In Order to Breathe Again
Chapter 3
**Trigger Warning**: Suicidal ideation, post-suicide attempt, heavy angst
Every time House blinked, in that sparing moment between when his eyes were closed and before they parted once more, House could so distinctively hear and see the pleading, apparently very suicidal friend of his weeping, crying out and feeling every bit as damaged as House's own thigh muscles were.
It was nauseating and exhausting and horrible and House didn't know how to feel about it, or what he could reasonably feel about it, given the fact that it wasn't him this time on the table, not him this time in a hospital bed and it wasn't him this time falling apart to hundreds of shards.
The person that had always been there for him to help him pick up the pieces, no matter how many insults he unfurled their way, was the same very person struggling to exist right now and how could House ever dream of putting such heavy burdens like that onto his very sick and very ill best friend?
He swallowed thickly.
Now was probably not the time to get so emotional.
But every passing second felt like agony. Every moment he knew what Wilson had done, what he had almost gotten so very right, what parts of the puzzle still didn't make a lick of sense and maybe never could—it was too much.
House wanted to drown his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle, but he couldn't bear the thought or the follow-through because he was every bit as damaged as Wilson now was.
How did he miss this? How did House the Oh So Wise and Great miss such a telling sign of Wilson falling apart before him?
Yeah, they'd not been talking for a few weeks—but why was this time so very different than all the other times? Why would Wilson be the one shattering and trying to-to not… exist?
Wilson wasn't the kind of person to self-destruct. House, certainly was, and they'd always had this awareness of that hard and fast rule. Wilson wasn't the one in their relationship that got to fall apart—and was this expectation of Wilson always being the strong one the reason he had broken so incredibly so that he had very nearly, fully and completely died, without ever seeing the resolution of their friendship between him and the diagnostician?
Did Wilson truly feel so inept and alone that the only way out he could envision was the entire way out of his life to begin with?
House swallowed hard and cried out for a moment. He was in his office, far enough away because he couldn't bear to see one more tear fall from his friend's face as his wrists were bound to the bed and psych was taking over.
Would he visit him?
House couldn't help but wonder.
Certainly, Wilson had all those other times before. But would Wilson want House to visit him now? See him at his worst? Or, worse still, have House carry the burden to the fact that he could so easily get Wilson to slip away again just by being his asshole self?
Surely Wilson wouldn't expect House to grow a heart within twenty-four hours and be all human and open and emotional and tough, right? Because what if House said the wrong thing? Did the wrong thing? Would Wilson then take that as ammo of why he should stick a gun to his head and shoot?
House whimpered again, working his jaw with difficulty, feeling like it had cramped up since the last time he had used it. He had tried to get a bite to eat, tried to sleep, but Wilson, broken and in such despair, haunted his mind and wouldn't allow him to drift away.
Wilson wouldn't want House to drift away, right? Why, if all those times House had been suicidal but had Wilson there to make it through, why would Wilson think now that he was all alone on some forbidden, stranded island and the only way through his pain was to end it all?
If Wilson was always on the side of life, which House knew to be true for years, why would he suddenly switch over to the side of death?
How did House, of all people, miss this?
He shuddered—it brought up old traumas. Had he missed it, too, with Kutner?
Had Wilson taken a page out of Kutner's book but opted for something a little less… bloody?
What had he taken? House's eyes narrowed, searching in the darkened office for an answer that was not readily available. They hadn't run a tox screen yet, it was definitely on House's to-do list, but he wracked his mind for what it could have possibly been.
It also made him increasingly nauseous. He felt like he was about to be sick. Maybe that would serve him right. Maybe he needed that, too, because he hadn't been there for Wilson, not when it mattered most, not when it counted above all else.
Chicken noodle soup from lunch started to come back up before he could really satisfy an answer as to why it shouldn't.
He dove for the black trash bin and unleashed the contents of his stomach into its plastic bag. He coughed, spluttered, wiped his mouth before his eyes shifted to the part of the room, he'd been trying with his entire being to avoid (and failing, innumerably every time). The place where he'd found Wilson. His… his Wilson, where he'd fallen, slain almost except that the warrior in tow was himself.
How could it have been so?
House's eyes teared up at the thought, the ever-lasting question he'd never get any real answer toward for now. He couldn't exactly ask his best friend, now of all times, why he'd tried to end his life and die—House, though not always aware or respectful of societal norms, definitely knew that question would be too outlandish, too… intense to ask about right now. Maybe later, after some time had passed and Wilson stopped being as much of an emotional idiot as he seemed to be caught up in being right now, and House tried to be pithy, tried to be kind in his musings, but he didn't understand it, couldn't understand it, and didn't even fully want to understand it because maybe if he did, maybe if House knew all the reasons why, maybe he'd be offering Wilson the gun or the vial of medicine and taking one for himself, too, so they could be in oblivion together.
