In Order to Breathe Again
He didn't really register it happening until it happened:
There was a tightness in his chest like someone had just started to squeeze his ribcages together, hellbent on enacting their revenge on his voodoo doll as if he'd committed some heinous crime against them like breaking up with them or challenging them in some strange, unforgivable fashion.
There was this high note of breathlessness that existed in the twisted fashion of lungs trying frantically to fill. He struggled to draw in a full, deep breath and the panic that rifled through his system, despite the fact that he was a doctor, and he knew that this awareness of his own symptoms was going to do him more harm than good, it still felt suffocating and crushing and impeding doom loomed over him like Death was there and everything good was about to come to a final, swift end.
He wanted to cry out or shout or scream or anything, really. But he just couldn't quite manage it, couldn't quite manage to. His hands felt slick and slippery and when they dove over his desk with the papers and files strewn about, it just ineffectually spread the mess to his floor and, even though he just managed to bump shaky fingers into his phone—a blip of hope and hunger arising in his throat when he did—they slipped right past, and he was falling onto the floor behind his desk.
The impact was rough. It did nothing to help the stranglehold that was what his body was encased in. If anything, he felt more breathless on the floor than he had when he was sitting up.
He couldn't quite form his thoughts, couldn't quite make sense of the urgency and immediacy upon which a small part of his mind functioned well in, but he knew he needed more help than he had, alone in his office, no one near enough to know that something was dearly wrong and his voice not loud enough to call for them to alert the signs of the Universe that something was wrong.
He felt even more sickened now than what he had a few moments prior.
He didn't know how exactly he managed it, but his hands gripped his pager connected to his hip and brought it up to fast blinking eyes.
He'd just gotten himself to send out a 911 to the one person he knew he'd need by his side for this, when the flip flopping of the red organ in his chest swam his vison into spotted out darkness and he just recalled the pager slipping from his hands and then, he was plunged too, into darkness.
"Foreman?" House was busy scribbling on the white board the patient of the week's latest symptoms, a dangerous smile on his lips as he felt giddy with the fact he was annoying his employee, when his pager went off.
He was just amid writing out confusion when he, too, felt himself be momentarily confused. He ripped the pager off his hip and his brows drew together in his own muddled inconsistency.
He flipped the dry erase board marker in the air, caught it just as fast, then hobbled over to his desk as he raised a hand towards Chase and uttered, "You, be me for a second. Latest ideas?"
Chase started to rattle off some diagnosis that House knew was incorrect anyways (he liked to watch them flounder for a second or two) when he plopped his cane by his phone, picked it up from the cradle and punched in Wilson's office number.
The phone rang and rang but the oncologist never picked it up.
House frowned, flicking his gaze back to the pager for confirmation he'd gotten the right page. An uneasiness dripped its way into his gut.
House and Wilson were… in a disagreement of sorts, lately.
Something House had done recently had pissed off his (only) friend and there had been some mixed words of anger and resentment between the two with House sleeping at his old apartment and Wilson not coming over to hang out for about three or four weeks.
It wasn't something House thought would never blow over between them, but it had left a gap and a hole much larger than he had expected by his side. So, the fact that Wilson was initiating a call—maybe a truce with his self-righteous white surrender flag—was unnerving but not entirely surprising. House wasn't sure why then he had such a random, bad feeling about it. He was clearly unsuperstitious, but something didn't feel right about this. Wilson… didn't give up that easily.
Maybe he wants my input on a case, House thought to himself. The oncologist could do nothing without him, he implored further.
With a cocky grin on his face, he slapped his marker onto the clear tabletop and said to his fellows, "Gotta run, kiddies. Daddy's got a new wrench to work out."
Taub was milking a look of exasperation with a sprinkle of disgust, when House shouted back over his shoulder, "Test for toxoplasmosis! Foreman search the house, and Thirteen do something productive."
Chase may have shot his co-workers a toothy grin, but even though House hadn't seen it completely, he would have believed he'd made up the motion.
Greg didn't entirely know that Wilson would be in his office, but he hobbled his way in that direction regardless. The fact he was taking the hallway was an ode to some miracle that he didn't want to barge his way across their outer office connection. Wilson, he'd surmised, needed some ounce of privacy—at least letting his friend think that for now would help ease the blow when House would all but ignore it thereafter. He had to counsel some things and nurture others before a larger fallout could take place. It made sense to House, so he figured it'd make sense to anyone else. Even if others didn't always get his sense of intellect.
