"don't leave unless you're going"
The first time they met, Dr. Gregory House correctly diagnosed James Wilson’s badly sprained ankle. Not that it was a difficult diagnosis: the ankle in question was the size and color of an eggplant and could barely support Wilson’s weight. Going for a run had seemed like a good idea: Wilson had a light rotation because of the Christmas holidays and the Michigan winter was making him a little stir crazy. It would be months before the Lakes thawed enough to go sailing: so, running it was. There was a trail winding around his apartment complex and it was almost guaranteed to be empty since the complex housed mostly hospital staff and everyone who could leave, had.
It was colder than Wilson had expected-most days he went from heated apartment to heated car to overheated hospital-and it looked like it was going to snow again. He had an old pair of sneakers but the only sweatshirt he could find was from prep school. As he set off down the empty trail, he tried to figure out what had happened to his wardrobe of casual clothes. Honestly, it had never been all that extensive. All through school, there had been uniforms. In college, he’d stuck with the khakis-and-button-down routine: girls liked that clean-cut look. (So did their parents.) Professional school was for professionals: if the other students thought you were an overly-formal kiss-ass for not going around in mismatched scrubs-well, Wilson hadn’t gone to medical school to make friends. Besides, he’d skipped a grade in elementary school and graduated college a year early; even now, he was years younger than the other residents. Without the tie and the white coat, he knew he looked all of eighteen.
Wilson also knew he’d have to find something better than this ratty sweatshirt: he was already cold and he’d been running for less than ten minutes. And, sure enough, it had started to snow. Running through falling snow was disorienting: it was hard to judge how fast he was going. Since he hadn’t worn a hat-surely he owned a hat? he’d lived in Montreal, for crying out loud-the snow kept blowing into his eyes, making it hard to pick out the winding trail ahead of him, white-on-white as it rose out of the woods. Wilson looked up, for just a minute, into the dizzy swirl of falling flakes and his leading foot hit an icy spot. He slipped, stumbled just where the trail curved, and instead of finding solid ground, sunk up to his ankle in slushy snow from the last storm. He tried to regain his balance but the tread was worn off his old shoes and something in his left ankle snapped when he tried to jerk his weight back from the edge of the trail. There was a split-second of frantic arm waving-his right hand smashed into a tree-before gravity took over and sent him pitching into the gully that bordered the trail.
The fall was more of a somersault so, fortunately, it was his foot and not his head that hit the boulder at the bottom. Or maybe not so fortunately. Wilson lay sprawled in the snow, his own heartbeat thumping in his ears, watching his breath shudder into little clouds and trying to decide which way was up. He took stock: he could move his fingers, his clothes were wet, there was an unnerving heat blossoming in his left foot. Moving slowly, Wilson clambered to his feet…well, his foot: the left one really couldn’t take any pressure at all. The trail was infuriatingly close, not more than eight feet away, but its incline required a climb. He couldn’t very well hop up something that steep. He tried hobbling along the gully, but it seemed to take him further from the trail. He dragged himself back to where he’d fallen. The adrenaline was leeching out of his system and he became aware of the sweat and snow soaking his clothing. The sun had nearly set. He was beginning to get cold, really cold.
It had just occurred to Wilson that the cold would present more of a problem than the ankle-no way he could go back to work if he had double pneumonia-when he saw a flash of color through the trees. Another runner, making his way back along the trail through the dusk.
“Hey!” Wilson called, the cold air stinging his throat; then louder. “Hey? Hello!”
Wilson scrambled together a snowball as the runner came into view, chucked it at the trail in a desperate bid for attention. About twenty yards beyond where Wilson had taken his spill, the runner stopped, turned around and jogged back. This guy was dressed for the weather, Wilson noted enviously, having given up trying to suppress his shivers. The other runner looked down the slope to where Wilson, pale and drenched and shocky, was propped up against the same rock that had attacked his ankle. The runner tugged headphones from underneath his stocking cap and made the first pronouncement of what would be a long and beautiful friendship: “You throw like a girl.”
What the hell kind of comment is that? Wilson wanted to ask, but before he could get a word out, the other runner spoke up again. He didn’t even sound winded: “We don’t have signs or anything, Prepster, but …you do know the trail is up here, right?” He’d zoned in on the sweatshirt and his sarcasm could melt snow.
Freezing and bruised, Wilson was at the end of his patience. He glowered up at the cocky bastard and answered in kind: “Yeah,” he said dryly, “I was taking the scenic route.”
The other guy at least had the decency to look surprised by Wilson’s tone. More than surprised, Wilson decided, the look was one of…appraisal. “And was it worth the trip?”
“Not really, no,” Wilson replied with an equally straight face. “Over-rated, actually.”
“Might be nicer in the spring time?”
“One can only hope. Maybe I’ll make a return trip sometime.” Wilson figured this probably ranked in the top five most surreal conversations he’d ever had, but he must be giving the right answers. He had the feeling that, if he weren’t, this guy might just jog off into the snowstorm
“The Michigan tourist board will be delighted to hear that. Although….you’ll have to leave before you can come back,” the runner observed innocently.
“Yeah.”
The runner rearranged his headphones, apparently bored with the conversation. “Well, good luck with that. Nice talking to you. Stay warm.”
“Hey!” Wilson yelled
“Pardon?” The runner took off the headphones again.
