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readingrat) wrote2012-05-14 10:02 pm
fic: The Kelpie - Part IV Chapter 2
A/N: Another big thanks to my beta ![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6){kind=small}
brighidsfire who gave me valuable insider information for this chapter.
Part IV: Mayfield
Chapter 2: Barrels out of Bonds
"What have you planned for the coming weekend?" Nolan asks as the session draws to a close.
Wilson smiles, confident about this part of his agenda. "Oh, just normal stuff: shopping on Saturday with Allison - I desperately need some new shoes - and on Sunday I'm taking Rachel to the zoo."
"So," says Nolan in that mildly curious tone that never fails to put Wilson on his guard, "how is your relationship with Allison progressing?"
"It's not ...," Wilson begins, then falters. He gives it a second go. "We're taking it slow at the moment, seeing whether it's what we both want."
Nolan nods his head rhythmically. "Okay," he says. "Any specific reason for the change in pace?"
Yes, there is a very specific reason and it answers to the name of Gregory House. When Allison visited him a few days after the PPTH Anniversary Gala, the conversation turning to House (as was to be expected), it soon became obvious that she blamed House mostly for his, Wilson's, present state. According to Allison, his problem was his total dependence on House, a trait House had nursed and cherished in order to further his own interests; House's reappearance in his life was thus a pestilence that needed to be combatted with their combined efforts.
It isn't that he doesn't agree with Allison on some level: there's no doubt that his friendship with House had a negative influence on some of his behavioural patterns, and he's of one mind with her with regard to House encouraging behaviour that furthered his own plans no matter what the consequences for Wilson. (He's still angry with himself for succumbing to the influence of House's neediness after the car crash, first helping him to survive the trial and then getting actively involved in House's insane witness protection programme.) The thing is, it's one thing to question the purity of House's motives, but it's quite another to blame him for the choices that he, Wilson, made in the past. Allison may believe that House is capable of poisoning the very air he breathes, but Wilson is painfully aware that in all his sins of commission or omission there was an element of choice, and being House's friend does not exonerate him from the responsibility of the choices he made. If House managed to wake the beast in him, then only because there was one slumbering within. House is not Frankenstein, the creator of monsters; he merely reveals what lies hidden, uncovers lies, unmasks hypocrites - such as James Evan Wilson.
This difference of opinion wouldn't matter - didn't matter till now - but now there's no doubt that House is back in his life, for better or for worse, and there's no exorcism that'll drive him away until his curiosity is satisfied. And Wilson isn't exactly sad about that, because life without House isn't what Allison makes it out to be, a return to purity and innocence. It's dreary, lonely and boring. Allison, however, has decided that what he needs is House purged out of his system. This isn't exactly new: both Bonnie and Julie had been pretty much of the same opinion, even if neither of them were as decided or vociferous in expressing it. Neither of his marriages had survived his partner's disapproval of House. (Okay, he's doing it again - blaming someone, in this case his ex-wives and possibly House, for outcomes for which he is mainly to blame.)
The fact of the matter is that Allison wants to fix him while he doesn't want to be fixed. He has always been the strong one in a relationship, catering to the needs of a weaker partner, and no amount of therapy will ever turn him into someone who'll agree to a needy role in a relationship. Furthermore, if Allison believes that he was a passive victim of House's madness, then she's plain delusional. Yes, he often gave in, he frequently allowed House's manic energy to override his better judgment, but it was always an active decision, never a passive sliding into something he'd expressly wanted to avoid. Since his marriages didn't survive his wives' passive-aggressive disapproval of House, there's no way a relationship with Allison is likely to last if she's already openly hostile towards House at the outset.
That doesn't mean that he doesn't respect her. Quite the contrary - he's all admiration for the way she manages to focus on House's shortcomings and block out his brilliance, charisma, restless energy, dominance and vulnerability. Few people can do that, and of those only a negligible number are heterosexual women; no matter what 'type' of guy women go for, House checks at least one, if not more of their boxes. Allison's switch in attitude from 'House is a lonely, hurt child who needs my loving and cherishing care' to 'House is toxic to his environment' is somewhat extreme, but it's nothing he can't empathise with, having gone through that sort of a pendulum motion himself a few times.
