Chapter 46 – Lazarus Rising

There comes a time in your life where you have to look at yourself, really look at yourself, and you have to ask: what kind of person am I?

Apparently, as indicated by where I currently was, I was the kind of person who liked to talk to dead people.

No one was in the morgue this late at night. I bypassed the sign-in sheet and hovered outside the cold steel doors, trepidation and horror mixing together in my chest... but in that same respect, those emotions took a backseat to the feeling that had captured me since House had told me about Joey's fate.

Guilt. Inescapable, deep guilt.

I'd messed up.

I'd messed up bad.

Joey Arnello was dead. Dead, undeniably, because of me. And worst of all? I had no idea what had killed him. As soon as House had departed, I'd torn through his office searching for Joey's chart and patient file, trying to find an explanation.

Yeah. Didn't work out well. I did find Joey's chart, but after they took him off of the pig, everything was blank. House hadn't updated anything since early this morning, so I had no way of knowing what precisely had gone wrong.

It was charted that Joey had Hep C. So House hadn't adhered to Bill's wishes on that point. I'm surprised I didn't have more mobsters coming after me, in that case. I wonder why House hadn't played good old boy this time around. Interesting.

I recoiled at that thought. It wasn't interesting. It was fucking horrible. A man was dead, and goddamnit, I wasn't House. Interesting was all too callous a word, and my callousness was the very reason that Joey was dead.

I hadn't thought enough, hadn't anticipated enough, and this was the consequence. Life and death, spiraling around me. Within my control, supposedly, but I'd lost my grip, and now a man was dead.

And I didn't know what I was seeking in the cold subbasement of the hospital... but I had to see Joey. The man I'd failed.

Maybe the first of many.

The morgue was locked, but luckily House kept his hospital keys in his desk drawer, and I'd snagged them. He rarely bothered to use them, because he preferred to find fun ways to break into the various locked rooms around the hospital, rather than take the easy way. I suppose it paid off; House could pick most locks in under five minutes.

I pressed into the morgue, tripping along with my IV. Thank God the painkiller being pumped into me was non-narcotic, or I would've likely been a drooling, unresponsive mess at the moment. My thoughts were impaired enough as it was, thanks to my rattled brains.

I shivered when I stepped inside. Whether it was from the cold or a cocktail of fear and dread, I couldn't say. The morgue was as I remembered, though it hadn't been pictured much over the course of the show. Steel tables spaced evenly across the length of the room, and drawers all along the sides, numbered and labeled.

I swallowed with difficulty. I was surrounded by corpses. Actual, once-living, now dead human beings. People with families, and lives, hopes and dreams. All gone.

I tried to get in a few deep, even breaths. The reality of human mortality was something I needed to accept sooner rather than later if I wanted to be a doctor. I would encounter death countless times in the future, and never mind the fact that I would have to dissect cadavers in med school.

People die.

But I didn't want any more to die because of me.

I did a quick check of the names on the drawers; no Joey. I turned my eyes to the steel tables. Two of the four were occupied by bodies, covered in white sheets with tags on their feet.

"This is so creepy," I said under my breath, hobbling along to the first table. I checked the name. Nope. Which could only mean the next one was Joey Arnello.

With a trembling hand, I pulled down the sheet, revealing Joey's face. I was surprised; he looked a lot better than I thought. I expect hideous gray bloating skin and bulging eyes that stared up at nothing. But Joey looked practically TV ready, much like the others bodies on House had.

Weird.

My mouth opened, closed. In the muddle of my thoughts, I wasn't sure what I wanted, what I thought I would gain from this, from fumbling my way into a freezer full of dead bodies at 5am to see the face of the man that I'd indirectly killed.

"I'm sorry," I whispered haltingly. "You... you don't know me... um, didn't know me... but I'm the reason you're dead." My voice shook badly, just like the rest of me. "I knew what was wrong with you. But I screwed up. I stepped away from... from everything, and I thought that things would just be okay. And that was my biggest mistake."

I felt tears building in my eyes. I blinked, and they slipped down my cheeks. "I either have to stay hands off and not interfere, or I have to mold and shape everything. I have to be constantly involved, constantly there, guiding things. Only intervening when I want to, when I think it's important enough... That's what got you killed. And I'm so, so, sorry."

