The team was startled the next morning to find House already there when they arrived. Not only was he not hungover this morning, not only was he not late, but he was actually early. He was sitting at the conference table, staring at the totally blank whiteboard as if conducting a differential on air. None of them saw the mental writing he'd been afraid to put down in plain view, but the words to him were as clear as if they had been written in indelible ink.
Alcohol.
Error.
Sabotage.
His career at the hospital, not to mention his own slipping grip on control of his life, hung suspended from those three words.
Alcohol lowered inhibitions, but it did not give you desires you didn't have anyway, couldn't make you do something you were absolutely against doing. If he had gone back to Vicodin while drunk, he knew that it meant his own mind didn't really believe in his efforts at rehab, no more than Cuddy or Wilson did. It meant the last year truly was a waste. And part of him was still afraid he was hallucinating, although Cuddy's search had helped knock that fear to a back burner, at least. But it hadn't been eliminated.
Error. The easiest solution, the quick-fix, and therefore the one he least believed. Nothing in his life had ever been easy or had been fixed quickly. No, that couldn't be it. No get-out-of-positive-free card would appear to resolve this.
Sabotage. A very good possibility. He knew he had enemies. Someone could have interfered with the results in the lab. The answer he hoped most for, and thus the one he was afraid to put too much stock in.
Which led in a circle back to #1, that he himself had blown it, just as he had blown almost every other nonprofessional thing in his life.
"House?" Taub said tentatively when it became obvious that their boss was totally unaware of the team's entrance. House jumped and turned quickly in the chair, gritting his teeth as his leg protested the sudden movement.
"Are you okay?" Chase asked tentatively.
No, but nothing you all can do would help. "Fine."
"You're . . .early," Foreman noted, in a tone that equated that to hell freezing over.
"Going to report me? You're the official spy for Cuddy, you know. Coming in early. That's a serious offense. Better stop that in its tracks." Sarcasm dripped off House's tone, pushing them back, trying to regain distance to get his mental balance. It worked. Foreman rolled his eyes and gave a "last time I act concerned" look before sitting down himself with a professional journal.
"Got a case?" Chase asked.
"Not yet. Why don't you all go fishing? I hear ER is biting well sometimes. Or you could always do my clinic hours."
All but Foreman drifted out, and House moved to his office, taking his mental whiteboard with him.
Alcohol.
Error.
Sabotage.
(H/C)
He knew from Cuddy's expression, even before she spoke, when she entered his office in mid morning. "It's positive," he stated, saving her the trouble.
She sighed, looking concerned. "Yes. I'm sorry." She put the lab report down on the desk, and he studied it.
"Pretty much rules out error, then, or makes it unlikely. It would have to be two errors in a row." He was trying to keep working this out clinically, trying to avoid the inescapable conclusion that he had fallen off the wagon without even knowing it, tricked by his own subconscious. "That leaves alcohol or sabotage."
"We need to repeat the test," she said. "And this time, I'll watch it personally, and you can, too. No chance for anybody in the lab to throw the results."
"Then everybody would know . . ." He trailed off. Having the dean in the lab personally supervising tests with House there led to only one inescapable conclusion. The grapevine would have him relapsed and suspended again before the results even printed out. Cuddy never ran tests herself, never stood over a test in the lab.
She fought down sympathy. If he had screwed up again, if he did lose his license and had to stop practicing, of course the hospital would eventually know. Yet she still, perhaps foolishly, believed his denial. Whatever had happened, he had not intentionally taken the pills. "Maybe somebody who would draw less comment in the lab, then. I'm sorry, House, but I do want it directly supervised this time by somebody besides you alone. But getting someone else means letting someone else know what's going on. Your team is down in the lab all the time, but do you want to tell one of them?"
He shook his head vigorously, feeling a quick pang as he remembered the one team member he would have trusted with that assignment. Kutner. He flinched, remembering Kutner standing next to him in Cuddy's office that day. "Too bad none of it was real," the fellow had stated, looking genuinely sympathetic. Had anything in the last year, any of his efforts, been real?
"House?" Cuddy asked.
"Nothing." He sighed, considering the only two real options. He could either be judged and condemned in advance by Wilson, or he could be judged and condemned in advance by the entire lab staff and by grapevine extension the hospital if he repeated the test with Cuddy. "Call Wilson," he said, his tone defeated.
Cuddy felt a momentary urge to touch him on the shoulder, to let him know she was there, but she fought it down. She hadn't been there lately, obviously, had ignored the significance of his increasing drinking, and equally obviously, by his own statements recently, he didn't want her there. He didn't want her as a friend. "Maybe it will end there, House. Maybe the results were sabotaged in the lab."
"Maybe," he agreed.
Neither one of them believed it by this point.
(H/C)
"I don't believe this," Wilson stated for about the tenth time. He was keeping his voice down in the lab as he ran tests, both blood and urine for double results, and nobody was in their corner of the room of equipment anyway, but he was incapable of doing this in silence.
"Heard you the first several times," House replied. He paced a quick circle and rubbed at his leg. It was back to its usual baseline gnawing, burning pain today. Probably it had been a bit more bearable yesterday morning when he woke up because he'd been drunk-pilling.
"I mean, I know you've been drinking some lately, but seriously, House. How could things get this bad? Why didn't you say something? Why didn't you let me know?"
House whipped around to face him, his eyes ice cold. "Yes, how could you possibly have known things were going downhill? It's not like you got woken up by the police - if you were woken up instead of doing morning calisthenics with that harpy."
Wilson was bristling. "Leave Sam out of this. She isn't responsible for your screw-ups."
"You paid people, Wilson." House was getting more annoyed now, almost relieved at finding a target for anger besides himself. "You're the one who agreed to Nolan to be there for me. Instead, you were paying people to spend time with me instead. Face it, you didn't see a problem because you didn't want to see one. If you didn't want to put up with me anymore, you could have told me directly instead of just trying to shove me off like an unwanted gift you're regifting."
Wilson felt his own anger firing up. "Everything is someone else's fault with you, isn't it, House? My fault, Nolan's fault, the lab's fault. It's never you."
Their eyes locked, and right then, the printer whirred and regurgitated a piece of paper. Wilson picked it up and held it out so they both could read it. Double positive, blood and urine. No chance this time of error or of interference with the results. House stared at the page, looking so stricken that Wilson felt concern displacing annoyance. "Look, House," he said softly, "maybe I have been taking things with Sam too quickly. Like I said before, you can move back in if you need to."
House turned around, shoulders sagging. "Don't be a hypocrite, Wilson. We both know you don't want me there. Maybe the return period hasn't run out on the organ, so you can take it back and totally erase me from your place." He limped toward the door.
"House! Where are you going?" Unconsciously, the oncologist's hands had gone to his hips.
House turned around to face him again. "What do you care? If you really want to know, I'm sure you can pay somebody else to find out so you won't have to be bothered to follow me yourself." He turned and pushed his way out through the doors, limping heavily.
Wilson shook his head. Looking back down at the lab results, he reluctantly pulled out his cell phone to call Cuddy.