Night of the Dripping Tap, Chapter 5
The guy in the bed next to his was close to death. House had checked his bright yellow pallor, heard his raspy breaths and listened to all the recriminations, retributions and redemption pleas he had been muttering in his morphine induced delirium.
Earlier that day, the guy had hefted his distended barrel-like belly from the gurney and thrown himself to the floor. He'd sworn at what House supposed was a spectre of death and warned that he wouldn't go without a fight then his gown had come open and his shrivelled rice and peas had forced House to thrown up for what had to be the thousandth time since he'd been ill. For someone in advanced stage liver failure he sure had a lot of fight left in him.
The nurses had been in and tied him to his bed with soft restraints avoiding all the lecherous pats to the ass he had been doling out. He'd continued to shout, swear and fart viciously throughout the day until the nurses came and added a little Ativan to his IV mix.
House had been sinking into the kind of sleep that made you lose track of time yet lasted only seconds. He'd felt like the dial on an analogue radio, tuning in and out from white noise to snatches of conversation and insane, morphine-crazy dreams. Lurched awake by the loud cackle of yet another of barrel-man's five hundred relatives coming in to say their last goodbye he stretched his mouth and longed for the cup of water just out of his reach on the night stand.
Lying prone as he was, he felt like all the muscles holding his skeleton together had been replaced with some sort of lead syrup. He didn't have the energy or the inclination to move and started to feel himself slipping under again, eyes drooping like a hung-over student in a lecture.
His head lolled off to the side and his body listed slightly with it. He was leaning back against a stack of pillows to help his stomach and felt like he was lying on a million puffs of cotton wool. There was a nagging pain but he had nowhere to be, no Cuddy trying to dupe him into some kind of deal, no Wilson trying to second guess him and rat him out for trying to score; just him…and barrel-man.
'YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME YOU BASTARD!!!'
House jerked awake once again and felt a stitch twang a warning in his belly. He managed to get his head to loll to the left so he could see what was going on and was faced with a very yellow man trying to escape from his restraints.
'NO! NO! NO! I'LL-' and with one final horrendous wheeze, Barrel-man was no more.
House stared open-mouthed and forced himself to flap his hand about in the hope of hitting his call button. He had seen death so many countless times before and this was no different. It was just a little, unexpected.
'Ah, Dr House, you're awake! What can I do for you?' a jolly, middle-aged nurse beamed as she waltzed over to him.
'He uh-' House barely lifted his arm to indicate the reason for his call, 'he croaked.'
'Oh, oh I see… well. You just hold tight Dr House and I'll sort everything out…' the nurse twittered on as she drew the curtains around the corpse and ran out to get help.
All the excitement of the day had caught up with House and he tried valiantly to succumb to the deep, deep sleep that he craved. Nurse Nightmare had other ideas however and while the morgue team busied themselves with the barrel-shaped cadaver she busied herself with him. She smoothed his brow, checked his foley, shoved a thermometer in his ear and pulled the sheets up tight under his armpits.
'Huh, temp's a little high there Dr House. Think I'll get the doctor to take a look at your wound. I won't be a minute.'
'Please, take as many as you need.' House replied glad to hear a little snark back in his voice. He touched his fingers to his wound gingerly. It had been three days since he'd been brought in and three days since he'd had any kind of decent sleep. He was aware of his obvious tolerance for powerful narcotics but even the strong dose morphine they had him on wasn't taking the edge off the nauseating pain now radiating around the fresh wound in his stomach. If he hadn't needed that damn shot of adrenaline to bring him round from the surgery he might not have been spending so much time having imaginary conversations with the rabbit that kept sitting on his chest and be able to figure out whatever it was that was bothering his belly so much.
'Fucking bunny…' he muttered.
'I'm sorry Dr House?' she stopped and turned back. 'Did you say something?'
He batted at the hallucination tickling his nose and the rabbit hopped off, following the nurse, in the direction of the bathroom. House decided that he had had enough of lying down and levered himself up slowly to follow. He had an overwhelming urge to evacuate his bowels and couldn't bear the idea of a nurse bringing one of those little bowls again.
He struggled to detach the foley from its stand and almost balked at the weight of his urine sloshing about in the bag like a goldfish at the fair. Dragging the IV stand behind him, he staggered off in the direction of the bathroom, cane tilting violently, and wobbled left and right as the room tilted perversely this way and that. He'd almost made it half way there when vertigo claimed him and he hit the deck like a sack of old shoes.
At that very moment, Nurse Nightmare had come back into the room with a doctor in a white coat fluttering behind her.
'Oh! Dr House! What happened?!'
The friendly looking nurse and terrified looking junior doctor flapped about and managed to drag House up to standing between them. Amidst the horrible tangle of gown, cane, IV line and foley House flopped uselessly like a rag doll.
Until he felt his ass hit the bed once more, House had lost all sense of which way was up and which way was down. It felt as though all the blood in his body had been ordered to collect in the extremities and wait out this gravitational miss-hap.
Once his head had stopped spinning and he felt like his blood was starting to reach the rest of his body, House noticed the green, blood-smattered goo oozing out of the wound on his belly and seeping through his gown.
'That's not right…' he thought.
Not a second later, House was out like a light. Again.
Hours or possibly seconds later, the pillow felt wet under his head and he swiped at the sweat pouring down his face and stinging his eyes. His cheeks were burning and he could feel the gown that was almost covering him stick to his flesh like glue. Blobs of colour ran across his eyes and his throat made him feel like he'd eaten a bottle of talcum powder.
Through this hot, hot misery, he was aware of the doctor whose balls hadn't dropped yet prodding his belly. Every time baby doc made contact with his skin, House felt flames leap from the wound and flash through his veins.
Somewhere he could hear the incoherent moan of some poor sap and couldn't connect it to the sound he did not know he was making.
He batted at the hands clawing all over him and scratched at his stomach to try to relieve the maddening sensations prickling all over his body.
'Woah there, Dr House! You're ok, you're spiking a fever and we're trying to cool you down.'
The syrupy voice glooped into his ears and did nothing to calm the savage and jerky movements his body was making with no direction from him.
'Ok, ok I think we need to put a drain in that wound, looks pretty nasty…' Nurse Nightmare swished out of the room while Baby Doc readied himself to insert the drain – for what House deeply hoped wasn't the first time.
'Now Dr House, what I need to do is… I need… Now what we…'
'What Doctor Valentine means is that this isn't a nice experience, Doctor House. I'm sure you know what we're going to do but you must try to prepare for the experience. Don't try to fight the tube okay? Just keep swallowing, work with me then it will all be much easier.'
Feeling strangely reassured by a middle-aged woman muttering about a procedure he himself had done a thousand times, House allowed himself to contemplate nurses having a purpose beyond their urine collection abilities.
This feeling lasted a matter of seconds until he felt himself start to gag around the tube being shoved up his nose and down his throat squashing any protest.
He felt like he was going to suffocate and was helpless against the overwhelming fear that he was going to see out his final miserable moments wriggling like a fish caught on a hook.
House felt the tube hit the posterior pharyngeal wall and counted to two before he predictably started to gag. The nurse took this opportunity to explain to the dumb-struck junior doctor that this was perfectly normal and kept on feeding the tube down House's oesophagus. Once she had it in place, the nurse – who by now House thought entirely… competent – listened to his belly with the doctor's stethoscope to check its location. With a grin that only hinted at satisfaction, she attached the tube to a drainage bag and House's stomach breathed a sigh of relief, glad as it was of a well-earned rest.