I wrapped my arms around myself, pulling uncomfortably at my IV. "I'm just a dumb kid. I can play with the adults all I want, but no matter what I do, no matter how smart I am or how much I know, it's never gonna change the fact that I'm..." I choked back a sob. "I'm not cut out for this. All this time, I've wanted so badly to believe that I was special, that I was chosen for this, that I could save everyone." I snorted. "I'm not special. I was arrogant to think that I was. I was arrogant to think that I could handle this."

I closed my eyes. "But now I'm in too deep, and I don't know how to stop, I don't know how to fix the damage I've done, I mean, I– I can't change the fact that you're dead. That's irreversible. And if I'm the one who has to be the universe's check and balance, then who the hell is going to be mine?"

"...you talk a lot..."

My eyes snapped open. I threw myself backwards, clattering spectacularly into the opposite steel table (thankfully vacant). My knees gave out, and my ass hit the floor. I wrapped both of my hands tight around my IV pole, white knuckled, and I stared.

Stared at Joey Arnello, who was looking at me with half-lidded eyes and obvious confusion.

"H-holy– what– you– you!" I managed spectacularly, heart trying actively to climb out of my ribcage. "DEAD. YOU WERE DEAD. YOU ARE DEAD!"

Joey put a finger to his lips and shushed me. "Don't wake 'em," he said, nodding towards the wall of drawers. "Gotta be respectful, you know?"

I gaped, some kind of horrible, uncomprehending groan coming out of my open mouth. This was just too much. Brain overloaded. And this was coming from me, the chick who fell through a portal and ended up in her favorite TV show.

Cross-dimensional portals, sure. But this... this was fucking nuts...

"'Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him,'" I quoted numbly.

I jumped again when the doors to autopsy slammed open.

"Shit."

I turned. House and Foreman stood by the door, looking like children caught with their hands in the candy jar.

Beside me, Joey laughed softly, carefully pushing himself into a sitting position. "Looks like you boys got some explaining to do."

"Anya–" Foreman began.

"There's no time for a plot synopsis right now. We need to get you out of here," House said, nodding at Joey. "We've got a five minute window tops to get you where you need to go." House's eyes turned on me, sharp and urgent. "Go back to your room."

"A man just rose from the dead right in front of me and you expect me to–"

"Yes."

House was rarely serious, but in this instant, I knew that he was. I shrank under the intensity he projected, and I found it difficult to devise a reason to disobey his wishes. I didn't know what the hell was going on, couldn't even begin to grasp it... but I had to hope that House would explain when he could. I had to trust him.

"Anya, your father's right. You need to get out of here. You shouldn't be involved in this."

"I–" I swallowed, then nodded. "Okay. I'll go. But House, I swear to God–"

"I said go, Anya."

Okay, if House had a Dad Voice, that was it. And for the first time in a long time, I found myself in the position where I could relinquish control to a higher authority... let the adults take care of it.

Because if there was one thing I'd learned since turning eighteen, it was that being eighteen doesn't make you an adult. It doesn't make you ready for the world.

Not one damn bit.

I pushed myself to my feet, and just as House had ordered, I went, and I didn't look back.

I'd struggled to stay awake once I'd wandered back to my room, but after a brief scolding from the on-duty nurse for my prison break antics, I drifted off almost immediately. I was half-convinced she'd given me a sedative, along with upping my pain meds, but that might've just been paranoia on my part.

I slept, and I slept hard. But this time, when I woke, the sun was streaming through the windows, and it wasn't Wilson sitting by my side.

House hadn't noticed that I'd opened my eyes yet, as he was wrapped up in what I was pretty sure was Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap.

"I'm on my death bed and you're playing Zelda. Typical."

House's eyes flicked up to me, disinterested, before returning to his game. "Death bed. Please. You're not attached to any barnyard animals."

"And yet there's still a pig in my room."

That earned a slight smirk out of him. "Good job not getting murdered by Don Stereotypical Italian, by the way. I thought for sure you'd try to save his soul and he'd shoot you just to shut you up."

"You sure know how to comfort someone."

"That's why I get paid the big bucks... my sunny bedside manner."

I laughed at that, and it felt good. It leaked away a little of the mountain of tension that had built up in my chest over the past twelve hours.

"Anyway..." I glanced at the door, checking to make sure we were truly alone and no one was listening in. "Let me see if I can figure this out, because by God, if there's one thing on this planet I can do right, it's predict the plot of TV episodes." I cleared my throat, propping myself up against my pillows.

"I sense a monologue coming on..." House grimaced.

