The Promise

Chapter Four

Stacy picked up House at his motel for the drive from Trenton to Newark to meet with Deacon Bernard at the lawyer's office. Before leaving she made House change out of the t-shirt and jeans to a dress shirt and sports jacket, similar to the way he used to dress for work at the hospital. He won out on one point though: he still wore his t-shirt under the button up.

"So what do you think about Deacon?" Stacy asked him once they were on the road.

House shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road in front of them. "Hard to tell yet. He certain commands a high price so he better be good."

"Do you have the money to cover the legal costs?" she asked, glancing over at him.

House nodded. "Wilson transferred most of his savings over to the bank account of Wilson Thomas, my pseudonym, before he…before. I have a fair amount to work with. Don't worry about it."

"Okay, I won't," she replied. "Deacon told me that after this meeting he should have a good idea of how to approach your case. When we're there today be completely honest with the both of us, Greg. He can't help you if you keep information hidden from him. Anything you tell us will be kept strictly confidential."

"Relax," House told her softly. "I don't want to sabotage this. I promised Wilson I would move on with my life to the best of my ability, and I intend to keep that promise."

"I find it hard to believe that James is actually gone," she commented wistfully, a sadness coming to her eyes that only caused House to experience his own grief more sharply. "Did he suffer much?"

House hated talking about Wilson's illness and death, but he knew that Stacy and Wilson had been friends and that she cared. She deserved an answer.

"Toward the end he suffered a great deal," House answered frankly with a sigh, keeping his gaze everywhere but on Stacy. A knot tightened in his stomach just recalling it. "The last two weeks were the worst. The tumor had grown large enough to interfere with his breathing so he struggled for breath. He refused to go to a hospital so I cared for him at the beach house. He had oxygen and we managed to score some morphine for his pain, but there were times when it simply wasn't enough."

House started when he felt a soft, slender hand take hold of his.

"Shit," Stacy murmured. He could see unshed tears in her eyes. At first he suspected her of pitying him but he quickly realized that instead of pity it was mutual grief that she was expressing. "He was lucky to have you there for him. I'm sorry that the both of you had to go through that."

"Wilson's the one who suffered," House demurred but Stacy shook her head, stealing glances at him.

"We both know he wasn't the only one," she said with certainty. House said nothing to that, knowing that he didn't have to; Stacy knew him perhaps as well as Wilson had.

They didn't talk much for the rest of the drive. Stacy parked her car in the parkade adjacent to the office building that leased two whole floors to Bernard, Clayton and Steinberg. When they arrived on the twelfth floor the receptionist welcomed them in immediately, escorting them through the outer office where two paralegals and a legal secretary worked to the inner offices belonging to the partners in the firm. She stopped outside Bernard's door and knocked lightly before poking her head in and announcing that House and Stacy had arrived. Bernard said something in response before the receptionist opened the door all the way and stepped back to allow them admittance. Bernard rose from behind his large antique mahogany desk and came around it to greet them and shake their hands. House briefly shook hands though he was quick to withdraw his.

"Have a seat and we'll get started as soon as my assistant Susan arrives. She'll take notes of the meeting. Don't worry, she's bound to the same strict confidentiality as I am," the tall, slender fortysomething with greying blond hair told them.

Susan arrived promptly with a voice recorder and a steno pad. She set the recorder onto the desk separating House and Stacy from Bernard and then pulled up a chair out of the way, ready to take notes.

"If you don't mind, I'll be recoding this meeting," Bernard told them. "Nobody but your defense team will hear this recording. Its for my personal use—I can easily go back to a fact or two if necessary without having to call you back to repeat something."

"Fine," House told him tersely. He tried to ignore the tight knot in his belly.

"I'd like to start by asking you some questions, Dr. House," Bernard told him. "I strongly encourage you to be completely honest with me. I need to know the truth. I'm on your side here and I can only do my job properly if you're frank with me, Okay?"

House didn't answer immediately, considering whether or not he could trust the lawyer.

"Greg," Stacy prompted softly.

House nodded, waiting for the questions to begin.

"Describe to me the events surrounding the revoking of your parole to the best of your knowledge," Deacon asked, relaxing into his executive chair, tenting his fingers in front of him as he listened.

"I was charged with felony vandalism for flushing a set of season tickets down my boss's toilet," House said with a sigh. "Foreman—Dr. Eric Foreman—gave them to me to encourage me because I had found out that my best friend was dying from thymic cancer. I was angry that he would assume he could come close to replacing Wilson in my life. It was meant to give him the message that he could never replace Wilson."

"Wilson?" Bernard asked. "Who is this 'Wilson' individual?"

"He was Dr. James Wilson, Chief of Oncology at Princeton-Plainsboro teaching hospital and my best friend…my only friend," House clarified, his stomach clenching at referring to Wilson in the past tense.

"Dr. Wilson has since died, correct?" Bernard asked. House nodded.

"Correct. He…died…a month and a half ago from his cancer," House said, finding it hard to use the word died.

"I see. Please continue with your account," Bernard told him with empathy.

House nodded. "I had no way of knowing that flushing the tickets would destroy the hospital's entire plumbing system and flood the hospital. I only wanted to plug Foreman's toilet to send him the message. The plumbing blew up throughout the hospital and flooded several floors. An MRI machine was among the casualties. Because the fire department found my name on the tickets they charged me with felony vandalism, which automatically violated my parole. I was to report back to custody after the weekend."