“Aren’t you going to help me?” Wilson demanded, hands on his hips. “My ankle may be broken, I can’t climb that hill…”
“Sprained,” the runner interrupted, sounding a little bored. “Hairline fracture at the most, but probably just a bad sprain. Certainly not broken, my preppy young friend. Your rugby coach will be happy.”
“I don’t play…wait, why are we talking about this? Are you going to help me or not?” Wilson asked peevishly.
“Not,” said the runner. “But if you sit backwards, you can probably scootch your way up all on your own. And I’ll wait for you at the top.”
“If I do that, I’ll be covered in snow!” Wilson protested.
“Oh, like you aren’t already?” The runner rolled his eyes-even from a distance, they were freakishly blue and Wilson remembered having read somewhere that an abnormal proportion of sociopaths had blue eyes. “Good thing you cleared most of the snow on your way down,” the guy added, looking at the long snow skid that marked where Wilson had gone off the trail. “Anyway, hurry up if you’re coming. It’s getting a wee bit chilly up here.”
Wilson flopped down in the snow, gritting his teeth and feeling more than a little sociopathic himself (he’s chilly?!). It wouldn’t occur to him until much later how remarkable it was that this complete stranger had intuited the entire, improbable accident without asking a single question. Using his good leg for propulsion and his hands for balance, Wilson did manage to work his way up the hill more easily than he would have thought possible. He was about a third of the way from the top when the runner started pelting him with snowballs.
“What the…?! Stop that!” Wilson turned around just in time to get a snowball in the face. He shook snow out of his hair and slid a few inches down the hill before bracing himself again.
"Come on! You threw one at me first! Besides, I’ve done my best not to laugh too hard at the fact that you fell off the road-a road, and you fell off it-I gotta get my fun in somewhere. Anyway, what are you gonna do about it? Chase me?”
Wilson threw a handful of snow in the general direction of the runner, who just laughed: “With aim like that…you sure you don’t play rugby? What kind of prep school kid doesn’t play rugby?...”
Ignoring the subsequent monologue on prep schools and dumb jocks, Wilson struggled up the rest of the hill. He was so cold. And tired. God, he was tired: breathing was an effort. And the hand he’d bashed against the tree was now starting to hurt almost as much as his ankle. He couldn’t feel his left foot at all. Near the top of the hill, the runner grabbed his shoulders and, with more strength than Wilson would have given him credit for, hauled him up the last few feet. When they tumbled backward, landing in a heap on the trail, Wilson had to blink away tears, not so much out of exhaustion or even pain, but just out of sheer relief.
“See, that wasn’t so bad. Told you so,” announced the know-it-all runner. Wilson flinched when the runner started fidgeting, expecting another snowball,. “What?” he asked, absently brushing snow out of Wilson’s dark hair, his mind already on the next problem: how to get home.
It was a slow trip. The runner filled Wilson’s sock with snow-“It’s like an icepack. Except not so much with the ice. Or, you know, the pack”-and propped him up on the left side. Somewhere between the trail and the apartment complex, Wilson thought to introduce himself. His Samaritan stopped their sluggish march down the trail and insisted on shaking Wilson’s hand-“Gregory House, nephrology. Well, originally nephrology. Now infectious diseases. Expecting that second board cert. will come in handy any day now.” His grip was more than necessarily firm and Wilson was pretty sure Gregory House remembered the injury to his right hand. The point was loud and clear: the good doctor did not approve of social niceties.
Point taken: Wilson bit the inside of his cheek and cleared the pain from his face. “You’ve bombarded me with snowballs,” he said lightly, “no need to be so formal.”
Again, that sharp, appraising look and a brief crooked smile before House headed off into another rambling monologue. Wilson had the inexplicable feeling that he’d passed another test.
“James Wilson, almost-MD…Wilson, to your prep school friends. Because all prep school masters call their charges by their last names. I have this on the good authority of several British novelists. Let me guess…aphasiology?”
“You read novels?” Wilson scoffed. In the 45 minutes he’d known Gregory House, the man hadn’t stood still for more than 10 seconds: fiddling with headphones, snowballs, Wilson’s own hair. If this Dr. House had to plow through Middlemarch, he would spontaneously combust.
“I watch the miniseries on PBS,” House replied primly.
“And it’s oncology,” Wilson corrected, “pediatric oncology.”
“Close enough,” House shrugged, or tried to under Wilson’s weight. “I can spot a lost cause at twenty paces.”
“And I’m one of them?”
“You’re enamored of them,” House savored the word.
“Oooh, PBS vocabulary, there,” Wilson muttered.
House smiled, “You’re either a Southerner, a stroke expert, or someone who works with dying children.”
“Or all three?”
“A Southerner who works with children who’ve had strokes?”
“It could happen.”
“Yeah, but if it did, I never would come near you without my silver crucifix. Highly contagious.”
“Lost causes are contagious?” Wilson was having to concentrate to wend his way through this conversation. And, damn, but it was cold.
“Yup. I’m utterly immune-childhood exposure-but still…”
“Wouldn’t want to take risks.” Wilson mumbled, just to fill his spot in the conversation
House looked thoughtfully off into the snow, “There’s something about valor being the better part of wit, or something….”
“Brevity is the ss…ssss…soul of, uhm, wit, “Wilson explained, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, “discretion is the bet-better part of valor.”
“I like mine better.”