He was about to lay a hand on Wilson's doorknob when a woman in a red dress shimmied past him from the elevator. House immediately took the moment to stare longingly and fondly at the woman's ass, her long brunette hair trailing down her back as her ass curved into her dress like she were an intuitive hooker at the corner stop or just had some really bad lordosis. He hummed to himself whether it was just him or not that could tell a fake ass from a real ass and he spent another minute admiring her walk before he was swinging open Wilson's door and loudly proclaiming, "I just knew you couldn't stay away!"
From his angle of the room, it looked empty. But even looks could be deceiving.
His blue eyes glanced over each part of the room, a layer of mist settling over his features as something didn't add up, didn't feel right, didn't make sense. Why would Wilson page him if he wasn't even going to be half decent and show up for himself? His eyes went from the closed blinds at the window to his large black couches and then to the peculiar layer of scattered paperwork on the floor. The phone in its cradle lay haphazardly, dangling over the edge of his friend's desk and even that was a glaring detail that didn't make much sense.
"Wilson?" He was asking out loud in the same moment that fear overtook him when he saw a pale hand outstretched and the sinking feeling in his gut recognized the clump of brown hair that was Wilson's head lying strewn about behind his desk.
"Wilson!" The immediacy upon which the diagnostician launched into the room was unparalleled. Whether he'd slammed the door shut or not was of little importance to him as he rushed to the side, practically dropping his cane into oblivion, and barely noticing it anyways.
"Wilson, Christ!" He sank down to the floor, taking in the sight of Wilson lying there, unmoving. House gripped the overturned chair and skittered it across the flooring so he could get a better look at his friend, doctor mode already initiated and in high gear.
He just barely realized in his periphery of understanding that he didn't see Wilson's chest moving up and down with every breath. Frantic pianist fingers landed their way to Wilson's carotid and held their own there for a few seconds too long.
Dropped in an ice bath, House realized Wilson (strangely, unnaturally, doom-worthily, inescapably terrifyingly) did not have a pulse. His own breath caught in his throat, and he didn't want to believe it or entertain the absurdity of that thought but he was already vehemently spewing out, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," as he lurched his way to the phone, hands scattering over it before his brain was in control, dropping it and shouting out the open doorway, "Code blue! Somebody, help, code blue!"
He was already back to Wilson's side, holding his best friend's neck sturdy as he set him on his back. He tilted back Wilson's chin and he did what he'd always been trained to do and started to rescue breathe into his friend.
After two breaths, seeing Wilson's chest rise and fall, House intertwined his fingers and began pushing into the center of Wilson's chest, right over his heart. He locked his elbows and proceeded to pump into his friend's chest. Worry and franticness and fear catapulted through his system—an image in his mind that he was actually working on getting Wilson's pulse back because for some reason, somehow, somewhere, some why out there, his heart had stopped and now House may never get that chance again to sit by his friend, annoy him, steal money and food from him, irritate him, fight with him, love and learn and grow with him. He tried to blot out and away all that fear, but it didn't make it any easier as House was trying desperately to formulate Wilson's heart to pump blood back to his brain and hopefully save his friend from becoming the next vegetable man he'd eat lunch with trying to hide from Cuddy and his team.
The intensity of the moment began to reach a crescendo when he saw in his tunnel vision and felt Chase there acting in line to save Wilson's life—his duckling asking, "How long's he been down?" and House crying out, screaming even, in a tight voice, a prolongingly painful voice, "I don't know!"
It's not like he'd checked his watch to time this level of hell he found himself existing in. He didn't know how long Wilson had been down—in his mind, he wondered, it couldn't have been longer than when he got the page, right? Had House staring at that woman's ass ate up another minute as he'd so carelessly and unknowingly set forth into a now very real reality where Wilson and he would have a fight, Wilson would die, and that fight would never be fully and appropriately resolved?
Was Wilson going to die? House reasoned, I mean, he's already de—
He shook his head and made sure his palms were digging in two inches deep to his friend's chest.
He could worry about all of that later. All of that at another time.
He didn't, couldn't, fully reason or understand or interpret the signs that Chase was now flinging House's hands away from Wilson, until he was grasping his boss's wrists and saying in a distant howl of a tone, "It's all right. We've got the defibrillator. You can stop now."