It isn't quite what he intends to tell Nolan; he isn't sure how Nolan will react to his changed attitude towards House - if it is a change. He isn't really sure: it was easy to be angry with House and tell himself that in the unlikely event of House knocking at his door, he'd slam it in his face and make sure he jammed his fingers in the doorjamb while he was at it. Now that House has fallen down his chimney and is sitting in the hearth in a pile of cinders, appearing both forlorn and absurdly proud of himself at the same time, it's a lot more difficult to rid himself of him.
So he tells Nolan, "It would be a long distance relationship - New York isn't that far from Princeton, but Allison has a challenging job and I would need to take it slow. Besides, let's be honest about it - I'm not a good choice for her. Her career is taking off whereas mine is definitely stagnating. That's the sort of situation that can cause a lot of tension in a relationship, especially since I'm bound to have problems adjusting to my changed status in the professional world."
Nolan nods thoughtfully. "It's good that you're taking a realistic view of this. It's even better that you're not making any rushed decisions either way." He looks down at his notes. "Okay, that's the weekend. One more overnight pass midweek, and if all goes well, there's no reason why you shouldn't be released the Friday after."
"That's great. Umm, what about House?" He's been expecting another visit from House this week, because it seems unlikely that House will let matters rest where they are, but so far Nolan hasn't mentioned the matter at all. That is odd because if Nolan is warding House off in the belief that he, Wilson, is too vulnerable to deal with House, then that begs the question of how Nolan expects him to be able to cope with House swooping down on him the moment he is released. The second possibility, that House has lost interest, is one that he discards straightaway.
"Ah, yes, Greg. That's another matter that we need to talk about," Nolan says.
Wilson leans back. Matters they 'need' to talk about usually concern some aspect of his behaviour that Nolan considers worthy of modification.
"You may run into Greg during recreation time out on the grounds or in the common rooms," Nolan continues.
Wilson's eyebrows shoot up. Whatever he was expecting it wasn't this. "House is - what the hell is he doing here?"
"Sorry, patient confidentiality. But I thought I'd forewarn you so that you'd be prepared. That's all, really."
House is a patient again at Mayfield? Then he must have relapsed. Badly. Or slumped back into a depression. Or both.
"How long has he been here?" he asks.
Nolan lifts his hands. "Sorry, again. But feel free to ask him when you see him."
"I'm ... allowed to talk to him?"
"Sure," Nolan says, as if he hadn't been shielding him from House's verbal attacks a mere week ago.
"O-kay," he says slowly.
Recreation time has him at the window of the common room. It's a cool, blustery day with occasional showers. A few patients are jogging along the meandering paths and someone is trying to fly a kite, but all in all the grounds don't look very inviting. He's considering going to the small library on the fourth floor to read a few magazines when he spots a lone figure on one of the benches. Abruptly he turns away, grabs his coat and scarf and goes outside.
He's within a few yards of him before House looks up over his reading glasses and acknowledges his presence by giving him the briefest of nods.
"What are you doing here?" Wilson asks, irritated by House's lack of reaction. Confronted with the man in flesh and blood he is reminded that knowing House isn't just exciting or rewarding, it's also strenuous and a lot of hard work.
"Reading," House answers, his attention firmly focused on an open file in his hands.
"Don't evade. What are you doing in Mayfield?"
House gives him a sly glance. "Accessing my therapy notes. It's a sort of tit-for-tat arrangement: Nolan gets to boast that he is treating the amnesiac of the decade while I get my therapy notes." He gives the file a little shake.
Wilson gives up waiting for an 'appropriate' reaction and sits down next to him, squinting unashamedly at what House is reading. The space in the centre of each page is covered in large, loose writing in black ink, heavily underscored in at least three different colours. The wide margins are covered in notes in the same colours as the underscoring, with arrows, circles and other esoteric symbols connecting random bits to other random bits.
"Nolan's notes? Nolan's therapy notes?" So far, he hasn't noticed Nolan making complex colour-coded notes.
"Yep. Pretty useless so far."
"What do the colours mean?"
