Chapter 62 — Strength of Spirit
A/N: Thank you to BrySt1, Lordban, HeatherSS1, OldSFfan, Robin, Visitkarte, kqzw, lizonia, SoleFaith, and Meme for their reviews on the last chapter!
House was a big fat fucking baby when he was sick. Like all men. I shouldn't have been surprised.
I placed a warm bowl of chicken noodle soup from the hospital cafeteria on his stomach. He had his arm thrown over his head and had a consistent whimper in his throat. He felt for the spoon and started wolfing it down.
"I half expected you to ask me to feed it to you," I said, sitting on the Eames chair's footstool by House's feet.
Zach leaned against the glass outer wall of House's office, watching House with amusement. He handed a tube of Icy Hot to House. "Try that, hoss," he offered with a manly pat on the shoulder. Zach didn't work until six o'clock that night, so he'd joined me in taking care of my snotty, congested hero during the day.
House undid a few of the buttons on his shirt, setting the soup aside for the moment. "Just kill me, hoss." He squeezed a sizable dollop onto his chest and rubbed it into his skin. "Oh, that burns so good." He inhaled deeply.
"Don't touch your eyes. And for a man who's lived in chronic pain every day for the past six years, you're kind of a weakling," I commented. "Did you take the Dayquil?"
"I took the Nyquil."
"House, you're at work," I reminded him exasperatedly. "Now isn't a good time to pass out."
"Maybe by the time I wake up my team will stop fawning over Cancer Girl," House said, returning to his soup.
"Andie. She has a name. And of all the people to fawn over, small children dying of terminal illnesses are pretty far up the list," I told him.
"Right up there with Mr. Rogers and Gandhi," Zach chimed in.
"Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life with," House quoted mordantly. "Your boy Gandhi is a textbook racist."
Zach showed faint surprise. "Kill your heroes."
Before I could chide House more about his flu medicine, Chase poked his head into the office, flanked closely by Foreman and Cameron. "Pulmonary angiogram of Andie's lungs was clean. Arterial blood gasses and a CT scan were also normal. Her heart and lungs are fine."
House sighed, flinging his arm to the side and revealing his bloodshot eyes. "Which gives us no explanation for the diminished sat percentage." I noticed Cameron watching him with concern, but too much obvious doting in front of Chase and Foreman would lead to inevitable suspicion.
"Yeah, oddly enough, sometimes normal is normal," Foreman said dryly.
"Sometimes we can't see why normal is normal. Drag the board in here," House ordered.
Zach dipped out and obediently carried the whiteboard in, setting it House's line of sight. House snorted. "Nice and obedient. Maybe I should make like Cuddy and get a male secretary. Cameron, get her symptoms up."
Cameron blinked in surprise. "You're letting me touch the markers?"
"Cutest gets the markers. Chase is starting to get a little neck-beard, so you're up," House said, and a brief, knowing look was exchanged between the two.
Cameron and House had made up from their spat during Acceptance, though I had no idea how—and House sure as hell wasn't ever going to tell me. Bad part of living my favorite TV show; I didn't get around the clock surveillance on what was going on with everyone. I only knew what I could see with my own eyes, and oftentimes, House didn't let me see a whole lot. Either way, the pair was getting along fine again.
Chase subconsciously scratched his stubble with a frown, and Cameron went to the whiteboard and jotted down Andie's symptoms.
"Guys, I know we ruled out infection, but if we forget the labs for a minute, there is one infection we didn't test for because of her age: neurosyphillis," Foreman pointed out.
"There's no way," Chase said immediately.
"If the infection dipped into her cerebral cortex, all peripheral functions could be compromised," Foreman insisted gravely.
"She hasn't had sex! She's nine!" Chase snapped.
"Can we please remember the pregnant twelve year old you guys treated last spring?" I said, more to play devil's advocate than anything else.
"Pregnant twelve year old?" Zach repeated.
"Long story," I said quickly.
