fic: The Kelpie - Part IV Chapter 3

[readingrat]

Part IV: Mayfield

Chapter 3: The Return Journey

"The SSRIs you're on aren't working. I'm switching you to a different product," Nolan decrees.

"Which won't work either, because: I'm. Not. Depressed!"

Nolan gives him his I-know-better smirk. "Before you discovered your identity, you worked or you travelled around. You haven't worked at all since then ...,"

"It wasn't exactly exciting work," Pete shrugs

"... nor have you travelled anymore."

"There was no reason to - I know who I am now. And there's no reason to earn money if I don't need it to travel, is there?"

"But you do need some money to move to Seattle, and you need to get your paperwork done. You haven't done that either. Nor have you shown the slightest sign of doing so since you got to Mayfield. The work Dr Foreman is offering you isn't boring, so your reasoning doesn't hold."

Nolan can be damn irritating.

"Why," he asks, "aren't you getting your paperwork done so you can depart to Seattle?"

There's no answer to that. Not that it stops Nolan from speculating: "You lack motivation because you're depressed."

Pete snorts. Nolan continues, undeterred, "The reason I'm sure you're depressed, however, is because you haven't made a serious attempt to jerk me around."

"You're assuming I'm depressed because I'm being nice?" He manages to pack any amount of incredulous indignation into his voice, but Nolan merely smiles.

"There's a difference between 'nice' and 'non-manipulative'," he quibbles. "Besides, I'm not sure I don't like you better when you are manipulative. But let's return to the question at hand: why aren't you applying to have your identity confirmed? You've been in Mayfield for twenty days now, you've talked me into giving you a fair number of your files, you've had a whale of a time at James's expense, you've even had two - successful - meetings with your lawyer to prepare for the hearing, but you've done zilch for your future."

Pete gestures to the side of the freeway they're travelling down. "Can I get out?" he asks.

Nolan responds by accelerating his Mercedes and overtaking a Cadillac.

Pete hums, Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?

"I took the liberty of taking you down to Princeton two hours before the appointed time of the hearing because I want you to go to the Township and hand in your application. Max has taken care of all the paperwork. With a bit of luck you'll be Gregory House again within four weeks."

He's silent, trying to think of a good reason to refuse Nolan's request/order/injunction/demand. "You can't make me do that," is all he can come up with.

Nolan doesn't answer at once. He overtakes two more cars before he says, "You don't want to be Gregory House."

"This isn't about whether I want to be Gregory House. I am Gregory House, whether I want it or not," he says, because that's a fact.

"Yes, the rational part of you accepts that, but the rest of you doesn't. You're procrastinating because reclaiming his identity makes it an indelible fact, not just a theoretical possibility. What is it about Greg House that disturbs you so much?"

He shrugs nonchalantly, a gesture that is wasted on Nolan, who has his eyes on the freeway. "Nothing," he says. "It's just that I've gotten fond of Pete Barnes over the years. There's nothing - no memory - attached to House."

"Now you're manipulating me," Nolan says appreciatively. "You're saying what you think I want to hear. You don't seriously believe I'll buy that you have got attached to an identity of which you knew from the start that it wasn't yours? I repeat: what's wrong with House?"

He doesn't reply. Asking a question ten times isn't going to increase Nolan's chances of getting it answered.

"Pete, I can't help you if you won't talk to me," Nolan says relentlessly.

His head is saying that he doesn't need help, that he's fine as he is, but the words are already bubbling out of his mouth. "I drove a car into my ex-girlfriend's house. How the hell am I supposed to be okay with that?"

"But you told me that when you started exploring your past, you were aware that you could have been guilty of some crime. In fact, you were reckoning with something of the sort," Nolan says.

"Not with trying to kill my girlfriend."

"Correct. You were expecting organised crime and murder. This," he says with emphasis, "seems highly preferable: no one got killed and you were not a hardened criminal."

"I committed an act of violence in a fit of uncontrollable rage. Whether someone got killed or not is not the point. Someone could have got killed; four people nearly got killed, and one person got severely injured."

"I wouldn't call a sprained wrist a severe injury," Nolan observes.

Nolan thinks he's referring to Wilson. He doesn't correct Nolan; he isn't going to get into a debate on whether Rachel's injuries are his fault or not.

"No one got killed," Nolan repeats for what seems the umpteenth time, "and yet you are as bothered as if you had been a serial killer in the pay of the mafia. Ah, I get it," he says with that annoying expression of epiphany on his face. "If you had been a professional killer or had committed crimes as part of a 'job' for a crime syndicate, then you'd regret it on some abstract moral level, but you wouldn't fear a re-occurrence of your deeds. They'd have been committed in cold blood, so it would be your decision to don that part of Greg House's identity or to leave it behind you. But a crime committed in the heat of the moment, one that you had no rational control over - that scares you, because who can guarantee that you won't repeat that?"

Nolan is so pleased with himself that he doesn't seem to expect an answer. Pete stares out of the window. They whizz past the sign announcing their exit to Princeton and Nolan pulls into the right lane, braking reluctantly.

"I can go back to England," Pete says.

"Now that," says Nolan, "is the first intelligent idea you've voiced so far. But don't rejoice too soon - you are getting your paperwork done. Today. If you return to England, it'll be as Greg House."