"They came without an instruction manual, but the system seems to be green for resolved issues, red for important unresolved issues, pink for less important unresolved issues, blue for relationship stuff, orange for work-related stuff, ..." He trails off, leafing through the small pile to check whether he can find any more colours.
From what Wilson can see, there's a lot of red and blue, both colours overlapping in various places, the odd arrow in orange and a few splotches of pink. If there's any green at all, then he can't see it.
"Did you ... steal them?" he asks with a feeling of premonition.
"What do you take me for, a common thief?" House asks with mock indignation.
"A common thief knows he's subject to the same laws as everyone else. He hopes he won't get caught. You believe you're above the law, hence you don't care whether you get caught."
House scratches the side of his nose. "I'm hurt. I asked nicely and said 'please', so Nolan gave them to me."
That's never the whole story, but it's a point of minor interest. "What did you do to get put in here?"
"Who says I did anything?"
"You're never here voluntarily."
"Maybe I like it here," House says with a calculating look. "Fond memories ..."
"You have no memories!"
"Ah, got me there! But Nolan has mine, in fifteen case files like this one, and I intend to read them all." He scans three pages in quick succession. Anyone who didn't know him would assume that he's merely glancing over them. Wilson, however, is aware that each page will have left a photographic imprint in House's memory and that even as he turns to the next page his amazing mind is sorting, cataloguing and storing information, forming cross-connections to other data, creating reference points and supplying weird associations.
"Seems to have been quite the year," House murmurs, returning to a previously perused page.
"What year?" he asks, although he has a good idea which one House means.
"2009. Okay, end of 2008 onwards. My father died," he taps a mess of red and blue, "one of my fellows offs himself, and then your girlfriend ... Hang on!" Something has caught his eye. "I was in the same bus in the middle of the night coming back from a bar? Was I doing your girlfriend?"
"No," Wilson says curtly. They've never, ever discussed Amber's death and its impact on their friendship. The topic is taboo and there's a Good Reason for that.
"No? Then how come you ...," his eyes flicker back to the notes, "blamed me for her death?"
"I didn't!" Wilson protests. At House's disbelieving stare he amends, "I don't now."
House leans back mustering him curiously, showing no signs of sympathy, guilt or embarrassment. On the upside, he isn't exhibiting any sort of wicked glee or malice either. He's simply curious, in a House-ian way of course, which means he'll pursue the matter, but he could just as well be discussing the results of a clinical trial for cancer medication for all the personal interest he's showing. (Contrary to what the general public believes, House has marked tells that reveal emotional involvement, and Wilson can read every one of those!) After a moment he demonstratively returns to his therapy notes, but Wilson's relief is short-lived.
"Ah, it's all here," House says, stabbing another heavily annotated page. His tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, he re-reads the page twice, his puzzled frown morphing into a scowl. He finally looks up and shakes his head. "Multiple organ failure after amantadine poisoning because the crash trashed her kidneys. How the hell was that supposed to have been my fault?"
"It wasn't," Wilson says helplessly. "I - needed someone to blame."
"And you chose me."
Wilson nods mutely. Put like that, it sounds stupid, callous and unjust. At the time, however, it had seemed logical and inevitable. House had been like an oversized baby, craving attention and throwing tantrums when he didn't get any. Getting so shit-faced that he needed to be picked up from a bar had been part of his stratagem to divert Wilson's attention from Amber back to himself. Even if nothing disastrous had happened that night, sooner or later he'd have pushed so hard that something would have given: either their friendship or his relationship with Amber. The bus accident had merely served to bundle that destructive energy ...
"Do you know how many types of crazy that is?" House asks, his eyes already on the next page.
Wilson stiffens, wondering for a brief moment whether House can read his thoughts.
"My father's death appears to have been a Cause for Joy," House remarks next, adding drily, "Why am I not surprised? ... Wait - you drugged me and kidnapped me to make me go to the funeral?"
"Cuddy drugged you; I only ... okay, it was my idea. You didn't want to go, but we thought you should, for your mother's sake and to get some closure. You and your dad ... didn't get along very well," he ends lamely. The funeral trip isn't something he's proud of in retrospect, although House is hardly in a position to claim high moral ground with regard to incapacitating kith and kin with drugs.