"Maybe the sex wasn't her idea," Foreman continued. "I mean, she's been around a lot of adults. All the hospital visits, the counselors at the cancer camp..."
Cameron grimaced. "You think she's been molested."
"She's hiding it pretty well if there's anything like that going on," Chase said, putting his hands on his hips.
House rubbed a hand across his nose. "Yeah, all girls who have been molested want to talk about it. Break out the rape—achoo! Rape kit."
I handed him a box of tissues, which he happily took.
"She hasn't had sex," Chase pressed again.
House tilted his head. "Why are you so sure?"
"Because she...she told me she never kissed a boy."
"You read her diary, too?"
Chase shuffled awkwardly, scratching at the back of his neck. "She, ah. She asked me to kiss her."
Oh God. That was right. How had I forgotten? Chase actually kissed Andie. Done in the spirit of absolute innocence, of course, though I doubted her mother or anyone on the hospital board would feel that way if they found out. It was no surprise though, not really. Chase seemed to get along with kids better than either Foreman or Cameron. He was a sucker for them, up to and including being unable to say no when they asked for something, even if it meant putting his license at risk if the situation was put in a different context.
House lifted his hands. "I rest my case. A normal nine year old does not have sex on the brain, not when a doctor is threading a catheter through her veins."
"But she's not a normal nine year old, she's got terminal cancer," Chase argued.
"Cancer doesn't make you special. Molestation on the other h-h—" House sneezed loudly.
"She wanted one kiss before she dies. If she's never kissed a boy it's a fair bet she hasn't had sex," Chase pushed back.
"Tell that to all the hookers who won't kiss me on the mouth. Hey, here's a theory, she has been molested, seeks refuge in romantic fantasies with older men with great hair...and I think you left out the punch line. Victims of molestation learn to work the angles. Manipulate people." House narrowed his eyes at Chase, lips curving up into a smirk. "You did it, didn't you? You kissed her."
Foreman, Cameron, and Zach all looked at Chase sharply. Chase's eyes widened, and he spluttered, fumbling for a response, "Look, it—it wasn't sick."
Cameron turned around and covered her mouth. Foreman just kept shaking his head in dim horror. Zach laughed. "Damn, I'm sure that'll go over well with Mommy if she ever finds out."
"Why are you even here?" Chase shot back at Zach. "Was letting one teenager in on differentials not enough?"
"Words hurt," I said with a pout.
"One, he's not a teenager. My precious bundle of joy has a false sense of maturity, so she purposely seeks out older men. Two, he's my personal nurse for the day. The sponge bath is next."
"It was one kiss, one!" Chase held up a single finger. "For a dying girl. Any of you would have done the same thing!"
"No," Foreman said emphatically, shaking his head even harder. He and Cameron were both quietly freaking out.
"Chase, your heart was in the right place, but you know how it'll look if anyone outside this room finds out," I said gently, trying to make him feel a bit better.
"In reality, Anya's just mad that she didn't realize sooner how easy it is to squeeze a kiss out of you," House snarked. "This is exactly why you aren't allowed to touch my markers." He waved off the ducklings. "Go find out if she's had sex."
Foreman and Cameron practically fled the room. Chase just threw his hands up in defeat, stalking into the differential room.
"I do not purposefully seek out older men," I hissed as soon as Chase was out of earshot. "Zach's not even twenty-one until next month."
"Yeah, I'm still a young, strapping lad," Zach said, thankfully seeming to have brushed past House's comment about me and Chase. He teased me relentlessly about my perceived crush on Chase, but he'd never said anything about it in front of Zach before. And I wanted to keep it that way. "I hope you were serious about the sponge bath. Don't disappoint me."
"Maybe if you play your cards right," House quipped, adjusting in his chair with a pained groan. He thrust the empty cup of chicken noodle soup in Zach's general direction. "Refill."
