readingrat | fic: The Kelpie - Part IV Chapter 1 (Reply)

Part IV: Mayfield

Chapter 1: A Thief in the Night

Gusts of wind have chased away yesterday's rain and the morning sun is dissolving last pockets of mist in the fields. White clouds chase across the sky; the trees gleam in regal gold, crimson and russet. The idyll outside, however, does little to calm his nerves. He fidgets in his seat, changes the radio station, roots through Lisa's glove compartment, and generally manages to get on her nerves. She ignores him, merely changing the radio station back to her choice, a rather lame rock and pop station.

"I don't need this," he finally mutters.

She takes a deep counting-to-ten breath. "We've been through this. If you get picked up by the police again, Tritter will crucify you."

"I won't. I don't need the drugs."

"No, you're self-destructing for the fun of it," she mocks.

"I'm not self-destructing. It was a mistake, okay? It won't happen again. Turn round and drive me back."

Her fingers drum on the steering wheel. "What about your neighbour's anthropomorphic pet?"

He shoots her a quick sideways glance. She hasn't mentioned the state of his apartment since her brief comment last night. He should have known better than to believe she would let it slide. "What about it?" he asks guardedly.

She sighs. "Fine! Be pig-headed. But has it occurred to you that whoever you pissed off may have tipped Narcotics off? I refuse to believe that it's a coincidence that you got arrested the same night that someone vandalised your place."

"It couldn't be that this 'someone' had nothing to do with my arrest, but took advantage of my absence to do a bit of re-decorating?"

She doesn't deign to reply to that. "Look, I don't know what you did to your cat friend, but ..."

"Maybe I didn't do anything?" he suggests.

"But," she continues, "someone who is screwed-up enough to collect and spread a whole load of cat crap around your apartment to make a point probably won't baulk at setting you up the next time. Next time you could get arrested for something you didn't do."

He is sorely tempted to inform her that the screwed-up person is someone she once screwed, but he doesn't want to open that can of worms.

They turn into the alley that leads to Mayfield. It's the third time he's here, but the stark grey building in the distance looks every bit as threatening as it did the first time, when he'd been trailing Lisa and Wilson. It makes the Maudsley seem like the Last Homely House in comparison. Even when he shuts his eyes, the feeling of dread that assails him won't ebb away; far the opposite, in fact.

He rubs his right thigh, the non-existent one. "I don't need a detox. It's only been - what? - three weeks or so."

Her lips tighten. "Let Dr Nolan decide," she says.

"Hey, I'm a doctor, too. I'm quite capable of ...,"

"Dr Nolan," she says unbendingly, "knows more about your addiction than you do."

"Based on Wilson's objective account?" he sneers.

She takes her eyes off the road at that. "He was your therapist. Didn't he tell you?"

No, the sneaky bastard didn't.

"You spent about four months in Mayfield, six years ago," she explains.

That must have been the out-of-state detox that his fellows mentioned. He should, of course, have made the connection to Mayfield. Considering that Wilson seems to have been managing most of his major life decisions, it makes sense that he detoxed in a place of Wilson's choice. He mentally scrolls through yesterday's meeting with Wilson and Nolan (was it really only yesterday? It seems ages ago ...), but comes up with nothing that could have wised him up to the fact that he's no stranger to Nolan. Either he was too focused on Wilson to notice the signs or the shrink really is that good at subterfuge.

"I don't need therapy," he says. "It's a waste of time."

It certainly was at the Maudsley; after that he'd never gone to the therapist he'd been referred to as an out-patient, and he'd been fine. Besides, just the thought of therapy sessions with someone who will not only spout the usual mumbo-jumbo, but who'll also claim a knowledge of and an insight into past issues that he himself can't recall gives him the heebie-jeebies. His nausea increases to the point that he starts making bets with himself as to whether Lisa will reach the parking lot before he upchucks all over her car mats.

She does. He gets out and leans against the car with both hands planted on the roof, drawing in long breaths of fresh air. Lisa goes to the boot and takes out his backpack.

When she comes round and drops it at his feet he straightens up to tower over her, saying, "I'm not doing this. You can't make me." The slanting sunlight highlights his sweaty fingerprints on the car's roof.