"That must be the understatement of the year," House quips, tracing a finger down the page. "Regular sessions with a belt; ice baths whenever he caught me lying; whole nights shut out on the back porch." He reads each item off the sheet as though it was a patient's symptoms. "Oh yeah, and a broken arm after getting pushed down the stairs."
Wilson is happy that he's seated, he's that dizzy. "I ... I never knew. You only told me he wouldn't speak with you one whole summer."
"Really?" House turns the page. "Ah, that's here too. It doesn't seem I minded that too much." It's only underlined in pink.
Wilson can't detect any emotion in House's face or voice other than pleasure at having found that stray item one page on. Other than that he's completely indifferent. They could be discussing the relative merits of pizza as opposed to Chinese takeaway for all he seems to care.
"Why didn't you ever tell me? I'd never have made you go to the bloody funeral if I'd known!"
"How am I supposed to know what I told you and why?" House asks reasonably. He shrugs. "I assume that I didn't consider it any of your business."
"But now you do?"
House considers this. "Now it makes no difference," he finally says.
Wilson stares into the distance, watching a lone maple leaf spiral to the ground as he contemplates the present state of affairs. One would sooner expect a politician to tell the truth than House to divulge anything pertaining to his past. He briefly ponders whether this unprecedented openness, with House practically reading aloud from his therapy notes, could be the result of whatever medication Nolan has prescribed, only to discard the notion: he has seen House drunk, high, drunk and high, disoriented, maudlin, and sentimental, but never so completely out of the loop that he'd volunteer personal information of such heavy calibre.
And then he understands. "That isn't you," he says obscurely, gesturing at the file on House's lap.
House snaps the file shut, displaying the label stuck on its cover: House, Gregory.
"That's me," he says grinning, "and I have the fingerprints to prove it." He waggles his fingertips annoyingly under Wilson's nose.
"It isn't 'you' as in: you don't see yourself as Gregory House. You're studying it like it was a patient file."
"It is a patient file. What else is it supposed to be?" House says, his voice raised in irritation.
"You don't care about what you did or what happened to you!"
Cool blue eyes appraise him. "No, I don't. Why should I? I can't remember any of this crap, and I sure as hell don't intend to let it ruin my day."
Wilson wants to shake him and yell, You have to care! That's twenty years of shared history you're holding in your hands, trials, pain and sometimes even laughter, and you're treating it like an article in bloody Modern Psychology!
But he merely asks, "Why are you reading the notes if they're irrelevant to your present state of mind?"
"Because it pisses me off that everyone claims to know more about my past and my screwed-up personality than I do." He tips his head to the side, his frown deepening. "Someone should teach the man how to use word processing. His handwriting sucks."
Wilson considers what House said about wanting to know about himself. "Some of your stuff is in storage at a unit near Princeton. If you're interested in rooting around in it, I could take you there." Anyone with the slightest sense of self-preservation would hand House the key to the storage unit and leave him to his own devices.
"Stuff? What kind of stuff?" House asks, his face lighting up.
Wilson tries to remember what he brought to the storage unit three years ago. "Some of your furniture, books, pictures, a few knick-knacks."
"Great - let's go!" House says, rising.
"Wait! You need a day pass from Nolan," he says firmly.
"Day pass - stay pass. Let's elope," House suggests, waggling his eyebrows at Wilson.
"And spend our honeymoon in a storage unit. No thanks!" And for the first time that afternoon he risks a tiny smile.
"You're the candidate in a game show," House says.
They're in Wilson's car on the highway towards Princeton. House has a cigarette stuck behind his ear, but so far he hasn't lit it. Wilson has few hopes that the cause for House's reticence is the no-smoking sticker on the glove compartment. He's probably saving it for the extra psychological edge that blowing the smoke into Wilson's face will give him when he touches on something especially tricky. Like Amber. Or Wilson's deal with Tritter.
"Okay," Wilson says. There's no avoiding this probing into his psyche, disguised as an exercise in statistics, probability, chaos theory, you-name-it. If he's very, very lucky, it'll be one of those scenarios that House tried out on him before the EST, so he'll remember it while House has no idea that he's heard it before.