“But mine make sense.”
“So do mine: valor is hard to sustain. Stick around too long and people realize you’re not all that brave. And discretion can be…very-funny? Ok, maybe not.” House waved dismissively with the arm that wasn’t holding Wilson up. He didn’t comment on the cold, didn’t have to: Wilson’s shivers were starting to feel like convulsions. Instead, he sighed and asked the snowflakes: “Why am I not surprised he has all the proverbs committed to memory?” His attention returned to Wilson; “how are you with the seven deadly sins?”
Wilson stuttered through them.
“And the gifts of the Holy Spirit?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“And I’m a raging heathen, but why should the Christians do all the useless memorizing? Did we not go to medical school precisely to hone our abilities to memorize useless facts? But we can work on that next time you fall into a snow bank, ‘cause here we are.”
How had they gotten here so fast? Wilson looked at the apartment house in front of him; it was nearly invisible behind the curtain of snow, but there was something strange about it. It took a few seconds for his cold-numbed brain to fasten onto what it was, and a few more seconds to actually articulate it: “I don’t live here.”
“I should hope not!” House answered. “My girlfriend might have something to say about that. I live here.”
“Why aren’t we at my place?”
“Why would I wanna go there? Even if I knew where it was. Look, if you don’t want to come in…” House shrugged again, “then you can stay out here.”
“Nnn…I’ll come…”
“Thought you’d see it my way.” Wilson was becoming inured to that smug tone, but something else was niggling in the corner of his mind.
House, thank God, lived on the first level. He propped Wilson up against the wall by the door like a snow shovel. “Don’t run away, now,” he said as he pulled out his key. Wilson just nodded.
House got the door open and led Wilson into the apartment and straight to the bathroom, where he turned on all the hot water taps full blast. He hauled in a chair and made Wilson sit down in the steam. “Stay there,” he ordered like he was training a puppy, then kept up a stream of chatter from another room. “I’m making coffee. It’ll be black-I ran out of sugar and I never remember how long the milk’s been around-but you’ll drink it anyway, because if I give you anything else, you can’t have any drugs. Let this be a life lesson for you, Preppy, if you have to choose between booze and drugs: go for the drugs. Of course, in a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to choose…”
A second later, he stuck his head back into the bathroom. “I could be persuaded to go with the hard stuff…”
Wilson shook his head. Did this guy ever stop talking? “Coffee…coffee’s good.”
When House came back with the coffee, Wilson’s mind had begun to unfreeze. So had the rest of him: he thought he might get by with just walking pneumonia. House handed him a mug and a stack of dry clothing, then noted the perplexion on his guest's face. “Don’t tell me it’s not your color ‘cause that would imply that I ever cared,” he warned.
“What? No…no, it’s just…I can’t feel my foot.” Wilson looked down, dumbfounded, at the offending ankle.
“Hmm…I wonder why that could be?” House asked the air, crouching down to inspect Wilson’s foot. “That’s very odd, indeed. I just can’t figure out what would cause such a-” And before Wilson even knew what was going on, House had wrenched off the left shoe in one smooth yank.
“Jesus Christ!” Wilson shouted; fireworks exploded along his leg and he scrunched his eyes shut against the scald of tears. “My God! That-damn, that…” He gasped, choked on the steam, sloshed hot coffee all over his already wet clothing. Gradually he caught his breath, opened his eyes, but he couldn’t get his hands to stop trembling.
House had dropped down to sit on the floor, his back against the wall, looking supremely innocent. “Jesus Christ? I thought you were Jewish? Anyway, looks like all the nerves are working, so I imagine feeling will return pretty soon. Do you concur, doctor?”
“Yeah, I can feel everything just fine now, thanks,” Wilson growled.
“I believe in tearing the band-aid off right away.” House’s expression turned mournful. He walked over to stand behind Wilson, dropping the shoe into his lap. “I do have some bad news, which will probably impact your future running career.”
“What?” Wilson felt the faintest flicker of fear. It was just a sprain, right? House was looking unnaturally somber.
“Perhaps I should get a second opinion before…”
“Just tell me!”
“Ok,” Wilson could hear House take a deep breath. “You over-pronate. You’re going to need to start buying running shoes to correct for that.”
By the time the diagnosis had registered-along with the correlate that over-pronation wasn’t nearly the fatal condition Wilson had expected-House had dodged out of the bathroom. Wilson twisted in his chair and hurled his shoe after the laughing doctor, missing by a mile.
Wilson slammed the door and maybe it was the relief at not being crippled for life, but he couldn’t help smiling once House couldn’t see him. It was true: he spent most of his time with dying children. In the long run, that could only have an adverse effect on his sense of humor. But he found something-not quite amusing, but bittersweet, maybe nostalgic about childish pranks and snowball fights. They were so rare in his life that he had to take them where he found them, and House seemed to have realized within an hour of meeting him that Wilson, at least, would never tell him to grow up.
