Post-Trauma 8.1 of ?
Not a long update, but here's what I've got:
Temas isn’t sure what to expect when Greg-House-comes in for his appointment. He’d seemed almost like a completely different person on the phone earlier that week.
The first surprise is that he brings his friend James with him again. Temas decides not to raise the issue, just greets them both. “Hi James, Greg. How are you feeling?”
Greg glances at him sharply. “House. Fine.” He chooses a seat as far as possible from Temas’s desk, and James sits near him.
Temas drags another chair over. “I gather you’ve had a busy week?”
House nods. “The acupuncture worked. Some. I’m going back again today, after this.”
“Great.”
“I’m taking gabapentin. For the pain. Wilson prescribed it.”
Temas nods. “Sounds good. How’s that working out?”
House shrugs.
Temas decides not to pursue it. “You’ve made a lot of changes this week. What brought all that on?”
With a hesitant glance at his friend, House explains what had happened after their last session. How they’d gotten in the car and gone to Pennsylvania.
Temas, experienced at reading the significance of creative play, understands quickly. He’d disclosed last time that he had wanted his friend to come rescue him from rehab. Immediately after leaving the session, he’d arranged to enact the rescue that never happened. It was something he encouraged his child patients to do, with dolls or other toys, in session-to replay their traumatic experiences with better endings. House, of course, had played through the experience in real time, with the real people involved. Unconventional, but it had clearly worked for House. He seemed alert and focused, as well as much less passive.
“Wilson showed me my test results, and the dead girl’s. You knew too. About what they did to me.”
It’s not really a question, but Temas answers it anyway. “I was working it out, yes.”
House nods. “Anyway. We talked some about what happened. At rehab. I still don’t remember much about here. With Luerssen. But I’m…better. I guess.”
Wilson speaks up. “Are you going to tell him about the flashbacks?”
“I was going to leave that for a surprise,” House says. “But I guess I have to, now.”
What House describes aren’t exactly flashbacks, as the term is normally used. Normally, a PTSD patient flashes back to the moment of the trauma-they may actually believe they’re back there, or they may only feel the physical and emotional symptoms that they experienced at the time-a Vietnam war vet, for instance, might actually see and smell the jungle, and hear the choppers over head and the screams of his buddies, or he might only experience the rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and fear that made up the physiological response to his original trauma. What House is experiencing, on the other hand, is a brief return to the state of altered consciousness that he’d lived in for months following his “treatment.”
Still, “flashbacks” is the best available name for them. Temas agrees that they’re probably brought on by the same mechanism as typical flashbacks-some sensory stimulus triggering a memory that brings the whole thing back in a big chunk. He explains this, and adds, “The frequency and severity of the flashbacks will probably decrease over time, even if we do nothing. What we should do next is try to figure out what’s triggering them-so you can avoid likely triggers, in the short term, and we can desensitize you to them, in the long term.”
“No,” House says.
Temas blinks. “Pardon?”
“I don’t care what’s triggering them. I just want them to stop.”
“I understand that. But--”
“Not doing it,” House says.
“Why not?” Temas asks.
“Because I don’t want to.”
“The process of therapy isn’t always fun, but--”
“Yeah, I wonder where I’ve heard that before?”
Temas backs off. He does have a point. “Okay. Maybe it’s too soon. What would you like to work on today?”
“Getting Luerssen arrested for murder,” House answers.
What follows is more of a council of war than a therapy session. The three of them hammer out a plan of action. Temas will start things off on two fronts by contacting the APA, the police officer who signed off on Isabelle D’s suicide, and the police department in Nevada where the rehab centers are located. House and Wilson will stand by to be contacted by both agencies. House will work on a deposition about his experiences in rehab and with Luerssen, and Wilson will assemble the results of the tests he did on his friend, along with summaries in non-technical language.
It’s not until they’re finished making the plan that Temas thinks to point out to Greg, “This is going to be difficult. It’s going to stir up all of the feelings you’ve already been dealing with, and probably some others, too. But once we start this process, you won’t be able to call it off.”