"The show master shows you three identical doors. Behind one is a shiny new red Ferrari, behind the other two there's a pig. If you choose the right door, you get to be owner of the Ferrari."
"One pig behind both doors or one pig behind each door?" Wilson asks, more to gain time than because it matters. He hasn't heard this one before.
"One pig behind each door," House says impatiently. "You have to choose one of the doors."
"Okay. I take the middle one. Do I own a pig now?"
"No. The door you've chosen remains closed. Instead, the show master, saying that he'd like to increase your chances of making the right choice, opens one of the other doors, revealing a pig behind it. He asks you whether you want to stick to your original choice or whether you'd like to switch to the remaining closed door. Now," House takes the cigarette from behind his ear and twiddles it around, "do you stay with the door you chose at the outset or do you take the other door?"
"Shit, this is probability, isn't it?" Wilson asks rhetorically. In school he'd totally messed up the math exam on probability. "Wait, no, it doesn't have to be." He narrows his eyes and taps the steering wheel to the rhythm of his thoughts. Then he squints over at House. "I can choose any door, right, even the open one? I choose the one the show master just opened, the one with the pig."
Cool, appraising eyes bore through him. Yes, this is a test. "Why?"
"Because if I win the shiny red Ferrari, you'll 'borrow' it and put it through someone's wall and it'll be impounded as evidence, so I'll be left with nothing. You don't want a pig, so it's safe. I'll call it Wilbur, move to Oklahoma with it and live happily ever after."
"Nice." House leans back and sticks the cigarette behind his ear again. "You hate Oklahoma," he says. It's difficult to say whether he's satisfied or disappointed.
"So what's the right answer?"
"If you want the Ferrari, you'd do better to switch to the remaining door."
Wilson mulls over this. "Why? Two doors left, one with a pig, the other with the Ferrari behind it. That's a fifty-fifty either way, so I may as well stick with the original door."
"Wrong. The odds are two to one that in the first round you chose a door with a pig behind it, in which case the show master has to take the remaining pig out of the game, and the last door hides the Ferrari. So you'd do better to switch."
"But that isn't what you'd do," Wilson says. "You don't stick to the rules of probability. You take chances, so you'd stick with the door you chose first."
"Wrong. I never take chances when I can avoid it."
"Right!" Wilson says sarcastically.
"I," House continues, ignoring him, "would observe the show master. He has to know behind which door the Ferrari is hidden in order to take the right door out of the game. I'd be able to tell by his reaction whether I chose the right door or not, and based on that I'd decide whether I need to switch doors or not."
"So you want to outwit the laws of statistics and probability by including the human element in your calculations."
"There's a human element the moment there is human interaction, but the human element is as predictable as any other element. It's just a question of deducing the rules that govern human behaviour and applying them to a given situation."
Wilson pulls off the freeway near Lawrence. The storage unit, a large concrete block in the middle of nowhere, exudes anonymity; two surveillance cameras eye them as the gate opens. He parks in a disability parking space in front of the unit, kills the engine and looks at House.
"Don't expect too much," he says cautiously. "You had ... have a lot of stuff, and there are some very interesting things in there, but - there's practically nothing personal."
House doesn't say anything. He merely swings himself out of the car. Outside, he waits for Wilson to join him to show him the way. Wilson leads the way inside, looking around a little uncertainly. It's been a long time since he was here; after House left, he'd simply packed up his stuff haphazardly and had driven it here.
"You got a heated unit for some furniture and a heap of papers?" House exclaims when Wilson leads him to the section with the climate controlled units. "You must've really, really loved me!" Blue eyes regard him quizzically, with just a note of suspicion.
"I prefer to think of it as a sign of respect for your property, specifically your couch, on which I spent many a night," Wilson says drily. "My love for you died when you rejected my proposal."
That has the desired effect of distracting House from the anomalies of Wilson's storage renting habits. "You proposed ... naah, you're kidding me!"
