1Because sometimes you have to make the hard decisions for love's sake...
"So Cameron really did it." Wilson kicked off his shoes and collapsed on the couch in House's office.
House sat beside him and stretched out his long legs. "Yep. My overly-moral duckling is starting to see the world as something less than black and white. She actually euthanized a patient tonight." He smiled, a short-lived expression that would have been missed by anyone but the man sitting beside him. "Chase was all for it, Foreman was against it for legal reasons, and Cameron..." he gestured. "...is just Cameron."
Wilson looked over at him. "So how many times have you done it?"
House's lips quirked up in another microexpression. "Let's just say I'm not a virgin. You?"
"No. Never." Wilson slouched back tiredly.
House sat up, suddenly interested. "Wilson, you're an oncologist. Your patients die by the truckload-"
"Gee, thanks. Glad your opinion of my medical skills is so high."
"-from one of the most painful, humiliating diseases known to man and you've never even helped one along a little? Why not?" House leaned forward on his cane and peered at his friend intently.
"I manage my patients' pain very well," Wilson replied. "I would never spare the morphine for a dying patient just because guidelines say so. You know that." He was exhausted from a long, stressful day and the topic was not what he needed. He was hoping for a hot dinner, a backrub, and whatever activities might follow in their bedroom. He could tell from the look on House's face that he wouldn't get out of the discussion so easily.
House nodded. "You're an excellent doctor, but that's not what I asked. I asked why you've never euthanized a patient."
Wilson shifted on the couch. "I don't know. I mean, it's a topic that comes up eventually, isn't it? It's just that I don't think it's right. We're supposed to preserve life."
"At all costs?"
Wilson rubbed his hands across his face, scratching at his burning eyes. "I'm not saying that. I know when to give up, when to give a patient the news that we can't do anymore, but to actively take a life, even with the patient's permission..." he thought for a moment. "No, I don't think it's right and I'd never do it."
House approached the questions as he would any puzzle: directly and aggressively. That quality made him a brilliant diagnostician, but also cost him personally. It intimidated people and made them feel cornered. Wilson had been close to the man far too long to be put off, but he was also not in the mood to be a puzzle tonight, to be the object of curiosity. "House-" he started, warning him off.
"You're backing away from the question, Jimmy." House persisted. "What if the patient begged for it? Terminal, all dignity gone, pain unmanageable?"
"God, House, do you have to know everything?" he snapped. "Why are you interrogating me? Can't you just accept my beliefs and leave it at that for tonight?" He got up, slipped his shoes on, and started toward the door. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I just want to go home."
"What if it were me?"
The quiet voice, devoid of all the normal sarcasm and biting edge, stopped Wilson cold. He turned back. "What?" He felt his heart freeze in his chest. "Greg, are you trying to tell me something's wrong with you?" Please, not you, not ever.
House shook his head. "No, but it does put it in a different light, doesn't it?"
There was no mocking in the question. Wilson could have met mocking with sarcasm of his own, maybe stood a chance of ending this conversation before it went places he wasn't willing to follow.
"You're my primary physician and my medical proxy," House persisted in the same gentle tone. "You're also my lover. That complicates things for you."
Wilson moved away from him, over to the window, somehow hoping that physical space would equal mental space. Instead, he felt the weight of the question follow him across the room. "You're not even sick, not so much as a cold, so can we drop this? Please? You're fine!" he snapped.
He heard the creak of the old couch as House shifted his weight. "I am now," he said softly.
Wilson suddenly realized the reason for the conversation. House was ten years older, an alcoholic and drug addict in nearly constant pain. There had always been the unspoken understanding that he would die early, possibly decades before his younger lover. Renal failure, heart failure, liver failure. One way or another, House would go first and Wilson would find himself alone, facing the decision in real life he was being asked to make now. The realization flooded him with grief and loss not yet experienced. He leaned against the window, seeking cold comfort in the glass.
As a doctor, Wilson knew death. As an oncologist, he was almost intimate with it. Death itself could be a blessed relief to a patient who had fought long and hard and had been rewarded with nothing but suffering, but dying-there was nothing blessed about the process. It was ugly and hateful, robbing a person of everything that made him human, adult, alive.
Terminal. All dignity gone. Pain unmanageable. These were the things that frightened the almost fearless Greg House. To have no more control over his life. To lose that odd, aloof dignity with which he carried himself. To suffer unmentionably with no hope of release.
Unbidden, the weeks after House's infarction sprung into Wilson's mind. How he had lain helpless in bed, unable and unwilling to bathe or feed himself without Wilson's help, hating it but needing it. Lips bitten bloody in an effort to choke back the screams when Vicodin wasn't working. All through it, Wilson had stayed by his side, holding his clenched hand and reassuring him that it would all be better, whispering that the pain would fade soon.
What if he hadn't even had those feeble murmurs to soothe? No hope. No confidence. Just a long, dragged-out end.
Wilson took a deep, ragged breath and turned away from the window. "I would take care of you again, you know. For as long as it took."
"I know." Quiet, unusually patient. Waiting.
Wilson fought past the choking sensation, fought to get out the words House needed to hear, that maybe he himself needed to say. "And if there's no hope, if it ever becomes too much for you-" "The answer is yes," he whispered. "I would help you end your life." His breathing hitched. "But I would miss you for the rest of mine."
Silently, House crossed the room and took Wilson in his arms. Wilson placed his hand over House's chest, needing to feel the strong heartbeat under warm skin.
Please, not you, not ever.