Post-Trauma 6 of 7 (at least)
Back at the cabin, House sits at the table, a glass of water and one of his gabapentin pills in front of him. Wilson’s moving around, bringing things in from the car and putting the groceries away; House doesn’t pay him much attention.
He rolls the pill between his fingers. Part of him screams that it’s the enemy. He doesn’t need it. His leg doesn’t really hurt; it’s just his sick, weak mind telling him it does, so he’ll have an excuse to start using again. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with this pill-it’s not narcotic; he can’t get high from taking it-but it’s a step down the road back to being a user. Wilson shouldn’t indulge his fantasy that his leg hurts.
But it does hurt. The part of his brain that tells him it doesn’t keeps banging up against that fact. It doesn’t hurt, it tells him, you just think it hurts.
But if he thinks it hurts, it does hurt. Pain is entirely a subjective experience. Pain is the experience of feeling pain-there’s nothing visible or tangible or testable about it. There’s no way to distinguish “real” pain from pain he just feels.
Then, his brain tries, you aren’t feeling it. You’re imagining it.
But he’s not. If he was imagining it, he could stop.
Hallucinating it?
There is no difference between hallucinating pain and having it.
It doesn’t hurt. He just says it hurts to get drugs. He’s an addict, and addicts lie.
Except it hurts.
A hand falls on his shoulder. He jumps, guiltily.
But it’s just Wilson. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to hide it in a piece of cheese for you? That’s how we gave our dog a pill when I was growing up.”
“No thanks,” House mumbles.
“Take your time,” Wilson says. “You’ll get it.”
“Your faith in me warms my heart,” House says, layering the words with enough sarcasm that Wilson (probably) won’t know they’re true.
While House struggles with his pill, Wilson goes out to the car and brings in his briefcase. He wasn’t completely sure that House was ready, but he’d been so much himself at the store, that Wilson decided to take a chance. Sitting on the sofa, he popped the catches on his case and took out a folder and started leafing slowly through the contents.
Most of the documents inside he’d had for weeks. A few gas chromatographs had just come in earlier that week, from the out-of-state labs he’d sent the samples to. Nevertheless, he wasn’t expecting to come to any new insights.
Not by himself, anyway.
He starts laying out the reports on the coffee table.
“Whatcha doin’?” House has turned around in his seat to look at him.
“Looking at some lab reports,” Wilson answers casually.
“I didn’t bring any work with me,” House says worriedly. “Should I have?”
“Not necessarily. This is just something I’ve been trying to figure out for a while.” He very carefully doesn’t study House to see if he’s responding to the call of the hunt.
When he finally gives in and steals a glance, House has gone back to playing with his pill. While he’s still watching, House throws the pill into his mouth with the air of one bravely doing something extremely dangerous, takes a swig from the water glass, and stands up.
Limping over to the sofa, he holds out his hand. “Give.”
He puts up a token protest. “Some of this stuff’s confidential.”
“So? It’s a consult.”
Wilson selects one particular report from the middle of the pile and hands it to him.
He scans it. “Why are you giving me an autopsy report for a girl who committed suicide?”
“She…might’ve had help. And there are some other patients who might’ve had the same kind of help. Look at the toxicology report.”
House turns the page, and shrugs. “Barbiturates. She probably took them to settle her nerves before she started cutting. Lots of people do.”
“That’s why I asked the medical examiner for the raw data,” Wilson answers, handing over another page.
House studies it. “That’s…weird.” While the toxicology summary on the final report only shows the presence of barbiturates, the raw data show traces of other chemicals. “This looks like, maybe, thorazine that had almost cleared her system. Or something closely related. I’m not as up on the newer antipsychotics as I probably should be.”
Wilson feeds him another report.
“Not Thorazine, then. Something in the same class. And-sodium pentathol? Where the hell was this girl living?”
“That’s one of the other patients, actually,” Wilson says, handing over the gas chromatography results.
House studies it. “Are these people in some kind of a cult?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Most of these things aren’t really drugs of abuse. But if I was trying to do mind control on a budget, I’d probably start with some of this stuff.” He studies a few more documents. “I’m not surprised the girl offed herself. If she was like these others, she was pumped so full of drugs she couldn’t string two thoughts together. Any chance of getting the body exhumed to test hair and tissue samples?”
“I don’t know,” Wilson says honestly. If they involve the police-and maybe Doctor Temas will want to, once they have a better idea of what Luerssen did-it’s possible.
“Whoever gave her this stuff killed her,” House says flatly. “As surely as if he slit her wrists himself. If he knew what it would do, that’s murder.”
“You figure he knew what it would do?” Wilson asks, wondering if House is going to put it together.
“It would be hard for a layman to get his hands on some of these drugs. He’s probably a doctor.” House wavers. “Or a pharmacist or something like that, I guess.”
“That makes sense,” Wilson agrees.
“I wonder if the drugs are the whole story,” he adds. “There are a lot of other ways to do mind control. Peer pressure. Sleep deprivation. Post-hypnotic suggestion, even.”