House raises his chin. “Luerssen’s still seeing patients. Not here, but he’s in private practice.”
“Yes.”
“And people are still being sent to New Horizons for treatment.”
“Yes,” Temas admits.
“Then I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Wilson thinks, over the next few days, that it would be much easier if he could do the first-person account of what happened, and House could do the lab report. Emotional difficulties aside, the way House’s mind works doesn’t lend itself readily to narrative.
House does most of his work on the deposition at night. Wilson’s been staying over at his place since they got back from their trip-they’ve never exactly discussed it, but House seems to want him there. Wilson falls asleep on the couch most nights to the sound of House tapping away at his computer keyboard. And most mornings he finds a few printed-out pages left on the coffee table. But although House obviously knows he’s reading them, even wants him to read them, he refuses to discuss what he’s written.
A week and a half goes by before the police contact them. House cancels his next therapy session, saying there’s nothing new to discuss, although he does go to all of his acupuncture appointments.
It’s not until there’s a knock at the door, and he looks out to see two police detectives waiting there, that he realizes he’s been holding his breath waiting for this. He wasn’t sure how it would happen, and he wasn’t sure which way would be worst-if they came for House at work, here at home, or called them down to the station. What he did know was that it wasn’t going to be good, no matter what.
Now that they’re here at the house, he wishes it had worked out either of the other two ways. House looks like a deer in front of a firing squad, wide-eyed and desperate and resigned. “You want a minute?” he asks. “I’ll stall them out in the foyer for a while.”
“’kay,” House says faintly.
Wilson opens the door just far enough to squeeze out, then shuts the door behind him. “Hi. I’m Doctor Wilson.”
“Doctor Wilson. I’m Detective Angela Whitley, and my partner’s Detective Charles Dawson. Can we come in?”
“Did Doctor Temas send you?” He figures he’d better check, first-it would be a real bitch if they’re here to toss House’s place for drugs.
“We’ve spoken to him, yes. We’d like to talk with you and Greg House about Doctor Luerssen.”
Wilson nods. “He’s a little freaked out. You can talk to him in a few minutes.” He opens the door, calls in, “It’s okay, House,” and shuts it again. “What do you know?”
“We don’t really discuss the details of an ongoing investigation.”
“My friend…has been through a traumatic experience. And it all started with one of your colleagues staging a vendetta against him. Forgive me if I seem to be being a little over-cautious.”
“I understand your concern,” Whitley says. “Doctor Temas gave us several warnings and suggestions about Doctor House, too. But you have to understand that to us this is an investigation. Not part of his therapy.”
“Right.” House will probably prefer it that way.
“We’ll try not to upset him, but our investigation takes priority over your friend’s feelings,” she concludes.
“The most important thing,” Wilson says, “is that he has these flashbacks, and when he’s having one, he’ll agree to anything. You’ll probably notice when he’s having one; you just have to wait it out.”
“Do they last long?”
Wilson shakes his head. “Minute or two.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I have copies of his labs for you, and I kept back some blood and tissue samples, if you want your own people to repeat the tests.”
“Hold onto it all for now. I’m not sure we’ll be able to connect any of his evidence to the dead girl.”
“Well, if you manage to exhume her, you should be able to get much better results, anyway. She had her last session with Luerssen less than a week before her death, and I didn’t do any tests on House until three weeks after he’d stopped seeing Luerssen. There should be a lot more of the drugs in her system.”
“That…might be difficult,” Whitley says. “Is your friend ready to talk to us?” he asks.
“I’ll check.” He goes in. House is sitting on the couch, very still. “You ready for this?”
“Yeah.”
Wilson doesn’t put much stock in the actual answer, but notes that House made eye contact when he said it, and that he looked like himself, not a glassy-eyed zombie. “Okay. I’ll let them in.”
The two detectives come in. House takes a deep, shuddering breath, but when he lets it out, he’s still there. They introduce themselves, and House mumbles something back.
“We’re investigating the death of Isabelle Dumont,” Dawson adds.
“Good,” House says.
Whitley continues, “We understand you and she were treated by the same psychiatrist, following your return-hers and yours-from inpatient treatment facilities.”