Wilson struggled out of his wet clothing and into House’s dry stuff. A little long and tight across the shoulders, but an infinite improvement. He ransacked a remarkably well-stocked medicine cabinet to bandage his hand; judging from the crowded cabinet shelves, House had a bit of a pharmaceutical fetish. Balancing precariously to spare his damaged ankle-over-pronation can kiss my ass, Wilson thought-he edged out of the bathroom and into the living room. Obviously, House had offended someone on the residential lottery board because his apartment had basically the same layout as Wilson’s, despite House’s significant seniority. It did look bigger, though, because it was nearly empty. Mostly books and medical journals, with a small television in front of a sagging couch. Wilson resists the urge to shift the heavy textbooks off the piano in the corner; he can almost hear his mother telling him that the weight will damage the instrument. No evidence of any girlfriend. Masterpiece Theater was on the TV and House was on the couch with a takeout container in one hand and chopsticks in the other. Masterpiece Theater. The soap operas come later, after House’s surgery, when the morphine makes him too drowsy to follow more than an hour-long plot.
“Yourshis o’ der,” House said with his mouth full, gesturing toward a stack of textbooks that served as an endtable.
“What is it?”
House swallowed, rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna eat it anyway-does it matter?”
Wilson couldn’t explain why, but the supercilious manner was a lot more tolerable when he was warm and dry. He picked up the take-out container and the one of the two pill bottles next to it.
“A corticosteroid?”
“You have swelling,” House responded, one eye on the TV
“Not in my brain.”
“There are differing opinions about that,” House said darkly. “Besides, the knee bone’s connected to the shin bone; it’s all going to the same place. If you take ‘em both, they’ll combine and probably not even cross the blood-brain barrier anyway.”
“Probably?” Wilson sputtered. “Not even?”
“Oh, my God, I should have left you in the snow!”
It would be judicious, Wilson decided, to change the subject. “Who did you get to deliver on Christmas Eve?”
“Chinese place on Montrose.”
“Wow…on Christmas Eve?”
“They’re not Christian, Jimbo! You are the WASP-iest Jew I have ever met!”
That shut Wilson up. He sat down on the floor with his back against the couch, watching House maneuver the chopsticks.
“You’re good at that,” he said eventually.
“I’m good at lots of things,” House said shortly.
After that, Wilson devoted himself to his dinner. The television show involved some sort of scandal at an eighteenth-century French court-he couldn’t keep the characters straight, but House dodged nimbly between the show and the collection of textbooks in front of him. He was reading at least four books at once, flipping back and forth between them, leaving soy sauce fingerprints in the margins.
“I grew up in Japan,” House volunteered suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing.
“What?”
“Ja. Pan.” House repeated slowly. “I grew up there. Or, rather, Japan and Guam and the Philippines and Hong Kong. Hence the chopsticks.”
“Oh. Ok.” Wilson wasn’t sure why he was being awarded this information.
“Here,” House had somehow discovered that Wilson was a leftie: he swapped his chopsticks to his left hand and held it out so that Wilson could mimic the grip. With his free hand, he adjusted Wilson’s finger placement. Then, as quickly as he’d left them, he returned to the books, keeping the chopsticks in his left hand taking notes with his right. House is nearly ambidextrous, a trait that will prove very useful later in life.
Half an hour later, Wilson was warm, fed, and about to fall asleep if he didn’t move soon
“Done?” he asked House, indicating the take-out cartons.
House nodded but didn’t look up. “Go forth. Return with beer.”
Wilson hobbled out to the kitchen with the trash; House didn’t thank him and he certainly didn’t offer to help. The nearly-empty fridge contained two Tupperware containers of indeterminate origin, a jar with a biohazard sticker on it, a wrinkled apple, mayonnaise, a carton of orange juice and, sure enough, the remains of a 6-pack. He fully intended to go back to the living room with the beer, but the raft of white sheets in the chaotic ocean of House’s bedroom proves too tempting.
“Don’t you dare…” House called warningly when he heard the squeaky mattress springs.
“Just resting my foot,” Wilson yelled back, but he was nearly asleep when an idea wriggled into his head. A sensory memory, of other times he’d been this drained, of thirty-six hour rotations, people who were now beyond his help. It was ridiculous, of course…so improbable that it wouldn’t let him sleep. Finally he hauled himself up, turned on a bedside lamp, and hopped out toward the living room. Already his ankle was stiffening up, but at least the pain had lessened. His host was stretched out on the couch with legal pads and journals fanned out on the coffee table around Wilson’s abandoned coffee mug. The Late Late Show flickered on the TV.
“Hey? Are you awake?” Wilson whispered.
“No,” House said crisply.
Wilson smirked; he should have seen that one coming. “I was…I wondered-those questions about the proverbs and the sins?”
“Yeah?” House’s eyes wandered from his journal article to the television, already bored with the conversation.
“Were those mental state tests?”
“Hmmm?” House asked blandly.
“I used to sit up with my patients-the youngest ones-during my residency…” Wilson started.
“Good for you, Ms. Nightingale.”
House didn’t seem to be listening any more, caught up with whatever was on the tube, but Wilson needed to keep talking. “And I’d have them recite the alphabet, or Mary Had a Little Lamb, or whatever, so I’d know when they were conscious and oriented and-was that what you were doing?”
“You mean was I playing twenty questions so I could be sure your brain hadn’t turned to frozen broccoli?” House punched the remote, turning the TV off; he sounded strangely pleased, but Wilson couldn’t make out his expression in the quick afterburn of the dying picture.
“Yeah.”
“Nah,” House stretched and headed for the bedroom. “I was just testing your theology.”
“Where are you going?”