Her face is worried, anxious. She draws a hand through her hair, expelling a long breath of defeat. Now that he knows that she used to be his boss, he can't help wondering how their interactions at work used to function, for whenever he digs in his heels, she caves. It's another item to add to his mental list of 'Things to Ask Wilson' - he'd only got in the car this morning in the first place because he has nothing better to do, and going to Mayfield will give him access to Wilson on an everyday basis. Now, confronted with the looming edifice, that prospect doesn't seem enough of an incentive to get him to go through the heavy oaken front doors.

She chews on her lower lip, engaged in some sort of mental argument with herself. Finally she snaps out of it and says, "Go in and talk to Nolan. After that, if you decide not to go through with it, then ...,"

"I'm deciding here and now! I wanna go home!" He casts around for the next bus stop - if she won't drive him back, he'll get back on his own.

"Then," she continues with emphasis, "I'll take you back and write you a scrip."

That gets his attention. "For what?" he asks suspiciously.

"Vicodin."

What the hell is she playing at? He looks down at her tipping his head back slightly, which has the advantage of slanting half his face out of her line of vision (although to her it must seem as though he's looking at her down his nose), as he tries to gauge her mood.

Guilty: check.
Worried: check.
Insane: possibly.
Stupid: no. Definitely not.

Then why is she offering to write him a scrip? Chances are that he'll refuse to stay after talking with Nolan, and he'll definitely hold her to her bargain - she knows that. Which means that she's reckoning with having to write him a scrip. Which in turn means that she was planning to write him a scrip all along, otherwise she wouldn't be getting herself into this position.

He (sort of) gets why she would consider writing him scrips a viable option - from her point of view it's preferable to his scoring drugs on the streets and getting picked up by Tritter. Tritter, so he has gathered, is her idea of Hitler's reincarnation. The question is, why does she think he'll take the risk of returning to his wicked ways within Tritter's radius of destruction when, if he was considering continuing his casual drug use, all he need do is wait till he gets to Seattle where he is unlikely to be victimised by the local cops?

She thinks he'll be back on the streets scoring drugs because she expects the worst of him. And that hurts. Not that her opinion bothers him - once he's in Seattle she'll be history - but all these preconceptions that aren't based on what he is, but what he used to be, are a total pain in the ass.

"What makes you think I want a scrip?" he asks coldly.

She sighs. "You went through the drawer with my papers last night. It only contains my personal documents, my cheques and my prescription pad. My passport is boring, so either you were out to forge cheques in my name (which I doubt) or you wanted my prescription pad."

He remembers. He'd been unable to sleep, so he'd finally got up and migrated into the living room. He hadn't dared to turn on the television for fear of waking her or Rachel, so he had tried to hack into her computer. That, however, had proved well-nigh impossible because he knows too little about her to figure out her password. So, instead, he'd started going through her personal files, the ones in which she keeps all the details of her career to date, and had spent an amusing hour or so updating his knowledge of her career moves. She must have been quite something in her youth. He'd been immersed in reading her exceedingly pushy, self-advertising and naive application to PPTH when he'd chanced to look up at the wall where her High School Diploma hung framed above her desk. And that was when it had struck him: her CV didn't add up. According to her application she was born in 1965, and was therefore thirty-one in 1996 when she applied for the job at PPTH. That, however, would have made her twenty when she graduated high school in 1985, a contradiction in and of itself considering her over-achieving nature.

He'd started rooting around for personal documents that would prove her age, and he'd soon found the drawer with the passport and the prescription pad. And, yes, he'd been hovering over the prescription pad, turning it in his hands when she had walked in, but he wouldn't have ... (Or would he? ... No, he isn't that desperate.) When she'd asked what he was up to, he hadn't answered because he hadn't wanted her to know that he'd discovered something interesting that made potential blackmail material, not until he'd scoped out the hows, whereofs and whys of the age-remix she'd been indulging in. Instead, he'd slunk back to the guest room looking guilty as hell.

He gets what that must have looked like - the junkie, whose supply was confiscated by the police and who can't afford to go back to his old haunts for fear of running into the cops again, helping himself to a stray prescription pad the way he has done in the past. (He remembers the court notes of the 'Tritter case' mentioning forged prescriptions.)

Nevertheless, he hasn't done anything - well, not much - to earn her distrust, so he'll just head back to Trenton, get someone to clean up his place, and then ...