"I'm not. I have witnesses - the workers at the restaurant where I proposed, and my then-neighbour who also witnessed the proposal. Don't your therapy files mention the matter? It was in 2010, when you were still in therapy." The loveliness of this is that it's all absolutely true, so House's in-built lie detector can't freak.
They've reached the unit now; he bends to open the padlock , and then pulls up the rolling door while House stands aloof, watching him struggle as the door jams halfway up. When he's finally got it open all the way, House peers inside.
"It's dark!" he says unnecessarily.
Wilson flicks on a light switch next to the door. A bulb on the ceiling casts meagre light on stacked crates, shelves with boxes on them and furniture shrouded in dust sheets. It's all rather impersonal and dismal, rather like the jetsam of a foreclosure sale. There's just one shelf with a few knick-knacks that had turned up after Wilson had sealed the last crate - mementos that had defied his efforts to banish House away in straw-padded boxes. Wilson, ever prepared, pulls a flashlight from his pocket, but House has already stepped inside with the breathless awe of a devotee who has gained access to his deity's innermost sanctum. His eyes widen, his nostrils flare, and pulling himself upright, he pivots slowly around his own axis, taking in everything he can see. And Wilson knows with crystal clarity why he chose to accompany House instead of giving him the key and leaving him to fend for himself - this is too good to miss.
House walks over to the massive wardrobe that used to stand in his bedroom and reverently lifts a hand to stroke the wood along the grain. Then he tugs the door open. Inside are House's biking gear, a few pairs of trainers, and some other random items.
"Wow, hot!" House says, fingering the leather jacket. "What happened to the bike?"
"Sold," Wilson says briefly. The brain procedure, performed in a private clinic near London, had eaten up all of House's assets and then some. They'd had to pay a hefty sum to persuade the owner to rent out an OT and nursing staff, and to keep mum about it afterwards.
A moment later House tosses a pair of trainers next to Wilson's feet. "Hang onto those, they're going back with us," he tells Wilson.
Not waiting to see whether Wilson is obeying his instructions he turns to a long, low object and pulls the dust sheet off it, revealing his leather couch. After staring at it for a few seconds he dives onto it face down. His torso vibrates as he inhales deeply, before exhaling with a sigh of deep satisfaction. After repeating the procedure twice he rolls over to squint up at Wilson.
"No 'personal belongings', huh? Wilson, you're a moron."
"Well, there are no pictures ... " House is right - he is a moron. If House didn't consider pictures, photo albums, diaries, etc. of importance before his brain surgery, why should he do so now?
An hour later House is sitting among the crates surrounded by padding, books, journals, cooking utensils (Wilson has no idea why he packed those, but House used to be enormously proud and possessive of his state-of-the-art knives and saucepans), and balls (Wilson knows why he packed those), his expression a blend of bliss and that distilled concentration that he gets when he's on a case. Every now and then he holds up an item for Wilson's benefit or tosses it onto the growing pile of 'Things to be re-possessed at once', but mostly he's silent, totally absorbed in his exploration.
"A first edition of Gray's Anatomy," he announces, holding the leather-bound manuscript up before dropping it back into the crate. There's a longer silence while he sorts through journals; Wilson kills the time by thumbing through the pile that's already at his feet, thankful that he got rid of all of House's porn - they'd never get out of here if he hadn't, and rules in Mayfield are strict and very pc on such matters.
House is frowning at a book in his hands; when Wilson approaches to see what it is, he looks up quickly and drops it back into the crate he's working on. At Wilson's querying glance he mutters, "It's nothing, just a Harry Potter book." He sounds ashamed, whether of his former juvenile reading habits or whether of his present interest in his children's books is difficult to say.
"You had an eclectic taste in reading," Wilson remarks casually. "We watched all the Harry Potter movies together, and you possess the entire Jack Cannon series. The Twilight series too, I should imagine."
"What, chick lit?" House says, disgusted.
"Well, maybe not. You definitely watched the movies, though."
House is rooting around in the crate again, resurfacing with three Jack Cannon books, his reading glasses slightly askew. "Ha, cool!" he says. "Dunno why they never made movies of those." Brandishing a book with a canary yellow dust jacket he says, "This one is the best in the series." He looks at a book with an ice-blue dust jacket in distaste. "Damn, I actually spent money on that last book! Had I known how craptastic it was, I'd never have bought it."
