Chapter 61 — Capital Punishment
A/N: Thank you to SoleFaith, Rubyia, OldSFfan, BrySt1, NikaJ, HeatherSS1, Musikrulesok, Lady Deebo, Lordban, Illand Girl, Robin, wsmith, Meme, and Kris for their reviews on the last chapter!
House walked into his office and banged his cane on his desk, startling me out of my Fundamentals of Nursing Care homework. "Jeez! What?"
"Season two has begun!" he announced cheerily. "I totally stole Death Row Guy from Nolo."
"Neat," I said, barely glancing up from my paper. "Have fun with LL Cool J. Now do you mind? I have my first test tomorrow."
"Oh, like you won't pass it. All you've done all summer is study," House said with a roll of his eyes. "And what's an LL Cool J?"
"A rapper this universe is deprived of," I answered disinterestedly. "No one dies in this episode, so forgive me if I'm not personally invested in this one."
House narrowed his eyes at me. "Usually you're going all googly-eyed, trying to help my patients, trying to save them from painful, invasive, and expensive tests. You know, all the fun stuff. But this time, you couldn't care less." House leaned forward, planting his hands on the surface of his desk, a knowing smirk on his lips. "Little Miss Perfect Christian doesn't think much of poor Clarence, now does she?"
I sighed heavily, looking up from my paper. "Fine, I'll play: no, House, I do not have a great deal of sympathy for a man who has murdered four people. I am clearly a hypocrite." I gestured towards him, "Now you mock me, I justify my point of view, you mock me again, say something dramatic and final, and walk out of the room. End scene."
"Are you calling me formulaic?"
"Yes," I said furtively. "You don't get 177 episodes of a TV show without being formulaic."
"I'll make sure to be dangerously erratic in the future, wouldn't want things to get boring for you." He made a 'come on' motion. "Get up. We're going to prison."
"Can't you just go alone?"
"What, don't you want to spend time with your old man?" House accused, placing a hand against his heart in mock hurt. "You don't visit, you don't call...unless you want money, of course..."
"I live with you, you ass," I retorted, but I got up anyway and packed away my books and study guides into my backpack. "I've got flashcards in here. You're quizzing me on my way up. I'm driving."
"Whatever."
We headed out of the office, and we'd barely gotten ten feet before House hit me with, "So, what do you think? Hang 'em high? Or in accordance with your Lord and Savior, do you think no one is beyond redemption, no matter how high their kill streak is?"
"The only state that still hangs people is Texas," I said in a monotone.
"That's not an answer."
"What do you think?" I countered. "You never seemed to say either way in the episode. You certainly put ostensible value on human life, since you're trying to save a guy who is literally slated for death. But then again, most people are against the death penalty because of religious reasons, or at least spiritual reasons. Only a higher power or God himself can judge a person for their crimes, can exert power over life and death."
"If mankind had no interest in exerting power over life and death, my profession wouldn't exist, nor would grocery stores. Natural selection would be allowed to take its course," House responded.
"I'm not saying it's not a contradictory viewpoint."
"So you don't share it?"
"That's not an answer," I taunted back, mimicking his voice.
"I don't care. It doesn't affect me either way," House said with a nonchalant shrug and a spin of his cane.
"Bullshit. You have an opinion on anything and everything, even if those beliefs exist purely in the edge-lord sense to piss other people off. You're gonna do great on the internet in a few years."
"Edge-lord? Ooh, I like that. Gonna have to stick that on my dating profile." House stepped into the elevator and I followed behind him, hitting the button for the lobby. House looked at me, amusement dancing in his eyes. "I say kill him. If someone doesn't contribute anything to society, there's no loss."
"Okay, well on that basis, there's a lot of people we should just mow down in the streets. You a Stalin fan? Or more Spartan, letting disabled babies die on the side of hills?"
"Fine, fine, you want to play semantics: if you exist as only a detriment to society, I don't have a problem with you getting the chair. Have I explained my apathetic non-opinion enough? Now you, you actually care about this." House brandished his finger in my face. "You care about everything."
I dropped House's eyes, taking a deep breath and crossing my arms. "Look—"
"Oh, now you're angry."
"I'm not," I snapped, exasperated by House's pestering. "I just—I don't know, okay? I don't know how I feel about it. I used to be very staunch anti-death penalty, for the exact reasons you cited. No one gets the right to play God, to decide who lives and who dies."
"A viewpoint that you agreed was contradictory, and obviously don't agree with now, since you're trying to run my life. And I assume someone I know at some point dies—wouldn't be a prime-time medical show without a few character deaths for cheap drama," House said, and I tried not to flinch. He noticed the grimace immediately though. "So someone does die." It wasn't a question.
"Not if I have my way," was all I offered in response.
The elevator doors opened, but House didn't move. He just stared at me instead. "Is it me?"
I just stared back at him, and I had no idea what to say—and I was dimly shocked that it had taken House this long to ask. You'd think me telling him I'd come back to save him would stir him to immediately ask what exactly happened to him, but he'd never pushed like that. He'd assumed that he didn't die, because of my joyous, hero worshiping reaction upon meeting him, rather than bursting into tears like a long lost loved one had just come back to life. But he had never been so straight-forward, never just asked, do I die?
