Chapter 15

"Midnight Vigil"

I stepped inside the apartment door and shook the raindrops out of my hair. The gesture made me about half lightheaded and I blinked the room back into focus before dropping the jacket, car keys and briefcase on the couch.

The place was dark, mostly, except for the small light near the piano, but I was already walking in the other direction, past the closet door, past the radiator and the hallway table on the left and the bookcase on the right, and moving directly toward House's bedroom.

Lisa Cuddy was leaning over the bed on the far side of the room, her face hard, eyes glinting in the dim night light in the corner. She was clearly undecided about the next course of treatment, and her eyes closed with relief when I appeared in the doorway and looked down at him.

I took one look and saw the pallor of his skin, the set of his face, what I could see if it, half buried in the pillow. I also saw the awkward position of his left leg, and I realized what was going on. I swallowed hard and took the syringe out of Cuddy's hand, still poised in the air, glanced at it and shook my head.

"No!" I whispered urgently. "Ten milligrams!"

She tried to argue with me at first; tried to tell me he'd already refused the five-milligram dose. I turned my eyes hard upon her, trying to make her understand this was not the time for dissention among the ranks … this was House! She held my gaze for a moment, and seemed to reconsider. Then she turned on her heel and left, and I knew she would draw up the larger dose I had requested.

I went to his side, ready to lay down the law and force him to listen to me. Then he looked at me with such naked urgency and desperation that the unspoken trust coming up from the depths of his eyes turned my resolve into sorrow, and I could not berate him. He was telling me in the only manner open to him at the moment that he did not want to be addicted to morphine, did not want this drugged existence that was thrusting itself upon him.

I sank into the bedside chair and drew it closer to the bed. I reached out to touch him, but my hand was trembling so badly that I withdrew it before I made contact, afraid he might realize, even through his pain, that I was not very strong myself right then.

"What are you trying to do to yourself?" I asked him softly. I had to whisper because I could not trust my voice to remain steady if I said it aloud.

"You're wrong!" he rasped weakly. "I … want a healthy leg. You're wrong!"

I watched him becoming agitated, his head moving restlessly on the pillow.

What?

Was he hallucinating? Was he becoming disoriented with the confusion and pain that ruled his body? Gently, I reached out to touch his face; lay "hands on" in an effort not only to calm him through human contact, but also to get a feeling for body temperature. His temp seemed slightly elevated, and I squirreled that information away for consideration later. He was also moist with sweat, but not saturated, and my fingers sifted back through the coarse strands of silver-in-copper hair. He stilled instantly at the touch on his skin, and I spoke to him.

"What are you talking about?" Softly: as though speaking to a child.

"I don't define myself that way!" he insisted, "… wrong …"

Then he was swept up in the pain again, moving about with jerky, seizing movements, and suddenly I saw something than made my blood run cold. His attempts to ease the spasms in the left leg were being derailed by his flailing hands as they moved about beneath the blanket. I picked up a corner and looked under. Now he was grabbing at the right leg as well.

"Cuddy!" I dropped the blanket and twisted around.

He started violently below me, and I knew he'd sensed the alarm in my voice. I brushed my hand away from his face and settled it onto his shoulder in a soothing motion. He reacted to it for only a moment and then returned to his jerking, fumbling attempts to ease the agony, which had suddenly doubled in the other leg.

I was about to call for Cuddy a second time, but she hurried around the corner and walked up behind me. "What?"

I felt a touch of panic try to infiltrate my tired brain, but I could not let it get a grip. "We've got to do something. He's not making sense, and his brain's going to undo everything we did to control his breakthroughs if we don't get a handle on this pain … now!"

Behind me, Cuddy touched my shoulder sympathetically, and I saw she had the syringe in her hand.

I took it with a nod of thanks, and then leaned down again, attempting to refocus Greg's attention on my words. "House! Listen to me! We can't let this go any further … we've gotta do the morphine!"

He was still out of it; still whispering nonsense. "Wrong! You're wrong, Jimmy …"

There was no time to waste trying to decipher what he might be talking about. It could be a hallucination … or the tail end of some strange dream … anything.

"Okay! I'm wrong! I'm wrong and I'm sorry! Really sorry, all right? I'm going to make you feel better now … and I'm sorry I was wrong. So sorry."

I saw his mouth turn up slightly at one corner, and the configuration of his tense body backed off a bit from "frozen hinge" to "broken spring". I used the opening to further assure him. "You'll feel better in a minute … then we can talk …"

I injected the medication into the port and looked over my shoulder to shrug and scowl at Cuddy, still a quarter-step behind.