He opens his mouth to tell her that he's taking off when her face, soft (for a change) with desperation, registers. Her eyes are shimmering, and he can see himself reflected in them, small and distorted. And for a moment he sees himself as she sees him: an idiot who can't keep away from the drugs that once ruined his life, who dumps her only to come whining for help the moment he falls foul of the law, who abuses the trust she puts in him when she brings him into her home by trying to steal her prescription pad. True, he isn't guilty of the latter crime, but the rest is pretty much accurate, so he can't really blame her for assuming the worst. Anyone with a smidgen of sense would have left him in his crapped-up apartment in Trenton. In fact, they wouldn't have come at all, but sent a lawyer. (He's grateful now that she came, because a lawyer, unacquainted with the facts, could hardly have grasped the situation sufficiently to bail him out so quickly.) Hell, any normal woman getting a call like that from her felonious ex would have deleted the call from the answering machine and got on with her life. Felonious, violent ex.

Okay, that does make her stupid, insanely stupid. But he owes her, and although she's overly concerned, some of her arguments can't be refuted, and since he's here already he may as well confront Nolan.

Doesn't mean he can't mess with her head. "Okay, one hour with Nolan, and then I get the scrip and a ride home."

"Fine. Let's go," she says and strides off, clearly wanting to get well inside before he changes his mind.

Belinda sticks her head through the door, breaking into his reverie. "Dr Cuddy and Mr Barnes, sir."

"Thank you. Send them in, please." Nolan quickly gathers his thoughts, shaking his head as though to rid it of the fluff of old memories. He has been distracted ever since Dr Cuddy called early in the morning asking whether she could bring Greg in. Distracted and conflicted. He can't very well refuse Greg. Wrong; he could, but if Greg were sent somewhere else, would they be able to help him? It isn't that Mayfield and its staff are unique, but they do have the advantage of prior experience with Greg, who now that he has authentic amnesia on top of his natural resistance to therapy, is definitely a psychiatrist's worst case scenario. Oh, other institutes will be salivating at the idea of getting him as a patient - total retrograde amnesia without any other impairment is an exceedingly rare condition - but helping him would be a secondary aim on their agenda. The question is whether James will make any sort of progress once Greg is under the same roof.

Dr Cuddy and Greg enter, Dr Cuddy striding in front, Greg trailing behind with a scowl on his face. Rising to greet them, Nolan suppresses a sigh; after all, it isn't as though he expected Greg to be enthusiastic about another stay at Mayfield. He extends a hand to Dr Cuddy. "Good morning, Dr Cuddy. Good morning, ...?" he hesitates. "What would you like me to call you?"

"Pete will be fine," Greg says ungraciously. He sits down, stretches out his legs, crosses his ankles, folds his arms over his chest and stares at Nolan challengingly.

Nolan sits back in turn and interlaces his fingers over his stomach, smiling slightly. "Before we begin, a few formalities. Pete, do you have any sort of medical insurance? Travel insurance or the like?"

"He's covered by PPTH's medical insurance policy for employees," Dr Cuddy interjects. Both Greg and Nolan stare at her. She gives them a twisted smile. "When I employed him after the infarction the board consented to terms giving him lifelong medical coverage regardless of his employment status. I told them he'd sue the hospital for medical negligence if they didn't agree."

"That was very thoughtful of you," Nolan remarks. He wonders how she'd felt about providing for him after he nearly killed her.

Dr Cuddy snorts. "It was self-protection. It ensured that if I did feel like firing him, worry about his medical care wouldn't influence my decision."

During therapy Greg had once described Dr Lisa Cuddy as a guilt-ridden, trigger-happy idealist. It had sounded paradoxical, but listening to her describe how she obtained a major lifelong benefit for her employee expressly to facilitate firing him gives Nolan an idea of the complex edifices she constructs to reconcile her impulsive actions with her conscience. Nonetheless, whatever her reasons may have been, it takes care of the greatest obstacle to Greg House's re-admission to Mayfield.

"Great. Then, whatever the course of treatment we agree upon today, we can be sure that funding will not be a problem," he says jovially.

"We won't," Greg says. Nolan looks at him questioningly. "Agree, I mean. I let you talk for an hour and then I'm outta here."

Nolan looks at Dr Cuddy; on the phone she'd said that Greg had consented to treatment at Mayfield.

