Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Heart
Chapter 2
His fingers were wracking his knuckles, spurts of anxiety giving way to hesitant calm. Wilson still hadn't awoken and was in a private room, his entering the ER had led to zero findings as his heart had steadied itself surprisingly (worryingly) on its own (don't get him wrong, House was grateful, it was still just a shock).
Blue eyes studied the oncologist bordering on blearily. His thoughts were skittering back to unimaginable foreboding when he noticed Wilson's fingers twitch. Blinded by grappling white hot hope, House determined his friend was waking up.
"You passed out." He delivered with more of a chill tone than he had intended.
Wilson licked his lips and blinked at his friend.
"You could have gone into sudden cardiac arrest."
He said it so deadpanned it almost made Wilson chuckle, but he was so terrified by the prospect and the medical weight of the statement that he felt his heart skip a beat and the monitors behind his head noted his heart increasing a few.
"Did I?" he asked hesitantly, watching as House's blue-eyed gaze flicked to above his friend's head, studying the monitor closely and then his eyes fell back to Wilson, brown eyes imploring him with a terror he couldn't help but internally feel a little bad about.
"No." House sighed; arms folded across his chest.
"Oh," Wilson let out a deep breath. "You should probably lead with that next time." He winced and ran a hand down his forehead, jostling the nasal canula briefly. "Probably shouldn't say it to a cardiac patient either." He made a face at the diagnostician. "Not good for the ole ticker."
"This isn't funny," House observed, a callousness entering his vision for the briefest of moments. He wanted to say he was proud of Wilson's dazzling humor, but he bit back the comment from ever leaving his lips, supplying himself with a soft hiss.
"Did I say it was?" Wilson shot back, a little incredulous, a small twitch in his cheek.
"You were making jokes," House stood his ground firmly, though at what rate he couldn't quite decipher with his stomach twisting in knots and his leg still burning from the escapades of the day.
"Only to cover up my broken heart," Wilson feigned a frown, brushing his hand to his chest like there was pain there.
A glower from the older doctor continued his gaze at the oncologist, a flaring of his nostril and a deepening of his frown.
"You're impossible," House crooned instead, taking the moment to stand up in a flurry, if only to hide for another moment the tears that had spread unwillingly in his eyes. He had his back to Wilson in an attempt to manhandle all of his wildly withering emotions back into his own chest as he picked up a lone object on the other side of the room.
Wilson watched in peculiarity and intrigue.
When a long silence stitched the conversation as over, Wilson tried instead, "Your thoughts?"
"I really thought sunflowers were overrated," House replied, twirling one in his hand, the long stem leaking droplets of water from the small but present collection of flowers in Wilson's room.
"I meant diagnostically," Wilson expanded on his earlier declaration. A sheen of worry still reflected in his eyes, that twitch at his cheek again. He rubbed his face for a second and the muscles still continued their small bursts of energetic rippling anyways.
"How long's that been happening?" House was asking instead, placing the forgotten flower onto the countertop, and lounging his way over to his friend, favoring his left leg more than usual to which Wilson was immediately quipping, "You okay?"
"Peachy!" House forced a grin that held no warmth and then asked again, "How long's the twitching been happening?"
"Not long," Wilson evaded, then his eyes narrowed, and he stated more pressingly, "Really, House, what's making the pain worse?"
"Oh, you know, my friend the Boy Wonder Oncologist happened to pass out on me and literally fell on me doing so and then his heart was—"
"At least you broke my fall," Wilson quipped, taking the seriousness of what House was trying to get out and earning him another small but pointed glare.
"—Your turn. When'd the twitching start?"
Wilson huffed; gaze averted for the time being. "I don't know, a couple of days ago?" He paused then added, "You know as well as I do that it's probably benign fasciculations with no real cause or importance."
"How would I know? You just told me about them. How would you know? Plus, you're not the diagnostician here, it's me. Just your face or…?"
