Post-Trauma 12.1
For most of the next week, House seems caught halfway between his real personality and his broken one. He’s not sleepwalking through his days; Wilson hears almost no sanctimonious pronouncements about the importance of paperwork and clinic duty, and he begins turning on the TV on his own. But at the same time, he’s uncharacteristically subdued, and keeps busy with work during work hours, forgoing any of his usual hijinks. He takes a couple of cases, and solves them each in less than a day, which tells Wilson he’s taking on patients he’d usually dismiss as too boring. When Wilson breaks the news that Luerssen has been released to house arrest pending trial, he has no reaction whatsoever.
He goes to acupuncture and uses the heating pad, but still doesn’t take his gabapentin. He rubs his leg often, and twice Wilson hears him get up at night to pace in an effort to walk off the pain. He doesn’t say much about Luerssen-if he’s remembered anything new, he’s keeping it to himself-but he doesn’t say anything about Wilson moving back out, either.
On Thursday, Wilson signs out of work early to take House to therapy, as has become their usual routine. “Do you want me to come in with you?” he asks as they go into the waiting room.
House shrugs. “Dunno.”
“It’s up to you.” He’d just as soon keep House in his sight, but he doesn’t want to smother him.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it.” Wilson picks up a magazine from the side table.
House twirls his cane slowly.
Temas finishes writing up his notes on the previous patient and heads out to the waiting room. House is sitting hunched over next to his friend, looking as much like a little boy in the pediatrician’s office for a shot as a grown man of almost fifty possibly can look. “I’m ready for you, House,” he says.
House gets up and looks indecisively back at his friend.
“You coming back too, Wilson?” he asks.
“If House wants me to,” he answers.
House hesitates, looking back and forth between them.
“Why don’t you come back by yourself, and if you want Wilson later, we’ll come get him,” Temas suggests. House’s relationship with Wilson looks to be one of the best things he has going for him, but at some point, treating him like he can’t be let out on his own is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Okay,” House agrees readily, and they walk back to Temas’s office.
Temas has to restrain an impulse to take his hand, as though he was walking with a child patient. He’s a grown man. Where’s this impulse to think of him as a little kid coming from? Maybe it’s that House was abused by a figure of trust, which much more often happens with children. Or his over-compliance-the caustic, assertive House that he’d seen only once in session would surely not inspire the same feelings.
It could also be that he reminds Temas of Lee, who acts like an overgrown twelve-year-old so much of the time. Taking the two of them to Chuck E. Cheese would be a riot.
Possibly literally.
“How did the week go?” Temas asks, as they sit down.
“Just terrific,” House says flatly.
Sarcasm is, under the circumstances, an encouraging sign. “What do you want to work on today?”
“Eh.” House wanders over to the shelves, but doesn’t choose anything to play with. “I’m starting to remember more about what happened in the Clinic last week.”
Temas is careful not to react too much. “Yeah?”
“Mm. I decided it must’ve been Luerssen. Even though I still feel like it wasn’t.”
Temas blinked. “Ah.”
“Yeah.” He rolls a toy car down the shelf. “So I don’t know what I’m gonna say in court about that. Am I supposed to say what I remember, or what I know’s true?”
“I’m not sure,” Temas admits. “You might want to talk to Ms. Shepherd about that.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
When House doesn’t say anything more, Temas probes gently, “So what do you remember about the…incident?”
“Well. I’ve been having dreams about it. It’s…I can’t figure out which parts really happened.”
“Hm. Well, for our purposes, what literally happened isn’t the most important thing. What you remember happening, what you feel, can be even more significant.” House has a real aversion to the word “feelings,” and all its derivatives, but Temas can’t see a way around it this time.
“Yeah, well. For getting Luerssen put away, what actually happened is the most important thing.”
“Is that the only reason you’re here?”
“Yes.”
Temas just waits.
“Okay, maybe not.” House sighs. “I’ve been trying to get Wilson to stop being my friend.”
Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that. “How come?”
“I think one reason is that Luerssen said he’d hurt him if he found him at my place.”
One reason-not the only one; maybe not even the most important one. He makes a noncommittal sound.
“But the real reason is that I’ve just been fucking up his life the entire time he’s known me. I broke up two of his three marriages. I got him kicked off the hospital board and fired once. I got his car impounded and his medical license suspended. And those are just the big things. He’s always dropping everything to deal with my shit. Whether it’s bailing me out of jail or bringing me here or cooking for me, or…just everything. It’s…I don’t know why he puts up with me. Nobody knows why. So that’s another thing, I make him look like a spineless idiot to everyone who knows us.”