“Yes,” House agrees. Wilson decides it’s still basically him, even though he’s being cooperative, something not usually associated with House. “Doctor Luerssen,” he agreed.
“What went on at your sessions with Doctor Luerssen?” Whitley asks.
Flatly, House tells them. “I don’t remember all of it,” he begins. “I don’t think I was meant to. I mean, I think forgetting what happened was part of the plan. I’d go in. Sometimes he’d get a blood or urine sample for a drug screen. He’d give me an injection, and he’d ask if I’d behaved myself since our last session.”
“If you’d used any drugs, you mean?” Whitley asks.
“That, and if I’d associated with any of my druggie buddies--” Wilson smiles against his will, “-things like that. Sometimes he gave me things to do between sessions. He had me sell my motorcycle. He wanted me to get rid of my pet rat, but I didn’t.” House glances over at Steve, who’s running on his wheel. “After that, he’d talk for the rest of the session.”
“About what?”
“About what was wrong with me. In my case it was that I was an addict. And I was uncooperative, and ungrateful, and arrogant. And thought I was smarter than everyone else. He’d have told her different things. The dead girl, I mean. The drugs…made it impossible not to believe him. I’m not surprised she killed herself. I’m surprised more of us didn’t.”
“Why did you keep going back?”
“He said I’d have to go back to rehab if I didn’t. Bad as treatment with him was, rehab was worse. At least this way I got to go home afterward. But that makes it sound like a rational decision, and really it wasn’t. I couldn’t think. When I was going there. It was like the only thing in my head was what he put there. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to stop going.”
They ask House a few more questions, mostly things he doesn’t know-where Luerssen got the controlled drugs he gave his patients, whether he was acting on anyone else’s instructions. Why he did it.
“I don’t know,” House says. “I don’t know if he had a reason. He hates addicts. He might have hated all his patients.”
“How do you know that?”
“He said so. Often. It’s possible he thought he was doing the world a service. Or maybe he just enjoyed it. Or both. Or neither. If you find out-let me know.
Temas isn’t sure what to expect when Greg-House-comes in for his appointment. He’d seemed almost like a completely different person on the phone earlier that week.
The first surprise is that he brings his friend James with him again. Temas decides not to raise the issue, just greets them both. “Hi James, Greg. How are you feeling?”
Greg glances at him sharply. “House. Fine.” He chooses a seat as far as possible from Temas’s desk, and James sits near him.
Temas drags another chair over. “I gather you’ve had a busy week?”
House nods. “The acupuncture worked. Some. I’m going back again today, after this.”
“Great.”
“I’m taking gabapentin. For the pain. Wilson prescribed it.”
Temas nods. “Sounds good. How’s that working out?”
House shrugs.
Temas decides not to pursue it. “You’ve made a lot of changes this week. What brought all that on?”
With a hesitant glance at his friend, House explains what had happened after their last session. How they’d gotten in the car and gone to Pennsylvania.
Temas, experienced at reading the significance of creative play, understands quickly. He’d disclosed last time that he had wanted his friend to come rescue him from rehab. Immediately after leaving the session, he’d arranged to enact the rescue that never happened. It was something he encouraged his child patients to do, with dolls or other toys, in session-to replay their traumatic experiences with better endings. House, of course, had played through the experience in real time, with the real people involved. Unconventional, but it had clearly worked for House. He seemed alert and focused, as well as much less passive.
“Wilson showed me my test results, and the dead girl’s. You knew too. About what they did to me.”
It’s not really a question, but Temas answers it anyway. “I was working it out, yes.”
House nods. “Anyway. We talked some about what happened. At rehab. I still don’t remember much about here. With Luerssen. But I’m…better. I guess.”
Wilson speaks up. “Are you going to tell him about the flashbacks?”
“I was going to leave that for a surprise,” House says. “But I guess I have to, now.”