House huffed.
Damn, that was dark. Even for him.
It was probably for the best he was isolating himself away from Wilson, instead trapped in the man's office, trying to uncover the reasons and the answers to his many questions that would be, for the foreseeable future, unresolved, unsolved, abandoned.
The door opened quieter than he remembered it could and he was mildly surprised to see the balding head peaking out from behind it, the short Jewish doctor looking out meekly to House surrounded in the darkness of Wilson's office and saying, "You're really doing this?"
House blinked because he couldn't formulate an answer that would make sense to such a nonsensical question.
"Sitting, in his office, trying to figure out the clues you missed?" Taub's face twinged a bit at the sides. "You couldn't have seen it coming."
House snorted at the comment immediately. Taub grimaced a small smile.
"What you could see coming is why our patient—"
"Good god, man," House burned in response, "Have you no shame?"
Taub's head tilted imperceptibly so.
"A man has nearly die—!" He broke off the thought, swallowing hard. Hiding his hands from shaking as he placed them back in his lap, he said, "I don't really care about the patient right now." In a lower voice, "I got my mind elsewhere."
He looked back to where he had found him. He was almost certain he could have drawn out the body line like they do in those murder crime scenes because he'd memorized the way Wilson had been lying.
Wilson had been lying.
In more ways than one.
Taub sighed, but proffered the file, first extended to House, which he ignored pointedly, and then to which the shorter man placed upon the table between them.
"In case you get reinterested," he commented bluntly, spinning on his heel. He paused at the doorway, but he didn't look back at House as he said, "For what it's worth, I don't think, not even after…even after Kutner, I wouldn't have seen this either."
It should have unnerved House more, the statement there that everyone now seemed to know what water Wilson had dove headfirst into, but it was such a periphery concern that House couldn't muster up the strength to even delve too deeply into it.
There was only one brain he wanted to pick apart. And even then, he was still scared shitless as to what he might find.
"Fuck!" He was slamming his head back into his pillows again. He challenged the restraints on his wrists, with no real effort because he knew he was stuck right where he was, no further end in sight.
"Could you please just—?!" He cried out again but the female doctor with the strawberry blonde hair tied up in a bun only observed him with a blank expression on her face.
"Heuughrrrhg," he pulled at the straps again, for no other reason than because he could and he had to let out his frustrations somehow. It was better than the utter fear and terror that had landed its way deep inside his chest, intermingling with the angst and complete and utter despair.
"I swear," he pleaded, tears leaking out of his eyes. "I won't do anything. Please, just let me go."
The counselor's frown deepened to the slightest degree. She wasn't buying it.
It was infuriating.
"Where's House?" he tried instead, gaze flicking to beyond the room where he was glad at least, he'd managed some privacy with the curtains pulled tightly across and for which he didn't have to manage the worried and concerned and pale faces of his colleagues as they realized more and more what a complete and utter basket case Wilson really was.
"Please," he whimpered again, his mind telling him that of course House would leave him alone with this, like he'd left him alone with all of this before, for weeks on end, no other out in sight. House wouldn't know how to be a decent human being if this were happening to his neighbor, let alone his very best friend. Wilson cried out; it was better for House to leave him now, better he got out while he still could.
Why wasn't this damn woman saying anything?!
"Aren't you supposed to help me?" He growled, and he wanted to wring his hands through his hair, but they were restricted to the sides of his bed.
They hadn't made him switch to the psych floor yet, for which he wasn't sure if he was grateful or not about, but he knew it was coming. He would be stripped of his things and wheeled into the ward with an uneasiness of having to receive his care within these hospital's four walls. He pondered if that was for better or worse; would he have rather gone to some place new altogether or kept his healthcare within those who knew him on a day-to-day basis? But the only person he really wanted to cry to, to apologize to, to beg to, was the very same person not in this room all over again.
He let out another mewling cry, a whimper almost, that did nothing to absolve himself of all the emotions he never wished to experience again. More tears streamed down his face, and he couldn't even wipe them away. He couldn't seem to be or do much of anything these days.
"How do I get out of here?" he said so despondently, so stripped away, so bare, so broken. His voice didn't even sound like his anymore. He couldn't recognize himself in his sorrows any longer.
It's why the only way out seemed to be…
He let out a long, long breath. He yearned for the next one to never come again but still, he found, it did. Still, he found, he existed. Even after he'd tried everything in his power not to.
