Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Heart

He'd been trying to be a good friend.

He'd been walking with House in a loop after lunch, trying to help him reach an important epiphany that needed to be there in order for House to save his latest patient of the week. But even during the exchange, something in Wilson had felt off and he didn't know how or if he even should voice such concerns to his best friend. He didn't really want to deal with the stares and the prodding and the concern, even if half of his heart wished he could receive that now if at no other point in time.

So, he didn't, thinking it'd go away on its own.

And, for a little while, it did.

Until the third lap around the hallway and House was about to deposit Wilson back to his office for him to tell all the little cancer patients their time was almost up, and Wilson felt his whole world start to shake as symptoms lined up in his skull in a way that only House could probably ever relate to, because the diagnostician's mind would orient in the same fashion to solve a case.

Except this wasn't really a case House could solve because it was stuck within Wilson's mind and barred from his lips because he could barely even get out many syllables as he somehow, continuously so, found himself walking with his friend; albeit, how well that was going, he couldn't be sure at all, now.

The symptoms lined up something like this:

Nausea (it felt like his stomach was clenching and he was about to vomit near House's shoes). Breaths, in the periphery of his understanding, coming in a little too quick, a little too ragged. How House wasn't hearing it and noticing the ocean that was being produced by Wilson's lungs (maybe his friend was so deep in solving his case he was a little absent-minded (the bastard, when Wilson needs him the most, he's absent)) was something that trailed a cold shiver down Wilson's spine.

He felt sweat rolling down his armpits. His head felt warm, and his hearing was fading, drowning out like he was coming out of the pool after a good swim, blocked, unable to properly assess what was around him. An alarming rate of lightheadedness was overcoming him, starting to see his vision blackening, the dots crowding out the long hallway in front of him. He would have searched for House if he could, but he was so lost in his own incompetence, he couldn't quite dare to.

The last frightful thing, arguably what should have been the most important, was that his heart was fluttering inside his chest. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was a steadier rhythm, but it wasn't and the gods above (or not-above) hadn't blessed him because he could feel his heart stop-stutter and pound and he thinks he just managed to hiss out a "House" before his limbs went limp, his head lolled back and he fell unconscious.


"Multiple ischemic strokes don't explain why she's gotten a blood clot in the first place. If the arteries are blocked, it doesn't add up with her preceding symptoms of a rash on her shins and the rectal bleeding she so dutifully added to her nice, fresh clean sheets. Then again, a blood clot wasn't on our list of projected symptoms either. What could this be?" House was grumbling, mostly to himself, he realized as Wilson had stopped uttering in half-attempts of conversation during their whole round of walking up and down the hallways.

He couldn't quite deny it, but House was irked by the younger man. The oncologist had been making himself sparse in the condo again and House couldn't figure out if it was a new lady thing filling up Wilson's jammies or if the oncologist was trying to shield him from finding out a worse truth.

He side-eyed the doctor beside him, though he was immediately shifting his gaze again as he spoke to himself, "'No, you're right, House. It couldn't possibly be that! Try another CT and a full body scan.' See, Wilson? That's what you were supposed to say to me. Conversation's a two-way street." He smiled grimly as a small ounce of the puzzle was fitting into place, if in no other way than that he'd come up with a few new tests to find the bigger thing he was missing.

House sighed, and the two doctors were nearing Wilson's and House's office when he turned to glance down the hallway to hopefully catch another look down Cuddy's blouse or up her skirt as she'd just been hovering since lap two, looking like she was considering giving him another round of clinic duties or ready to plop her butt in his office for a quick and tidy make-out session. The latter, of course, was more unlikely due to the recent developments in his case but House could lie to himself for just a minute, couldn't he?

Anyways, House was shifting his blue eyes back towards his friend—when the oncologist had the gall and the audacity to stop in the small curve of hallway before his office so abruptly, House skimmed him with his case and audibly cried out, "Cripple here! Come on, Wilson, you know that's not the way foot traffic works!"

He was gripping his cane firmly in his hand again, eyes almost wandering back down the hall to look after his girlfriend when a part of his subconscious mind picked up on something peculiar, something he most certainly didn't miss on a good day, and today had been all right, thus far.

Wilson, suddenly, didn't look so well.

The diagnostician's eyes narrowed, and he was standing about three quarters of an inch too close to the oncologist. He almost couldn't pinpoint what was wrong exactly until Wilson was paling another shade lighter than he should be. Now that he was looking more closely, his chest was rising and falling far more rapidly than normal, too.

"Wilson?" House questioned softly, confusion flitting across his features.

The brown eyes were staring out into space blankly, fluttering slightly. Wilson hovered with an unsteady gait and the moment House was about to reach for him, it turned out he didn't have to as Wilson was suddenly falling down like a limp tree crashing loose of its roots. His friend's head lolled back, he started going down and fast, and House, because he'd been so near, immediately braced for impact, his hands coming up around Wilson's armpits and they slouched like that for a minute, House's leg searing in pain, before they both tumbled back onto the floor—one Doctor Gregory House awash in a new hell of pain and a Doctor James Wilson lying uncomfortably on top of the diagnostician.

I better get a raise for this, House couldn't help but think as he hissed out a groan. Wilson's gonna owe me big time.

"Jesus, Wilson!" House tried to breathe past the pain for another few seconds before he was trying to adjust the other man's weight on his own chest. As his right hand dislodged from beneath Wilson's right, he braced an open palm across Wilson's chest, in order to help House win back some leverage and get his ass off the cool floor.