What House describes aren’t exactly flashbacks, as the term is normally used. Normally, a PTSD patient flashes back to the moment of the trauma-they may actually believe they’re back there, or they may only feel the physical and emotional symptoms that they experienced at the time-a Vietnam war vet, for instance, might actually see and smell the jungle, and hear the choppers over head and the screams of his buddies, or he might only experience the rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and fear that made up the physiological response to his original trauma. What House is experiencing, on the other hand, is a brief return to the state of altered consciousness that he’d lived in for months following his “treatment.”
Still, “flashbacks” is the best available name for them. Temas agrees that they’re probably brought on by the same mechanism as typical flashbacks-some sensory stimulus triggering a memory that brings the whole thing back in a big chunk. He explains this, and adds, “The frequency and severity of the flashbacks will probably decrease over time, even if we do nothing. What we should do next is try to figure out what’s triggering them-so you can avoid likely triggers, in the short term, and we can desensitize you to them, in the long term.”
“No,” House says.
Temas blinks. “Pardon?”
“I don’t care what’s triggering them. I just want them to stop.”
“I understand that. But--”
“Not doing it,” House says.
“Why not?” Temas asks.
“Because I don’t want to.”
“The process of therapy isn’t always fun, but--”
“Yeah, I wonder where I’ve heard that before?”
Temas backs off. He does have a point. “Okay. Maybe it’s too soon. What would you like to work on today?”
“Getting Luerssen arrested for murder,” House answers.
What follows is more of a council of war than a therapy session. The three of them hammer out a plan of action. Temas will start things off on two fronts by contacting the APA, the police officer who signed off on Isabelle D’s suicide, and the police department in Nevada where the rehab centers are located. House and Wilson will stand by to be contacted by both agencies. House will work on a deposition about his experiences in rehab and with Luerssen, and Wilson will assemble the results of the tests he did on his friend, along with summaries in non-technical language.
It’s not until they’re finished making the plan that Temas thinks to point out to Greg, “This is going to be difficult. It’s going to stir up all of the feelings you’ve already been dealing with, and probably some others, too. But once we start this process, you won’t be able to call it off.”
House raises his chin. “Luerssen’s still seeing patients. Not here, but he’s in private practice.”
“Yes.”
“And people are still being sent to New Horizons for treatment.”
“Yes,” Temas admits.
“Then I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Wilson thinks, over the next few days, that it would be much easier if he could do the first-person account of what happened, and House could do the lab report. Emotional difficulties aside, the way House’s mind works doesn’t lend itself readily to narrative.
House does most of his work on the deposition at night. Wilson’s been staying over at his place since they got back from their trip-they’ve never exactly discussed it, but House seems to want him there. Wilson falls asleep on the couch most nights to the sound of House tapping away at his computer keyboard. And most mornings he finds a few printed-out pages left on the coffee table. But although House obviously knows he’s reading them, even wants him to read them, he refuses to discuss what he’s written.
A week and a half goes by before the police contact them. House cancels his next therapy session, saying there’s nothing new to discuss, although he does go to all of his acupuncture appointments.
It’s not until there’s a knock at the door, and he looks out to see two police detectives waiting there, that he realizes he’s been holding his breath waiting for this. He wasn’t sure how it would happen, and he wasn’t sure which way would be worst-if they came for House at work, here at home, or called them down to the station. What he did know was that it wasn’t going to be good, no matter what.
Now that they’re here at the house, he wishes it had worked out either of the other two ways. House looks like a deer in front of a firing squad, wide-eyed and desperate and resigned. “You want a minute?” he asks. “I’ll stall them out in the foyer for a while.”
“’kay,” House says faintly.
Wilson opens the door just far enough to squeeze out, then shuts the door behind him. “Hi. I’m Doctor Wilson.”
“Doctor Wilson. I’m Detective Angela Whitley, and my partner’s Detective Charles Dawson. Can we come in?”
“Did Doctor Temas send you?” He figures he’d better check, first-it would be a real bitch if they’re here to toss House’s place for drugs.
“We’ve spoken to him, yes. We’d like to talk with you and Greg House about Doctor Luerssen.”
Wilson nods. “He’s a little freaked out. You can talk to him in a few minutes.” He opens the door, calls in, “It’s okay, House,” and shuts it again. “What do you know?”