House felt an itchiness reenter his nervous system. How could he stop now? How could he ever think of stopping when the most important person in his life was here, on the ground, still as can be and—what the fuck had happened? How did this happen? WHAT was happening? How did this come to be a reality for all who cared about Wilson?
He was breathing heavily, and Chase was hurriedly opening Wilson's shirt to expose his chest and placing the paddles where they needed to be, and House could see only red and black in his vision as the person who meant the world to him was just lying there, cold, and still and clammy and House, he could barely get in another breath otherwise—Chase yelled out, "Clear!" And Wilson's body shook briefly, and the crash cart wielded out a tone it should never have to ever, that Wilson was still dead, and House's world was still collapsing evermore.
"Again! Clear!"
The monotonous tone still rang grim.
House was sure he'd swallowed his tongue and couldn't find his saliva in his mouth anymore and all there was left was cotton swabs stuffed inside and he'd never be able to clear the parched feeling that existed in his life ever again.
He'd never be able to breathe a full, deep breath again and had Wilson really, just been all alone, by himself, in his office? What if he hadn't had the strength to page him at all? Would he still be—still be—?
House swallowed as quickly and consciously as he could. He forced himself to hop into action more, flicking his head towards Chase where he lay hunched over Wilson, defibrillator in hand and trying his best doctor's voice at changing the outcome of this potential situation in favor of the diagnostician and the oncologist.
"Give me that," House was whispering and swatting away the hand of a nurse preparing an injection of epinephrine. He plunged the needle into his patient, because at least thinking of his friend as a patient provided him enough emotional suspension that he could actually be helpful and worthwhile and get something of his job done in the right amount of time.
The shrill lack of a beat still rang out and it felt like the hundredth time that Chase was calling out, "Clear!"
House was nearly ready to lose all of his mind and scream and cry and plunge into a darkness of a world he never would have wanted to exist in—when the most amazing of sounds occurred and he realized that Wilson's chest was heaving and he was gasping and he was bringing in new lungsful of air and panting and, hell, was his best friend breathing too heavily?
"Wilson!" House panted out himself, and he instinctively yanked his hand into Wilson's, squeezing lightly and chocolate brown eyes, sluggish and slow, found his blue and held his gaze for a moment.
"Housssse," he hissed softly, and the sound of his name never sounded so glorious and needed and wanted in the diagnostician's entire life.
"I'm here," he found himself saying before he could really think twice—but hell, did it matter? Did it matter what anyone else thought because hell, he almost just lost his best friend in the world, just now? From… from something he wasn't even sure he'd be able to figure out in time.
House squeezed Wilson's hand again, but his friend's breathing wasn't slowing down.
"Wilson?" Blue eyes shifted and narrowed in consideration and Wilson was suddenly losing focus and falling slack jawed to the side. "Hey, no, stay with me, okay? James, you've gotta stay with me."
"Can't…" Wilson gasped for air again and Chase may have passed a small shudder as the AED read out a dangerous rhythm.
"Heartrate's too fast," Chase was saying, and he fiddled with something out of House's vision, but House was already placing his fingers back to Wilson's neck, the pulse there thrumming far too quickly for House's liking. And far too quickly for Wilson to be reasonably alive and okay with.
"Can't… breathe…" Wilson hurled out as the gasps of air continued to spring forward and House felt himself falling into a void that was so endlessly dark and terrifying and soul sucking that he wasn't sure he'd ever properly find his way out of it again on the other side.
"Wilson!" House cried out, desperate for his friend to be back on this side of the living. "Wilson. Don't you die on me," he was urging and if he was crying, and if those were tears down his face, he most definitely was ignoring it and pretending like it wasn't happening because this new reality could never be existing and how the hell had this happened to begin with? What was going on with his friend, now—medically?
Wilson's eyes went unfocused and even as House was clinging to his hand, he had a moment where two of his fingers were attached like glue to Wilson's carotid and the moment the pants stiffened into silence and the rhythm and thrumming at his friend's neck stilled completely, the more increasingly so House broke apart and felt his own heart skip a beat or three.
"Chase!" House was grabbing the paddles from his duckling faster than he'd moved in a long time. "Charging 360, clear!"
There was a calamity about the situation House could start to understand coming into focus. There were more people in Wilson's office than what was reasonably so in any rock band's popular concert.
