Beautiful Lies
Thank you so much for the reviews! They make me write that much faster (well, that, and the fact I no longer have classes). Enjoy this chapter--it's detox time!
Ch. 3
It had begun with just an increased throb of pain in his leg, when the scheduled time for his pill had come and gone. Just a little warning for him to get some Vicodin into his system. He could almost ignore it if he tried hard enough. The trick was not to think about it.
He cursed himself for not seeing the blatant clues that told him he was hallucinating. It wasn't possible to detox in one night. It made no sense for a single stray pill to lie on his bathroom floor. And how could he have expected Lisa Cuddy to leave her baby overnight? But he was too caught up in the glorious fantasy of it to notice.
"There are more clues you missed, you know," Amber said lazily. "Like that mosquito."
House stared at her, horror dawning.
"Wilson even told you, remember? 'House, you're a drug addict. You're always imagining things.' But you dismissed it out of hand. The great Gregory House couldn't be seeing bugs like a meth addict on the street."
House stood up abruptly. He couldn't take this anymore; he had to get out. But his leg collapsed under him and he crashed onto the floor.
Painfully, he hoisted himself up with his elbow. Looking up, he could see Amber towering above him, laughing.
"Did you think that I was the first time?" she mocked. "For someone who prides himself on his perceptiveness, you really are blind."
But House wasn't listening. His mind had sped ahead, going over the times where he felt 'off'. "When I crashed my bike—" He began hoarsely.
"It wasn't a real car coming towards you, was it? You thought you saw lights, you swerved off the road to avoid it---"
"No," he moaned. This can't be happening, this can't…
--
An Hour Later
He didn't know how, but he had managed to drag himself back on to the bed, and now laid there, teeth chattering and shivering. The pain had become full blown, like someone trying to saw his leg off with a very rusty saw. There was a primal urge in him, craving with every fibre of his being for Vicodin.
He wanted to throw up. He tried to walk the few steps to the small adjoining bathroom, but he couldn't put any weight on his bad leg. He braced himself, and fell onto the floor, letting his upper torso take most of the weight. His leg screamed even more (if such a thing was possible…but apparently it was), so that he actually saw black spots dancing in his vision.
After they cleared, he began to drag himself slowly, and painfully, towards the bathroom. If he had been in his apartment, or anywhere else for that matter, he would've caved and looked for Vicodin a long time ago. But he knew that there was none here. And he had expressly wished for the intendants to stay away from his room for the first while, so he wouldn't be tempted to lie and cheat his way to a pill.
Amber was still there, but she was silent now, watching him like a bird of prey.
This can't be a hallucination, House thought. I don't think that it hurt this much in my fake detox. This is real, it's really happening. And that was what gave him a little hope, even though at the moment he would've traded anything for a Vicodin.
--
"Thirty-year old patient—" Cuddy walked into the diagnostics room, holding a file.
"What happened to House?" Taub interrupted. "The last I saw of him was when he handed that guy with pancreatic cancer off to me, telling me to take him to Radiology. He hasn't been in for a week. What happened?"
Cuddy faltered, looking around to the rest of the team for help, but Thirteen and Foreman just looked back at her in askance. They wanted answers too.
Cuddy sighed, and rubbed her face tiredly. She hasn't slept well this whole week. She kept seeing House's haunted, broken face, and eyes filled with pain—his panicked words, I'm not okay…
She had to tell them eventually. They would find out. They had worked under House for long enough to catch his spirit of getting the answers at all costs.
"Dr. House," she began. Then stopped. Oh god, she couldn't do this. She was going to cry, and it was not good form for the Dean of Medicine to burst into tears in front of her employees.
The hospital rumor mill has been almost burning down with excitement all week. First, Dr. House had announced to the world that he had slept with her, and now he's gone mysteriously missing… Some people thought she had murdered him and dumped his body in a river, yet others thought she had kidnapped him and was holding him as a sex slave…all of which Cuddy would've found amusing had she not known the real, horrible truth.
"Cuddy," Foreman stood up, concern in his voice.
"I'm all right," she said, more aggressively than she'd meant to. Foreman sat down again. She took a breath. Well, out with it. "House…has been admitted to Mayfield."
She couldn't utter the words, psychiatric hospital, but she didn't need to. Audible gasps were heard from the team.
She allowed them a minute.
"Thirty year old patient, nausea, sudden loss of vision…" she began again. She had a job to do.
--
Wilson entered Cuddy's office. Every time he looked at her, he saw House's glowing face, so unused to happiness, and his heart broke. House had thought he'd slept with Cuddy, and he didn't run. He had wanted to make it work. And Wilson was so ready to believe, that he'd conveniently overlooked the fact that it was impossible to detox in one day. After all, if House didn't see a problem with it…
This was hard on Wilson. He already had a brother in a mental institution. And now his best friend was in there too. Sometimes he wondered if there was something about him that drove every one around him insane. Or maybe he just liked to surround himself with insane people. Either way, something was wrong with him.
"Yes?" Cuddy looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and she had put on more makeup than usual. Yet her face was calm, and her eyes were…almost dead-looking.
"They just phoned me," Wilson said. He didn't need to clarify who they were. "House has decided to detox."
"Oh," Cuddy said softly. Wilson could see some emotion—what, he couldn't say—flit over her face for one brief second. Maybe she was imagining the pain he would be in. Maybe she felt guilty that she didn't stay and helped him detox and made his fantasy a reality. Maybe then she told herself not to be stupid, she couldn't have left Rachel for House. Whatever it was, it was gone within a blink of an eye, and her face was set once more. "Thanks for telling me, Wilson."
Huddyness forthcoming next chapter! Meanwhile...review please!