"Worse," I said with a tremor in my voice.
I headed out of the elevator, House at my heels. "What does that mean?"
It means you had to watch your best friend die of cancer. Tears burned to life in my eyes, blurring my vision. Get it together, Carhart! "I'm going to make sure you never know," I whispered, barely loud enough for House to hear.
"Anya—" a surprisingly serious tone, and even more surprising use of my name, but I just shook my head.
"Don't, House. Don't." I took a deep breath, trying to change the subject as fast as I could. "And as for the death penalty—I believed in it until a guy in Harrisburg, his son...he came home with a puppy, and asked his dad if he could keep it. His dad was on a six-day meth binge, stuck it in the fucking microwave. Someone that cruel and empty inside, death's probably a mercy. I find acts of evil like that more abhorrent than ending a human life."
"Puppies in microwaves is the line, huh?"
"Destroying innocence is the line," I elaborated. "Destroying innocence just because you can."
"What if there's a reasoning behind it?"
"There never is."
House didn't seem to have a response to that. We reached the car, and I passed my bag off to him. "Flashcards are in the front pocket. I need to ace this test."
House and I whittled away the forty-five minute drive to New Jersey State Prison by going through my study guide repeatedly, and my nicely organized, color-coded flashcards. House grew bored almost immediately, but every time he whined about stopping, I would remind him that I was driving the car and I would happily kill both of us.
"What does PPE stand for?" House asked, rubbing a hand across his forehead.
"Personal Protective Equipment," I answered quickly.
"Which of the following strains of hepatitis does a vaccine exist for—" House broke off with a shake of his head. "An idiot could pass this test, why are you so worried?"
"Because it's important! This is the building block stuff, the foundation that everything else I'm going to learn this year is going to stand on. And there's only a vaccine for Hep B."
"It's boring," House bitched.
"House, I'm gonna be a nurse, almost everything I learn will be boring to you."
"Yeah, well, this stuff is boring-er." He pointed at the next exit. "This is it, we're almost here."
"Do you just have the way to the prison memorized?"
"Where do you think I pulled Foreman out of? And I looked at a map. A novel idea, I know."
We headed off the highway, and before long I was at the checkpoint to get into the parking lot, behind the first set of walls. "Prison walls still standin' tall, some things never change at all," I sang under my breath.
"What is that?" House asked, dimly curious.
"Another song from the show. Hell of a soundtrack. You got your thingy?"
"Yeah." House passed over the papers from the hospital, and when the CO approached us, I handed them to him.
"Dr. House is here to see Clarence Jones," I told him.
"And you are?" the CO asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
"My chauffeur," House provided before I could speak. "She's staying in the car. Don't ask her too many questions, her English isn't great."
"IDs," he requested, and we both showed ours. He didn't seem to second guess my fake one, thankfully. House's mysterious fake documents contact did good work, evidently. We passed through the security checkpoint, and I pulled into the visitor parking lot to let House out.
"What, you don't want to come?" House asked innocently.
"Small, limp-wristed white girl, big state prison. Sounds like the set-up to a bad joke. I'm good out here. I'll study until you're done," I told him with a faint smirk.
"I could be awhile."
"Then I'll study real, real hard. Go on." I nodded at the visitor entrance. "Don't drop the soap."
"You and Cuddy both need fresh material."
About an hour passed before House returned, and I'd come and gone from the prison in that span of time. "I'm getting my team over here. They're not letting me cart Death Row Guy out, so I'm carting them in."
"I suspected." Without Stacy around as general counsel for House to con into a court order, I had a feeling House wasn't convincing anyone to let him transfer Clarence to PPTH. I reached into a freshly acquired bag from the liquor store and handed House a bottle of Wild Turkey. "You'll need this."
House stared at me uncomprehendingly. "One, Wild Turkey is hot garbage, which you would know if you knew the first thing about alcohol. Secondly, how the hell did you get this?"
"I zipped off to the nearest liquor store and just paid some guy going in to grab it for me. Don't drink it now. You'll know it when you need it. Just figured I'd save you the trouble."
House continued to stare.
"It's medically relevant," I provided happily.
House uncapped and took a quick swig. After a visible wince, he simply said, "Right."
"Ride home with one of the ducklings. I'm heading back to Princeton to meet up with Zach. I'll see you whenever you uh, finish up all the fun and games here with John Coffey."
"He's not that big."
I just laughed. "Bye House." I roared out of the parking lot, leaving the doctor behind, bewildered with his bottle of liquor.
House didn't return home that night. I didn't see him again until I got out of my afternoon classes the next day, backpack heavy with still more coursework. I thought senior year back in my own universe was bad, nursing school was already blowing it out of the water. I couldn't imagine my workload once I had clinicals on top of it all, next semester.
House and Wilson were in mirror positions on the couch, legs crossed and up on the coffee table, watching television. Several empty beers were scattered around the apartment, with each of them nursing a half-full one. I took one look at them and said, "Trouble with the wives, boys?"