Wilson rolled his eyes, "All over my body."
"That's interesting," House tapped a finger to his chin. "I'll add that to the list."
"The list?"
"Differential diagnosis, Wilson! Get with the times, you're my next patient." House studied his friend again, noticing the look of mild irritation and somewhat controlled relief that existed on his friend's face and body.
"I thought you already had a patient?" Wilson questioned instead, pointedly.
"All better!" It was a lie and Wilson seemed to know it, giving him a knowing look but he didn't pick up the bait any further, leaving it be for now.
"We're gonna run a stress test." House iterated instead, and Wilson's eyes rolled again, immediately barking out, "You mean this hasn't been one thus far?"
"I like my friends alive, Wilson!" House let out a clipped breath before he settled into the chair beside Wilson's bed. "I don't want you dying on me," he said a little quieter.
Wilson was silent for a beat and House almost looked grateful, to which the oncologist swooped in with a "But during a test is fine. Diagnostically relevant, then."
House scoffed to hide the break in his chest and picked up a book he had settled on the floor, placating benign forgetfulness about all the quips Wilson was making mostly at the diagnostician's expense. He'd get Wilson back for it, certainly, as long as he got Wilson back in the first place.
Wilson wasn't heartless. Not, not per se. To House at the moment, yeah, maybe a little bit but he reasoned and justified to himself it was because he was entirely freaked out and thought maybe some normalcy, even if it was a little put on and heavy, would help his friend work on solving the mystery as to why Wilson felt the way he had felt. He knew his friend wasn't a miracle worker, but he had to try somewhat of an approach, hadn't he?
Wilson sighed. Even his own rationalizations seemed moot and uncalled for. If House wouldn't be eating his head and berating him for centuries, he'd consider and entertain the thought of apologizing.
In reality, he'd just linger under the radar until House forgot (who was James fooling but himself? House never forgot) or until something else transpired with his actual patient (that Wilson knew still existed) and for which Wilson's experience of becoming an untrained comedian would slip out of his range of memory and things in their friendship would continue on without a hitch.
Or at least without recognition that anything weird had transpired to begin with.
Wilson could hope for that, even if it was completely delusional.
He sighed again and squished himself further into his almost too comfortable bed.
How exactly had he wound up as a patient? To House, no less?
He wracked his mind for what had happened—hell, even, why it happened—but the Universe didn't give good answers and Wilson was out of his mind to start thinking that it would, for him, now.
His cancer patients never got a reason, fuck even a good reason, and so he could wonder this for years as to why he'd become another sufferer of a medical issue.
He bit his lip in thought—had the dizziness come before the landing, or the falling, as it were? Had his face felt too warm or was he just making up new symptoms now to fix the puzzle?
He was about to rip the nasal cannula from his nostrils in utter patient-laden frustration when there was a small, nearly insignificant knock on his door.
Brown eyes shifted there until familiarity brought a smile to his face.
"Lisa!" He exclaimed, almost too giddily to fit the situation.
"How are you feeling?" she asked with deep sincerity, already clacking her way over to the chair House had all but recently vacated.
He shrugged noncommittally. "You know…" he trailed off, even though he really didn't know.
Cuddy braced him a grim, forced smile. "You gave us quite a scare."
Wilson had the suspicion, though he didn't say it, that it was more of one for a particular limping twerp of his instead of a collective "we."
He didn't know why he still had a sour taste in his mouth for Cuddy and House to be together. He'd volleyed for years to get the two together but since they'd been for nearly nine months he couldn't quite breathe past the lump in his throat.
He hadn't really explored it in therapy lately, dreading when the woman with long blonde hair he saw tried to shift the conversation that way, but he knew she meant well—or at least, he hopes so for how much he was paying per session (he had to go off the books so as to not leave a paper-trail House could so easily and damningly find and look into).
Cuddy's sudden and kind voice shook him out of his reverie.
"Has House been by?"