"Gotcha." Zach zipped out of the office without hesitation. I could tell he was doing everything in his power to stay on House's good side. Made all the more difficult by the fact that House barely had a good side. House had naturally also noticed Zach's desire to win him over, so he'd been testing how much of a servant boy Zach was willing to be for him...as was expected.
"How about you don't make jokes about me having the hots for Chase in front of my boyfriend?" I told House, glaring at him.
House looked up at me through red-rimmed eyes. "You can't yell at me. I'm sick."
"Yeah, you're sick alright," I grumbled. "Seriously. I don't want him to get a complex or something."
"But you do have the hots for Chase," House said. "Therefore it's my obligation to constantly make fun of you for it."
"I don't!" I protested loudly, maybe a little too loudly. I glanced back into the differential room, but Chase was nowhere to be seen. I turned back to House. "House, TV characters are good targets for puppy love, but it doesn't translate into real life. Hence why I'm with someone who wasn't a TV character in my world."
House tilted his head, scrutinizing me. "Did you ever have a crush on me?"
I glared at him in response. "No."
"Ha, that's a lie. You're way too much like Cameron not to have had a crush on me," House said, and I could tell he was getting a kick out of taunting me.
"Don't get a big head. I had a universal crush on everyone on the show."
"Everyone?" House's mouth formed an O. "Maybe you're more interesting than I thought. Cuddy's ass has been looking particularly delectable lately—"
"Stop," I begged. "Just lay off the Chase jokes in front of Zach. Ridicule me when he's not in the room, it isn't hard."
"But you'll get angrier if I do it in front of Zach, therefore it will be funnier to me," House countered.
I buried my head in my hands. "I hate you."
Much later that night, when Zach had headed home, I found House outside Andie's room, staring at the sleeping child and spinning his cane in slow, lazy circles. I sidled up next to him. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall. He didn't acknowledge my presence, but that didn't surprise me.
"I always tried to figure out your motivations in this episode," I told him quietly. "Not the first time through, obviously. I was ten. I didn't give a shit why you did anything. I just thought you were funny. But when I got older, when I started to think about the show. About why you did the things you did. And you know, by the time I got sucked into this world, I thought I had you pretty figured out...even now, though, I still don't know why you're about to do what you're about to do."
House graced me with a glance, but didn't say anything.
"Is it just to satisfy your curiosity? Some kind of sadism? Or do you really think a nine year old girl has the right to decide whether she lives or dies? Do you think everybody has that right? But then again, you don't believe in dying with dignity. So what are you doing here, House?"
"Does it really matter?" he asked, voice unusually absent of tone. "You've already made up your mind about it, and you're not going to stop me."
"Isn't that the exact opposite of what I just said?" I hadn't made up my mind about it—that was the entire point I was trying to make.
"You'll do the same thing you always do. You'll spin up a narrative about me in your head where my motives are pure, or close enough to be faintly believable, and you'll cling to that regardless of what I say to you," House explained without inflection.
"You think that I'm wrong to believe the best of you?" I wanted to think that House respected Andie for her ability to somehow persevere in the face of literally insurmountable odds. Death. Pale Horse Himself. Something that full grown adults spent their entire lives trying desperately not to think about or confront in any way, shape, or form, be it through hard drugs, religion, or just plain denial. But Andie never seemed to flinch. House respected her not running from what was in front of her, and thought she deserved to have her fate in her own hands.
Maybe I did have a narrative in mind. Confirmation bias at its finest.
"Thinking the best of anyone makes you an idiot. Even Wilson has given up on thinking the best of me. You could stab Wilson in the throat and with his last gasping breath he'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt, but even he's taken off the rose-colored glasses," House responded, pushing away from the wall. "Maybe I just want to poke her like a rat in a cage."
"You wanted to be there when Wilson told her she way dying," I said, halting House with a faint touch to his wrist. "Why?"
"Because I wanted to see how she would react," House said over his shoulder.
I just stared at him, lips pursed.