"You didn't buy it - she gave you a copy. Look inside: it's dedicated to you."
House opens the front cover. "It isn't signed."
"I said 'dedicated', not 'signed'. You told her not to mess up the pristine pages by splattering ink all over them," Wilson quotes loosely.
"To Dr House, without whom this book would never have been completed," House reads aloud when he finds the page with the dedication. He looks at Wilson questioningly.
"She was your patient and you saved her life," Wilson says, smiling.
"So she dedicated the crappiest book in the series to me?"
"It was the one she was working on when she fell sick."
House leafs through the book moodily. "It sucks! We don't find out the identity of Jack's father, and there's this totally ridiculous cliff-hanger ending. The stuff she wrote after the Jack Cannon series is complete mind-fuck: New Age nonsense about the mind finding healing." He grimaces. "I should've let the woman die!"
Wilson shakes his head, amused. "You're incapable of letting anyone die, even if saving their lives costs you," he says, thinking back on all the times House risked law suits, losing his license, and even the woman he loved, Stacy, in his drive to save his patients at all costs.
House glances at him sharply. Then he abandons the crate, wandering off to a bulky shrouded object at the back of the unit. There are a few boxes stacked on top of it, so he can only fold the dust sheet back, but when he does so the effect is even better than what Wilson envisioned when picturing this scene.
"Oh - My – Go-o-o-d!" House breathes in tones of hushed awe, an expression of unguarded wonder and delight on his worn, jaded features. Then he reverently trails his fingertips along the lid of the baby grand, his eyes closed, his mouth open slightly; Wilson feels voyeuristic watching him, but it's probably the only glimpse of House without his defences in place that he'll ever get. A sharp bolt of anger shoots through him at the thought of the women who were lucky enough to have House open up to them, whose betrayal made House shut down even further.
"Don't stand around - help me with this!" House orders, pulling him out of his reverie. He's pulling the boxes off the piano, piling them haphazardly wherever there's an empty space, with little regard for their contents. Wilson winces at a particularly loud crash and tinkle, remembering the hours he spent wrapping up wine glasses and whisky tumblers in tissue paper, and hurries to help House remove the last few cartons. Finally House tugs off the huge dust sheet, revealing his black baby grand in all its glory, and opens the lid. He plays a few experimental chords and arpeggios before giving Wilson a small nod of approval. That's all the acknowledgement he'll ever get for saving the instrument and renting heated storage space for it.
The stool is nowhere to be seen, so House pulls up a crate and sits down, lifting his hands with a flourish before bringing them down in a ringing chord. Next he plays scales, a cheek muscle twitching every now and then at some imagined dissonance.
"Needs to be tuned," he mutters.
Wilson shrugs. Trust House to find a hair in the soup. He glances at his watch - and freezes.
"House?" he says tentatively.
House, busy playing a chromatic scale from the lowest to the highest note, ignores him, although it's difficult to say whether that's deliberate - House won't respond to his real name, but Wilson refuses to participate in this charade of calling him Pete or Barnes, evading the issue whenever possible but calling him 'House' when it can't be avoided - or whether House is so immersed in the piano as to be deaf to all other auditory impulses.
"Here," House says, cocking his head sideways while he repeatedly presses the highest key - Wilson has no idea which note it is. There's a jangle that even Wilson has to acknowledge as non-imaginary. House rises and opens up the case, holding a hand out to Wilson without looking at him.
"Flashlight!" he demands.
Wilson goes back to the crates to retrieve it, saying, "It's almost seven. We have to leave or we'll be late."
House doesn't respond. He leans back to press the offending key again, and then he peers into the piano's innards, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Wilson shines the flashlight into the corpus, aware that the sooner House gets to the bottom of the Mystery of the Jangling Note, the fewer speed limits he'll have to break on the drive back to Mayfield.
"Clever," House murmurs. He plucks the flashlight from Wilson's hand and shines it on a spot just below the shortest three strings. There's a small rectangular protrusion that at first glance looks as though it is part of the corpus, identical in wood and varnish.