"To your knowledge, did anyone actually see you flush the tickets?" Bernard asked him, repeating the question he'd asked the night before.

House shook his head. "No, no one saw me. I'm certain of it."

"So it was not your intention to damage the hospital's plumbing system as a whole?"

"No," House insisted. "Didn't matter what I said. I was going back to prison for six months…but Wilson only had approximately five months left to live. As it turned out he lasted a little longer than that, but not much."

"Was that when you devised your plan to fake your death and leave Princeton with Dr. Wilson?" Bernard asked.

"No," House answered. "I didn't think of that until after I had escaped the factory fire."

"I see," Bernard acknowledged with a nod. "So how did you come to be in that burning factory in the first place?"

House shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Hey," Stacy encouraged gently, "you can do this, Greg."

He nodded, wishing he could just skip over this part. "I had a patient who was a heroin addict. I was depressed about having to go back to prison rather than spend Wilson's last days of life with him. I just wanted to escape…so I went with him—his name was Oliver Pratt—to a condemned factory to buy some heroin from his dealer. We shot up together in the factory and I was out of it for several hours. When I came down from the dope I discovered that Oliver had ODed and died and somehow the factory had caught on fire and was burning around me. I was nearly killed by a falling beam, but it missed me and collapsed the floor beneath me. I fell into the basement and found a way out through a loading dock. While I was trying to escape the factory Wilson and Foreman had come looking for me. They both saw the beam fall but they didn't realize that it had missed me. They believed I'd died in the fire. Once I was free of the factory I realized that if the authorities were convinced that I had died then I could escape with Wilson and spend the rest of his life with him. I realized that they would find Oliver's burnt body and assume it was mine. All I had to do was call in a favor with someone I knew in the coroner's office. My contact exchanged Oliver's dental records with mine and I was legally declared dead.

"Wilson didn't know that I was still alive until my funeral," House explained. "When he found out he helped me buy fake identification and we left on a final road trip together. We traveled the country on motorcycles until he became too sick to continue. We rented a beach house in southern Oregon and remained there until he died. I phoned in an anonymous report of his death to the police and left before they got to the beach house. I'm assuming his next of kin were called to claim his body for burial following an autopsy, which would be standard procedure. Since then I traveled back east. I promised Wilson I would continue with my life after he died, and that's why I came to you."

"You must have really trusted Wilson to keep your secret, despite the fact that that made him an accessory after the fact," Bernard commented. "You weren't at all concerned that Wilson would turn you in?"

"Not at all," House answered.

"Why not?" Bernard asked, genuinely curious. "He took a huge risk."

"Wilson was my best friend," House explained. "We were closer than brothers. If he had been in my shoes, I would have done the same thing for him."

"Indeed," Bernard said with a sigh. He sat forward in his seat, leaning on his elbows on his desk. "Well Dr. House, you're going to end up back in prison, that's all but guaranteed, but for how long depends on how good of a plea deal I can arrange for you with the district attorney's office."

"What kind of plea deal?" Stacy asked, interjecting. "How are you intending to approach his situation?"

"First of all," Bernard began, "I'm going to attack the felony vandalism charges. I'm not a plumber, but even I know that plugging up one toilet in an institution as large as a hospital shouldn't completely compromise the entire plumbing system. I have one of my PIs looking into the condition of Princeton-Plainsboro's plumbing system as well as the city's system at the time of the incident. If my suspicions are right, that plumbing system was already in poor shape. That, and the fact that there were no witnesses to your flushing the tickets, should provide us with enough of a case for reasonable doubt that will convince the prosecution to drop the charge. So we're really looking at the fleeing of custody as the biggest obstacle to your freedom, Dr. House. There's no way we can deny that it happened. I'll try to convince the ADA in charge of the case against you that a jury would be more lenient to you out of compassion for the situation you found yourself in—wrongfully accused and facing a return to prison when a close friend is dying. It's unfortunate that Dr. Wilson wasn't your legal domestic partner, which would only make our case stronger."

House shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He wished that Stacy wasn't sitting next to him just then. He had to tell his lawyer something that would likely shock her.

"Actually," House spoke up, avoiding looking at Stacy, "Wilson was more than just my friend. He and I…we were lovers until he died."

House didn't have to look directly at Stacy to know that her jaw dropped and she paled with surprise. Bernard didn't flinch, almost as if he had been expecting House to make that declaration. Of course there was no way the lawyer could have known that before House's confession, which meant he was very intuitive and observant. Those were qualities House respected but found rare in others.

"H-how long?" Stacy asked once she was able to find her voice. "I mean…was there always an attraction there or—?"

"Don't," House said softly, forcing him to meet her eyes now. "Don't go there. Wilson and I…we became lovers after my faked death, while we were on the road. There wasn't that same attraction there when you and I…when we were together; at least, not on my part. It developed gradually over the years since then."

She nodded slowly, taking that information in and processing it, still appearing stunned.

"That fact, Dr. House," Bernard told him, drawing their attention back to the matter at hand, "just might make a significant difference in your case. The ADA might be less inclined to take your case to trial and risk having a sympathetic jury hear your heart-rending need to be with the man you loved when he was dying. If handled properly, this could be very, very good for you."