"Don Calafiore kindly suggested that you kill Joey or pay the consequences. As you tend to do, you completely blew him off and probably called him a moron with a series of ethnic slurs for flavor, sent him on his merry way. You tell Wilson about what happened but refuse to tell the cops. Wilson, out of concern for me – enough concern that it makes up for the consistent lack of concern you have for anyone or anything – told the police. The police have been here bugging you since, tapped your phone, Calafiore put in the call, and you find out he has me. Now here is the part where my prophetic abilities are really gonna come in handy."

"You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you?" House broke in.

I ignored him and continued: "You knew that the only way I was really going to be safe was if Joey died. Even if the cops found me, it would still piss Calafiore off to no end. I couldn't run from him forever. He would've just caught me again, and this time, instead of waking up in a slaughterhouse dangling from a meat hook, I would've woken up in the Hudson with concrete blocks tied to my ankles. So you cut a deal with him and Bill. Fake Joey's death, get him into witness protection... and Joey doesn't testify. Both of them get what they want. A crime boss walks free, but who cares about that, right?"

"You know what's worse than a sanctimonious speech?" House asked, leaning forward and lacing his fingers together, expression somewhere between smug and amused.

"A sanctimonious speech that's dead wrong?"

"No. A sanctimonious speech from a traumatized teenager with a head injury... that's also dead wrong." He snorted. "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you forget anything you saw in the morgue. Joey Arnello is dead. The mob thinks I killed him. The hospital thinks I didn't find out what was wrong with him in time – which I almost didn't. It's barely a lie."

"It's not like you would care if it was a huge lie."

House shrugged. "The closer a lie is to the truth, the easier it is to keep it straight."

I nodded. "Okay. Explain Foreman to me."

House wouldn't meet my eyes. "Foreman's a homie. He knows the seedy criminal underworld. You think I could get Cameron to do something like this?"

"I'm surprised it wasn't Wilson who helped."

"Wilson doesn't know."

I merely raised an eyebrow.

"Can't risk Wilson cracking and saying the wrong things to the cops if they decide to poke around. The detective who came to your daring rescue seems like the annoyingly persistent type, rather than the easily bribed type. Which sucks for us, but–"

"So you're telling me you masterminded this plot of yours with Foreman? In, what, the span of a few hours?"

He shrugged. "Little bradychardia, little sedative... mimicking death isn't that hard."

"You don't think this is going to look suspicious to the hospital?"

"To the hospital, it looks like an honest mistake. Even Cuddy thinks it was a happy coincidence that Joey 'died' when he did. I wasn't getting anywhere with the case, last she knew."

"House..."

"This is the part where you can stop asking questions." House rose to his feet, idly twirling his cane.

"I don't like how little I understand everything that happened."

House made for the door. "You're getting discharged at noon," he called over his shoulder. "We'll get your crap from Julie's lair–"

"Wait," I said, heart suddenly tightening in my chest as a belated realization hit me. "You... House, were you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"About Joey. About the Sherlock Holmes move you pulled with him."

House went silent, eyes going to the floor.

"You told me earlier he was dead. That's all you said."

Still nothing.

I pushed myself up ramrod straight, a wave of cold washing over me. I shook my head slightly. "I can't believe... you were going to let me think I'd screwed up something and killed him, weren't you? Or that you'd killed him for me? I don't even know which is worse."

"It would be better if you didn't know. Plausible deniability."

"Don't give me that bullshit! I can plausibly deny 'til the cows come home! You lied to my face, and you were going to let me live with his blood on my hands! Let me believe that something I had done had killed him. For what? My own good?"

"I save your life, and you decide to get morally outraged by the way I did it?" House snapped back. "Sorry. Next time I'll just let you die, I guess." He turned for the door. "Not much of a guardian angel if I'm the one who has to save you."

I felt tears coming on again. "You can leave my stuff at Wilson and Julie's," I said quietly. "I think I'm gonna stay there for awhile."

I saw House's shoulders tense, saw his grip tighten on his cane.

I didn't know what I wanted from him. I didn't know if I wanted him to fight with me, to yell at me, to apologize, to explain something, anything– I just knew that above all, I wanted him to be real with me, to be honest with me.

This is your problem. You keep expecting House to be something he's not. You expect things out of him that he's not willing to give, that he can't give.

I was confused, hurt, pissed. And I wanted answers.

But... in the words of the philosopher Mick Jagger, you can't always get what you want.

House left my room without another word, slamming the sliding door behind him.