“Bed. You’re the guest, you get the couch. Don’t move any of the stuff on the coffee table.” House’s voice got fainter as he moved farther away. “I’m not getting up before noon tomorrow; make your own coffee. The door’ll lock behind you, so don’t leave unless you’re going.”
Wilson was drifting, tired, and the medicine was kicking in. “I can find my own way home,” he told the empty living room, too out of it to realize that House hadn’t asked.
It was colder than Wilson had expected-most days he went from heated apartment to heated car to overheated hospital-and it looked like it was going to snow again. He had an old pair of sneakers but the only sweatshirt he could find was from prep school. As he set off down the empty trail, he tried to figure out what had happened to his wardrobe of casual clothes. Honestly, it had never been all that extensive. All through school, there had been uniforms. In college, he’d stuck with the khakis-and-button-down routine: girls liked that clean-cut look. (So did their parents.) Professional school was for professionals: if the other students thought you were an overly-formal kiss-ass for not going around in mismatched scrubs-well, Wilson hadn’t gone to medical school to make friends. Besides, he’d skipped a grade in elementary school and graduated college a year early; even now, he was years younger than the other residents. Without the tie and the white coat, he knew he looked all of eighteen.
Wilson also knew he’d have to find something better than this ratty sweatshirt: he was already cold and he’d been running for less than ten minutes. And, sure enough, it had started to snow. Running through falling snow was disorienting: it was hard to judge how fast he was going. Since he hadn’t worn a hat-surely he owned a hat? he’d lived in Montreal, for crying out loud-the snow kept blowing into his eyes, making it hard to pick out the winding trail ahead of him, white-on-white as it rose out of the woods. Wilson looked up, for just a minute, into the dizzy swirl of falling flakes and his leading foot hit an icy spot. He slipped, stumbled just where the trail curved, and instead of finding solid ground, sunk up to his ankle in slushy snow from the last storm. He tried to regain his balance but the tread was worn off his old shoes and something in his left ankle snapped when he tried to jerk his weight back from the edge of the trail. There was a split-second of frantic arm waving-his right hand smashed into a tree-before gravity took over and sent him pitching into the gully that bordered the trail.
The fall was more of a somersault so, fortunately, it was his foot and not his head that hit the boulder at the bottom. Or maybe not so fortunately. Wilson lay sprawled in the snow, his own heartbeat thumping in his ears, watching his breath shudder into little clouds and trying to decide which way was up. He took stock: he could move his fingers, his clothes were wet, there was an unnerving heat blossoming in his left foot. Moving slowly, Wilson clambered to his feet…well, his foot: the left one really couldn’t take any pressure at all. The trail was infuriatingly close, not more than eight feet away, but its incline required a climb. He couldn’t very well hop up something that steep. He tried hobbling along the gully, but it seemed to take him further from the trail. He dragged himself back to where he’d fallen. The adrenaline was leeching out of his system and he became aware of the sweat and snow soaking his clothing. The sun had nearly set. He was beginning to get cold, really cold.
It had just occurred to Wilson that the cold would present more of a problem than the ankle-no way he could go back to work if he had double pneumonia-when he saw a flash of color through the trees. Another runner, making his way back along the trail through the dusk.
“Hey!” Wilson called, the cold air stinging his throat; then louder. “Hey? Hello!”
Wilson scrambled together a snowball as the runner came into view, chucked it at the trail in a desperate bid for attention. About twenty yards beyond where Wilson had taken his spill, the runner stopped, turned around and jogged back. This guy was dressed for the weather, Wilson noted enviously, having given up trying to suppress his shivers. The other runner looked down the slope to where Wilson, pale and drenched and shocky, was propped up against the same rock that had attacked his ankle. The runner tugged headphones from underneath his stocking cap and made the first pronouncement of what would be a long and beautiful friendship: “You throw like a girl.”
What the hell kind of comment is that? Wilson wanted to ask, but before he could get a word out, the other runner spoke up again. He didn’t even sound winded: “We don’t have signs or anything, Prepster, but …you do know the trail is up here, right?” He’d zoned in on the sweatshirt and his sarcasm could melt snow.
Freezing and bruised, Wilson was at the end of his patience. He glowered up at the cocky bastard and answered in kind: “Yeah,” he said dryly, “I was taking the scenic route.”
The other guy at least had the decency to look surprised by Wilson’s tone. More than surprised, Wilson decided, the look was one of…appraisal. “And was it worth the trip?”
“Not really, no,” Wilson replied with an equally straight face. “Over-rated, actually.”
“Might be nicer in the spring time?”
“One can only hope. Maybe I’ll make a return trip sometime.” Wilson figured this probably ranked in the top five most surreal conversations he’d ever had, but he must be giving the right answers. He had the feeling that, if he weren’t, this guy might just jog off into the snowstorm
“The Michigan tourist board will be delighted to hear that. Although….you’ll have to leave before you can come back,” the runner observed innocently.
“Yeah.”
The runner rearranged his headphones, apparently bored with the conversation. “Well, good luck with that. Nice talking to you. Stay warm.”
“Hey!” Wilson yelled
“Pardon?” The runner took off the headphones again.
“Aren’t you going to help me?” Wilson demanded, hands on his hips. “My ankle may be broken, I can’t climb that hill…”
“Sprained,” the runner interrupted, sounding a little bored. “Hairline fracture at the most, but probably just a bad sprain. Certainly not broken, my preppy young friend. Your rugby coach will be happy.”