"As opposed to what?" House snarked, but I could tell he was distracted. Wilson and Julie fought so constantly that Wilson had grown numb to it, but House and Cameron...if they'd had a fight thus far, I hadn't noticed, but I knew male commiserating when I saw it.
"What'd you do to piss Cameron off?" I inquired, dropping my bag on the armchair and inserting myself between House and Wilson with an exhausted yawn.
"I told her the truth," House replied, taking a draught of his beer.
"Yeah, I'm sure that's all you did. And I'm sure whatever truth you told was couched in very gentle terms, right?"
Wilson snorted. "He's known for his delicate touch."
"She had a clinic patient, she was dying, and Cameron kept running test after test after test trying to prove that she wasn't, because apparently she skipped How to Tell Someone They're Crow Food 101 in med school," House ranted. "I was honest with her. Someone had to be." He pointedly looked at Wilson.
Wilson held up his hands, sloshing some of his beer on the couch in the process. "I was honest with her, too! There was no talking her out of it."
"Your idea of honest and House's are probably two very different things," I pointed out.
"And you're not even sleeping with her! Why should you bother to spare her feelings?" House accused.
"You are sleeping with her, why shouldn't you?" Wilson shot back.
I blinked sleepily as the two doctors bickered back and forth. When House had sufficiently felt he'd gotten the last word in on Wilson, I broke in again: "Just bring her a bottle of wine and say you're sorry. Get some apology sex and get over it."
House seemed taken aback. "I'm sorry, did you just encourage to both have relations outside of the marriage bed AND be insincere? What kind of Christian are you?"
"Who are you and what have you done with Anya?" Wilson tacked on sarcastically. He finished his beer and started the process of cleaning up the mess he and House had made, since House clearly wasn't planning on doing it.
"Look, I'm uh...I'm learning about relationships. Obviously I'm kind of late to the game, but sometimes you just gotta suck it up and apologize, even if you were in the right, even if you meant what you said. Even if it sucks to eat shit, it sucks more to pick a hill and die on it for no reason other than being right," I explained haltingly. "Like, a couple weeks ago, I got on Zach about smoking, and I was kinda mean about it. He was unhappy, and I could tell, so a few days later I apologized, and we were fine. It wasn't worth fighting over."
"But what if I want to die on every hill, all the time, forever?" House retorted petulantly, draining his last beer. "Keep doing that with your boytoy and you'll end up like Wilson: three dead-end marriages and three alimony payments, because Mommy and Daddy never taught him how to stand up for himself."
"House, I'm still with Julie!" Wilson called from the kitchen, indignant.
"I'm preparing you for the inevitable, like any good friend would do," House hollered back.
"You're a saint," Wilson grumbled.
"What's more important to you: being right, or being happy?" I challenged, wondering how House would react. If I could get him to start questioning things like that now, maybe in whatever relationship he did end up in for the long-run, he could find some kind of contentment. For all Wilson's joking about a delicate touch, Cameron was certainly someone who could use it.
"You know the answer to that," House said, and I could tell what I'd just asked him essentially went in one ear and out the other.
"Cameron's a puppy. No matter how many times you kick her, she'll always come back—" I began, but House interrupted me.
"Gee, who else do I know like that?"
"It's almost like you surround yourself with people who will never leave you no matter how much of a jerk you are to them," Wilson said, returning to the living room. I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not, but I thought I detected at least an undercurrent of annoyance in his voice. "Someone will grow a spine eventually."
"It won't be you two," House said immediately and with enough confidence that I crossed my arms and scowled. Mainly because he was right, but nevertheless. "Cameron knows how I am. If she doesn't like it, she knows where the door is."
"That's a healthy attitude to have," Wilson sighed. "I need to get home. Julie's cooking."
"You should tell her you're having an affair. Good dinner conversation," House told him.
Wilson just looked at House, eyes unspeakably tired. "If you have people in your life who are willing to stick with you no matter how much of an ass you are, it might suit you to treat them better. Ever thought of that?"
"You say that as if you're such a peach to me," House countered.
Wilson grabbed his coat from where it hung on the rack. "If I was a peach to you, I would bore you to tears."
House didn't seem to have a comeback for that. "Fair enough."
"I'll see you," he said, and I could tell he was dejected. I wanted to ask him about what was going on at home, try to offer some kind of comfort, but I could tell when something was out of my league. I didn't have any grasp of what was going on with Wilson and Julie; too many layers. And House snapping at me over not having any right to speak on him and Stacy, that same logic applied to Julie and Wilson.
Sometimes it was better just to keep your mouth shut.
Wilson departed, leaving me and House alone. I turned my head to look at House, and he looked at me, and without really thinking about it, I just started laughing.
"What?" House asked, annoyed.
"Nothing, really. Just wondering why I still try to talk you out of being a dick when I know there's no use."
"Can't teach an old dog new tricks."
"I'm not that old."
"Old enough to give a middle-aged man relationship advice, evidently," House said. "You look like hammered crap. Go to bed."
"You look miserable. Make up with your girlfriend."
House stuck his tongue out at me, I stuck my tongue out at him. Mature as always.