Chapter 10
Waiting and Fearing
"What do you mean you think it's hereditary?" Mrs. Gray inquired stolidly.
House stood silent for a moment, then replied, "I mean I think it's hereditary. What do you think I mean?"
She rolled her eyes, and shifted her weight, attempting to match his height. "You know what! Why should this sort of thing even surprise me?! After all this time, wouldn't it seem fitting that it was my fault all along?!" As she spoke, she waved her arms about and scoffed at the prospect's absurdity.
Leaning on his cane, he let her finish her rant. "I never said it was hereditary on your end."
She froze where she was, and she spun, staring at him, a tear at the edge of her eye. "What?" she asked in but a whisper.
He stepped closer. "I think he has a neurological condition. Aiden's family history shows that his father's side had several problems with-"
Her sharp inhalation stopped him cold. "Damn it, Ted!" she cursed softly.
House looked at her for a moment, then said, "Ok, this is the point where you tell me something major and life-changing about you're ex…Well, for Aiden at least it'll be life-changing. For you it'll just be bad memories."
Mrs. Gray scoffed. "Ted is not my ex. He's still alive, and we're still married. It's just that…He wouldn't recognize my face if looked at him…He wouldn't recognize Aiden…" More tears glistened in her eyes.
"Dementia," House answered for her, and she convulsed with sobs. "What caused it?"
She shook her head. "Not dementia…paranoid schizophrenia. He chooses not to remember us. He says that they'll get us if he admits he knows us."
Eyes narrowed, House tilted his head to the side. "Who are they?"
"His hallucinations. We've tried everything to get rid of them, but he's too far gone." She folded her arms beneath her bosom.
"How old is he?"
"Thirty-six. As you said, he has a family history of this sort of thing."
House dropped his head for a moment. "I need you to tell me everything you can about your husband." Mrs. Gray raised her head to survey the diagnostician. "And I mean everything. Your son doesn't have much time, and we need to remain ahead of the game."
Searching his eyes for a few tense moments, Mrs. Gray surrendered a nod. "Ok," she answered. "Sometimes I just wish he would come back…the Ted I remember. But then I remember, I used to be afraid of him."
"Was he abusive?" House asked.
"No," she replied. "We loved each other, and he was always kind to me. But I wanted a family, and he was just never meant to be a father. While I was pregnant, he always ignored me, or looked at me with this…indescribable, angry expression. His schizophrenia hit shortly after Aiden was born." She paused and wiped a stray tear from her eye. "Since then, I've only had our son, and him I refuse to fear."
Watching the tiny screen in Aiden's observation room, Foreman, Chase, and Cameron viewed the many hours of observation tapes of their patient. Fast-forwarding through most of the material---since it was during the times they were physically observing him---the team focused on the quieter moments right up through the surfacing of the peripheral neuropathy. The clips didn't appear to show much of Aiden's life save drawing in his sketchbook. In those instances, he would spend anywhere from minutes to hours working on his pieces.
"So, all we've learned is the kid's an artist," Chase mumbled.
"There's got to be something else here," Cameron muttered.
Foreman sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Sure there is. We just don't know where or what it is."
Having reviewed the tapes for the past hour and a half, they continued to watch the entire thing in fast-forward, looking for any minute detail they might have missed. It seemed to be the same scene over and over again: Aiden continually risingfrom his bed or the floor to draw. Cameron noted it first. "Doesn't it seem odd to anyone else how he's always unoccupied right before he starts drawing?"
Glancing at each other, Chase and Foreman leaned in toward the screen. "Where?" Foreman inquired.
Cameron rewound some of the tape. As it played, she pointed to the screen. "Here he's on his bed." The grainy image showed the white-haired, young man laying motionless on the bed, much like he was now. "And then he just gets up and draws." In a flurry of motion, the figure on the tape rose suddenly and stooped for the sketchbook, scribbling furiously on an empty page. She fast-forwarded a bit, pointing out several similar instances, each drawing session occurring at a different pace.