House was on the verge of his own panic attack when someone was bringing a gurney to Wilson's side and talking about an ER trip or a room or anywhere with more proper medical equipment. House was already clambering onto the stretcher, his leg be damned, and restarting CPR as in his mind he pictured himself watching with Wilson as some other poor, hapless soul was comedically flowing through the hospital's hallways and how he and Wilson would crack a joke and make something so dark so light, but instead of that, instead of that happening it was Wilson on the table (he never deserved to be on a table, that was House's territory and he was no man shy of ever landing himself repeatedly in a hospital bed) and House being the damsel in distress trying to desperately and insanely save his friend from the other side (which House knew didn't, couldn't exist and definitely wasn't willingly going to give Wilson up to it any time soon) and it was harrowing and uncomfortable and exasperating and terrifying and awful.
They were in a room within House's next blink, and he didn't pay any attention at all to the details around him because the only thing that was most important to him in this life was bouncing on a gurney with every shock that went through his heart to get the damned thing to start beating again.
If House could have throttled Wilson into submission and into existing again, he was more than trying to do so. House would kill Wilson himself if he got him back and he was more or less okay.
House wasn't about to give up on his friend, because to hell if Wilson ever really gave up on him.
Blue eyes launched upwards to see the heart monitor that was its own shrieking insanity. The line was still horizontal and flat, an echoing long note of nothingness that House wasn't about to let Wilson dive into headfirst.
"Come on, Wilson!" House was shouting and someone nearby was injecting his friend with another epinephrine.
House was about to start plowing fists into Wilson's chest at an almost comical extreme of intensity and desperation and a howling sense of this could never become the reality of their lives and House would kill Wilson and himself if Wilson even dared to spend the rest of his time on this planet more dead than alive—when a bleep rang out and a pulse rate, though not great, showed on the monitor. House would have breathed a sigh of relief, but something stopped him from doing so because the beat returned to sinus for a moment before shooting up again to an over-excited horse running, hummingbird level of fury that made House feel even more outside of his body.
"Heartrate's 200!" Someone was crying out and House was immediately performing an instinctive carotid massage at Wilson's throat.
"Come on, slow down," House wasn't even aware he was saying it out loud, but he had, and he watched the monitors intently, teeth plucking at his bottom lip in thought.
"Where's that adenosine?" He barked out not long after and the injection was already going into Wilson's arm.
It was a few additional tense moments before the heart monitor was blinking into a more sustainable and normal rhythm. It was still high for Wilson's case, at about 115, but it was some underlying improvement.
House didn't move an inch for a solid minute, then two then five. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop and for something worse to happen even next.
But five minutes turned to ten and the room was emptying and the way his fingers were empty once the paddles were removed from his grip made the reality of this situation fully land upon House, his leg screaming out in pain and his body disentangling himself from having once been cradling Wilson on a bed, to standing stiffly by his bedside to just entirely collapsing into a visitor's chair.
"What happened?" was the female voice suddenly in the room and only at his most grounded level could House tell that voice belonged to the boss lady herself: Dr. Lisa Cuddy.
Cuddy's blue eyes prowled over the scene, a grim frown present on her face as she looked for a long moment at her head of oncology on the bed and then finding some semblance of normalcy, they landed on the heap of a mess that was Greg House in a chair.
"House?" she crossed the room so fast and immediately put a calming hand onto his shoulder, his body shaking to its own accord and his own heart hammering a beat so fast and quick he might as well have been a construction worker jackhammering the street.
"Are you okay?" she was asking so politely it made him want to puke and hiss and cry all over again.
"I'm not the one—" he started but he couldn't dare to finish his sentence.
A shiver went through his body like the aftershock of a Californian earthquake.
"You're freezing," she stated, and she motioned to something outside his line of sight and a blanket was sought for and then placed around him. He didn't budge or push it away or did much of anything really. His eyes were fixed on Wilson: analyzing and trying to encode all the ways that Wilson breathed in and his chest rose and breathed out with his chest deflating. He tried to memorize the way the heart monitor beeped and the idea in the diagnostician's mind of how blood was flowing through his friend's body again, thankfully, a hundred times over and he'd be praying to not-god's in the existence of the world that Jimmy was back on this side of the living, but he thought of how much time Wilson had been without blood flow to his brain and would that mean something disastrous for them moving forwards or what would happen or what could happen or what did happen and he didn't realize he was shaky and crying and trembling and hyperventilating until Cuddy was holding both his shoulders and trying to be soothing or some shit and he was breaking apart and falling and dying—he was dying at Wilson nearly dying and everything was too much and the world was imbalanced and everything that had once made sense no longer did and he didn't know how he was ever going to make it make sense again.