"What is it?" Wilson asks reluctantly.
House grins. "I'd have to hazard a guess: my secretest stash of vicodin."
That's what Wilson fears too; the small box isn't large enough to hold more than a bottle of pills or a vial of morphine.
"It's really diabolical," House continues, with admiration at his own deviousness in his tone. "I must have slipped it in sideways and then glued it to the corpus. Now there's no way of getting at the pills without damaging the baby in some way. A Last Resort Stash, the addict's equivalent to the nuclear bomb. I wonder what it would have taken to make me break into that."
The drug's presence only adds to Wilson's sense of disquiet. "Let's go. We'll come back some other day ...,"
House is perched on the crate-stool once more, pounding out the first bars of a well-known, most un-House-ian hymn. Could House have turned to religion for solace in England? But then he breaks into song:
Would you be free from your memories grim?
There's power in the drug, power in the drug!
Would you o'er sadness a victory win?
There is wonder-working power in the drug!
There is power, power, conscience-numbing power
In the poppy plant's juice.
There is power, power, eu-huh-phoric power
In the juice of the poppy plant.
Wilson pulls out his cell phone and goes outside to escape the deafening din in the small unit.
"Hello? Darryl, it's James. I think we're going to be late. House has discovered his baby grand, and I can't get him to leave," he says all in a rush.
"And why is that your problem?" Darryl queries.
"Even if I manage to drag him away now, we won't make it by eight!" Wilson continues, doing his best not to sound whiny, but reasonable. "So is it okay if we come back a bit later?"
"James, you have a day pass till eight. You are responsible for getting yourself back in time."
"But ... I can't leave House here."
"Why not?"
"How'll he get back? We came in my car."
He can hear Nolan sighing at the other end. "I take it that you informed him that it's time to leave."
"Yes, of course."
"Then he's aware of the consequences. It's his decision, just as waiting for him at the risk of having your privileges rescinded is yours."
"You want me to abandon him here?" Wilson asks disbelievingly.
Nolan chuckles drily. "It's a storage facility off Princeton, not Death Valley, and Greg's a big boy. It won't kill him."
"There's more," Wilson admits. "There's a vicodin stash glued to the inside of the piano. It's almost impossible to get at, but ...,"
"James, there are bars and liquor stores all the way from Philly to Princeton, yet I gave you a day pass."
"But ... you released him into my care today!"
"Did I say that?"
Wilson massages his neck, trying to remember what Darryl had said when they left Mayfield. "Not precisely," he mutters.
"Okay, then I'll see you in an hour," Darryl says.
Closing his phone, Wilson returns to the unit where House, a remote expression on his face, is playing a Brahms lullaby.
"House, we've got to go!" Wilson says, striving for firmness rather than desperation.
House misses the next chord and opens his eyes to scowl at his hands. He repeats the last few bars, gives a small nod of satisfaction and continues the piece.
"House!"
"Busy here."
Wilson tugs his fingers through his hair, pacing up and down the confines of the unit and willing himself to wait this piece out. Expecting House to interrupt a running process in order to follow an arbitrary rule about time limits is foolish and short-sighted. At the end of the lullaby, however, ...
... House promptly launches into the next hymn, singing along with a cruel, sideways glance at Wilson:
What a friend we have in Wilson,
All our fucked-up-ness to bear!
What an ass he is to tarry
When he knows he shouldn't care.
Oh, what fun we often forfeit!
Oh, the boredom we endure!
But messing with his head provides us
With an instantaneous cure.
That's it! Wilson extracts the key from his pocket and slaps it on the piano. "Lock up when you leave," he advises, and then he stalks out.
What with finding an employee who'll let him out of the compound and the delay he has already incurred, he's an hour late in returning to the ward. The only upside to having his privileges rescinded for three days (and his release date postponed once again) is that it gives him seventy-two hours to cool down before there's a danger that he'll run into House and wring his scrawny neck.
Lewis E. Jones, 'There is Power in the Blood'
Joseph M. Scriven, 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus'
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Oh this fic is my lovely escape from all that :)
Um, there's a new chapter up on ff.net but I can't see it here? Not that I'm being pushy or anything...
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