"You can't ...," Pete commences, raising his voice.

"I can," Nolan says, raising his voice to as much effect as Pete. "Listen to me: whether you turn back into Greg House or not will not affect your propensity to lose your calm and do things that hurt the people around you and, more importantly, yourself. I have no idea whether you were trying to kill Lisa Cuddy (and her date) or yourself, but either way you were trying to hurt her, even though it endangered your own well-being."

"Let me out of this car!"

"As soon as I've finished talking. Yes, remaining Peter Barnes and ignoring what happened here four years (and more) ago is a lot easier than facing what you did here and determining to do whatever it takes to avoid making the same mistakes again. Because that's work, work on yourself; it's long-term, not a quick fix; and it's nothing that can be cured with medication or an operation, not even one that removes your memories, because the deeds remain even if your memory of them fades or is erased. But keeping Peter Barnes's papers doesn't turn you into him. You. Are. Greg. House."

"You call me 'Pete'," he objects weakly.

"I'll call you Napoleon if it keeps you happy - and if I consider it indicated. I do not consider it indicated to support you in your attempt to hide from your conscience. It's going to keep coming back to bite your butt. If you truly had none, I'd let matters rest, but the Greg House I knew had a very sensitive one, and from what I can make out, it didn't get compromised in the least."

He looks over at Pete. "I call you 'Pete' because I respect your decision to cut yourself loose from your past. You don't have Greg House's memories, either positive or negative, or any remembrance of being called by that name, so calling you 'Greg' doesn't make sense on any level. But as your therapist, respecting your decision to become a new person also entails directing you down the route that will enable you to drop everything that you objected to in your old life: there's no sense in turning into Peter Barnes if you allow those parts of Greg House to remain that led you into misery in the first place. You believed that your memories made you miserable, but it wasn't the memories that made you miserable, it was their effect on your self-esteem. That effect is back, now that you know all about yourself, and believe me, you won't like yourself unless and until you do everything in your power to become the kind of person you want to be."

"I'll never be that kind of person."

Nolan purses his lips. "There's another reason I call you 'Pete'. It acknowledges the change in you from the 'Greg' I used to know, a positive change. You're a lot easier to work with than you used to be: opener, lighter, more optimistic. Some of it is probably due to being practically pain-free, but I attribute most of it to a change in attitude. You're less fatalistic, more amenable to the notion of an open outcome that you can influence with your actions. You don't regard life as a steam roller that's out to flatten you any moment.

"I'm not asking you to change who you are; I'm asking you to change a few behavioural patterns that are more deeply ingrained than your episodic memory was. Luckily, you've lost the memories that caused those patterns; there's really no reason why you shouldn't be able to learn new ones with a minimal effort." At Pete's sceptical glance he adds, "Minimal compared to what it would have been five years ago and compared to what other people have to invest. There are a lot of downsides to what you did to your brain, but let's not lose sight of the upsides."

"You're one bloody optimist, aren't you?" Pete mutters, but on some level he's pleased at the qualified compliments he's getting.

"Comes with the job," Nolan says.

---

"Amnesia?" the blonde young clerk at the Township says when he submits the application his lawyer prepared. "Like in Fifty First Dates? Wow, cool!"

"For whom?" he asks. "For you, because you have a cool story to tell your next date?"

"Sorry," she says, blushing.

He continues remorselessly, "Hate to disappoint you, but tomorrow morning I'll still remember the dumb clerk who thinks that losing one's memory is so romantic."

She completes the paperwork in silence. "It'll take about three weeks, but I'll issue you temporary papers. Will that be okay, Mr House?"

"Yep, that's fine," he answers, and before he knows it he's holding a scrap of paper stating that he's Gregory House, born in 1961 in Lexington. Five minutes ago he was Peter Barnes, of unknown birthplace and age. It's hard to believe that it's so easy to turn into someone else.

It's also hard to believe that Detective Tritter is capable of causing such complications - the hearing, instead of taking the ten minutes that the situation warrants, drags along for three whole hours, all thanks to Tritter's obdurate attempts to prove that he's a hardened drug-peddling criminal, intent on evading the legal system by pretending to a false identity. (Okay, it doesn't help that the judge is a moron and - according to his lawyer - pointing this out to the judge doesn't help either.)

It's somewhere in the second hour of the tedious mess that he begins to appreciate Nolan's prescience in insisting that he file his papers to prove that he's Gregory House - that takes the wind out of Tritter's sails regarding identity fraud - and by the third hour he is ready admit that Lisa may not be all that paranoid to regard Tritter as a fiend in human guise.

The only diversion during the long ordeal is Lisa's PI. He sneaks into the court room while Nolan is testifying - a euphemism for a lengthy drone that includes citing whole paragraphs from a statement that 'the Maudsley Hospital, London, has been kind enough as to place at the court's disposal' - and edges into the bench behind Pete.

"Hey," he says.

Pete's guts tighten while he looks ahead stonily as though mesmerised by Nolan's interpretation of Dr Weller's medical findings - no matter what he pretended to Lisa, he doesn't believe that his arrest the night of his confrontation with PI was a coincidence. The fellow probably has excellent connections to the local law-and-order, and heaven knows what lies he's prepared to dish out in a misplaced notion of chivalry towards Lisa.