Wilson's brows knitted together as he blinked in apparent confusion. Immediately, his nerves were on edge and the paranoia of why she'd ask him that knowing how House was, made him nervous. For once, the machine above his bedside did not betray him.
Cuddy's lips formed in a thin, pursed line. "He was ready to box Dr. Maseon in the ER on your behalf and I had to kick him out before limbs went flying," she said in a sheepish explanation.
Wilson nodded and let out a half-choked chuckle. "He said he didn't have a patient anymore…" he said in uncertainty, not even sure what he was trying to assert.
She laughed, briefly. "She just threw in some vomiting blood, so I think it'll be a while before she's released." She looked at the oncologist, not without awkwardness.
It seemed apparent, suddenly, that the once close Housian friends had grown apart and settled into barely knowing each other or how to successfully interact—at least without forcing it.
The silence lasted a moment or two too long and Wilson tried to breathe through the knot in his chest—wondering off to the side if this would be preceding another attack—and valiantly trying to not let his internal panic overcome him.
As he could feel his heart begin to beat faster, Cuddy moved from her frozen position and rested a warm hand over his and rubbed the skin carefully, saying, "Things will be okay."
Wilson bit back a scathing House retort his older friend would be proud of him for and just nodded, a flash of non-understanding in his gaze.
She smiled gruffly and said, "I'll leave you be to rest for a bit."
He knew she meant it compassionately, but it fell a tad too flat and could have been stated in the setting of a monotone lecture. Wilson, for a second, didn't think her sparing him the awkwardness of their lack of communication was going to be as forgiving as being alone, by himself, to his own devices with nothing to do but watch the floaters in his eyes, sitting with the ongoing beeps from the incessant heart monitor.
Instead of any form of actual protesting, however, Wilson just nodded silently. At the same moment he was internally begging her to stay and be a distraction from his own experiences, he was utterly silent and hoping she'd, indeed, be turning around and leaving again. He felt aghast as to how he could feel two such deeply polar opposites at the same time, but he knew his therapist, that blonde-haired lady, would say something about dialectics and finding the middle path. Sometimes he wondered if she was full of shit compared to what House would tell him if he were honest with his friend.
He snorted briefly and settled back into his pillows, staring up at the ceiling blankly. It wasn't long before his attention span drifted back to analyzing the symptoms he thought, but couldn't be certain, he was having leading up to his fainting, but it didn't seem to matter that much at all, anyways. Before he realized it, his eyes were closing as he relaxed further than he probably should have been, considering the severity of his current health affairs, and drifted off to sleep.
A/N: Hi there! First off, I am so, so, so, so, sooooo sorry for the giant lack of ANY story updates for practically this ENTIRE year! I think I JUST got out of a weeklong writer's block (for which I am endlessly grateful about, it was rough because I wanted nothing else but to write and I just could not, gwah!) and a lot of the groundwork for this chapter happened at the end of last year and into the beginning of this year (2023). Then I got all perfectionistic about it and didn't or couldn't work on it for months.
However, I finally just got myself to roughly finish it up for at least an upload-friendly update for now so that I can return to it more fully (and ideally more easily) in the future. It's definitely not my best work and a bit forced, but if I keep waiting for the "right" writing vibes in the future (even hitting all the marks I wrote down in my outline), I'll pretty much never upload or update this story, so, bleh. My favorite part was always the hilarity of Wilson's remarks and humorous engagements with House in this chapter, so I'm glad to be able to finally share that and have that in the real existence of this chapter/story's continuity hahaha.
I have TONS of new stories and updates and more to come in the future. This year's been strange as hell and one hit after another, but I'm still here and I'm still gonna push through it. I hope to see you peeps soon again in another story update or upload! Thanks so much for reading! Any thoughts are much appreciated.
Written: 12.12.2022, 3.11.2023, 3.12, 10.23.2023
Edited: 12.12.2022, 12.14, 6.28.2023, 10.23.2023