She rolls her eyes. "He's being difficult," she says.

"I understood that you'd agreed to treatment for what may possibly be a relapse," Nolan says carefully to Greg.

Greg shows the enthusiasm of a high school junior who has been dragged into detention. "She promised me a scrip if I sat through this session, so ... " He shrugs nonchalantly.

Nolan stares once more at Lisa, who takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for two seconds and then opens them again. "That is correct," she says, enunciating each word with precision.

He has had dealings with any number of indifferent, callous, crazy or plain stupid family and friends of addicts, so he wouldn't have thought that after over twenty years as a therapist the behaviour of a so-called friend would still have the capacity to surprise him, but if it was Dr Cuddy's goal to ensure a total lack of cooperation on Greg's part, then she could hardly have done a better job. It is doubtful whether Greg ever intended to agree to a longer stint of therapy, but under the present conditions - the promise of a scrip after this session (if one can now call it such) - any motivation that he, Nolan, succeeds in creating will be nipped in the bud. Greg will leg it out of here at the end of his hour, pick up his scrip and disappear forever.

"Pete, would you leave us alone for a moment, please?" Nolan asks. He's unwilling to let Greg out of his sight, but if he is to have any sort of productive session with him, then he needs to sideline Dr Cuddy first.

Greg gets up more than willingly. The moment the door closes behind him Nolan leans forward.

"Dr Cuddy, let's not beat around the bush. You are palming your problem off on me. You're bringing Greg here so that you can tell yourself that you've done your duty, and if Greg refuses to stay, then you'll pretend to yourself that it's either his fault for being an obstinate pig or mine for being bad at my job."

She sits up straight and raises a delicate eyebrow. "Greg ... Pete is not my problem, and I have no duty or obligation towards him. I bailed him out of Trenton PD and I'm bringing him here because I choose to do so, not because I am morally obliged to help him in any way. He was reasonably willing to give the matter a try when we got moving this morning, but the moment we reached Mayfield he baulked. The only way I could get him to enter at all was by promising him the scrip."

He's puzzled at that. Greg did, after all, arrive here in her company. "Dr Cuddy, what exactly is the nature of your present relationship with Greg?"

"There is no relationship," she answers flatly. "He phoned last night because he got arrested, needed a lawyer, and couldn't reach anyone else."

"And despite the absence of any sort of obligation you went to Trenton yourself to pick him up."

She draws a hand through her hair. "I didn't mean to, but when I phoned Trenton PD to find out what he'd done, Detective Tritter took my call." She twists a lock of hair around her finger. "He underestimated Tritter the first time he ran into him and he's underestimating him again, but this time Tritter has the advantage of knowing what he's up against, whereas Pete has no clue whatsoever. I had to get him out of there before he put his big foot into it." She looks at him imploringly. "You got him to stay the last time for detox and therapy. Can't you ...?"

"After your incautious offer that may be difficult. I remember talking to you a long time ago about the nature of interventions, and I'm reasonably confident that I mentioned that enabling the abuser to obtain drugs or to pursue his habit is not conducive to a successful intervention." He manages to keep his tone mild, but he'd like to take the woman by the shoulders and give her a good shake.

Dr Cuddy sits up and stiffens. "Who says this is an intervention? An intervention presupposes that those planning it have some sort of Damocles sword that they can dangle over the addict's head: the withdrawal of love, employment, friendship, financial security, what have you. I have nothing, no leverage, no hold on him whatsoever. To him, I'm just ... some woman he dated for a short while."

She manages a good imitation of cool indifference, but under her level tone there's the brittleness of glass shards, and for a moment Nolan allows himself to pity her for what she must be going through. He has seldom witnessed cases where the emotional involvement that drove an addict's friend or family member to drag him or her to Mayfield was not reciprocated in some form or other by the addict himself, boosting his motivation and facilitating treatment. This however, could be such a case: the gravitational force that pulls Dr Cuddy towards Greg is based on their pre-amnesia years and is hence one-sided. Greg, for his part, has cut himself loose (metaphorically and surgically) and is floating through space, free, but also uncontrolled.

