Voice of An Angel
Greg stirred, his mind fogged by what he presumed was hard sleep. His mouth was dry, as if he had slept with it open the whole time. He tried to move his tongue around his mouth, move the saliva around a bit. All he managed was to unstick his top lip from his lower lip. A cool damp cloth was placed gently over his mouth. He sucked at it, trying to extract enough moisture to cool his feverish lips. The cloth disappeared. A cold, wet sensation replaced it.
"Ice chips," a voice spoke softly.
He sucked savagely at the fingertips as the moisture disappeared. The coldness was replaced once again.
"Put it on your tongue. Let it melt before you try to swallow." By now the ice was small.
He didn't heed her words and choked on what little water the ice produced. Greg didn't recognize the hoarse wheeze that served as a cough escaping his throat. He tried to form words.
"Shh. Don't try to talk. Sleep. You're not alone."
Ethereal. The voice that ministered to him was angelic, and yet melancholic. Was he dying? There was no way to tell. Numbness held him in a cocoon of non-feeling, non-being, for it was impossible to be alive without pain. Pain was unmistakably missing. Blissfully absent.
His mind worked at that fiber of knowledge. Tested it against all he knew. The voice. Another strand beginning to entwine with the first.
Get off the bus, House.
The white lights are nothing more than the brain shutting down.
'I'm dying,' he thought, 'or perhaps I am already dead.'
Get off the bus, House.
But I don't hurt here.
The Fates had taken up his frayed and split threads, plaiting them in a frantic dance as the deeds of his past untangled them. He decided he was dying; nearly at the end of the proverbial rope. He had to make a choice: stay on the bus, or live. Any other time he'd opt for the bus. Right now, at this moment, he wasn't ready to die.
'How am I supposed to wake up,' he formed the thought in his mind. The other times when he had come to, sensation was the first step. This should be easy. In his head he was aware of what he needed to feel. But no matter how hard he wished it; no matter how hard he tried to feel existence, there was nothing. A small cry of terror escaped his throat.
"Shh. You're safe. Sleep."
The voice again. "Are you real?" He felt the air move through is throat and beyond his lips, but it didn't sound like him.
"Yes, Greg, I'm real," Cindy chuckled. "And you're obviously wasted."
A smile graced his lips. Not dead. Not even close. On opiates. Hallucinating. No wonder he associated it all with Amber.
"No oh…"
"Shh. She fed him ice again. "No opiates. Lots of other good things to keep you comfortably numb."
Foreman came in to check on his patient and to see if he could coax Cindy into going home for a while. He looked at the chart hanging on the end of the bed. Then he checked out House's heart and lungs. All systems seemed to have stabilized over the last few hours.
"You should go home and get some rest."
"I want to be here when he opens his eyes."
"I doubt that's going to happen any time soon."
"He stirred, just before you came in."
"Did he say anything?"
"He mumbled some things. I couldn't understand any of it. He sucked on some ice chips, then drifted off again."
That reminded Eric to check his urine output. They were able to locate three fat emboli that escaped a fracture site. While the surgeon was plucking one out of his leg, it dislodged and disappeared. His body went into shock, then systemically started shutting down. Not all of it was from the singular rogue embolus. There was only so much a body could take. Evidently, House's had reached its limit.
The urine wasn't exactly the color Foreman had hoped for. "He might need dialysis."
"If the clot hit a kidney, why are they both shutting down?"
"We don't know. He's had eons of abusing his body. Could be he's at his wailing wall."
"So what now? What if his kidneys continue to fail?"
"We keep him stable for as long as we can and hope for a miracle."
"So no transplant."
"His case wouldn't even make it to the transplant committee's agenda."
"Damn. Means we'd have to make a plea for a donor to come forth."
Eric snorted. "House wouldn't just take anyone's kidney. He'd want to interview them first."
"Let's hope he gets the chance."
"You should go. We'll call you if he wakes up." He saw the look of skepticism on her face. "I promise."
"Are you going to stay with him now?"
"Dr. Hadley's going to spend some time with him. Then Wilson, then Cuddy." Her skepticism reappeared. "Don't worry. They'll call you if there's any change."
"I doubt that." Cindy gathered her belongings before going over to the bed and kissing Greg's forehead.