They had fallen over closest to Wilson's office, which meant they were down around a corner and unless House said anything soon, no one was going to quite notice them there (and House, red already burning his cheeks) wasn't about to let anyone else see them in such a predicament. The nurses would talk, he reasoned, and he didn't need to be shooing off any other plights of discussion that he and Wilson were secretly a gay couple.

House was about to growl at Wilson again when a sensation met his palm that tore through House's reverie like he'd just slipped on ice in the parking lot three hundred yards short of the doors to the hospital. (That moment of quick, hot-red panic.)

"Wilson?"

His voice was too tight for it be considered normal and his high-end doctor senses were tingling.

House pressed his palm deeper into Wilson's chest and found both the potential culprit to this situation and the reason it sent chills down his spine, his own skin breaking out into a loose sheen of sweat:

Tittle-tattling against his palm was a fast heartbeat. A fast heartbeat. Wilson's heartbeat. A heart for an older gentleman that should never be performing such theatrical entrances (or exits?) as was Wilson's at this very moment.

House sucked in a quick breath as anxiety plunged through his system. His eyes narrowed considerably, the rate too fast to even calculate in his own caught off guard brain, until the situation turned even worse—there was an absence of feeling for a second, then two, maybe three, before the organ resounded its resolution to life and beat again, a little wilder this time.

House immediately was depositing Wilson to his side, uncomfortably but quickly worming out from beneath the oncologist, then placing two firm fingers to Wilson's carotid, looking at his watch and timing to the best of his ability.

"Wilson?" He didn't know why he asked for his friend's attention again, but he found himself doing so, and then he was muttering something about, "187, irregular," and pulling off Wilson's stethoscope to jam into his own ears.

He placed the cool metal over Wilson's shirt and counted, as much as the fear behind his eyes and his own mind wanted to expunge themselves from his tightly controlled lips forced into a thin line, how many normal beats the oncologist had before another round of unsteady, misfiring of beats that did little else but tremble.

"Need some help over here!" House was barking to no one in particular, except that some people were close to the elevator as it had just dinged its landing to this floor. House's nerves felt like they were on fire, but he couldn't pull his worried gaze away from Wilson even as he felt a hand on his shoulder and he shrugged away from the touch, a woman's voice he was meant to recognize not fully registering as such.

"House?" Her voice was meant to be sympathetic to him, and he knew it was supposed to make him feel better, but the man on the floor was breathless and his heart kept stutter-stopping and it left the diagnostician more afraid than he'd been since he was either shot or passed out or flatlined those multiple times when Amber had been extinguished from the world and House couldn't believe this was really happening, that after everything they'd been through, Wilson would be the next one to end up on the receiving side of a hospital bed and, what, House was supposed to just man up and pretend like nothing was wrong or happening or unraveling or—?

"House!"

Cuddy's voice cut through the mangled beats—thhhhhh-thwump tha, thwump-tha, th-th-thwump, thhhhhh-thwump-tha—and House's vision was swimming with confusion and the absurdity that this puzzle wasn't solvable too, just like his patient's and how the hell was he supposed to breathe again if anything worse happened to Wilson? The tongue in his mouth felt too big and he could barely get out his version of a diagnosis before his own body was falling haphazardly right, sinking to the floor, even with Cuddy's hands on his shoulders and she was telling him things, he was sure of it, but he couldn't quite work out what was happening (what was happening to Wilson? Damn it, House, you had one job, don't you dare fall unconscious, too! Wilson needs you.)

And if it weren't for the voice in his mind that sounded surprisingly like Jimmy, he might have ignored it and settled his oozing core onto the floor but because it DID sound like Jimmy and Jimmy Wilson was still before him on the floor with more people beginning to surround him, House knew, he knew, he had to keep calm and alert and get the diagnosis out from his mouth, assessed from his brain, even if it felt so wrong, so very, very wrong:

"Cardiac syncope."


A/N: Welp, hello again! What can I say? I've deep dived exponentially back into House a bit (no full episode watching, though I did consider it!) with clips on Youtube and looooots of other fanfics read a'plenty! I wanted to torture Wilson some more and this idea has been in my head since last night, and now it finally exists as something else in the world!

No idea what timeline this is set in so don't start asking too many questions I don't have answers for, hahaha. Probably somewhere between S6 ending and S7 starting. I'm thinking this will be eventual Hilson ship so if that's not your style, you may want to back away slowly now haha.

Any who, no idea on when or how I'll be updating but I don't imagine it being a long story (I think a 10 chapter limit sounds most reasonable). I'm really just winging this. I tried to get the medical patient stuff reasonably done well so huzzah. It's not my main priority and I don't think I'd be the greatest working on really good diagnostic skills going backwards, but, I'll try my best!

Gotta say though, this start of the story, and the title itself feels pretty Housian to me so I'm proud and grateful for that! Thanks so much for reading and feel free to leave your thoughts in a review or plop me a message for a prompt or something! There is one other idea I wrote notes on that I made up a few days ago but I think this story and my other new House story will suffice the Writing Gremlins for now. Also, don't mind me and my strange word choices at times—I swear, the words fly to me but I don't always know what they mean but they sound too fancy to not include and deny The Muse its glory!

Written & edited: 12.11.2022