Dealing with Greg will be complicated enough as it is, but Dr Cuddy adds an additional challenge to a constellation that is already giving him a headache. With respect to James, her proximity to Mayfield and her willingness to get involved in his process have been exceedingly beneficial. That there is someone from his past who is willing to let bygones be bygones and accept him even when his perfect façade displays cracks has been an enormous boost to James, as have the structure and discipline that Dr Cuddy's family life gives those weekends that he's allowed to leave Mayfield. Whether she'll be of the same benefit to Greg is doubtful. He, Nolan, is all in favour of exploring the possibilities that a relationship can offer even if that means risking disappointment and hurt, but he has heard a little from James about Dr Cuddy's spectacular break-up with Greg, and if even half of what James implies is true, then from Greg's point of view a renewal of intimacies is not to be desired. He has also heard and read quite a bit about Greg's even more spectacular reaction to that break-up, which in turn makes him wonder why Dr Cuddy should desire a reprise of the relationship at all.

"But you have been in a relationship of sorts since Greg returned to the US," he probes. Dr Cuddy nods, biting her lower lip. "Why? There must have been a reason why you ended the relationship four years ago. You've known Greg for a long time, so it couldn't have been disenchantment or surprise at how difficult he can be. That reason, whatever it was, must surely still have some validity."

There's a return of confidence in her mien. "I had a major health scare: we - all of us - thought I had a renal carcinoma that had metastasized into my lungs. House panicked and went MIA until the night before the supposed tumour was to be removed, and when he did turn up he was stoned. So, I decided I didn't need a relationship with someone who needed drugs to face pain or responsibility. It was stupid - one vicodin, and I panicked."

It's a little too glib, too rehearsed. "And other than that you had no issues?"

She taps her forehead lightly with the tips of her fingers. "We had our disagreements like everyone has, but before that we were fine." At his unbelieving look she adds, "Yes, he'd mess with my head, I'd get mad, and he'd make up for it somehow, but it was no big deal. It wasn't as though I'd been expecting anything else."

She's obviously in some sort of denial, and he has to jerk her out of it. "Dr Cuddy," he says conjuringly, leaning forward over his desk, "no one who is in a fulfilling relationship - certainly not a woman with your life experience - dumps an addict because he relapsed and took one or two vicodin. You knew he was an addict, you knew he might relapse, you had experience with him during his addictive phase, and none of that stopped you from getting involved. Indeed, you were not averse to an involvement when Greg was at the height of his addiction."

"I told you, I panicked," she says defensively.

"You had enough time afterwards to reverse the decision you made on the spur of the moment, and from what I hear, you have no problems reversing bad relationship decisions or admitting to mistakes. You could not have been a happy woman within that relationship, Dr Cuddy, or you would not have stuck to your decision to abandon it, and with it, Greg."

Her teeth mangling her lower lip, she stares out of the window at something only she can see. One hand moves up to her neck to finger her necklace. When she returns her gaze to him, the walls - some of them - are down.

"That was precisely the problem: with House I couldn't break up without breaking him, because for him there was nothing else any more. There was just - us. Stacy - his previous girlfriend - once complained that even when she was dating House she was alone; when I was dating House I was never alone even when he wasn't there, because everything I did affected him somehow. He clung to me, saw me as some sort of saviour. At first I didn't realise what that meant; I was simply relieved that if the worst came to the worst, I'd have enough power over him to stop him from jeopardising both our careers. But then ...," she murmurs, her lips trembling, "but then, it became a burden. What if something went wrong? What if something happened to me?

"I banished the thought until Wilson discovered a mass in my kidney. I promptly started making arrangements for my daughter: setting up a trust fund, arranging for my sister to become her guardian, and so on. I wasn't happy at the thought of having to leave her, but I knew she'd be fine." She grimaces and amends, "As fine as a toddler can be under the circumstances. But there was nothing I could do for House, and I knew that if I died - at that point it didn't seem an 'if', but a 'when' - he'd lose it completely, spiral out of control, break apart - which he started doing right then and there, only I didn't know it yet."

He shifts awkwardly and clears his throat, wondering whether he should offer her a tissue. But in a moment she has caught herself and is trying to smile, even though the effect is pathetic rather than reassuring.

"But you didn't die," Nolan says, "and what you did sent House into a spiral as surely as your death would have done. Couldn't you, shouldn't you have rethought your decision then?"

"I would have; in fact, I wouldn't even have ended it, but House was about to propose," Dr Cuddy says. Her statement doesn't make sense, and from what he knows of Greg it seems improbable. Although Greg had no issue with long-term commitments, his role models for matrimony - his parents and Wilson - were not of the type to make the proposition attractive to him.