"Greg," her voice echoed in the air, and she bundled him up extra nice and tight and she ran a hand down the side of his still wet face. "Greg, you need to breathe."
And Wilson had needed to breathe; and Cuddy was breathing, and House was breathing but Wilson hadn't breathed so how could House ever think he'd be able to again, fully, and completely on his own? What if this night came and Wilson stopped breathing? How would House ever live with himself if he wasn't there, again, to help or do or be or see or speak?
Cuddy was holding both her hands around House's jaw, but he didn't really feel it or see it or notice it completely. Maybe at the side of his vision, or in the back of his mind, he heard her sweet whisper then, "Do you need an Ativan?"
And he was nodding and shaking his head up and down so fast because he didn't think he'd ever be able to stop again or be able to exist again, especially not without Jimmy, and how was he ever going to be able to look his best friend in the face again and believe he was going to make it through this and live and exist and be?
The medication went into House more swiftly than he cared to acknowledge. He breathed in a sudden, long breath and held it for a moment before relinquishing it back into the world. He felt his body cool down with the medication first, the slow paradigm then slowing his mind a little more where he wasn't as panicked as he had been.
"Better?" she asked, and he nodded imperceptibly.
She took a seat by his side and squeezed her hand over his. "I'm right here," she said, and he would have tried to make a cruel retort or brush off her caring or do anything callous and mean to preserve his dignity, but he couldn't encounter the space or the energy to do so, so he didn't and just stared at Jimmy until exhaustion spread over him like a bride's veil and he, too, found himself slipping into unconsciousness.
When he came to again it wasn't without confusion.
His eyes parted open slowly until this overwhelming slap of fear landed in his gut again, making his heart speed up from resting to frantic and he was looking around the room, seeing the person he cared about the most—in a bed.
He held his breath instinctively for a moment, then released it in a loud huff: Wilson was still breathing.
He was alive.
House sighed. "Thank fuck," he ground out like he was a butcher doling out his next meat.
He hovered for a moment in his chair before he was quickly by Jimmy's bedside. He took up Wilson's hand in his, if for no other reason that he lied to himself was because he wanted to affirm his friend was alive and warm and real, but really came out of a need to be confirmed that he was in fact alive and warm and real and the love and fondness he had for the younger man needed to be accentuated in that moment, especially with Wilson still being unconscious (how embarrassing it'd be otherwise, he couldn't help but notice the thought quip in his mind. At the same time, to hell with societal pressures, he'd make out with Wilson if it meant his friend would know that he cared about him and loved him and he wanted him here, on this planet, alive.)
House felt himself holding onto this blindingly bright hope that Wilson would stir now, that this was some fairytale and a universe just in that regard, but Wilson remained with his eyes closed and breathing even and heartrate back down to a normal rate for his age.
House couldn't help the small whimper that parted from his lips. He, reluctantly, put down Wilson's hand to snag the paperwork filed from the end of the bed.
"What happened to you?" he asked to no one in particular.
He was reading over some of the technical information that did nothing to help soothe his own soul, his brain still lurching yards behind him meaning that he couldn't fully comprehend what he was reading (and the person he wanted to express that to the most was the same man in the hospital bed, he cringed internally at), when there was a small stirring out of the blue.
House's gaze latched onto the movement, immediately looking at Wilson's face, where some of his muscles were twitching slightly.
House changed his line of vision to the monitor above Wilson's head, a small uptick increasing his heartrate, as the older man's sight shifted back to Wilson, a small groan hissing out of his lips.
If House had ever frozen in time again like a soldier at line-up or a new ice statue daring to slowly melt in the sun, it was definitely at this moment. He didn't dare to breathe or blink or be in any other way.
Wilson's eyes, still closed, roamed about for a minute before he was slowly blinking, lips smacking, a small cough or two working their way up his too parched throat.
