Chapter 15: In the Still of the Night
When Wilson returned to the hospital a few hours later, he found House fast asleep. He looked down at the man he loved. House's right hand was spread protectively over his belly, and his left arm was flung across the bed, palm open to the ceiling. For a long time, James stood in the doorway, just watching. Finally, he moved to check the monitors before settling in the chair next to the bed. He opened his briefcase and the pile of charts he needed to review. He was still working when the door opened and Dr. Cameron crept into the room. He watched as she checked the monitors and made a notation in the chart. He wondered what he should say to her. He knew how she felt about House, and could only guess at how she must be feeling. He knew how devastating it was to find that a dream was impossible, but maybe now she could set her sights on someone other than her boss.
He smiled at her. "You don't need to monitor him. I'll be here all night," he suggested, whispering.
She returned his smile, and he was happy to see the kindness in her eyes. "Dr. Wilson, tonight you've been demoted to 'family', even though you are a doctor," she whispered back. "Besides, someone needs to check on our patient periodically, anyway, so it's no trouble. I was going to be here anyway, and Chase will be taking over at 2 AM." She smiled at him as she exited the room, and he began to hope that maybe her heart really hadn't been broken.
As the night progressed, there was very little change. House was sleeping soundly, and as the night wore on, the pile of charts at Wilson's side grew. Every hour, Cameron would silently enter and check the monitors before withdrawing with an encouraging smile for Wilson. Midway through the night, Chase took over the hourly charting duty. Hours later, Wilson finally had to admit defeat. He had read the same paragraph for the fourth time, with no idea what he had just read, and he'd jerked awake as his head had fallen forward for the fifth time. He put away the paperwork and leaned forward so that he could rest his head on the mattress.
He closed his eyes and the next thing he knew, a hand was gently stroking his hair. He sat up, his back muscles protesting the movement. He looked over and saw of pair of bright blue eyes regarding him thoughtfully. "How are you feeling?" Wilson asked.
House smiled ruefully. "They've got me on some pretty good drugs. Have you been here all night?"
Wilson stood up to stretch his lower back. "Yeah. After I got your parents settled at our place and my mom at my apartment." He leaned down to kiss the older man. "I forgot to say good morning." He smiled.
House returned the kiss, but was distracted by what Wilson had just said. "Where's your father?"
Wilson's smile diminished slightly. "Back home, I guess. He didn't handle the whole gay thing very well. He was already walking out when I told him about the baby. I don't think it even registered." He sighed and flopped down in his abandoned chair. "Disappointing, but entirely predictable."
"I'm sorry." There was sympathy in House's eyes. "How about your mother?"
"Completely shocked, but I think that eventually she'll be OK with it," he replied, remembering the conversation in the bedroom. He looked up and then answered the question in House's eyes, "I think they're OK with it. Being told your son has a life-threatening condition tends to put things into perspective."
House nodded and then changed the subject. "What time is it?"
Wilson looked at his watch. "Seven fifteen. I guess Chase is a little late."
"He was here a few minutes ago. You didn't even twitch. He said that everything is all right." It was a statement, but Wilson heard the question lurking in there.
He quickly checked the monitors. "Everything looks fine. How are you doing? Need anything?"
"Water," House replied.
Wilson found the plastic cup with the straw. "Are you hungry?"
"Not really," but at Wilson's disapproving look, he added, "but I'll eat when the tray comes." He was rewarded with Wilson's smile. "Why don't you go catch a shower and get some food. I'll have them page you if Barry stops by."
Wilson was almost at the door when he remembered something. "By the way, the parents will probably be showing up sometime this morning." He heard House groan as he pushed open the door.
When he returned to the sixth floor, he was feeling much better, having eaten a bagel from the cafeteria and showered and changed in the doctor's locker room. He was walking down the hallway when he heard Barry calling his name. They chatted as they made their way down towards House's room. After checking the chart and doing a brief examination, he sat down with a pleased expression on his face. "Everything looks really good. This morning, I'd like to ease you off of the IV meds and back onto your usual pain regimen, just at a slightly higher dosage for the next few days. Also, I'd like to get you up and walking. If you can make it across the room and back with no problems with the baby, then I think we can send you home this evening as long as someone is there at all times."
The morning passed quickly. Shortly after Barry left, an orderly came in with the breakfast tray. House made a valiant effort and managed to eat most of the food. He then nodded off for a few hours, Wilson again in the bedside chair. When he awoke, he immediately noticed the increase of pain in his leg and the pull of the incision sites. So much for the temporary reprieve from the nagging pain.
His sigh alerted Wilson to his return to consciousness, and he immediately asked, "are you OK? How bad is it?"
"It's fine." Nothing he hadn't felt before. As if on cue, a nurse entered with a paper cup containing a single white pill, which he swallowed gratefully. He breathed a sigh of relief when she removed the catheter. One step closer to freedom. A few minutes later she was followed by the arrival of Barry and Foreman. Wilson caught the scowl, but wasn't sure if it was directed at the walker Foreman carried, or the fact that he would be on hand to witness House's maiden journey.
"Sorry House, I'm taking away your cane until I can be sure you won't fall on your ass again."
"Hey! You can't blame me for that, I was attacked!" House protested.
"Either way, it's the walker or staying here for another few days."
"Fine," he grumbled.