At his look of disbelief she smiles wryly and explains, "My previous boyfriend proposed after we'd been dating for a year. I knew House would do the same, not because he was wild about getting shackled, but to test whether I trusted him as much as I did Lucas. Yes, he's competitive that way. There were omens: he accompanied me to a wedding that he could easily have avoided in order to scope out what kind of a do I'd like - Mariachi music, a white dress, and so on -, he started talking about the relationship as long-term, he ... took an interest in my daughter's education, he tried out domesticity and how far he could push me at home. I registered all that subconsciously and some part of me knew that it wouldn't be long ...,"

"If you didn't want to marry him, you could have refused his proposal," Nolan points out.

She taps her fingertips on the desk in front of her. "I did want to marry him - before that. His addiction hadn't worried me before, because I'd always assumed that he'd die before I did. But then death suddenly seemed possible, and marriage wasn't an option anymore, because once I was married to him, he'd have expected me to name him Rachel's guardian in case of my death - again, mostly a trust issue, not because he was especially keen to do the job - which meant that if I died after marrying him, I'd be leaving Rachel in the care of a spiralling addict. That simply wasn't an option. Telling him that I couldn't marry him although I'd been prepared to marry Lucas wasn't an option either. It didn't leave very many options."

"Did you talk to him about this?" Nolan feels obliged to ask, knowing the answer.

Dr Cuddy snorts. "He'd have withdrawn into his shell of hurt, mocking the idea of proposing to me and pretending he didn't care either way, and then he'd have pushed me away so I wouldn't be able to hurt him anymore. It wouldn't have changed the ultimate outcome. Talking," she adds with a grimace, "was never our strong point."

"So," he says, "what do you believe has changed?"

She gives a short laugh. "Now he couldn't care less whether I die or not! ... No," she amends almost immediately, "that's not fair. He would care if I died, but he'd get over it. I'm no longer the proverbial straw that he's clutching at."

"But that could change if the relationship intensified and continued," Nolan points out.

Dr Cuddy shakes her head. "I don't think so. He's still broody and crude and intense and, oh, just generally a pain in the ass, but he doesn't exude this deep pessimism any more, this, 'karma is out to get me, so I may as well speed up the process by mucking up as much as I can of my own accord'. He was never a happy-go-lucky sort of person, even in school, but ..." She smiles at some memory. "Yes, that's what he reminds me of: what he was like in school."

"You knew him in school?" Again, he's honestly surprised.

"Not very well. He got expelled soon after I started pre-med."

"Hmm. I didn't know that."

She shrugs. "I doubt it's relevant."

"Everything is relevant to Greg."

"I mean, I doubt it's relevant now. He really has total retrograde amnesia - he recognises no one, not even Wilson, and he can't find his way around PPTH, where he worked for over a dozen years."

He musters her. "But it matters to you. It influenced your decision to employ him, and ..."

"I'm not your patient," she says politely, but firmly. She narrows her eyes at him. "You said we shouldn't beat around the bush, so let's get down to the nitty-gritty." She's all business woman now, the meltdown of the last ten minutes wiped away. "You want me to stay away from him."

"I think that some distance would be beneficial."

She hesitates. "If you can get him to stay for treatment, then I won't try to see him of my own accord. But if he asks me to come and visit, I won't say no. I'm not going to let him believe I abandoned him."

He has no intention of asking Dr Cuddy to lie or evade for the sake of his therapy concept - either Greg agrees of his own accord not to see her or he, Nolan, will have to accept defeat in that respect - but it's interesting that she should think he'd ask it of her. "You have abandoned him before and gone behind his back," he says, provoking her on purpose.

"Yes," she replies, "but it never really worked out well, and it's one thing having to pay the price for my own mistakes. It's quite another if I have to pay for yours." She rises. "If that's all, Dr Nolan, ...?"

He nods. "Will you please send Greg, sorry, Pete in?"

Greg ambles in a moment after Dr Cuddy leaves the room, his darting eyes belying his casual demeanour. Last time he was focused on James, drinking in every movement and every change of mien; this time he's absorbing his surroundings. He spurns the comfortable visitor's chair opposite Nolan; instead, he pulls up a hardback chair, spins it around so that the back faces Nolan, and straddles it, folding his arms over the top of the back and leaning his chin on the back of his hands. Nolan can feel the heat radiating off his stare.