"Hey!" the PI repeats. "Look, your place ... it's been cleaned; it's as good as new. And I've stocked the fridge. Here!" A hand shoots out next to Pete's right cheek. "Lisa's had your prosthetic fixed; it's there too."

Pete allows his eyes to flicker to the side. The hand is proffering a key - his key; the key to his apartment in Trenton. He'd left it with Lisa the day she took him to Mayfield; she'd offered to get the place tidied up for him. His own fingers shoot up and snatch the key out of the PI's hand.

"Whoa!" Lisa's ex (or maybe not so ex?) exclaims. The judge scowls at them, and Pete's lawyer looks at him worriedly.

After a few minutes Pete deems it safe to look around to check on the fellow. He's leaning back with crossed ankles, listening avidly to what Nolan is saying. When he notices Pete mustering him, he leans forward again. "This amnesia thing - then it's true?"

Pete gives a short nod. The detective nods back knowingly. "You always were a mad dog," he says with a mixture of admiration and amused contempt. "Heard you're moving to Seattle," he adds after a short - too short - moment of silence.

The judge's glare is downright baleful. The PI gives her a friendly wave. Pete gets up. He needs to talk to this guy, find out whether he's here to threaten him; if so, then he needs to defuse him. He isn't going to risk any more unpleasantness because of a non-relationship with a woman who has her personal Sir Lancelot to protect her honour.

"Need the bathroom," he tells the judge, who is just short of an apoplexy.

The detective falls into step behind him. Outside the courtroom he heads to a stairwell that he discovered earlier in the day. Like every other place it sports a big 'no smoking' sign, but the pervading stench of cold cigarette smoke indicates that it's a favourite hang-out for adherents of the blue fumes. Pulling out his cigarettes, he lights one and inhales with a sigh of relief: the proceedings in the courtroom are draining his shallow reserves of patience.

He's surprised at how easy he finds it to not sock the pesky weasel in the face. During the long nights in Mayfield he'd nurtured fantasies of acts of violence that he'd carry out if he ever ran into him again; he'd even considered seeking the man out - a casual conversation with Wilson revealed that his name was Lucas Douglas, and with that information he'd have been easy to locate. But faced with him now, the cause of past discomfort and his momentary legal problems, he's astonishingly indifferent to the notion of revenge. No, he amends, he's not indifferent to the notion of revenge, but he's not inclined to take it out physically on the man. He'll figure out something suitably demeaning sooner or later ...

"So, how'd you pickle your brain?" Lucas asks when Pete makes no attempt to start a conversation.

"Fried it, actually," Pete corrects absently. "EST is an electric procedure. You apply brief pulses of about 800 milliamps for a few seconds ... Are you even interested?"

"Sure, if you want to talk about it," Lucas says, but he's clearly humouring him.

Pete tips his head. "Why are you here? Did Lisa send you?" Lucas's demeanour this time round is more cocker spaniel than Rottweiler; the cunning and the covert aggression that marked their last encounter are so markedly absent that Pete almost believes that he imagined them. Almost, but not quite - there was, after all, a lot of shit spread through his apartment, not to mention the damage to his flex-foot.

"Well, yeah. Although 'ordered' is probably the word you're looking for." Lucas studies Pete's bemused expression. "You don't seriously believe I cleaned up your place for you because I enjoy scraping cat shit off the walls."

Pete guffaws. "You went to Lisa and told her you'd turned my apartment into an animal cage and ratted me out to the police, expecting her to pat you on the head and give you a dog treat?" From what he's seen of Lisa and read about her in Nolan's therapy notes, she's not the type to appreciate people playing knight in shining armour and snatching her from the dragon's den. She enjoys dancing with dragons.

Now it's Lucas's turn to narrow his eyes at Pete. "You didn't snitch on me?" he asks suspiciously. "No, I suppose you didn't. You've always been the private type. Broody and secretive - women love that, don't they?" He chews on his thumb nail. "Then Lisa must've figured it out herself. I wonder how. It's not like I did a lot of that kind of stuff while I was dating her - pranking and all that. I was kinda settled, domestic, reliable - the official contrast programme to Gregory House MD."

"She knows more than you give her credit for," Pete says drily. "You don't exactly have a poker face."

"No, I guess not. I'm good at observing and putting two and two together, but I can't for the life of me lie convincingly. Oh, well." He shrugs fatalistically. "Do me a favour: tell Lisa I apologised, will you?"

"Tell her yourself," Pete advises.

"Aw, come, be a sport! She's a little pissed off about the apartment ... okay, she's very pissed off, especially about the prosthetic - seems that getting it fixed was a bit of a hassle. She wasn't exactly listening to what I was saying when she phoned me ... Wait! You won't tell her that I apologised, because you can't tell her! She isn't talking to you, right? Dumped you in Mayfield, and then washed her hands of you. Funny - I sorta get that she'd give up on you after your car-through-the-wall stunt, but since when do a few vicodin matter to her? She was drooling all over you even when you were popping them like they were breath mints. Unless she's got another guy; then ..." The detective gets a faraway expression on his face.