The clincher came at the end of the tape, right where the peripheral neuropathy episode occurred. Just as Cameron was about to stop the film, Foreman cut her off. "No," he said. "Let's watch this."
As the clip began, only Foreman leaned in toward the screen. Chase released a groan. "We've already watched this clip four times. What is this time going to prove?!"
"There!" Foreman cried, pointing to the screen. Aiden stirred, raising his left arm, then instantly recoiled and headed for his sketchbook.
Chase shook his head. "What does that prove?!"
"If you suddenly got hit with a pain that caused you to physically tense like that, would your first reaction be to draw a picture?" Foreman asked borderline accusation.
The three exchanged uneasy glances as the sounds of Aiden's panting on the video feed dented the silence of the room. Finally, Cameron glanced through the window at the real Aiden. "We need his sketchbook."
The other two turned to her. Chase spoke for both of them. "What's that gonna prove?"
She answered, "Whatever's going on with him, in his head or body, is going to be reflected in that sketchbook."
"I don't know…" Foreman said contemplatively.
'Well, you said so yourself! Why would your first reaction to pain be drawing?!" she argued.
Releasing a sigh, Foreman folded his arms. "She has a point," he said, looking at Chase.
As two pairs of eyes bore down upon him, the Australian held up his hands in defense. "Why are we looking at me?"
Cameron shrugged, arms folded like Foreman's. "You seem to be the only one who doesn't agree at this point."
Blankly, Chase stared at them for a moment, then got up, shaking his head. "I feel like I'm being plotted against," he commented as he left the room. Within moments, a nurse entered Aiden's room, casting wary glances toward his sleeping figure on the bed. She retrieved the sketchbook, exiting hastily.
Shortly thereafter, Chase returned with the black, wire-bound hardcover sketchbook, and the team gathered in a tight group to view its many ink-stained pages.
With each and every page turn, an impending sense of horror stole over the three doctors. The images came in two varieties, inexplicable macabre and grotesque beauty, and each picture varied in quality, ranging anywhere from rough figures to professionally detailed, finished pieces. The tortured faces of rotting corpses screaming out from an endless vortex of nightmares and the intricate forms of songbirds in the midst of dark clouds vied for dominance within the pages of the book. The chaos eventually arrived at the point where the doctors prayed with each turn that their eyes would not meet another disturbing page.
Two thirds of the way through, they began to notice the quality of the pieces was degenerating. The pieces grew more hurried; they focused less on detail like their predecessors and more on the main subject. A little later, the main images themselves began to lose their overall form. Instead of drawings, every piece was a scribble that might have turned out to be an actual figure at some point. But instead they sat forgotten.
The blackness of the final page bleeding through the one they were on now that merely bore a rough hewn spiral, they cast a final gaze at each other, completely aware of what they might find. Foreman released a sigh, flipping the page.
The entire room let out a breath as the breathtakingly striking image of a white peacock gazed absently up at them from the dark prison of his page. It was the most detailed piece in the entire book.
After the initial shock passed, Cameron's short scream reverberated around the tiny room. Startled, the men looked up to see Aiden standing just on the other side of the panel, glaring at them with dangerously narrowed eyes. His right hand was tightly clasped around his pen, ready for use, and his entire frame shook with fury. "Give me back my sketchbook!" he shouted at them through the wall.
They said nothing, and he continued to shout at them. Soon, his shouts became screams. Cameron pressed a nurse call button on the console, but they were already far ahead of her. Three nurses rushed in, attempting to restrain the young man who screamed and writhed like a demon. They attempted to inject him with a tranquilizer, but he wrapped his mind around the needles and continuously bent them so they couldn't be used. Helpless, they just held him where they could.
Eventually, his shaking figured stilled, the worst of his anger subsided. It was then that he glanced up with a pained look in his eye and calmly said, "On the island, there is a large willow where the faeries dance, awaiting and fearing the return of the white peacock." Then, he allowed the nurses to steer him to his bed where they injected him with the sedative, and he slept once more.
Under a day and a half remained.