“I don’t play…wait, why are we talking about this? Are you going to help me or not?” Wilson asked peevishly.
“Not,” said the runner. “But if you sit backwards, you can probably scootch your way up all on your own. And I’ll wait for you at the top.”
“If I do that, I’ll be covered in snow!” Wilson protested.
“Oh, like you aren’t already?” The runner rolled his eyes-even from a distance, they were freakishly blue and Wilson remembered having read somewhere that an abnormal proportion of sociopaths had blue eyes. “Good thing you cleared most of the snow on your way down,” the guy added, looking at the long snow skid that marked where Wilson had gone off the trail. “Anyway, hurry up if you’re coming. It’s getting a wee bit chilly up here.”
Wilson flopped down in the snow, gritting his teeth and feeling more than a little sociopathic himself (he’s chilly?!). It wouldn’t occur to him until much later how remarkable it was that this complete stranger had intuited the entire, improbable accident without asking a single question. Using his good leg for propulsion and his hands for balance, Wilson did manage to work his way up the hill more easily than he would have thought possible. He was about a third of the way from the top when the runner started pelting him with snowballs.
“What the…?! Stop that!” Wilson turned around just in time to get a snowball in the face. He shook snow out of his hair and slid a few inches down the hill before bracing himself again.
"Come on! You threw one at me first! Besides, I’ve done my best not to laugh too hard at the fact that you fell off the road-a road, and you fell off it-I gotta get my fun in somewhere. Anyway, what are you gonna do about it? Chase me?”
Wilson threw a handful of snow in the general direction of the runner, who just laughed: “With aim like that…you sure you don’t play rugby? What kind of prep school kid doesn’t play rugby?...”
Ignoring the subsequent monologue on prep schools and dumb jocks, Wilson struggled up the rest of the hill. He was so cold. And tired. God, he was tired: breathing was an effort. And the hand he’d bashed against the tree was now starting to hurt almost as much as his ankle. He couldn’t feel his left foot at all. Near the top of the hill, the runner grabbed his shoulders and, with more strength than Wilson would have given him credit for, hauled him up the last few feet. When they tumbled backward, landing in a heap on the trail, Wilson had to blink away tears, not so much out of exhaustion or even pain, but just out of sheer relief.
“See, that wasn’t so bad. Told you so,” announced the know-it-all runner. Wilson flinched when the runner started fidgeting, expecting another snowball,. “What?” he asked, absently brushing snow out of Wilson’s dark hair, his mind already on the next problem: how to get home.
It was a slow trip. The runner filled Wilson’s sock with snow-“It’s like an icepack. Except not so much with the ice. Or, you know, the pack”-and propped him up on the left side. Somewhere between the trail and the apartment complex, Wilson thought to introduce himself. His Samaritan stopped their sluggish march down the trail and insisted on shaking Wilson’s hand-“Gregory House, nephrology. Well, originally nephrology. Now infectious diseases. Expecting that second board cert. will come in handy any day now.” His grip was more than necessarily firm and Wilson was pretty sure Gregory House remembered the injury to his right hand. The point was loud and clear: the good doctor did not approve of social niceties.
Point taken: Wilson bit the inside of his cheek and cleared the pain from his face. “You’ve bombarded me with snowballs,” he said lightly, “no need to be so formal.”
Again, that sharp, appraising look and a brief crooked smile before House headed off into another rambling monologue. Wilson had the inexplicable feeling that he’d passed another test.
“James Wilson, almost-MD…Wilson, to your prep school friends. Because all prep school masters call their charges by their last names. I have this on the good authority of several British novelists. Let me guess…aphasiology?”
“You read novels?” Wilson scoffed. In the 45 minutes he’d known Gregory House, the man hadn’t stood still for more than 10 seconds: fiddling with headphones, snowballs, Wilson’s own hair. If this Dr. House had to plow through Middlemarch, he would spontaneously combust.
“I watch the miniseries on PBS,” House replied primly.
“And it’s oncology,” Wilson corrected, “pediatric oncology.”
“Close enough,” House shrugged, or tried to under Wilson’s weight. “I can spot a lost cause at twenty paces.”
“And I’m one of them?”
“You’re enamored of them,” House savored the word.
“Oooh, PBS vocabulary, there,” Wilson muttered.
House smiled, “You’re either a Southerner, a stroke expert, or someone who works with dying children.”
“Or all three?”
“A Southerner who works with children who’ve had strokes?”
“It could happen.”
“Yeah, but if it did, I never would come near you without my silver crucifix. Highly contagious.”
“Lost causes are contagious?” Wilson was having to concentrate to wend his way through this conversation. And, damn, but it was cold.
“Yup. I’m utterly immune-childhood exposure-but still…”
“Wouldn’t want to take risks.” Wilson mumbled, just to fill his spot in the conversation
House looked thoughtfully off into the snow, “There’s something about valor being the better part of wit, or something….”
“Brevity is the ss…ssss…soul of, uhm, wit, “Wilson explained, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, “discretion is the bet-better part of valor.”
“I like mine better.”
“But mine make sense.”
“So do mine: valor is hard to sustain. Stick around too long and people realize you’re not all that brave. And discretion can be…very-funny? Ok, maybe not.” House waved dismissively with the arm that wasn’t holding Wilson up. He didn’t comment on the cold, didn’t have to: Wilson’s shivers were starting to feel like convulsions. Instead, he sighed and asked the snowflakes: “Why am I not surprised he has all the proverbs committed to memory?” His attention returned to Wilson; “how are you with the seven deadly sins?”