Temas can think of a lot of ways to characterize James Wilson, but “spineless idiot” isn’t one of them.
“Anyway, Wilson kind of talked me out of it, but I still….”
“Feel,” Temas supplies.
“Yeah, that. Like I don’t…deserve him. Or something.”
This is huge, and Temas knows it. “Where do you suppose that’s coming from?”
“Luerssen, would be the logical guess. But I don’t think he even knew about Wilson, the first time, and when he was in the Clinic, he didn’t seem to know who he was, just that he was staying with me.”
It strikes Temas as strange that House doesn’t realize the effects of Luerssen’s brainwashing could go beyond the specific things Luerssen actually said. “Hm,” he says.
“Have we ever talked about my dad?” House asks suddenly.
If he’s as much like Lee as he seems to be, lightning-fast changes of subject are normal-he’s not necessarily avoiding the previous topic. “I don’t think so,” he answers. He knows perfectly well they haven’t.
“He wasn’t exactly father of the year. You probably guessed that.”
Temas tries not to make assumptions, but if he’d had to make a guess, he’d have guessed House’s childhood was rougher than average. Maybe not “We only let Greg out of the cage in the basement when the coven’s coming over for an orgy,” bad, but not Leave it to Beaver, either. He nods and makes an encouraging sound.
House picks up the monkey puppet and sticks it over his hand. “Yeah. So Luerssen says I deserved it when my father beat me, and my mother was stupid to love me.” His tone is distressingly matter-of-fact. “So that’s probably where it’s coming from.”
“Wilson reminds you of your mother,” Temas essays.
“Sometimes,” House admits. “He has this whole ‘unconditional love’ thing that he does. She’s like that, too.” He doesn’t sound like he entirely approves of the phenomenon.
“So you have two people who love you,” Temas says. “Is your mother still alive?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. Don’t see her much. I think Wilson keeps her up to date on all my news.”
“Why don’t you see her much?”
“My dad.”
Temas waits to see if House is going to elaborate. He doesn’t-apparently, he thinks that should be explanation enough. “He…doesn’t let your mother see you?”
“No, it’s not like that. He just…well, seeing her means seeing him, and we fight, and she hates that.”
“Fight? Physically?”
“What? No. Argue, I guess I should have said. He hasn’t hit me since I got to be taller than him.”
He can tell House doesn’t want to talk about his father hitting him-he’s throwing it out, like a challenge, but if Temas follows up on it, he’ll just clam up. So instead he asks, “Do you talk with her on the phone?”
“Not much. She-I don’t really want to hear about what my dad’s up to, and I don’t want her reporting back to him about what we talked about.”
“Reporting” is an interesting choice of words, but Temas doesn’t want to interrupt him to ask about it.
“So it’s easier just not to talk to her,” House concludes.
Easier, maybe, but far from ideal. “Have you talked to her since you got back from rehab?”
“No,” House says quickly.
“You don’t want to know what she thinks about everything that’s been going on?”
“I don’t want to worry her.”
“You’re going through a hard time. She might be able to help,” Temas points out.
“Help how?” House says dubiously. “There’s nothing she can do about it.”
“Well. Give you some support, I mean.”
House shakes his head. “No.”
“Do you think maybe she wouldn’t believe you?” If House had been abused by his father-and it sounded like he had-his mother had either not known, or had known and not stopped it. Even for an adult, years or decades away from the abuse experience, the distinction tends to matter a lot.
“No, she’d believe me. She just wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I mean, she’d feel sorry for me. But that doesn’t do me any good.”
That answers that question. “Is that how it was when you were growing up?” Having a loving parent witness abuse and do nothing is one of the most profound fractures of trust a child can experience. Temas has to know.
House rolls his eyes. “Shrinks. Everything’s about childhood trauma with you, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure you know that early experiences have an observable impact on the developing brain,” Temas points out. House has already withdrawn from their conversation by making a joke; he might as well beat him to his next-favorite avoidance strategy, intellectualizing.
“’Neurons that fire together wire together,’” House quotes vaguely.
“Chronic stress in childhood-whether it’s from abuse, or growing up in a war zone, or exposure to crime, or some other factor-is correlated with a measurable reduction in size of the hippocampus and other parts of the limbic system.” He hopes House doesn’t ask what other parts-he’s not as familiar with brain anatomy as Lee would argue he should be.
