Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital ICU – Princeton, NJ - May 1999
At first, you're angry. You're angry and getting angrier, a crescendo of fire in your chest.
You aren't sure who deserves to be the victim of the majority of your fury: the Emergency Department at Princeton General for their negligence; Stacy for her defiance; House for his bullheadedness; or yourself for not being there earlier, convincing him to do the right thing, stopping Stacy from doing the wrong thing. You aren't mad at Lisa Cuddy, though you know he will be as soon as he's able.
You're regretful.
He was playing golf with two other department heads when it happened. The two of you had plans to play golf on Sunday afternoon. You've seen the surgical site, the long line of staples, the peripheral swelling and how it looks so gruesome next to the crater of an absent rectus femoris. You don't even expect him to walk in the foreseeable future, never mind golf.
You're scared.
You're standing on one side of the Intensive Care Unit's glass wall. It's hard to tear your eyes away from the monitors and almost impossible to ignore the constant beeps and whooshes and clicks, the things that let you know that your best friend is dangling from the ledge separating life and death. He keeps losing his grip, fingernails collecting dirt as he slips closer and closer to the abyss below.
But you're hopeful, too, because every time you think he's losing his fight with gravity, he finds something to latch onto and claws his way back towards the living. Back towards you.