“I get the impression this guy used the whole bag of tricks,” Wilson says. “But I don’t know exactly.”
House turns his eyes downward. Silence stretches between them, glacially. Although House is staring at the file, Wilson can tell he’s not really seeing it. Wheels are turning inside his head. “Why’d you bring this?” he finally asks.
Wilson rubs the back of his neck. “Well….”
House looks up at him, pinning him to the sofa with his eyes. “Why. This?”
“Because…” Wilson swallows hard. “Because most of those labs are yours.”
House nods like he expected that. “And the dead girl?”
“She was Luerssen’s patient.”
House rubs his hand over his face. “You didn’t tell me? How long have you known about this?”
“A couple of weeks, and I did. It just…didn’t register. Do you remember when I took the sample for those labs?”
House thinks. “Not…really.”
“I told you I was going to take some blood, hair, and tissue samples because I thought someone had been drugging you. You said you didn’t use drugs anymore, and take what I wanted, but be quick about it because you had clinic hours.”
“I…sort of remember that. I thought you meant I was using again.”
“I know that’s what you thought. But that’s not what I said. And last week, when I went to your session with Doctor Temas-do you remember that?”
House nods. “You made the Empire State Building out of legos.”
“Yeah. And we had a conversation about this,” Wilson reminds him, tapping the folder. “How I found something that looked like Ritalin in your blood work-here.” He points to the report that includes that finding.
“I don’t use stimulants,” House protests. “I never did.”
“I know. That’s what you said then.”
House rubs his forehead. “Am I going to remember this conversation?”
“I hope so. Temas said if you figured it out on your own, it would stick.”
Wilson fixes chicken and avocado sandwiches and a quinoa salad for lunch, while House quietly leafs through the lab reports.
“You feeling hungry at all?” he asks, when the food’s ready. House might have some nausea from the gabapentin, but he should try to eat if he can.
“Okay.” House brings the folder to the table, but closes it and sticks it under his plate. “Is this one of those no-lettuce salads?”
“Yeah. Try it, you’ll probably like it.”
House takes an experimental forkful. “It’s not bad.” He tries the sandwich, and devours half of it in a few bites. “This is a lot better than the food in rehab,” he says.
“I bet,” Wilson says. House has told him almost nothing about rehab, except that he doesn’t want to go back. “What’d they give you to eat there?”
“I mostly got peanut butter sandwiches,” he answers. “Because I was mostly in Iso. One peanut butter sandwich, one half-pint of milk, three times a day. It sucked.” He takes another bite and chews thoughtfully. “But I was probably better off in Iso than on the main ward. There, you got taken down if you don’t eat. Didn’t matter if you were nauseous from detoxing.”
“What’s ‘taken down’ mean?” Wilson hopes it’s like “written up,” but he’s afraid it’s not.
“That’s when Staff knock you down and sit on you until they decide to let you up,” House says matter-of-factly. “One time I thought they were going to kill this girl-she was throwing up and they restrained her on her back.”
“What happened?”
“Dunno. I yelled at them and got put back in Iso. But I think she was still alive when I got out.” He shakes his head. “Another guy, he was coming off of heroin, they made him carry around a bucket of his own vomit. But in Iso, you don’t have to eat.”
“That sounds horrible.” If he hadn’t already rescued House, he’d want to do it again.
“Rehab isn’t supposed to be fun,” House recites.
“They aren’t supposed to torture you, either.”
“You can’t treat addicts like real people,” House says seriously.
Wilson reminds himself that House has to live with this shit inside his head. He can stand to listen to it. “They said that at rehab, huh?”
“Yes.”
“They said your leg didn’t hurt, too,” Wilson reminds him. “They lied.”
House drums his fingers on the table. “Yeah.” More drumming. “That place…. I mean, I came out of it okay, but some of those pathetic bastards in there just couldn’t take it.”
Sure. He came out of it just great. Wilson bites his tongue.
“You aren’t supposed to make excuses for why you got on drugs, but people would talk about it anyway. I don’t know why. Somebody’d say she started drinking and taking pills when she was thirteen because her stepdad was messing with her, and then Staff would make everybody call her ‘whore’ for two days, and then the next time we had Group somebody else would do the same damn thing.”
“People went along with that? The other patients, I mean?”
House shrugs. “Yeah. A few people would tell her they were sorry about what happened, when Staff weren’t looking. But most people drank the kool-aid pretty quick.”
“What did you do?” Wilson asks. House doesn’t like to let it show, but Wilson knows he actually has a lot of empathy for people who are suffering.
“Not much. I was only out of Iso for four days before they put me back in. I don’t remember much from the second time I was out.” House frowns. “They started the shots there.”
“They did?” Wilson had thought it was just Luerssen.
“Yeah. The second time I was in Iso. That must be why I don’t remember it.” House pushes his plate away. “I’m not really hungry anymore.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Wilson agrees, clearing their plates away and putting the leftovers in the refrigerator.