“And overproduction of dopamine and underproduction of seratonin. What’s your point?”
“My point is that we shrinks always ask about childhood trauma because it’s important.”
House sighs dramatically. “Yes. That’s how it was when I was growing up. My dad would do something stupid, and Mom would wring her hands and say ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, John?’”
Nothing wrong with House’s short-term memory now, then-he seems to have had an easier time tracking back to where they were before the segue into neurobiology than Temas himself did. “So how do you feel about that?”
“I thought it was stupid,” House says flatly.
Wilson finishes reading up about the Brangelina breakup-he’d somehow missed most of the details back when it actually happened, so it’s a good thing the Mental Health Center still has those issues of People sitting around-and glances at his watch. Twenty minutes left in House’s appointment. He should have brought something worthwhile to read.
The receptionist smiles at him. “It’s good of you to bring your friend here every week.”
“Thanks.” Somehow, while being admired for being nice to House the cranky cripple is acceptable, he’s less comfortable with being admired for taking care of House the mental defective.
“I never liked that Luerssen. He was so rude and demanding to us in the front office.”
“A lot of doctors are,” Wilson says curtly. The PPTH administrative staff could say the same thing about House.
“We’re about out of time,” Temas says.
“Good.” House isn’t sure how Temas got him to talk about his parents, or why-he was perfectly fine before Luerssen got his hooks into him.
“Do you know what today is?”
“Thursday?” he hazards.
“You’ve been back from rehab for six months, which means you’re done with your court-ordered treatment.”
House blinks. “Well, shit.” He’d forgotten, somehow, that there was an end to this. “Great. Now I can go back to spending Thursday afternoons at the OTB parlor.”
“So should I expect you next week?” Temas asks.
House opens his mouth to say, “Hell no,” but then stops. “I…don’t know.”
“We haven’t done any termination work, what with all the…excitement.”
“What the hell is termination work?”
“Preparing you for the termination of the therapeutic relationship.”
“Wow. You people are full of yourselves. When I’m done treating a patient, I just send them home.”
“Well, this is different.” Temas leans forward toward him. “You’re doing good, especially with the drug situation, but I think there’s a lot left for us to work on. I hope you’ll keep coming to see me.”
House wishes Temas had just not said anything. He’d have remembered eventually that they were officially done. He rubs the back of his neck. “Okay,” he finally says. “I’ll come next week. After that, we’ll see.”
He goes to acupuncture and uses the heating pad, but still doesn’t take his gabapentin. He rubs his leg often, and twice Wilson hears him get up at night to pace in an effort to walk off the pain. He doesn’t say much about Luerssen-if he’s remembered anything new, he’s keeping it to himself-but he doesn’t say anything about Wilson moving back out, either.
On Thursday, Wilson signs out of work early to take House to therapy, as has become their usual routine. “Do you want me to come in with you?” he asks as they go into the waiting room.
House shrugs. “Dunno.”
“It’s up to you.” He’d just as soon keep House in his sight, but he doesn’t want to smother him.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it.” Wilson picks up a magazine from the side table.
House twirls his cane slowly.
Temas finishes writing up his notes on the previous patient and heads out to the waiting room. House is sitting hunched over next to his friend, looking as much like a little boy in the pediatrician’s office for a shot as a grown man of almost fifty possibly can look. “I’m ready for you, House,” he says.
House gets up and looks indecisively back at his friend.
“You coming back too, Wilson?” he asks.
“If House wants me to,” he answers.
House hesitates, looking back and forth between them.
“Why don’t you come back by yourself, and if you want Wilson later, we’ll come get him,” Temas suggests. House’s relationship with Wilson looks to be one of the best things he has going for him, but at some point, treating him like he can’t be let out on his own is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Okay,” House agrees readily, and they walk back to Temas’s office.
Temas has to restrain an impulse to take his hand, as though he was walking with a child patient. He’s a grown man. Where’s this impulse to think of him as a little kid coming from? Maybe it’s that House was abused by a figure of trust, which much more often happens with children. Or his over-compliance-the caustic, assertive House that he’d seen only once in session would surely not inspire the same feelings.
It could also be that he reminds Temas of Lee, who acts like an overgrown twelve-year-old so much of the time. Taking the two of them to Chuck E. Cheese would be a riot.
Possibly literally.