Shrugging indifferently, Pete pushes himself off the wall he's leaning against. He really couldn't care less what this twerp thinks. If it pleases him to believe that Lisa is mad at him, then that's just peachy, because he has no intention of telling him that he hasn't tried to contact Lisa since he was admitted to Mayfield. Nolan's decree (phrased as a 'suggestion') to avoid contact with Lisa is a godsend that enables him to ignore her while telling himself that he's just following his therapist's instructions for his own good and hers.

On the other hand, he'd rather not have Lisa stalked by Douglas; maybe the PI is simply obsessively interested in Lisa's life, maybe he's looking for potential blackmail material, or maybe he's just 'looking out' for her the way he did with Pete, but whichever it is, it won't serve to calm Lisa in her present jumpy state. Lucas isn't good enough at his job to stay undetected, but possibly he isn't so bad that Lisa can figure out who is stalking her. Judging by her driving technique when being tailed by him, Pete, on her way to drop off Wilson at Mayfield, she'll end up getting spooked and injuring herself or others.

So he says, "I've got an offer from Seattle Metropolitan to work as a consultant. I'll be going there as soon as I get Nolan's okay - Thursday or Friday - to look for an apartment. Neither of us wants a long distance relationship - Lisa doesn't think it's good for the kid." He blows a last lungful of smoke into Lucas's face, stubs out his cigarette to the dulcet sounds of the PI's coughs and returns to the courtroom before Lucas can question the logic behind his words.

When he gets back to the courtroom Nolan is winding up his testimony. Wilson, who arrived just before the hearing began, is next. He describes House's state before the EST, the procedure itself, and the results of the cognitive tests that Foreman performed on him right after the procedure. (He has vague memories of that: a bed in a clinic, his head hurting like hell, a hazy face, cards flashing at him, someone droning at him.) Wilson is factual and dry; it's a good performance, and it explains how Wilson managed to keep him out of jail the last time he was in court. (Of course, this time he's telling the truth.) He also cites from Foreman's case notes - Pete is prepared to bet that Foreman was hoping to be able to publish them one day, they're that precise and extensive. Lovely, high-resolution brain scans and enough tests to make the data statistically relevant. If Weller could see them, he'd be green with envy.

Tritter puts up a valiant fight, but it's obvious from Pete's medical and personal records that he hasn't been living the life of a master of crime. Rather the opposite - Pete cringes when Nolan hands around pictures of his housing in Bristol and reads out his employment record over the past three years.

"Detective Tritter," the judge finally says. "If Mr House's aim in donning the identity of Peter Barnes was to defraud anyone, gain illegal possession of drugs or cover up any sort of criminal activity, then we can safely consider it proven that he failed dismally. I dismiss those charges. As for illegal possession of 20 Percocet pills comprising a sum total of 100 mg of oxycodone, I am convinced that Mayfield Psychiatric Institution, as represented by Dr Nolan, is far better able to deal with the issue than our penal system. Case dismissed!"

His lawyer, the same one who represented him in the car crash fiasco, turns to him to shake his hand. "Congratulations, Mr House."

His mouth twitches. "If you're expecting me to point out that you did the work or to thank you, you're in for a long wait."

Delaney, a blond jovial man in his mid-forties, throws back his head and laughs. "Oh, no! I wasn't expecting anything of the sort. I'm grateful that you didn't do your damndest best to sabotage the hearing." The lawyer pauses, tipping his head sideways. "And I'm glad that you are better. I wish you ...,"

"What do you mean, 'better'?" Pete asks suspiciously.

Puzzlement crosses Delaney's features, only to be replaced by comprehension. He puts a hand on Pete's arm that Pete musters abstractedly. "When first I met you, you were impossible to work with. I was sure we'd come out of that trial with you in prison for a crime you presumably didn't commit and my reputation in shreds." He grins almost boyishly. "I wouldn't say you're a pleasure to work with as yet, but we're getting there, yes, we're getting there."

"I hope not," Pete grimaces. Delaney's eyebrows rise. "No offense, but this afternoon was not an experience I'm keen on repeating."

"That's the spirit!" Delaney says, slapping his back.

Nolan comes over. He and Delaney exchange a few words, the usual polite tripe. Wilson stays aloof; he's still passive-aggressively sore because of the incident in the storage unit. Pete is zoning out, bored, tired, and stressed at hours of enforced politeness, when Detective Tritter walks over to their group. Delaney instinctively puts out a protective-restraining hand which Pete evades with a quick sideways step, but Tritter keeps a diplomatic distance.

"Well done," he says in a soft tone that nonetheless penetrates the bustle around them.

Pete doesn't try to supress a smirk of victory. "Playing the fair loser?"

Tritter's smile doesn't touch his eyes. "I don't consider myself to have lost." He puts in an artful pause. "The outcome of this trial is a lot better than I expected: for reasons that elude me, your network of enablers swings into action every time there is the slightest chance that your crimes will catch up with you. But it is now officially established and recorded that you suffer from - correct me if I get the term wrong - severe retrograde amnesia, which means that you can't get your license back, ever, Mr House. You will never practice medicine again - unless you intend to repeat your entire medical training. Future generations of patients are safe from your unethical practices, your disregard of patient wishes, your abuse of your position to carry out risky and unnecessary procedures. You will never be able to use the authority of your profession again to bully others or hoodwink the system."