His eyelids separated then, and he squirmed mildly under the too bright of lights in the room, then blinked a bit harder and looked around again. Confusion flitted in his expression as he didn't recognize where he was. His eyes grew both wide and small at the same time, until they twitched to House at the foot of his bed, the older man stuck in a motion that would have been comical if Wilson had the ability to fully laugh or understand the horror written on his face and why it was there to begin with.
"Hou-se?" Wilson asked softly, clearing his throat mildly. "Wha- appened?"
Greg didn't move an inch.
Wilson's brown eyes narrowed considerably. "House?" the worry in his tone was so obvious it made its way into House's brain and sent him into a jolt of moving, breathing all at once and whimpering, limping to his side, dragging over a chair in such quick succession, Wilson was sure he'd daydreamed a handful of the moment.
Wilson gasped in surprise, what House would hope was more emotional than physical, but that he would be damned if he didn't find the answer to within his next breath, himself.
"How are you feeling?" it was so uncharacteristic to come from his friend that Wilson immediately let out a small huff and his intrigue and concern only intensified tenfold.
"What do you mean?"
It was the first real, fundamental sentence to breach his mind and out of his mouth and a pinprick of fear suddenly spiked in his chest. The heart monitor easily picked up this change, too, for which the oncologist felt mildly betrayed by.
"Don't freak out," House instantly placated with, a level of fear in his own breath and existence that, again, Wilson felt wholly unnerved by.
"Tell me what happened," he said instead, his voice a little stronger, his mind picking up more speed than he remembered it having in a while. Talking with House would do that to a person, the man was always three thoughts ahead, but Wilson, for what it was worth, did a pretty good job keeping up.
"I—" House began but he didn't know where the thought would go because he didn't have any clear understanding of what had happened to begin with, himself. "What do you remember?"
Wilson rolled his eyes and groaned again. "I—" he, too, stuttered, then sighed and played along (maybe if he stopped questioning his friend's genius, he'd figure out what the hell was making his face contort into such strange directions). "I was in my office." His gaze shortened a moment. A sadness passed through his eyes, landing at the corners where his crow's feet were. "I remember… pain." Wilson focused on his breath a minute. Trying to rouse the cobwebs in his mind to uncover the truth as to what had happened. "Something bad happened," he mulled over, looking to House for clues and direction. Whatever he was searching for, he didn't immediately find, so he went back to his own musings. "I just… There was a lot of pain, tightness, I couldn't make sense of it. I couldn't… couldn't breathe…" An internal playback of that memory made his heart beat a little faster again.
His brain noticed House looking up at his monitor more than he realized seeing it himself. Whatever House was looking for there sustained him enough that he didn't interject into the discussion at all. Wilson continued forwards, "I knew I needed help… I don't remember getting it." He swallowed thickly, his internal anxieties at such a high level, he was able to recognize he was sweating and the way his heartbeat was both audible out loud due to the monitor yet completely unaware to his physical experiencing of it. It was a disconcerting fact that made little sense to him, maybe as just a patient rather than as a doctor.
"House?" he asked, and his breath hitched for a second. "Is everything okay?"
Another beat or two added to the conversation. "Why am I in the hospital?"
House, half-there, tried to quip back, "You work in one, silly," but it was so half-hearted it made Wilson quell in silence. House looked at him for a minute too long and they just sort of existed in that moment like that, looking at one another, trying to gauge the panic and worry and precede onto the other side beyond it.
Wilson was vaguely aware that they'd been in some sort of verbal disagreement recently, which aided some of his mind's ponderings, but he couldn't recall any of the specifics, and it didn't seem to matter much at all right now, anyways.
Wilson swallowed again and stated a little more forcefully, "What happened, House?"
"I… don't know," House said so stricken with fear it scared the oncologist.
His breath hitched again, and he tried another approach to the fearful circumstance, "If you're trying not to freak me out, you're failing miserably."
House laughed, a little harsher sounding than he meant to, but he conceded Wilson's point. He tilted his head and said honestly, no fluff or complete emotion in his tone (at least from what he tried to put on), "You paged me. To your office. I came. When I got there, you were unconscious on the floor. You…" House studied Wilson, suddenly unsure how much he had it in him to completely terrify his friend out of seemingly nowhere, a stance unknown to the older man. "…I had to call a code blue." He waited a moment and assessed Wilson's face for any signs of…anything.
He expected fear or torment or confusion.
