And this is what you don't do. Allison Cameron. You idiot. You don't write someone a letter when you've drunk a litre of whisky and are lamenting about your life. You don't tell someone that you love them when you don't get to hear their response. You don't do it because you're selfish and tired of living alone and can't stop thinking about his hands.
You don't write it on pink scented paper because it's all you have in your possession and you definitely don't walk a drunken line from your door to his house at midnight and post it through his letterbox.
House was ill. It was no longer pain. It was illness. It had happened in February. There'd been signs but he'd covered his tracks. She'd seen him wince and she'd seen him stumble and fall. But this wasn't new. This was part of what he did.
However, something fundamental had changed and one day when she'd gone back into his office after lunch he was gone. All gone; his oversized tennis ball, his Gameboy, even his TV. And Wilson was there leaning against the desk and waiting for Foreman and Chase to arrive so that he could break the news.
There was talk of pain and relief and the end of the road. And what would happen next and only one option left. And it was all said in Wilson's most sympathetic voice. And there was a low sob in Cameron's throat that she managed to swallow two or three times until the meeting was over.
Wilson slid off the desk and walked to the door. Cameron followed and he stopped in the hallway and hugged her and whispered into her hair.
"He's made the right decision."
That night she'd swirled around her thoughts about House in the bottom of her whisky bottle until everything became blurred and mixed up.
In her dreams she'd seen his eyes and his jaw, defiant and strong, and he was grabbing the pen from the nurse and he was writing: Not this leg.
This leg.
Outside, a storm was brewing and she thought she could hear his cries through the wind and rain. She moved her head to the window and let the cold glass press on her hot forehead. Would he know that he wasn't alone? It was the one thing she'd needed her husband to know all of those years ago when she'd grabbed his hand at the end of it all.
She drank. Some old bottle of whisky that a patient had once given him. Because she had saved his life. Probably. She couldn't quite remember now. How many people…all of them touched and crying and mumbling and hugging. And smiling like they'd never smiled before and making promises that they couldn't possibly keep. She let the whisky rest at the back of her throat and swallowed hard with the shock of the first clap of thunder.
The power in the apartment cut out and she stumbled, glass still in hand, to the fuse box, before realising that she was far too drunk to work out how to get the power back.
She found her cell phone in the pocket of her coat and turned on it's light. She grabbed a pen and paper and envelope and etched out her life like the list of symptoms on the whiteboard in diagnostics. What she needed and what he needed. And then drew a thick wobbly line under the four words that ended both lists:
Not to be alone.