Wilson stuttered through them.
“And the gifts of the Holy Spirit?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“And I’m a raging heathen, but why should the Christians do all the useless memorizing? Did we not go to medical school precisely to hone our abilities to memorize useless facts? But we can work on that next time you fall into a snow bank, ‘cause here we are.”
How had they gotten here so fast? Wilson looked at the apartment house in front of him; it was nearly invisible behind the curtain of snow, but there was something strange about it. It took a few seconds for his cold-numbed brain to fasten onto what it was, and a few more seconds to actually articulate it: “I don’t live here.”
“I should hope not!” House answered. “My girlfriend might have something to say about that. I live here.”
“Why aren’t we at my place?”
“Why would I wanna go there? Even if I knew where it was. Look, if you don’t want to come in…” House shrugged again, “then you can stay out here.”
“Nnn…I’ll come…”
“Thought you’d see it my way.” Wilson was becoming inured to that smug tone, but something else was niggling in the corner of his mind.
House, thank God, lived on the first level. He propped Wilson up against the wall by the door like a snow shovel. “Don’t run away, now,” he said as he pulled out his key. Wilson just nodded.
House got the door open and led Wilson into the apartment and straight to the bathroom, where he turned on all the hot water taps full blast. He hauled in a chair and made Wilson sit down in the steam. “Stay there,” he ordered like he was training a puppy, then kept up a stream of chatter from another room. “I’m making coffee. It’ll be black-I ran out of sugar and I never remember how long the milk’s been around-but you’ll drink it anyway, because if I give you anything else, you can’t have any drugs. Let this be a life lesson for you, Preppy, if you have to choose between booze and drugs: go for the drugs. Of course, in a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to choose…”
A second later, he stuck his head back into the bathroom. “I could be persuaded to go with the hard stuff…”
Wilson shook his head. Did this guy ever stop talking? “Coffee…coffee’s good.”
When House came back with the coffee, Wilson’s mind had begun to unfreeze. So had the rest of him: he thought he might get by with just walking pneumonia. House handed him a mug and a stack of dry clothing, then noted the perplexion on his guest's face. “Don’t tell me it’s not your color ‘cause that would imply that I ever cared,” he warned.
“What? No…no, it’s just…I can’t feel my foot.” Wilson looked down, dumbfounded, at the offending ankle.
“Hmm…I wonder why that could be?” House asked the air, crouching down to inspect Wilson’s foot. “That’s very odd, indeed. I just can’t figure out what would cause such a-” And before Wilson even knew what was going on, House had wrenched off the left shoe in one smooth yank.
“Jesus Christ!” Wilson shouted; fireworks exploded along his leg and he scrunched his eyes shut against the scald of tears. “My God! That-damn, that…” He gasped, choked on the steam, sloshed hot coffee all over his already wet clothing. Gradually he caught his breath, opened his eyes, but he couldn’t get his hands to stop trembling.
House had dropped down to sit on the floor, his back against the wall, looking supremely innocent. “Jesus Christ? I thought you were Jewish? Anyway, looks like all the nerves are working, so I imagine feeling will return pretty soon. Do you concur, doctor?”
“Yeah, I can feel everything just fine now, thanks,” Wilson growled.
“I believe in tearing the band-aid off right away.” House’s expression turned mournful. He walked over to stand behind Wilson, dropping the shoe into his lap. “I do have some bad news, which will probably impact your future running career.”
“What?” Wilson felt the faintest flicker of fear. It was just a sprain, right? House was looking unnaturally somber.
“Perhaps I should get a second opinion before…”
“Just tell me!”
“Ok,” Wilson could hear House take a deep breath. “You over-pronate. You’re going to need to start buying running shoes to correct for that.”
By the time the diagnosis had registered-along with the correlate that over-pronation wasn’t nearly the fatal condition Wilson had expected-House had dodged out of the bathroom. Wilson twisted in his chair and hurled his shoe after the laughing doctor, missing by a mile.
Wilson slammed the door and maybe it was the relief at not being crippled for life, but he couldn’t help smiling once House couldn’t see him. It was true: he spent most of his time with dying children. In the long run, that could only have an adverse effect on his sense of humor. But he found something-not quite amusing, but bittersweet, maybe nostalgic about childish pranks and snowball fights. They were so rare in his life that he had to take them where he found them, and House seemed to have realized within an hour of meeting him that Wilson, at least, would never tell him to grow up.
Wilson struggled out of his wet clothing and into House’s dry stuff. A little long and tight across the shoulders, but an infinite improvement. He ransacked a remarkably well-stocked medicine cabinet to bandage his hand; judging from the crowded cabinet shelves, House had a bit of a pharmaceutical fetish. Balancing precariously to spare his damaged ankle-over-pronation can kiss my ass, Wilson thought-he edged out of the bathroom and into the living room. Obviously, House had offended someone on the residential lottery board because his apartment had basically the same layout as Wilson’s, despite House’s significant seniority. It did look bigger, though, because it was nearly empty. Mostly books and medical journals, with a small television in front of a sagging couch. Wilson resists the urge to shift the heavy textbooks off the piano in the corner; he can almost hear his mother telling him that the weight will damage the instrument. No evidence of any girlfriend. Masterpiece Theater was on the TV and House was on the couch with a takeout container in one hand and chopsticks in the other. Masterpiece Theater. The soap operas come later, after House’s surgery, when the morphine makes him too drowsy to follow more than an hour-long plot.