"Wrong," Pete says with all the vindictiveness that Tritter masks so well. "I have an offer from Seattle Metropolitan to work as consultant for their diagnostic department."

"Congratulations," Tritter says, not trying for the least semblance of sincerity, "but it's not the same as being a tenured head of department. I think you'll find that consultants are granted a lot less leeway than employees, and are a lot easier to jettison. There's no Dr Cuddy to protect you there, and I doubt any other dean will jeopardise his career or his reputation to save your sorry ass."

"Detective Tritter," Nolan says warningly, but Tritter has turned away already. An uncomfortable silence ensues.

"So," Delaney finally says with forced heartiness, "you have an offer from Seattle. I wish you all the best, Dr House."

"Thanks," he murmurs awkwardly, noting that Delaney has switched to the medical title that is his no longer.

Wilson, who has been frowning after Tritter, chimes in. "You've got a concrete offer from Foreman?"

He nods.

"Well, that's ... great." Wilson pauses. "I guess," he adds. When Nolan raises an enquiring eyebrow, Wilson explains, "It could mean that Foreman has got interesting cases that he can't solve without House's help, in which case House can dictate his conditions and pretty much do as he pleases. But I've checked Foreman's record; the department is small, but it is reasonably effective. His mortality rates are higher than House's used to be, but not significantly so. It could mean that he's refusing tricky cases, but that isn't Foreman's style. He's the typical younger brother out to prove that he's as good as his older sibling."

"Which means?" Delaney asks.

"That it's more likely that he wants to use House's name as a magnet to pull cases on board, but that he doesn't really want House taking an active role in the cases. And House, not having any sort of official status other than a consultant, won't be able to do anything about it."

"Wouldn't that be rather ineffective, paying Dr House to not do his job?" Delaney is somewhere between confused and fascinated.

"Umm, having House running around a hospital doing his 'thing' can be quite stressful," Wilson says with a quirk. "He has a habit of accruing horrendous bills for legal costs and for damaged equipment. Besides, his name alone will bring the hospital considerable donations, far in excess of his own fees as a consultant. So Foreman stands to win, no matter whether he lets House do his job or not." Turning to Pete he adds, "You should offer your services to Cameron."

"Cameron? Allison Cameron?" Pete asks, although he knows quite well whom Wilson means. "You mean the woman you're screwing?"

Wilson flushes. "I'm not sleeping with ...,"

"She hates me." Pete says bluntly. He'd run into her again when he'd gone to PPTH to get a copy of his medical records, and she'd been collected, cold and repelling.

"She needs you. She has bitten off more than she can chew by expanding the department to its present size."

"Sorry, I don't do assembly-line diagnostics. I believe in good old-fashioned virtues such as close contact with each individual patient - no new-fangled stuff like multi-tasking, etc."

Wilson grins briefly. "Cameron isn't running a Department of Diagnostics, she's running an ER without the trauma cases. At the moment she's got two lanes: one, patients the janitor could have diagnosed; two, the straight route to the morgue. She needs you to save lives for her. If you go to Seattle you'll be a feather in Foreman's cap, but no more than that. In Princeton, you can make a difference. And that's going to matter more to Allison than all the things she disapproves of."

"You guys are very odd," Delaney remarks out of nowhere.

Nolan rolls his eyes. "You're telling me! Gentlemen, edifying though this may be, I need to get back to Mayfield. The limousine awaiteth you."

Pete's a bit surprised when Wilson walks over to Nolan's car with them - he didn't drive down with them, after all.

"I spent the weekend at Cuddy's place, and she drove me down to Princeton this morning," Wilson explains, opening the front passenger door and getting in. That leaves the back seats for Pete. Wilson offers no information on Lisa or Rachel, and Pete doesn't ask. He sprawls inelegantly over the back bench, his trainers on the upholstery.

"C'n we drop by my apartment?" he asks Nolan. "I want to pick something up."

"Sure," Nolan says easily.

"And do I get another file for being such a good boy today?" he wheedles.

Nolan takes a thick file out of his briefcase and hands it to him with a smile. "Here. You've more than earned this one. Feet off my car upholstery, please."

It's the one about the infarction. Well, there's more than one file on that - he's read the one that has the bare bones of the medical information, with lots of red comments by Nolan ('Too distanced, purely factual information - refuses to deal with emotional aspects!'). This one, however, has all the background information, and tons on his then-girlfriend. This is - good!

"How many more files are there?" he asks Nolan.

"Three," Nolan says, fiddling with the Satnav.

"Do I get them on Thursday?"

"What's on Thursday?" Wilson asks, too curious to play stick-in-the-mud any longer.

"Release date," he answers tersely.

"Wh-what?" Wilson stutters. "How come you're getting released?"

This is really too good. "Because I've been a good boy. Followed the rules, did my homework, answered the teacher's questions, came out top of the class."

Nolan sighs, giving him a warning glance in the rear mirror. He sticks his tongue out in return. He has been good, all things considered.

Wilson is sputtering now. "Why does he get released, while my release date keeps getting pushed further and further back?"

"Because there's no medical reason to keep him any longer," Nolan says. The vein at the side of his neck is throbbing.

"So? My release date gets postponed and I get grounded because I'm one hour late, but he gets released although he stays out all night?" Wilson whines.