"Did you expect a different answer?" House asked with an arched eyebrow. "Or did you hope for a different one?"
He shook off my hand and slid open the door to Andie's room. I didn't try to stop him.
I wasn't able to return to the hospital for a few days, between work and school. By the time I made it back, Andie was being discharged. I was devastated I'd missed her "restart"—easily one of the most fascinating procedures that had been done on the show, never mind complicated as all hell. But, more and more, my schedule wouldn't allow for as many expeditions to PPTH, and I was bound to miss things I wanted to see.
When Andie and her mom walked out, all of the team, Cuddy, Wilson, and most of the other doctors and specialists that participated in her restart were lined up outside of the elevator bank, waiting to wish her good luck. She came out smiling, exchanging tight hugs with everyone gathered there to see her. Chase gave her tickets to a nature exhibit, so she could see real butterflies, and she looked up at him like he was the sun. It was absolutely heartwarming.
Chase, who for the most part came across far more cold and callous than Cameron or Foreman, turned completely soft when it came to kids. I wondered if it was because he grew up having to take care of his sister, since his mother had given up entirely on parenting for the booze, and his father had dipped and deemed it all not to be his responsibility.
It was a shame Chase and Cameron never had kids in canon. I had a feeling Chase would be a great father, someday.
Andie made her way towards us, smiling knowingly up at House. She really wasn't a typical nine year old; she held herself completely differently, and her eyes...God, she was older than I was, looking in her eyes. I shot up a prayer for her. Terminal was terminal, but I prayed that her last year would be the best, would be filled with joy and give her everything she hoped for out of her short life.
House looked down at Andie. "I'm not gonna kiss you, no matter what you say."
Andie didn't seem fazed. She reached forward and wrapped her arms around House's waist, resting her head against his chest. House looked like it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, but that was how House looked whenever pretty much anyone touched him.
And it was then that I noticed a difference from canon, something that shouldn't have seemed significant, but was. Maybe bigger than anything I'd seen from House yet.
He hugged Andie back.
Okay, not a real hug, or even close to one, but he did lightly set his hand on her head. He acknowledged the hug, acknowledged her.
I couldn't believe it. Of all the things that had changed this time around, what had changed the absolute least was House. Other than giving the ACE inhibitor speech for my sake last season, House hadn't really done anything...un-House-like. This was a softening, something about House's hard edge dulling, if only minutely and only for a few seconds.
Why? What changed this time?
"It's sunny outside. You should go for a walk," Andie said, pulling away from House.
House dropped his hand, watching her unblinkingly. "Walking...not really my thing."
A wave of sorrow for House crashed over me, and on impulse, I laced my arm through his. "Maybe today it is." He switched his eyes to me. "You can lean on me. If you need to."
Andie surprised me by hugging me next. I bent down and hugged her back, but said, "Hey, I don't even know you. You're lucky I'm a hugger."
"I was there the first time you played for the kids in pediatrics," Andie said, surprising me. "You make him look less sad. I think he needs that," she added.
I stood there, dumbfounded. Andie took her mother's hand in hers, and they left the hospital behind to the sound of applause. Together, they stepped out into the late summer sunlight.
House was quiet for a moment, then said with a sniffle, "I'm not going on a walk with you."
"Yeah, you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Yeah...you are." I grinned up at him. "Future knowledge, House. I know what you're thinking."
"I doubt—" House began, clear derision in his voice, but I cut across him.
"You want a new motorcycle." I released his arm and started heading for the doors, and House, surprisingly, went along with me. "There's an Aprilia dealership a few blocks from here. Let's go take a look around." I glanced over my shoulder at him and said, "You're younger than you think you are."
House had so much life left to life. Forty-six was not that old. Even with his liver probably being on a shorter leash due to all the years of pill and alcohol abuse, he could live for another thirty, forty years. So much longer than Andie had. So much chance for joy.
House kept in step with me all the way to the dealership.