Night of the Dripping Tap, Chapter 4
House awoke in what he presumed to be the OR prep room of Lexington General with the overwhelming need to take a dump. If he didn't get to the bathroom in the very next instant, there would be a code brown emergency of the strongest odour.
He wiggled his index finger to try to balance out the strange weight caused by the pulse-ox monitor and pulled at the oxygen mask over his face.
His nose registered the antiseptic smell and his ears, the swishing about of bodies in scrubs. He tried to get up but was pushed down firmly by a pair of arms dressed in pink scrubs.
'We're going to put you out now Dr House, you're going to feel as though someone is strangling you – try not to panic, it will just be me pushing down on your oesophagus to make sure you don't vomit again and choke while the anaesthetic kicks in. Dr House? Ok?'
House managed a weak sounding groan in reply as the doctor pushed the necessary drugs into the cannula in the back of his hand. He knew the reasoning behind the somewhat Jacobean practice but was nevertheless totally unprepared for the reality. When he had been shot all that time ago, he hadn't had time to process a single thought other than his body going into survival mode. This time, he knew what was coming, why it was coming, and he didn't like it.
The anaesthetist pressed down hard on the junction between his stomach and oesophagus as House felt the paralytic portion of the anaesthetic take hold. He was totally helpless. A large part of his sepsis riddled mind thoroughly believed that this was some huge elaborate murder attempt and was trying very hard to panic. The tiny rational part of his mind counted down from ten like a good patient and House felt himself falling backward into the bed.
The next sensation House was aware of was the muffled whispering bobbing about him and a searing slice of heat snaking across his stomach. Briefly aware of feeling cold, his body gave up trying to make sense of his surroundings and plunged him back into a deep, deep sleep.
Cold, metallic air hissed, pulse-ox monitors bleeped gently and freshly sown-up patients groaned intermittently. Nurses whispered whilst writing up notes, checking IV lines and sneaking quick glances at those in their care.
Gregory House was breathing well and the wound on his abdomen had stopped oozing blood. The surgical nurse changed his saline IV and smoothed the sheets that covered him. He was due to wake any time now and she wanted to be ready in case he vomited. She busied herself around him for a few more minutes as she noticed his eyes starting to flicker from side to side behind his eyelids.
She had been a nurse long enough to know when a patient was about to come round. There was an almost imperceptible shift in their breathing pattern and some associated random muscle twitching. Very occasionally, they did as House was doing now and sat bolt upright shouting obscenities.
'Dr House! Dr House! Settle down, please!'
'I can't fucking breath! Fuck! Fuck! What have you –'
And with that, Gregory House, patient 0079, collapsed back onto the gurney and into a deep, deep unconscious sleep.
Once he had been out for a further three hours, a mandatory shot of adrenaline was administered and House shot straight back up again gasping for air as though he had been stranded at the bottom of the ocean.
'Jesus! What did you do?' he panted through each breath and clutched at his stomach.
'Welcome back Dr House! You had a little difficulty with the anaesthetic so we gave you a little adrenaline and everything seems to be back to normal now.' The gentle tone of her voice belied the rising panic that had started to creep into the recovery room. It had been a very long time since a patient had had so much difficulty in coming round.
'Now Dr House, the doctor wants to speak to you about your surgery – there's nothing to worry about but there is something you should know…'
Wired by the synthetic adrenaline coursing though his veins, House felt unnaturally alert. Starting at his toes, he wiggled all the small and major muscle groups until he was sure every bit of him was still attached and then forced himself to think more rationally. He'd had enough experiences of anaesthesia in his time to know that something had gone wrong even if his mind wasn't firing on all cylinders. Simple appys didn't do this.
By the time the surgeon had made it over to him, House had run his own diagnostic. Judging by the site of the incision and the array of drugs dripping into his IV, House had a list of potential diagnoses ready to throw at the unsuspecting surgeon. He was just getting ready to launch his attack when the nurse squeezed some Ativan into his IV port.
Determined to fight through the growing sluggishness filling his head, House was completely unprepared for the dulcet tones of his surgeon lulling him along with the Ativan into the guise of dumb-layman.
Angry with himself for letting someone (and a drug – when had he become that easy to dose?) get the better of him, House half listened and half grizzled as the surgeon explained what had happened during the surgery. He had to confess to being somewhat taken aback by the right-side Diverticulitis diagnosis – he hadn't seen that one coming.
While he listened to the surgeon explaining in simple terms that they had had to remove a section of his colon lost to infection, he fought back a feeble urge to tell him to shut the hell up. He made himself a promise right there and then that he wouldn't ever confess to missing his own only very slightly unusual diagnosis.
He didn't let himself think too hard about that niggling feeling that he, Doctor Gregory House, master of weird cases, solver of the unsolvable, had succumbed to something only slightly weird, only slightly left of centre and really, quite pedestrian.