"Pete, would you like to comment that?" Nolan says with another glance in the mirror. It's more of an order than a question. "And fasten your seatbelt, please."

"I had an overnight pass," Pete mutters.

In the ensuing silence Nolan starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot. Wilson is hunched over, massaging the bridge of his nose.

"He had an overnight pass, but neither of you saw fit to tell me," Wilson finally says in an icy tone, glaring at Nolan.

"James, I want you to fulfil your obligations to yourself - regardless of anyone else's needs," Nolan says calmly. "Unless and until you can do that, you need treatment. This was not an incident I would have provoked, but in a way I'm glad it happened."

"See, I did you a favour," Pete smirks.

"Naturally," Nolan adds, with a measured look in the mirror, "that doesn't exonerate Pete, but that makes my point all the clearer. Pete is quite capable of looking after himself. There is no need to play the sacrificial lamb for him, especially since he didn't ask you to do so. ... Pete, is this it?"

They halt in the no-parking zone in front of his apartment. Pete gets out, followed by Nolan.

"Do you mind if I come along?" Nolan asks.

Pete shrugs. He knows he's in for a dressing-down because of Wilson; it may as well be sooner rather than later. But Nolan doesn't say anything as they go upstairs and Pete unlocks his door. He puts his head around the door carefully - it'll take more than a display of remorse on Lucas's part to make him trust the man. At first glance and smell, however, there's nothing of note. The place is tidy, almost pristine. The rug is gone, replaced by a garish patchwork homage to some indigenous culture. The walls have been repainted in a brighter shade of yellow than Pete would've picked, but he doubts he'll spend more than a few weeks here and he certainly won't spend that time staring at the walls, so he's not about to complain.

Leaning prominently against the coffee table is his prosthetic with its flex foot blade, showing no overt signs of damage any more. He goes over to it and picks it up, giving its length a loving stroke and twirling it experimentally a few times. It feels balanced; there's no sign of wear and tear along shaft or blade.

"That's my baby!" he says approvingly. He looks over at Nolan. "Okay, we can go. The rest will keep till Thursday."

"That's the prosthetic that was ruined?" Nolan asks. He is informed about the state the apartment was in after Pete's arrest, and the subject of the prosthetic has come up once or twice. "I hear they're very expensive. Is it mended or has it been replaced?"

"The socket's the same, but the blade and the shaft have been replaced," Pete says, holding the prosthetic out for Nolan to examine. "The blade is made of a carbon composite. It's tough, but if you maltreat it, you'll never know when it'll snap. Fatigue, it's called."

Nolan handles the prosthetic like a box of eggs, testing the elasticity of the blade with every sign of respect. "And you can run with this like with a real leg?" he asks.

"Can't remember running with two real legs, but I'd say, essentially - yes. The two legs feel different, but one learns to balance it out. I'd never have managed with my normal prosthetic - there's this short moment in a stride when both legs are off the ground, and it took me all of two weeks to brave it with the blade. I still have problems with inclines."

Nolan hands the prosthetic back. "That blade is a good metaphor for James. You can keep testing him and pushing him and he'll hold up, coming back for more. But you won't see the damage, and he may well snap just when you need him. Think about it."

Walking towards the door of the apartment he adds conversationally, "When I applied to the Maudsley for your medical records, Dr Weller was very interested in your potential. The Maudsley itself doesn't have any use for a diagnostician, but Weller has contacts to Guy's Hospital and to Oxford University. Both are interested in having you as a member of their faculty."

He tips his head sideways, analysing Nolan's words. "Why would I want to return to England?"

"Why not? It's where you opted to be abandoned when you erased your memory. You have a social network there that doesn't know a thing about the infamous Greg House. You'd be able to reboot your diagnostic career without having to cope with the agendas of your former employees. You'd put a safe distance between yourself and James. Take your pick."

"You think Wilson is a danger to me?" he says somewhat incredulously.

"I am of the opinion that in high concentration, neither of you is beneficial to the other. In his present state James isn't up to the kind of stress that your presence here is causing him."

The first part of the drive back to Mayfield passes in silence. Wilson, riding shotgun, stares out of the window. Pete studies his file; it reads like a bad telenovella. Hang on - his ex-girlfriend returned five years later to have him treat her husband? That couldn't have gone well.

The next few pages show that, indeed, it did not go well. The interesting thing is, it nearly did. He blamed her for saving his life, terrorised her husband, hacked her therapy file, and invaded her privacy, and the net result was that she ended up in bed with him. That's fascinating in a creepy sort of way. What is it that makes women he abused forgive him and return to him? Is he attractive to a certain kind of woman, the type that can't seem to recognise when their boundaries are violated? He ponders the Sharon fiasco; she'd considered them to be in a relationship, and yet she'd accepted his 'infidelities' as a given. In retrospect he considers it well possible that he'd deliberately shut his eyes to what he'd sensed she was assuming about them, which made him culpable of an emotional kind of abuse. Does he target women who are prone to abuse?

"Stacy - what's she like?" he asks Wilson, forgetting that Wilson is giving him the cold shoulder.

"Stacy? Successful constitutional lawyer, about fifty, married - as you've probably gathered," Wilson, equally forgetful, answers.