Talk about WHAT?? WHAT did I just apologize for?

I handed the syringes to her and grasped House's wrist to begin monitoring his pulse. Did his temp manage to elevate in the short interval since the last time I'd checked?

I placed my other hand on this moist forehead. "He feels feverish …"

Peripherally I saw her pick up the tympanic thermometer we used at night to monitor his temperature without waking him. He was just barely cognizant at the moment, and neither of us believed he could have held the oral one. Cuddy inserted it gently into his ear canal, and when it beeped, she looked at the readout.

"A hundred point four … probably the result of the spasms and the intense pain. If that's it, we'll know soon enough. It should come down as he relaxes."

I pushed back from the edge of the bed. "How long has he been like this?" I did my best to keep the accusation out of my voice, but wasn't sure of my success. I felt as though my world was coming apart along with Greg's, and I wasn't too sure I was making any more sense than he was.

"He's been in some degree of discomfort ever since you left," she told me. "He didn't want you to go in the first place; he's very needy right now. But as I told you on the phone, he was refusing the morphine. I didn't realize how bad it really was until just before you arrived …"

I acquiesced, closed my eyes for a moment. This wasn't her fault. "Cuddy … don't feel bad. Please. You can't punish yourself for his decisions. Been there, done that." I tried to smile, reassure her. It was very difficult.

"Í know just how … formidable he can be. I can't say I'd have handled it any differently."

She nodded, satisfied that I understood, but I knew she still felt guilty for having let the situation get out of hand.

At that particular moment, I just did not possess the energy to keep reassuring her. "Do you know what he was talking about?" About the best I could do right then, was change the subject and hope for the best. My grasp on the here-and-now was nearly exhausted.

"What am I wrong about?"

She shrugged. No help. "I have no idea. He didn't say a thing to me … didn't seem particularly upset …"

I looked down at him again. He was finally relaxed in sleep, thank God. I felt my eyes misting up for about the fiftieth time during the past couple of weeks, and felt just too exhausted to try to hold the emotion at bay.

"When he wakes up …" I managed, "I guess I'd better find out. I could have apologized for anything from ordering Chinese instead of pizza … to voting wrong in the last election. With House, you never know what'll set him off …"

My eyes were about to run over, but I met her gaze without flinching. I saw her really looking at me hard for the first time since I arrived home.

"Home" … "Home" is anywhere that he is …

"Are you all right?" She asked me, tilting her head and seeing me lose the last vestiges of control.

I swallowed convulsively, and hung my head. "I'm okay now … I think … had a little incident on the way home. My car took the worst of it."

She was alarmed, her focus switching like lightning from House to me. "What happened?"

I swallowed again, stalling for time until I could make my voice work. "Between the rain and the traffic and the wind and my own inattention, I ran the car off the road and ended up in a ditch at the end of a farmer's field. I could have killed a lot of other people … but I guess … 'Someone' … was watching out for me …

"It happened so fast that traffic never even slowed down. I got the car home, but just barely."

I shrugged. Didn't have the heart to tell this tired, wrung-out friend that the trouble had started when I'd grabbed for the cell phone. My worry for her and for Greg and what was going on at the apartment, combined with my own fatigue, the thumping pain in my wrist, and poor judgment, caused me to lose control of the wheel just long enough to cause a very close call.

I looked down at my ill friend, so glad to be back to him.

I looked across at my other friend. No longer just my boss, and felt like the luckiest man in the world.

Cuddy went into "Mother Hen" mode right after that. I took a last look at Greg, fast asleep beneath the blanket, legs and face both relaxed and comfortable, and the tears ran unabated down my face. This time I didn't mind. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and I realized Dick had been right.

I wondered what House would have to say the first time I allowed him to observe me bawling like a little kid.

Smiling to myself, I followed Cuddy out of the bedroom and closed the door softly behind me.

She gave me tea. Apple and cinnamon, and the aroma took me away blissfully to some other date and time where there was sun and green grass and the tinkle of a concert piano flitting through my mind and comforting me.

I sat on the couch with my fingers laced about the hot mug. I was dirty. I smelled bad, and my eyelids felt like twenty-pound weights. I remember Lisa covering me tenderly with a blanket, touching my cheek with the tip of a finger. She saw my swollen hand and her eyes were full of questions. I pretended not to notice.

Greg has a lot of thinking to do. Both of us have a lot of talking to do. He's going to wake up sore and probably confused.

We'll handle it.

Right then, I appreciated the comforts of the moment. When I closed my eyes, I knew that sleep was not far away, and I thought of Scarlet O'Hara.

"Tomorrow" would be another day!

Oooo0oooO

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