"So you were my shrink," he observes. "What's it like to be confronted with your biggest failure?"

"I wouldn't consider you a failure," Nolan says mildly, although he can feel his hackles rising.

"No? A massive relapse and self-destructive behaviour culminating in attempted manslaughter. Not my definition of a successful therapy."

"All addicts relapse." He lifts his hand to gesture at Greg. "You're still alive five years later. Given your prognosis on admission, I wouldn't talk of a total failure."

Greg grins and waggles a finger at him. "A negative prognosis on admission, and criteria for measuring a patient's progress which are as soft and squishy as your secretary's funbags. See, that's why psychiatry isn't an exact science but a playground for New Age gurus."

"What would you consider a positive outcome?" Nolan asks.

"The bottom line, even for you, should be that a patient accepts himself the way he is. I consented to a procedure that eradicated my identity. What clearer proof do you need that you fucked it up?"

"We can only offer our help. It's up to you whether you take it or not."

"That's right! If the patient doesn't recover, it's his fault; if he does, it's a therapeutic success. Wilson isn't exactly one of your success stories either, is he? Stuck in here for over five months - because of alcoholism. Even I was out faster."

"James's problems can't be reduced to alcoholism."

"You always have an excuse, don't you?" He stretches out a demanding hand. "My case file."

Nolan is prepared for this. The file is already lying at the top of his pile of current files. He picks it up and hands it to Greg, who takes it, his raised eyebrows indicating his surprise at the easy victory. After flicking through it his face scrunches up in disgust.

"This is worthless!" he opines, sending the file spinning onto the desk with a flick of his wrist.

"Those are your medical records detailing your patient history, all tests carried out on you in Mayfield, your diagnosis, all therapeutic measures that were initiated, all medication given to you, a chronological chart of your progress, ..."

"The notes on my therapy sessions have been removed."

"They weren't removed because they were never in your case file," Nolan says blandly. "My therapy notes are a subjective agglomeration of my impressions during a session, not an objective medical log - as I'm sure you'll agree. As such, they have no business in a case file that may get passed on to another physician during the course of a patient's treatment."

"You don't intend to give them to me," Greg surmises.

"No."

Greg's eyes flicker around the room once again, coming to rest on the three filing cabinets behind Nolan's desk. Then his gaze returns to Nolan, appraising, calculating. "What do you want from me in return for the information in my therapy notes?"

"My therapy notes about you," Nolan corrects automatically. "I want something for you. I want you to talk to me."

The fingers of Greg's right hand tap a complicated rhythm on his right leg; the slightly hollow sound proceeding from his prosthesis, where a healthy man would have sound-absorbing muscle matter, is intensely disconcerting. "Don't try to sell this as a favour to me or my, what do you call it, mental hygiene. You're blackmailing me."

"I'm offering you a fair bargain. Those notes are as much a mirror of my soul as they are of yours. I have never, ever shown a patient the notes I make during therapy sessions, and I have only shown excerpts to colleagues when we were involved with the same patient. I won't release something as sensitive as that without ensuring that it won't cause more damage than good." He pauses, gauging Greg's mood. "I need you to talk to me, so that I can assess your mental state and make sure that what you find out won't send you into a tailspin."

Greg leans back with his hands clasped loosely around the back of the chair. "I don't need therapy. I'm fine. Seems I was in pain and an addict, but no leg - no pain. Problem solved. As for my past, I can't remember it, so it can't bother me." He catches Nolan's disbelieving look, so he adds, "My interest in my past is academic in nature, like people who research their genealogies hoping that their ancestors were members of the European nobility rather than deported convicts."

"Then why pursue it?" Nolan asks reasonably. "Greg, ..." Greg stiffens, so Nolan quickly corrects himself. "Sorry, Pete. Four years ago your past seemed so worthless to you that you decided to wipe it out in a manner that could easily have turned you into a permanent resident of an institution like this one."

That gets to Greg. His eyes slide away, indicating a direct hit. This must be something that has been bothering him too - the thought that with the procedure he endangered his independence - for although Greg carried risky behaviour to extraordinary levels, generally showing a complete disregard for his physical safety, he was always wary of compromising his mental abilities.