"Not 'who is she?', but 'how is she?' Just turn the letters round."

Wilson thinks. "She's smart, funny, gutsy. Strong." He scratches his eyebrow. "Very strong."

That doesn't sound like the woman he's been picturing. "She couldn't cope with me - she left," he objects.

"That's what I mean. Sometimes it takes strength to go. She didn't put up with your crap, ever. You admired that."

"Maybe I should go see her," he says thoughtfully.

Wilson twists round. "Why would you do that?"

"Since my mother is dead, she's the person who has known me the longest. It makes sense to talk to her if I want to know what I used to be like," he explains.

"You've known me almost as long. You can talk to me," Wilson points out, somewhat piqued.

"You gonna tell me what I was like in bed? No? I thought not. So, Stacy it is. What's her last name?" Wilson stares out of the front window stonily. "Ah, here it is - Warner."

"If you want to know what you're like in bed, why don't you talk to Cuddy?"

"Husband is a high school counsellor. Can't be too difficult to find her," he ruminates.

"... She's got enough of a guilt complex to want to oblige you, ..."

He tunes Wilson out. "Letter, email or phone call, that's the question. Phone call has the advantage of the element of surprise, ..."

"We could also try to find Dominika - your ex-wife." Wilson's voice has an edge of desperation. "I've got her forwarding address somewhere."

"... but a letter is more personal - shows interest and attention."

"If this is about what you were like before the infarction, there's Crandall - a friend of yours from school."

"Of course, an email is more likely to get though - people glance over it, and hey presto, they've read it before they even realise who it's from!"

Wilson huffs audibly. "You're not listening, are you? Has no one told you that it's rude to ignore people who are talking to you?"

"Has no one told you that it's rude to change the topic? I'm talking about Stacy."

"If you want to know what kind of a boyfriend you were, just - go and ask Cuddy. At least there's no marriage to wreck there, and she knows as much about you as Stacy does, if not more."

He waves his hand airily. "We only dated for, what, nine months, we didn't 'cohabit', and before that she was just my boss. She doesn't really know what I was like before the infarction."

"She's known you since med school," Wilson points out. That's news. "That's longer than anyone else who's still alive, as far as I know. You don't want to talk to her," he surmises, doing one of his funny, jerking things with his hand. "You're avoiding talking about Cuddy and to Cuddy. You don't want to talk to Cuddy," he thinks for a moment, "because you still haven't forgiven her."

"That's crap!" he says despite himself.

"No, it isn't," says Wilson in his best I-knew-it voice. "You've forgiven me for keeping your identity from you - why not her?"

"Huh? Why should I be mad at her for that?" he says reasonably. "I had Foreman do invasive EST for exactly that purpose, so why should I be pissed at her for supporting my blatant wish to keep my identity from myself?"

Nolan's eyes are trimmed on the freeway, but the slight backward tip of his head indicates that he's tuned in to every word. He's probably having a field day in every respect.

"Okay." Wilson modifies his thesis. "You're mad at her for having your leg amputated. I don't care what Chase told you: She. Saved. Your. Life! Don't blame her for that - she's got a monopoly on guilt and she makes full use of it."

This defies logic, as Wilson should know. "I know she saved my life - I've braved the Gorgon that guards PPTH and read my medical files, and I'm aware that if Chase had had his wicked way with my leg, I'd be a feeding ground for worms now," he says, a muscle twitching in his cheek, "though I doubt that saving my life was high on her list of priorities at the time. But still, results count, not intentions, whether good or bad. Then again, maybe I should be mad at her for what she did during the infarction. No idea why she advised Stacy to authorise the debridement."

"Because you were killing yourself and they wanted you to live, you moron!"

Pete gestures at the file. "Precisely. Patients are idiots, and apparently I was no exception. If they were going to go behind my back they should have gone all the way and amputated. Instead they went for a knuckle-headed compromise, typical administrative shilly-shallying that made no one happy. Idiots! But I forgive them. Te absolvo!" he declaims theatrically. "So you don't need to worry - I can let bygones be bygones, and when I see Stacy, ..."

"Don't!" Wilson says.

"Don't what?"

"Don't do this. What were you going to do - drive up to their place, ring the bell and say, 'Hi Stacy, hi Mark, you remember me, but I don't remember you, so won't you tell me how Stacy and I were when we were together?"

He's genuinely puzzled by Wilson's near panic at the idea, so he says in his most reasonable voice, "Yeah, that sounds like a plan." Wilson throws up his hands. Mindful of Nolan's previous rebuke, he forces himself to add, "This ... isn't just about the sex. I want to know what she saw in me."

"Yes, I suppose that could work," Wilson says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'm sure Stacy will enjoy telling you what exactly made her so susceptible to you, abandoning the good thing she had with Mark on the off-chance that you two would work again, while Mark listens, smiling benevolently."

That makes no sense whatsoever. "She - didn't return to me," he says, turning back to the pages in the file where Nolan noted down the details of his second-time-around relationship with Stacy. "She did me, and then she left Princeton with Mark."

"Because you pulled out at the last moment," Wilson says with thin lips. "You got into her pants, had her on the verge of leaving Mark - who was in despair - and then you got cold feet."