Shock was all that was really there, and an unnerving notion when Wilson's shoulders pricked upwards like he were trying to move away from House, as though he'd been burned or stung. A shiver passed through Wilson before he could really notice it himself.
In the next instant, tears sprang to brown eyes with a lack of understanding swimming in them. His face twitched and his eyes fell downcast to inspect the floor. But he let out softly, "How long?"
"I… don't know," he answered sheepishly. "Chase was there and quite a lot of others…" he shook his head. "You came to all right, but you… we had to call the code again." House licked his lips. "You… you died, Wilson."
It was something between he wanted to get a reaction out of his friend, wanted to understand what was going on in his head, wanted to feel more like himself because the diagnostician was feeling less and less like himself the more the conversation uncovered itself but he was stuck between being kind and being an ass, which normally wouldn't have been a problem for him, but felt inaccurate and misplaced and unnecessary for the time being in this moment. So, he just stuck to some of the facts and assessed his friend with a critical and open look.
Wilson's reaction… maybe it shouldn't have, but deep down inside of House, it unnerved him.
The other doctor was avoiding his gaze. His eyes were almost mystified. His heartrate was stable again but something dark existed there that made House feel… odd. Different. Unpleasant.
"Wilson? What are you thinking?" he asked tentatively, for Gregory House to be tentative meant a lot and was saying a lot of things that he felt, for whatever reason, Wilson wasn't able to pick up on appropriately enough, not like how he usually would. Again, this struck some level of fear in him he would have done anything to ever avoid again.
House felt completely out of his depth when he realized, slowly, that Wilson was starting to cry. There was a solid two minutes where the older gentleman had no idea what to do or say or act in a way that was more nurturing than callous and careless so he just floundered for a minute, mouth open wide and hands hovering in the air until some semblance of emotional pain entered his scope of awareness and he was clinging to Wilson's bedside rail whispering, "Hey, hey, hey, it's okay. Wilson, you're okay."
Wilson, who was normally the ever calm one in a storm, crumpled into himself so completely and suddenly that he was a heaping mess of a man looking far more like a child than House had ever seen him.
House was about to either dive into the crash of the sea with his friend or snap him out of it with something rude and cruel when everything stilled in his body the moment he heard what Wilson said next. In fact, he didn't even fully hear it or allow himself to or let himself think for a moment that he heard it.
But, whether he wanted to opt into hearing it again, he did anyways and the coldness that spread through his chest and down to his stomach and into his knees pulled every last stitch of composure he had and melted it into nothing.
What he couldn't believe he'd heard Wilson say was, strangely, wrongly, couldn't possibly be said in a mewling cry:
"It didn't work."
A/N: Aaaaaaahhhhh, welcome to another fanfic! Oh my gosh. Aaa, so many feeeeels. So, firstly, this is my first time writing a proper House MD fanfic in YEARS and it will be multiple chapters and I love that I'm helping to rise again like a zombie in a tomb 10 years after the show has ended hahaha I had a complex dream the night before I wrote this chapter with House and Wilson in it and then I started to read some old classic and some others I never read before House fics and then I was ALL in my writing muse and started to crank out this bad boy!
Normally and consistently I only write MCU Loki centered Avengers fan fiction these days, but this was SUCH a nice little treat and I tried to channel in some fangirling-ness as I was reading and in love with one story I was reading about House and Wilson, and this came to be and I listened over and over to some clips that these scenes would slightly touch on and I definitely didn't get all the medical stuff right but—damn, who is in for a bombshell of a story? Meeee.
The twist at the end was NOT what I had in mind when I first started writing the majority of the chapter but it also couldn't be shaken from my mind once the chapter was gearing to a close. I have no idea where this story will go or how often or frequently I'll update it, but I don't plan for it to be really long (no more than 10 chapters) and I guess we'll see how it all goes. I don't know if there's even fics out there still about House these days… Hmmm.
Any who, welcome aboard the journey! Thanks so much for reading and I can't wait to launch this into the world at a whomping 2AM hahaha. Other fics I plan to update before the end of this year (2022) include: ALU, D&D, CeC.
Feel free to leave me feedback, ideas or reviews! Let me know if this fandom still exists in the world hahaha I'm posting this to AO3 too, where I am praying the page breaks that are in this story actually hold up weight there hahaha *cries in FFN horror*
Written: 12.8.2022, 12.9.22
Edited: 12.8, 12.9.2022