“We don’t really discuss the details of an ongoing investigation.”
“My friend…has been through a traumatic experience. And it all started with one of your colleagues staging a vendetta against him. Forgive me if I seem to be being a little over-cautious.”
“I understand your concern,” Whitley says. “Doctor Temas gave us several warnings and suggestions about Doctor House, too. But you have to understand that to us this is an investigation. Not part of his therapy.”
“Right.” House will probably prefer it that way.
“We’ll try not to upset him, but our investigation takes priority over your friend’s feelings,” she concludes.
“The most important thing,” Wilson says, “is that he has these flashbacks, and when he’s having one, he’ll agree to anything. You’ll probably notice when he’s having one; you just have to wait it out.”
“Do they last long?”
Wilson shakes his head. “Minute or two.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I have copies of his labs for you, and I kept back some blood and tissue samples, if you want your own people to repeat the tests.”
“Hold onto it all for now. I’m not sure we’ll be able to connect any of his evidence to the dead girl.”
“Well, if you manage to exhume her, you should be able to get much better results, anyway. She had her last session with Luerssen less than a week before her death, and I didn’t do any tests on House until three weeks after he’d stopped seeing Luerssen. There should be a lot more of the drugs in her system.”
“That…might be difficult,” Whitley says. “Is your friend ready to talk to us?” he asks.
“I’ll check.” He goes in. House is sitting on the couch, very still. “You ready for this?”
“Yeah.”
Wilson doesn’t put much stock in the actual answer, but notes that House made eye contact when he said it, and that he looked like himself, not a glassy-eyed zombie. “Okay. I’ll let them in.”
The two detectives come in. House takes a deep, shuddering breath, but when he lets it out, he’s still there. They introduce themselves, and House mumbles something back.
“We’re investigating the death of Isabelle Dumont,” Dawson adds.
“Good,” House says.
Whitley continues, “We understand you and she were treated by the same psychiatrist, following your return-hers and yours-from inpatient treatment facilities.”
“Yes,” House agrees. Wilson decides it’s still basically him, even though he’s being cooperative, something not usually associated with House. “Doctor Luerssen,” he agreed.
“What went on at your sessions with Doctor Luerssen?” Whitley asks.
Flatly, House tells them. “I don’t remember all of it,” he begins. “I don’t think I was meant to. I mean, I think forgetting what happened was part of the plan. I’d go in. Sometimes he’d get a blood or urine sample for a drug screen. He’d give me an injection, and he’d ask if I’d behaved myself since our last session.”
“If you’d used any drugs, you mean?” Whitley asks.
“That, and if I’d associated with any of my druggie buddies--” Wilson smiles against his will, “-things like that. Sometimes he gave me things to do between sessions. He had me sell my motorcycle. He wanted me to get rid of my pet rat, but I didn’t.” House glances over at Steve, who’s running on his wheel. “After that, he’d talk for the rest of the session.”
“About what?”
“About what was wrong with me. In my case it was that I was an addict. And I was uncooperative, and ungrateful, and arrogant. And thought I was smarter than everyone else. He’d have told her different things. The dead girl, I mean. The drugs…made it impossible not to believe him. I’m not surprised she killed herself. I’m surprised more of us didn’t.”
“Why did you keep going back?”
“He said I’d have to go back to rehab if I didn’t. Bad as treatment with him was, rehab was worse. At least this way I got to go home afterward. But that makes it sound like a rational decision, and really it wasn’t. I couldn’t think. When I was going there. It was like the only thing in my head was what he put there. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to stop going.”
They ask House a few more questions, mostly things he doesn’t know-where Luerssen got the controlled drugs he gave his patients, whether he was acting on anyone else’s instructions. Why he did it.
“I don’t know,” House says. “I don’t know if he had a reason. He hates addicts. He might have hated all his patients.”
“How do you know that?”
“He said so. Often. It’s possible he thought he was doing the world a service. Or maybe he just enjoyed it. Or both. Or neither. If you find out-let me know.