“Yourshis o’ der,” House said with his mouth full, gesturing toward a stack of textbooks that served as an endtable.
“What is it?”
House swallowed, rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna eat it anyway-does it matter?”
Wilson couldn’t explain why, but the supercilious manner was a lot more tolerable when he was warm and dry. He picked up the take-out container and the one of the two pill bottles next to it.
“A corticosteroid?”
“You have swelling,” House responded, one eye on the TV
“Not in my brain.”
“There are differing opinions about that,” House said darkly. “Besides, the knee bone’s connected to the shin bone; it’s all going to the same place. If you take ‘em both, they’ll combine and probably not even cross the blood-brain barrier anyway.”
“Probably?” Wilson sputtered. “Not even?”
“Oh, my God, I should have left you in the snow!”
It would be judicious, Wilson decided, to change the subject. “Who did you get to deliver on Christmas Eve?”
“Chinese place on Montrose.”
“Wow…on Christmas Eve?”
“They’re not Christian, Jimbo! You are the WASP-iest Jew I have ever met!”
That shut Wilson up. He sat down on the floor with his back against the couch, watching House maneuver the chopsticks.
“You’re good at that,” he said eventually.
“I’m good at lots of things,” House said shortly.
After that, Wilson devoted himself to his dinner. The television show involved some sort of scandal at an eighteenth-century French court-he couldn’t keep the characters straight, but House dodged nimbly between the show and the collection of textbooks in front of him. He was reading at least four books at once, flipping back and forth between them, leaving soy sauce fingerprints in the margins.
“I grew up in Japan,” House volunteered suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing.
“What?”
“Ja. Pan.” House repeated slowly. “I grew up there. Or, rather, Japan and Guam and the Philippines and Hong Kong. Hence the chopsticks.”
“Oh. Ok.” Wilson wasn’t sure why he was being awarded this information.
“Here,” House had somehow discovered that Wilson was a leftie: he swapped his chopsticks to his left hand and held it out so that Wilson could mimic the grip. With his free hand, he adjusted Wilson’s finger placement. Then, as quickly as he’d left them, he returned to the books, keeping the chopsticks in his left hand taking notes with his right. House is nearly ambidextrous, a trait that will prove very useful later in life.
Half an hour later, Wilson was warm, fed, and about to fall asleep if he didn’t move soon
“Done?” he asked House, indicating the take-out cartons.
House nodded but didn’t look up. “Go forth. Return with beer.”
Wilson hobbled out to the kitchen with the trash; House didn’t thank him and he certainly didn’t offer to help. The nearly-empty fridge contained two Tupperware containers of indeterminate origin, a jar with a biohazard sticker on it, a wrinkled apple, mayonnaise, a carton of orange juice and, sure enough, the remains of a 6-pack. He fully intended to go back to the living room with the beer, but the raft of white sheets in the chaotic ocean of House’s bedroom proves too tempting.
“Don’t you dare…” House called warningly when he heard the squeaky mattress springs.
“Just resting my foot,” Wilson yelled back, but he was nearly asleep when an idea wriggled into his head. A sensory memory, of other times he’d been this drained, of thirty-six hour rotations, people who were now beyond his help. It was ridiculous, of course…so improbable that it wouldn’t let him sleep. Finally he hauled himself up, turned on a bedside lamp, and hopped out toward the living room. Already his ankle was stiffening up, but at least the pain had lessened. His host was stretched out on the couch with legal pads and journals fanned out on the coffee table around Wilson’s abandoned coffee mug. The Late Late Show flickered on the TV.
“Hey? Are you awake?” Wilson whispered.
“No,” House said crisply.
Wilson smirked; he should have seen that one coming. “I was…I wondered-those questions about the proverbs and the sins?”
“Yeah?” House’s eyes wandered from his journal article to the television, already bored with the conversation.
“Were those mental state tests?”
“Hmmm?” House asked blandly.
“I used to sit up with my patients-the youngest ones-during my residency…” Wilson started.
“Good for you, Ms. Nightingale.”
House didn’t seem to be listening any more, caught up with whatever was on the tube, but Wilson needed to keep talking. “And I’d have them recite the alphabet, or Mary Had a Little Lamb, or whatever, so I’d know when they were conscious and oriented and-was that what you were doing?”
“You mean was I playing twenty questions so I could be sure your brain hadn’t turned to frozen broccoli?” House punched the remote, turning the TV off; he sounded strangely pleased, but Wilson couldn’t make out his expression in the quick afterburn of the dying picture.
“Yeah.”
“Nah,” House stretched and headed for the bedroom. “I was just testing your theology.”
“Where are you going?”
“Bed. You’re the guest, you get the couch. Don’t move any of the stuff on the coffee table.” House’s voice got fainter as he moved farther away. “I’m not getting up before noon tomorrow; make your own coffee. The door’ll lock behind you, so don’t leave unless you’re going.”
Wilson was drifting, tired, and the medicine was kicking in. “I can find my own way home,” he told the empty living room, too out of it to realize that House hadn’t asked.