And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive
Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls

Chapter 2 – Truth

You stare at the empty bottle of Oxy on the table, sitting chummily next to your drained scotch glass and cordless phone and you wait. You aren't sure if you should attribute your unnatural calm to the drugs or your belief that you are making a good choice. The right choice.

The easy choice.

You would ignore this voice of dissent under normal circumstances. You've never been able to have your conscience removed, but you've become proficient over the years at simply pretending it doesn't exist. Normally, it takes the persona of your father, or in more recent years of Wilson.

Tonight, it is Cameron's voice that argues with you.

The easy choice? Ending your life is not an easy choice. As usual, Cameron takes an overly simplistic and naïve view of things. Of course, it isn't really Cameron. It is just your mind using Cameron as an outlet for something.

Your jaws spring open in a violent and unexpected yawn. The drugs are beginning to take affect. Your mouth snaps shut and you blink hard a few times. You feel your limbs begin to grow heavy, the way you feel as you sit in a tub and the water drains out.

No. You can't go yet, not until you figure out why Cameron is still in your head.

You've weighed all the options. All the ways this can play out. None of them have good outcomes for you.

You can't win at trial. You could probably get away with forging the prescriptions from Wilson's pad. Get some shrink to testify to your inability to admit the Ketamine treatment failed and your fear of looking weak by asking for help. But there is no getting around the theft. You stole pills from a dead guy, signed your own name. Stupid. And undeniable.

You can't go to prison. You will wind up dead in there anyway.

You've done everything you are supposed to do. You've made sure all your papers are where Wilson will look for them. You've called your mother and said goodbye to the one and only person who has never given up on you.

There is nothing left.

There is no other option.

There's always another option. You're just afraid to face it.

You yawn again and have to blink hard several times to keep from drifting off toward sleep. You lean forward and to the right, causing your leg to cramp in protest. The pain sharpens your quickly dulling senses briefly.

What other option is there?

Take the deal. House, stop this. Please.

Now you have a face to go with the voice. You can see a spectral Cameron, crouched on the floor in front of you tending your wounds. You sigh and it turns into another yawn. The specter in front of you begins to change. You cringe, expecting to see Cameron's melted, maggoty face again.

Instead, the Cameron just morphs from one image of her caring about you to another. Cameron bringing you coffee. Cameron taking the piles of mail when you complain about the headaches they caused you. Cameron fixing you a cup of tea when you are sick. Cameron pressing her delicate hands over your wounds and reassuring you when you were shot. Cameron bandaging your arm. Cameron pleading with you to get help.

Please.

A thought that you have pushed from your mind for two and a half years with relative ease and unfailing certainty without ever letting it fully form now slips its chains and makes its way to the front of your rapidly blurring consciousness.

Maybe Cameron actually cares about you.

You close your eyes and are half-way to sleep when another realization comes crashing down on you. What if your subconscious picked Cameron because it knew Cameron could get to you?

What if Cameron can get to you?

You lurch off the couch and stumble to the floor on all fours. You try to crawl to the bathroom, but you can't coordinate your arms and legs properly and wind up falling face first onto the hardwood. With your lips pressed against the varnish, you change your mind.

You have to get to a phone to …no, you can't call anyone now. You'll end up in a psych ward instead of rehab. You can call Wilson. The phone is right there. You reach for it and manage to knock it to the floor. You grab it and stare stupidly before realizing you can't remember Wilson's number. It doesn't matter, as you can't see the numbers on the phone to dial.

You feel your eyes slip shut and the first trace of real panic sweeps over you.

You are dying. Right now.

You have to get rid of some of these pills before it's too late. You need to throw up.

Easier said than done. Over twenty years as a doctor and too many years drinking and taking drugs has apparently lined your stomach with lead. The only time it revolts now is when the drugs are taken away. Even if you could get to the kitchen, which you can't, you probably don't have enough ipecac or baking soda to make yourself vomit.

Running out of time, you ram your fingers down your throat. You cough and gag and almost heave before you yawn loudly and your eyes close again. You drift for a moment or two. But there is this nagging feeling you are supposed to be doing something. You manage to open one eye and can see nothing but floor.

Desperate now, you ball your right hand into a fist and drive it as hard as you can into your thigh. Luckily the fall has already strained what is left of the muscle, and awkward as the angle is from your position on the floor, the blow is just enough to give you one last jolt of clear thought.

You concentrate as hard as you can on Cameron's melted, waxen face. The maggots crawling out of her eye sockets and nostrils. The smell of the swampy spittle that flies from her lips as she speaks. You jam your fingers down your throat again, not pulling back even as you vomit down your arm. You turn your head and vomit again.

You roll over onto your back and stare at the ceiling. You feel fuzzy, but at least you feel. It will have to be enough for now.

If you are wrong about Cameron, what else are you wrong about?