Consistency
WARNING: MAY BE VERY TRIGGERING WITH REGARDS TO EATING DISORDERS, ESPECIALLY BULIMIA. DO NOT READ IF YOU MAY BE TRIGGERED!
Author's note: Well, I actually wrote this because I wanted to come up with the most implausible prompt I could think up for the character of House and then try to write it in a way that is in-character and plausible. I'm not sure how I did, so feedback, reviews, and even flames would be MUCH appreciated. I don't own House. Also, I incorporate some slight Season 6 spoilers here.
…..
House buys over $357 with of food in one trip. He's never spent that much on food before; heck, he's never spent half as much on food before. If anyone—anyone being Wilson, that is—asks he will say it is for cooking class, a "life improvement skill" forced upon him by those idiots at Mayfield as a condition for his release.
When he gets home, House puts away all the cooking food—the pasta, the cilantro, the tomatoes, the olive oil, the vinegar, the garlic spaghetti sauce, a million other soon-to-be-brunt things —and looks at what is left in front of him—two jumbo sized bags of Oreos, a gallon of cookie dough ice cream, a huge bag of marshmallows, two liters of diet soda. Wilson is on call tonight, so apartment is empty, eerily quiet, even, and House is glad to be here. Unlike the skuzzy gas station on the corner of Fifth and East, Wilson cleans his every bit of the apartment, even the kitchen sink. Here, too, everything feels somewhat less deprived, as though what he is doing is no worse than getting shitface drunk, something he had done here oh so many times before.
House eats without really tasting the food. He rips through it, devouring four cookies at a time, shoving marshmallows in his mouth until he can barely chew. He eats and eats and eats and knows it been too long, knows this is stupid, knows this wrong. He doesn't care, but that's really nothing new. He's never cared, at least not in the moment. He eats until the food is gone and his stomach aches with fullness. He stumbles over the sink and leans over the garbage disposal. It is not hard to make it come, as full as his stomach is, and he soon feels the rush of endorphins flood his system, taking the edge of the throbbing pain in his thigh in way those crappy, full of air, non-Vicodin painkillers never could.
He grabs the bottle of Gatorade he left out on the counter and chugs it. Forcing himself to move, he limps back over to the table and rests his head, dripping with sweat, on the cool oak of the table.
…
Mayfield Psychiatric Institute—Detox unit
For the first three weeks of his stay, House feels like hell. They give him drugs—drugs they won't identify—that they say will help with the detox. They don't—if just because nothing, House decides, could be worse than this. At least nothing survivable.
Detox here takes place in isolation, and House spends his days alone in a tiny bed with a basin by the side, shaking and sweating. And then there's the pain, of course, inescapable, unimaginable agony. It hurts so badly he cannot think, talk, or even see, for his vision starts to blur in pain. There is small, high-up window above his bed, but he is too distracted, too sick to keep track of the days. He learns about the three weeks only later when he sees an overly cheerful calendar hanging the break room. Three weeks, House learns, can be an eternity.
House pukes more than he would have thought humanly possible. He pukes because of the withdrawal and then again because of the pain. He tries to stop eating—it hurts too much—but those idiotic nurses shove it down his throat anyway, and House learns what it feels like to puke up a psych hospital's menu. He comes to appreciate ice cream, soft and even somewhat sweet coming up, and loathe noodles, which often make their way back up his nose, somehow making an already hideous thing even worse.
House is not surprised the vomiting provides an endorphin rush, taking an edge, however slight, off of the God-awful pain. It's basic medicine, after all, the same reason House had cut himself during previous detoxes. Of course, no one here would let him touch a razorblade.
Then, of course, there are Amber and Kutner. Always waiting, always talking, always there. The very proof of his insanity, driving him all the more insane.
…
Mayfield Psychiatric Institute—Ward 6
The nuthouse should be interesting, House thinks, but in reality most of his time is spent waiting. Waiting for the psychiatrist he is forced to see. Waiting for his roommate to shut up. Waiting for the idiotic therapy group to end. Waiting for the next dose of the new, shitty pain meds. Waiting for the anti-psychotics they've given him to take effect. Waiting for the moon to fall and the sun to rise. Waiting in line for meals he's already puked up, food he can't stomach. Waiting for the day they'll finally let him leave.
And, of course, waiting for Wilson.
Wilson is the only person House allows to visit, the only person he talks to, and the only one he calls. He can not bear the thought of Cuddy, but Wilson will come and will stay. He always stays.
He asks Wilson to bring him food, and to his hidden happiness, his friend obliges, bringing fast food, junk food, food that isn't Mayfield's, food that is good, food that is rich, greasy, and sweet, food that House swears would be heaven if he were idiotic enough to believe in such things. It's technically a breach of policy, but House has lost so much weight at Mayfield that the idiot nurses and crackhead administrators are for once willing to look the other way.
House eats and eats, devouring the food at a rate that frightens even him. After weeks of eating so very little, the food, delicious though it is, revolts in his stomach, and he limps quickly to the small bathroom he and his roommate share. Nothing comes up, though, and so he sits there, waiting, with his stomach turning and his leg throbbing. Then, almost before he can register what it is he's doing, House finds himself leaning over the toilet. With a few pushes of his stomach muscles, he heaves. For a brief moment afterwards, he sits on the cool tile floor, blissfully empty, blissfully free of pain.
When he crawls back to his stiff, unwelcoming cot, House tells himself that it was simply the consequence of eating too much, that he is not some vain teenage girl, that it was just a one time thing.
But House still cannot bring himself to choke down the mass-made, preheated Mayfield meals, and so he asks Wilson to bring him yet more food. He tries for slightly healthier food this time, hoping it will quell the primitive urge to load up on fats and carbs. He tries to ration it, too, but finds he cannot sleep with the food lying there, uneaten. Like unused Vicodin, it tempts him consistently, and, though House would never ever admit this—not to Wilson, let alone the million and one shrinks that parade through here—it is stronger than him. The pain is stronger than anything, and anything that can control the pain has him. It is simply the cost of living. Vicodin can cause liver damage, and self-induced vomiting can cause heart failure, but they quell the pain.
Would he choose that over pain?
Yes. If he gets to keep his mind, yes.
This time when he crawls back into bed, he doesn't even bother to make excuses. Pain control, he thinks.
….
House snaps awake.
Wilson is staring him in the eyes, looking at him in that way that he does, something almost judging but mostly just sad.
Oh, shit, he thinks, waking up to a table still littered with wrappers and a sink still rimmed with vomit.
"House," Wilson asks. "What the hell is this?"
"An addict is an addict," he answers simply. Out of all that bullshit he heard in Mayfield, it is the only thing that he actually believes.