“How did the week go?” Temas asks, as they sit down.
“Just terrific,” House says flatly.
Sarcasm is, under the circumstances, an encouraging sign. “What do you want to work on today?”
“Eh.” House wanders over to the shelves, but doesn’t choose anything to play with. “I’m starting to remember more about what happened in the Clinic last week.”
Temas is careful not to react too much. “Yeah?”
“Mm. I decided it must’ve been Luerssen. Even though I still feel like it wasn’t.”
Temas blinked. “Ah.”
“Yeah.” He rolls a toy car down the shelf. “So I don’t know what I’m gonna say in court about that. Am I supposed to say what I remember, or what I know’s true?”
“I’m not sure,” Temas admits. “You might want to talk to Ms. Shepherd about that.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
When House doesn’t say anything more, Temas probes gently, “So what do you remember about the…incident?”
“Well. I’ve been having dreams about it. It’s…I can’t figure out which parts really happened.”
“Hm. Well, for our purposes, what literally happened isn’t the most important thing. What you remember happening, what you feel, can be even more significant.” House has a real aversion to the word “feelings,” and all its derivatives, but Temas can’t see a way around it this time.
“Yeah, well. For getting Luerssen put away, what actually happened is the most important thing.”
“Is that the only reason you’re here?”
“Yes.”
Temas just waits.
“Okay, maybe not.” House sighs. “I’ve been trying to get Wilson to stop being my friend.”
Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that. “How come?”
“I think one reason is that Luerssen said he’d hurt him if he found him at my place.”
One reason-not the only one; maybe not even the most important one. He makes a noncommittal sound.
“But the real reason is that I’ve just been fucking up his life the entire time he’s known me. I broke up two of his three marriages. I got him kicked off the hospital board and fired once. I got his car impounded and his medical license suspended. And those are just the big things. He’s always dropping everything to deal with my shit. Whether it’s bailing me out of jail or bringing me here or cooking for me, or…just everything. It’s…I don’t know why he puts up with me. Nobody knows why. So that’s another thing, I make him look like a spineless idiot to everyone who knows us.”
Temas can think of a lot of ways to characterize James Wilson, but “spineless idiot” isn’t one of them.
“Anyway, Wilson kind of talked me out of it, but I still….”
“Feel,” Temas supplies.
“Yeah, that. Like I don’t…deserve him. Or something.”
This is huge, and Temas knows it. “Where do you suppose that’s coming from?”
“Luerssen, would be the logical guess. But I don’t think he even knew about Wilson, the first time, and when he was in the Clinic, he didn’t seem to know who he was, just that he was staying with me.”
It strikes Temas as strange that House doesn’t realize the effects of Luerssen’s brainwashing could go beyond the specific things Luerssen actually said. “Hm,” he says.
“Have we ever talked about my dad?” House asks suddenly.
If he’s as much like Lee as he seems to be, lightning-fast changes of subject are normal-he’s not necessarily avoiding the previous topic. “I don’t think so,” he answers. He knows perfectly well they haven’t.
“He wasn’t exactly father of the year. You probably guessed that.”
Temas tries not to make assumptions, but if he’d had to make a guess, he’d have guessed House’s childhood was rougher than average. Maybe not “We only let Greg out of the cage in the basement when the coven’s coming over for an orgy,” bad, but not Leave it to Beaver, either. He nods and makes an encouraging sound.
House picks up the monkey puppet and sticks it over his hand. “Yeah. So Luerssen says I deserved it when my father beat me, and my mother was stupid to love me.” His tone is distressingly matter-of-fact. “So that’s probably where it’s coming from.”
“Wilson reminds you of your mother,” Temas essays.
“Sometimes,” House admits. “He has this whole ‘unconditional love’ thing that he does. She’s like that, too.” He doesn’t sound like he entirely approves of the phenomenon.
“So you have two people who love you,” Temas says. “Is your mother still alive?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. Don’t see her much. I think Wilson keeps her up to date on all my news.”
“Why don’t you see her much?”
“My dad.”
Temas waits to see if House is going to elaborate. He doesn’t-apparently, he thinks that should be explanation enough. “He…doesn’t let your mother see you?”
“No, it’s not like that. He just…well, seeing her means seeing him, and we fight, and she hates that.”
“Fight? Physically?”
“What? No. Argue, I guess I should have said. He hasn’t hit me since I got to be taller than him.”