He wasn't sure if the sting of failure was worse than the attempt could ever be.
"What do you need?"
Her voice was softer than he imagined, and he was grateful for a break in the silence while the pain within his chest lay heavy on his body and he felt and wished to never breathe again.
He surprised himself when he uttered, "Reprieve."
"How can you get it?" Again, the tone soft and nearly seeing.
He sighed, the crying headache beginning to form. "Death." He grimaced. "But that's not what you want to hear." He frowned, his tone acidic, a cruelty there he had always done his best to hide and bury.
Now, it seemed no one and no thing was safe.
"Any other ways?"
Wilson let a beat form. He swallowed. "Loneliness." He flexed the straps around his wrists again, testing the limits. "If I'm alone I can…" he trailed off in his melancholy. "Where's House?" his gaze flicked to hers. "I…I need House."
"What do you want from him?"
He blinked. "…Forgiveness."
"Why?"
"Because I almost died." Gaze fixed at the floor again, prowling over the restraints that Greg had helped secure. He let out a long breath again, wishing it would anchor him instead of feeling like he was lost, alone, in a raging sea. House had cared, hadn't he, if he would secure Wilson in place? To page psych? To send him…help?
So then why did it feel like absolutely nothing? Why did James feel so abandoned? Why did he feel like he was going to leave House altogether, in a way that death never could?
What if—what if his stunt pushed his friend away so far that he never came back? Had he considered that, James, had he considered that his trying to no longer be alive would have disastrous consequences for those he loved if he were to have survived?
The easier answer would be that it wouldn't have mattered because James would have been dead and none the wiser about the impact that rippled out in those lives around him. A tear or two rolled down his cheeks again and he hated himself for it. He hated himself for all that he could become, for all that he had become. Who was he? He barely recognized himself.
Jimmy Wilson would never have tried to take his own life. He would never have taken a page out of House's self-destructive book and tried to do something as… outlandish as that. He'd have gotten help. He'd have asked for it. Attended therapy appointments, gone on the right medications, hell, he would have even just checked himself into the psych hospital itself and avoided this whole mess.
But now, instead, James Wilson was strapped to a bed in four-point restraints because not only did he try to kill himself, and very nearly did, he also threatened to continue to try if his best friend tried to leave him. He hissed between clenched teeth—who the fuck was he anymore?
"It wasn't manipulation," he clarified so quietly. His eyes were downcast to the floor, studying it, memorizing the flecks of black in the tiles. "I-I wasn't attention seeking." He paused, "It wasn't a cry for help."
"But you did ask for help."
The tone was curious, receptive.
His brows scrunched together. He started to shake his head, while her voice cut in with "You paged House. To your office. After you, hell, while you were attempting to die, you paged your friend. Doesn't that mean something to you?" There was a touch of colored emotion there, and normally Wilson would have taken up the bait, but he couldn't now, couldn't gather the energy necessary in him to cave and ask and talk because talking was exhausting, and breathing was exhausting, and everything that was about life and existing in it was exhausting and he just wanted to sleep, rest, relax, pass on. He couldn't have ever imagined this would be the case for him now, and he wanted to just close his eyes and never wake up again, avoiding the reality of his situation for a little while longer.
He was almost certain that she kept talking, prodding questions, sympathizing statements. But he tuned it out. He tuned it out as he lay back in the bed, defeated, helpless, exposed. He closed his eyes against the bright light, and he willed it so that he wouldn't have to bear another tomorrow.
He fell asleep with the temptation on his tongue that tomorrow may never come.
He was tired. So, so tired. And maybe rest would help, if only for a brief sense of reprieve, for a little while longer.
A/N: Hi there! I'm on an intense House related fanfic scurry and I can't say I'm disliking it hahaha I'm already starting the next chapter of a new story I put out yesterday (JBW) and can finally relinquish this one into the ether. Most of this was written over the summer but Oct and Nov played a hand in it, too.
Please take care of yourselves out there! More angst and struggles to come, gosh, that sounds odd to say. There will be a recovery period explored in this story, however! And then some Hilson because we all need some Hilson in our lives 😉 Also, decided to pique into addressing what we've been thinking about when Wilson paged House during his attempt; that will be further explored and explained in the future! No idea how or when but it will be!
My dream would be to work on some of my Loki fics soon, too. Maybe the trail blazing with House fics will help in that venture (it's a lot of perfectionism getting in the way there). Any who, let me know what you thought in the comments! Stay safe, friends!
Written: 7.9.2023, 10.31-11.2.23
Edited: 7.10.23, 10.29-11.2.23