Nolan takes a deep breath. "Besides," he continues, "after years of living without an identity, you have suddenly been bombarded with facts about your past, turning your perception of yourself upside down. Even if you had never been in need of therapy before, your recent past as an amnesiac more than qualifies you for it."

"My peg leg also qualifies me for the Paralympics, but I don't intend to participate." He pretends to give the matter a moment of serious thought. "Not next year, but I'm considering training for 2020. Why don't we set a similar target for therapy?"

Nolan decides to abandon the route of persuasive reasoning and return to the well-trodden path of coercion. "You want my notes - talk to me." He props his elbows on the desk and leans his chin on his folded fingers, giving Greg a challenging look.

"Fine." Greg says abruptly. "How many sessions?"

"That depends on you. As many as we need to get you to talk."

Greg stiffens. "You don't expect me to consent to a bargain where you get to decide whether I've fulfilled my end of it."

"You don't expect me to consent to a bargain where you get what you want without delivering the goods yourself. If I agree to a certain number of sessions without making any stipulations regarding your participation, you'll sit here silent as the grave."

Greg's eyes slide back to the filing cabinet.

"Don't bother to rack your brains about how you can break into my office and steal your case notes," Nolan says. "They're in a safe."

"I'm hurt!" Greg says, but he seems amused. His fingers tap a Bach fugue on the back of the chair. "In-patient or out-patient?"

Nolan chooses his words with care. "For therapeutic purposes out-patient treatment should normally suffice: as far as the opiates go, we're probably dealing with a lapse, not a full-blown relapse, and while your amnesia is undoubtedly fascinating, it hardly justifies your presence here 24/7. We do, however, need to consider the legal ramifications of last night's incident. No judge will pull you out of in-patient treatment in order to clap you into jail because of one bottle of Percocet, and in-patient treatment will boost your defence enormously should the matter land in court."

Greg leans back. "So my choice is either definite incarceration here or possible incarceration in Princeton."

"I wouldn't call it incarceration. As long as I can detect no immediate threat to your own health or that of others there's no reason why you shouldn't get privileges."

"Do I get to be on the same ward as Wilson?"

Nolan can't suppress a smile. "It's my aim to provide treatment for James and for you, not to supply you with a playground on which you can rehearse your plans for world dominance."

Greg's mouth twitches in turn.

"But there's no reason why you shouldn't see each other during recreation time," Nolan adds, reasonably sure that sooner or later he'll regret making this concession. "And I'll have the piano brought down from Ward 6. There's no one there at the moment who can play."

"Oh, you're spoiling me!" Greg says dramatically. "How can I refuse such an offer?"

Nolan rises. "Let's get the paperwork done and inform Dr Cuddy."

Greg gives a brief nod and disentangles his legs from the chair. Nolan holds the door open for him. Dr Cuddy is sitting on a chair in the hallway nursing a cup of coffee that is untouched so far. She looks up hopefully when they come out.

Greg holds out his hand. "Scrip," he says.

Dr Cuddy's face falls. She leans down to place her cup on the ground, and then digs around in her purse, avoiding Nolan's eyes as she pulls out a pen and a pad. Rolling his eyes, Nolan pushes Greg's hand aside.

"He's my patient now, Dr Cuddy, so from now on I'm the only person who'll be writing prescriptions for him," he says. Dr Cuddy's head jerks up and she glances quickly from him to Greg for confirmation.

"Spoilsport," Greg mutters.

"That's ... good news," she says in as level a tone as she can manage, but there's unmistakeable relief in her eyes.

"I'm taking him to admissions and then to his ward," Nolan informs her.

"Okay." She turns to Greg, whose eyes are meandering all over the hall. "Send me a list of the things you need and I'll have them picked up from your apartment. Oh, and I'll organise someone to clean it up."

"Thanks," Greg says awkwardly. He glances at her briefly before jerking his head at Nolan. "Let's go before I run for the hills."

Dr Cuddy puts a hesitant hand on his arm. "Good luck, Pete," she says, and then she turns away and walks rapidly down the corridor towards the exit.

Greg tips his head sideways as he watches her go. When she disappears round the corner he straightens up. Noticing Nolan observing him he shrugs, saying, "She's got a great ass."

"So have I," Nolan says. "Follow me."