The next few minutes were spent organizing the IV line, and the leads to the fetal heart monitor. After only a few shuffling steps, he had to admit to himself that there was no way he could have done this with only his cane. Somehow, he managed to make it across the room, but as he turned around, the distance back to the bed seemed to have quadrupled since the outgoing journey. He was less than halfway across the room when the door opened and his parents and Jane Wilson entered. He grimaced, knowing the picture he presented; skimpy hospital gown that didn't even completely cover his thighs; pale, skinny legs exposed to the world. Shuffling along in paper slippers, hunched over a walker like an eighty year old man, with Foreman and Wilson following closely behind in case he toppled over. Pathetic.
God, he was tired, but he knew that if he stopped, he would never make it back to the bed under his own power. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his father, and he tightened his grip on the walker and continued his uneven progress across the room. By the time he was back in bed, he was shaking with exhaustion, and he was certain that everyone in the room could see it.
He looked over at his mother, who was beaming with pride as if he had just run a damn marathon. He sighed and leaned back into the pillows. Barry performed a quick check of his vitals, and then another ultrasound to verify that there was no internal bleeding. "As soon as we get you fully off of the IV meds, I see no reason why you can't go home this evening. I'm sending you home with a fetal heart monitor and some other stuff, and I'm sure you'll feel better in your own bed."
When Barry was finished, there was a consultation with Wilson and the parents on the opposite side of the room. He watched as Wilson nodded and then moved to embrace Jane, before she walked across the room and sat down in the chair next to the bed. His eyebrows rose in surprise as she moved to take his hand.
"Now that you're 'out of the woods', so to speak, I think that I need to head home. Your mother is going to drive me." She smiled at him. "I'm glad that you make my son happy, and I think that eventually my husband will see that, too." She leaned over to press a kiss on his forehead before she moved to whisper in his ear, "take good care of my grandchild," before she straightened. She smiled encouragingly at him before turning toward the door.
His mother, seeing the exhaustion pulling at her son's eyelids, quickly took her leave. House sent Wilson away with an order to "go save some of the bald kiddies." Then he was left alone with his father. With a pained grunt, he rolled onto his side, before he grudgingly asked his father to find the pillow that had somehow ended up on the floor. As he positioned it under his leg, his father could only look on helplessly, unsure of what he could do to help his son.
"Do you need anything?" he finally asked.
"No. I just want to go to sleep for a while." At this, his eyelids finally closed, not even watching as his father slid into the chair beside the bed to keep watch over his only son.
The lunch tray arrived, but he decided to let Greg sleep. At 1 PM, a nurse arrived with Greg's pills, and after he swallowed them, he scowled at the now cold food on the rollaway table. He had managed to eat less than half of the food when his three fellows trooped in. He ignored the large rectangular package Chase was carrying and the smaller one in Cameron's hands, and barked, "so, how's our patient?"
"You were right," Cameron replied. "Tests proved it was pheochromocytoma, and we've started treatment."
"No side affects?"
"So far, nothing. We're still monitoring him closely, but he should be home before Christmas," Foreman explained.
Chase stepped forward with the package he was holding. "We thought you could use this."
House sighed and then reluctantly began unwrapping the gift. The larger package proved to be a medium sized whiteboard, and the smaller one a box of markers.
"We were afraid you'd start writing on the walls of your apartment," Chase explained.
The corner of House's mouth turned up in a wry imitation of a smile as he silently acknowledged the truth of the statement. He grunted his thanks and then awkwardly turned over onto his other side and closed his eyes, effectively ending the conversation. His fellows looked at each other in confusion before they turned and exited the room. Obviously, being pregnant and going through a near-death experience hadn't mellowed their boss one bit.
The afternoon brought another lap across the room with the walker, and another ultrasound before Barry was willing to discharge him. He changed into the sweats that Wilson had brought for him, and then he climbed into the wheelchair with only a token protest.
As Wilson pushed the chair down the hallway, House kept his eyes on the floor. Even though watching the linoleum slipping by was making him feel slightly nauseous, it was still better than looking up and seeing the pity in the staff's eyes. Even though most would universally agree that Dr. House was a bastard, no one would have wished for him to get cancer, and to see him hunched in the wheelchair, his normal fire diminished, was too hard, even for his most outspoken critics.
After he had climbed into the car, he tried to ignore the fact that the wheelchair had been added to the stash of medical equipment in the trunk. The trip home was quiet, and he leaned back into the leather seat of the Volvo, closing his eyes and shutting out the world around him. He stayed that way, even after the car stopped, listening to the sounds of the trunk being unloaded and people moving back and forth.
Then the door was being opened, and Wilson and his father were there to help him out of the car and up the steps into his apartment. As he crossed the threshold, he acknowledged that he was entering his prison for the next few months, with only the occasional furlough to the hospital if he was lucky.
Even with the relatively short distance he had walked, his legs were again feeling like cooked noodles, and he sank gratefully into the waiting wheelchair for the rest of the trip into the bedroom.
It seemed like he had just closed his eyes for a nap when Wilson was calling his name. He opened one eye before grumping, "go away!"
"Sorry, House. It's dinner time, and you have to eat for two. At least your mother's cooking is better than hospital food. Do you want to eat here, or out on the couch?"
He chose the couch, and was grateful that Wilson brought over the walker instead of the hated wheelchair. During dinner, he watched his parents with amusement as they balanced plates on their laps, trying to pretend that the arrangement was perfectly normal, when his mother had always insisted that a proper meal had to be eaten at a table. Wilson, on the other hand, was an old pro at this style of eating, consuming many a late night dinner on the couch in House's living room.
After dinner, they all watched a little television, until Blythe and John left for Wilson's apartment, where they were staying now that their son was home from the hospital. It wasn't even 10 PM when Greg and James were both fast asleep in their usual sleeping positions, Greg's head nestled at the juncture of James's shoulder, one arm thrown across the younger man's chest.
TBC