little bandages, covered them with a thick pad of gauze, then adhesive-taped it in place with gentle strokes.
House kept hissing and jerking his leg away from the touch. "God, that hurts!" He complained. "Willya hurry up, for cryin' out loud!"
Wilson sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. His back ached from bending over, and he still had the thigh sutures to do. Gently he wet another gauze pad with the cold antiseptic wash and daubed it on the four areas of heavy stitches near House's surgical scars. This time, the complaining was less, because the surgery up there was a little further along in the healing process. But there was still hissing and grunting and eye rolling and a general attitude of malaise.
Wilson grinned sympathetically as he applied more of the antiseptic cream to House's thigh. The large dressing covered the entire wound area in a single application, and Wilson wound a wide Ace bandage loosely around the thigh to hold it in place. "I swear to God," he said in a muted voice, "you have so many damn stitches in you that you're beginning to resemble a sock monkey!"
House grunted and lowered his leg back onto the pillow that cradled it. "I would have said 'baseball'. More manly!"
"Or 'Hacky Sack' …"
"Raggedy Andy!"
"Afghan."
"Fishing net! OW!"
"Shut up, House!"
"Yes, Mother."
"House?"
"What?!"
"I'm going to call Amtrack to have your bike delivered to Princeton. I don't want to pull it behind the car while you're with me. Okay with you?"
House raised himself onto his elbows. "What brought that on?"
"I don't wanna have to keep checking in the rear-view mirror on a damned motorcycle trailing along behind me, when I'm trying to take care of you while you're in the seat right beside me!"
"Aww … that's sweet, Wilson."
"Answer me! Is that okay?"
"Sure. Do whatever you want. This is gonna be your parade."
"And if you want to leave, then I think tomorrow would be the right time. These people need to get on with their work, and we're kinda turning into super-cargo … if you know what I mean."
"Okay. Works for me. You know what?"
"What?"
"This whole adventure has turned into the biggest wild goose chase I've ever been on in my life. Guesswork and irony. Twelve hundred miles worth!" House's words were flat with non-emotion. Forced non-emotion.
Wilson wished he had an answer to that, but there wasn't one. Instead, he placed his warm hand on House's knee and lifted his eyes to the wall across the room.
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