He can tell House doesn’t want to talk about his father hitting him-he’s throwing it out, like a challenge, but if Temas follows up on it, he’ll just clam up. So instead he asks, “Do you talk with her on the phone?”
“Not much. She-I don’t really want to hear about what my dad’s up to, and I don’t want her reporting back to him about what we talked about.”
“Reporting” is an interesting choice of words, but Temas doesn’t want to interrupt him to ask about it.
“So it’s easier just not to talk to her,” House concludes.
Easier, maybe, but far from ideal. “Have you talked to her since you got back from rehab?”
“No,” House says quickly.
“You don’t want to know what she thinks about everything that’s been going on?”
“I don’t want to worry her.”
“You’re going through a hard time. She might be able to help,” Temas points out.
“Help how?” House says dubiously. “There’s nothing she can do about it.”
“Well. Give you some support, I mean.”
House shakes his head. “No.”
“Do you think maybe she wouldn’t believe you?” If House had been abused by his father-and it sounded like he had-his mother had either not known, or had known and not stopped it. Even for an adult, years or decades away from the abuse experience, the distinction tends to matter a lot.
“No, she’d believe me. She just wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I mean, she’d feel sorry for me. But that doesn’t do me any good.”
That answers that question. “Is that how it was when you were growing up?” Having a loving parent witness abuse and do nothing is one of the most profound fractures of trust a child can experience. Temas has to know.
House rolls his eyes. “Shrinks. Everything’s about childhood trauma with you, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure you know that early experiences have an observable impact on the developing brain,” Temas points out. House has already withdrawn from their conversation by making a joke; he might as well beat him to his next-favorite avoidance strategy, intellectualizing.
“’Neurons that fire together wire together,’” House quotes vaguely.
“Chronic stress in childhood-whether it’s from abuse, or growing up in a war zone, or exposure to crime, or some other factor-is correlated with a measurable reduction in size of the hippocampus and other parts of the limbic system.” He hopes House doesn’t ask what other parts-he’s not as familiar with brain anatomy as Lee would argue he should be.
“And overproduction of dopamine and underproduction of seratonin. What’s your point?”
“My point is that we shrinks always ask about childhood trauma because it’s important.”
House sighs dramatically. “Yes. That’s how it was when I was growing up. My dad would do something stupid, and Mom would wring her hands and say ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, John?’”
Nothing wrong with House’s short-term memory now, then-he seems to have had an easier time tracking back to where they were before the segue into neurobiology than Temas himself did. “So how do you feel about that?”
“I thought it was stupid,” House says flatly.
Wilson finishes reading up about the Brangelina breakup-he’d somehow missed most of the details back when it actually happened, so it’s a good thing the Mental Health Center still has those issues of People sitting around-and glances at his watch. Twenty minutes left in House’s appointment. He should have brought something worthwhile to read.
The receptionist smiles at him. “It’s good of you to bring your friend here every week.”
“Thanks.” Somehow, while being admired for being nice to House the cranky cripple is acceptable, he’s less comfortable with being admired for taking care of House the mental defective.
“I never liked that Luerssen. He was so rude and demanding to us in the front office.”
“A lot of doctors are,” Wilson says curtly. The PPTH administrative staff could say the same thing about House.
“We’re about out of time,” Temas says.
“Good.” House isn’t sure how Temas got him to talk about his parents, or why-he was perfectly fine before Luerssen got his hooks into him.
“Do you know what today is?”
“Thursday?” he hazards.
“You’ve been back from rehab for six months, which means you’re done with your court-ordered treatment.”
House blinks. “Well, shit.” He’d forgotten, somehow, that there was an end to this. “Great. Now I can go back to spending Thursday afternoons at the OTB parlor.”
“So should I expect you next week?” Temas asks.
House opens his mouth to say, “Hell no,” but then stops. “I…don’t know.”
“We haven’t done any termination work, what with all the…excitement.”
“What the hell is termination work?”
“Preparing you for the termination of the therapeutic relationship.”
“Wow. You people are full of yourselves. When I’m done treating a patient, I just send them home.”
“Well, this is different.” Temas leans forward toward him. “You’re doing good, especially with the drug situation, but I think there’s a lot left for us to work on. I hope you’ll keep coming to see me.”
House wishes Temas had just not said anything. He’d have remembered eventually that they were officially done. He rubs the back of his neck. “Okay,” he finally says. “I’ll come next week. After that, we’ll see.”