"Oh." There's nothing about that in his therapy file, just the bald statement that Stacy left Princeton with Mark after his out-patient treatment was completed. He scratches his eyebrow with his thumb. "Well, it's over ten years ago now. They must have got over it if they're still married."

"They're still married, they've adopted two teen boys - or are fostering them, not sure about that - and the last thing they need is you popping up in their lives turning everything upside-down."

He gives Wilson his mock-hurt hand-over-his-heart routine to hide the very real dismay he feels at the assumption that his intention in visiting Stacy is to wreak havoc. "I have no intention of doing her - again; I just want to talk!"

"House!" Wilson yells. "You really don't understand, do you?" Mustering him closely, he sighs. "No, you don't. ... It's all very well for you. You can't remember a thing, so for you it's an academic study: you're filling in the gaps in a patient history that happens to be your own. It isn't like that for us. For us, you're someone who has been gone for three years, which really isn't all that long - I've gone considerably longer without seeing a single member of my family. There are memories attached to you, and feelings to those memories. If you visit Stacy, you'll undoubtedly find out tons of interesting things about your past - and then you'll go. But chances are that you'll leave her marriage in shreds again, because although she won't mean more to you than any other brunette you meet, you will always be The Guy for her." He rubs a tired hand over his face. "God, why am I even bothering?" he mutters mostly to himself.

Pete observes him as he turns back to face the front, sinking, almost shrinking, into his seat, the lines in his face prominent, his mouth turned down with exhaustion.

"I'm sorry," Pete says quietly.

Wilson freezes. Then, still facing the windscreen, he gives an almost imperceptible little nod.

---

	Chapter Index

Comments

[menolly-au.livejournal.com]

"You guys are very odd" - ha, I laughed :) yes, they are indeed, very,very odd. I always love any glimpses from an outside perspective of the various insanities of the PPTH personnel.

While proclaiming that he doesn't want to be House Pete is beginning to sound more and more like him. Loved Nolan's conversation with him, that there is no turning back - Pete cannot not be House, because he already is him. The objective is to avoid making the same mistakes, and to find a better way - it truly is a chance to start again.

Would have been nice to be a fly on the wall for the conversation between Lucas and Cuddy :) I'm sure she gave him an earful.

Sort of sad to hear that Cameron's diagnostic department isn't all that it's cracked up to be (although this is only through Wilson's eyes - and I bet he doesn't share that opinion with Cameron :) Wilson's suggestion to return to PPTH and work with Cameron is like a lot of Wilson's advice - well meant but probably not the soundest idea anyone's ever had. He probably has it right about Foreman too - no way would FOreman want House coming in and taking over, and House isn't going to sit back and just allow his name to be used.

The scene with Wilson, Pete and Nolan in the car was golden - and I'm sure Nolan was listening with every inch of his body. Pete was almost shame faced when he mumbled that he had an overnight pass, so he was just screwing with Wilson back at the storage locker. Nolan's comparison of Wilson to the blade was a good one, Pete/House will (and did) push and push and Wilson can't stop himself from coming back for more, but eventually the blade breaks.

When Wilson explodes about Pete's intention to go 'interview' Stacy I think he's also talking about himself, House has come back into his life, but to House it's an academic exercise, to Wilson its so much more.

Pete's "I'm sorry" at then end does suggest that there is some hope for old patterns to change.

(One little note - according to the show's admittedly vague and contradictory timeline I think it's established that Wilson has actually known House longer than Stacy, and also knew him before the infarction - not that that would preclude Pete from wanting to talk to her anyway.)

[leesarenae.livejournal.com]

I do not want this story to end!

I know you have worked 7 months on this, and wonder if this is your/our last glimpse of House? ( BTW, I'm only interested in House with Cuddy, forget cannon).

I'm feeling very sympathetic to Wilson. Could House/Pete be more clueless?

"She's known you since med school," Wilson points out. That's news. "That's longer than anyone else who's still alive, as far as I know."

Thank you :)

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

I want you to fulfil your obligations to yourself - regardless of anyone else's needs
Actually, one of the most difficult things to do for a depressed person. I'm glad Nolan's such a good professional.

To me, it was obvious that Wilson was talking about himself. House's return in his life has destroyed his (shaky) relationship with Cameron, and House's apology is to him, because of it. I liked how you made it so prominent, because it is a major sign of change; House never says sorry to Wilson in canon.

Moving, IC, and yes, Nolan is listening. Great imge, of Wilson being like a missing leg, and one which may get broken without House noticing - because after all, that's what happened here.

Loved your Delaney, and liked the insight he has on them.

Extra points for Wilson seeing through Foreman's and Cameron's situation so clearly.

still, results count, not intentions, whether good or bad.
What a strange idea. I also disagree that saving someone's life by going against their (explicit, informed) wishes is per se a good thing. I actually think it inexcusable. One may still do it, but should not expected gratitude. Of course amputation in the Kelpie is different, since House was unconscious: I'm talking about canon, nd the botched decision Stacy took under Cuddy's influence. I do agree with House here: it doesn't make sense (even though the two women no doubt found it logical).

PS obnoxious orthography point: wouldn't it be telenovela? Because it's Spanish/Portuguese, not Italian.

PPS I forgot to comment on how much I liked Cuddy's reason to make sure House gets medical care. God I love Cuddy being Cuddy.