“They took my cane. I remember that. Because there’s nothing wrong with my leg. I tried to tell them that even if it didn’t hurt, I was still missing a big chunk of muscle. I think I got in trouble for that. It would be Making Excuses, wouldn’t it? So I must’ve.”
“I would’ve come and gotten you if I knew what it was like,” Wilson says. Even though House was court-ordered into rehab, and Wilson hadn’t had any authority to get him out. He’d have gotten him out, somehow.
House nods. “But you wanted me to go.”
Wilson has been dreading this. He almost hoped that House didn’t remember who’d put him in rehab in the first place. “I didn’t know. I thought it would be, art therapy and talking about your feelings.”
“Yeah. I guess this was better.” House tries to smile but succeeds mainly in looking ill.
“Too soon?” Wilson asks.
“Yeah.” House sniffles and rubs at his eyes. “It was mostly just stupid shit,” he continues, not quite looking at Wilson. “Like you had to be on level three before they’d let you take a shower, and they’d make fun of you for being filthy and gross when it was their fault in the first place.”
“What level were you on?”
“Two, mostly. If you were a One, you weren’t allowed to talk, and nobody could talk to you except Staff and Fives, and all they’d do is tell you what was wrong with you. I was a One for a while. They didn’t give you your shoes back until you were a four, and the floors were really cold. If you complained about it they’d just say, ‘Whose fault is it you don’t have any shoes?’ Turns out, ‘Yours, you sadistic motherfucker,’ was the wrong answer.” He rubs his eyes again. Wilson very carefully doesn’t answer. “Let’s go sit outside. I need some air.”
“Sure.”
There aren’t any chairs on the porch. House sits on the edge, feet dangling a few inches from the ground. Wilson sits next to him. The cabin’s set in a grove of pine trees, it’s a warm day, and there are no sounds but the chittering of a couple of squirrels playing tag in the branches. House watches the squirrels for a minute and says, “For some reason, I kept thinking about Steve McQueen. When I was in Iso. I kept thinking when I finally got home, the first thing I’d have to do is throw out his corpse.” House glances up at him. “I was worried about you and the kids, too. But I figured somebody would notice if any of you starved to death. But me and Steve could have just rotted away in our cages and….” He swallows hard. “I know you’d have cared. It just didn’t feel like it then.”
Wilson nods. “Okay.” He adds, “I was taking care of Steve, too. I guess you figured that out.” He and House hadn’t been speaking, when House left for rehab, but he always looked after Steve when House had to go out of town.
“Yeah.” He sighs heavily. “I almost got rid of him a bunch of times. You aren’t supposed to keep vermin as pets.”
“You love Steve,” Wilson points out.
“I love Vicodin, too,” House says dejectedly.
“And me,” Wilson dares.
“I wasn’t supposed to see you,” House says. “’Cause you’re one of my druggie buddies.”
Wilson can’t help smiling at the thought of himself as somebody’s druggie buddy. “I thought I was your enabler.”
“That too.”
“Do you get why they told you not to see me? Luerssen, and the rehab people?”
“Because you gave me drugs.”
“That’s what they told you, but what’s the real reason?”
House drags the tip of his cane across the ground, digging a deep furrow in the carpet of pine needles. “It’s still kind of hard to think.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Laying his cane across his lap, House leans back on his hands. “You’d’ve figured out what they were doing. Faster.”
Wilson’s touched by House’s faith in his powers of deduction, but he just says, “Uh-huh. And?”
“And…it’d be easier to fuck with my head if I didn’t have anybody else. You’d’ve…reminded me who I was.”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured.” Wilson almost wants to hug House, but House doesn’t really like being touched, so he just bumps his shoulder against House’s.
One side of House’s mouth twists up in what’s almost a smile, for about half a second. “You’re going to have to keep reminding me for a while.”
He knows that you’re supposed to feel better after you tell someone about a traumatic experience.
He hadn’t expected it to work. Telling Wilson-even though there was a lot more, and worse, that he hadn’t talked about yet-hurt more, scared him more, than anything he’d ever done. He’d rather be shot again than see the horror and pity play out on his best friend’s face.
But he felt better. His head was clearer. He remembered more. The lies were easier to spot, and he remembered more of who he’d been before, and how different that was from what they’d told him he was.
And, he had to keep reminding himself, Wilson was tough. He was an oncologist; he dealt with horrors every day. Even though it felt like he was infecting his friend with filth, telling him about those things, Wilson could take it. He’d seen worse.
They’d taken a walk-on the handicapped-accessible “hiking trail” that’s really a paved path through the woods-without talking much, except for a few inane comments about the scenery (Wilson) and the mating habits of the local insect life (House). Now they’re back at the cabin, playing two-handed rummy, although Wilson’s making noises about fixing dinner.
“How’s your leg feel?” Wilson asks.
He shrugs. “It hurts.”
“Are you having any nausea, dizziness, anything like that?”
Oh. He’s being a doctor now. “No.”
“Okay. Let me know, if you do.” Wilson lays down some cards.
“Okay.” House studies what’s in his hand. “You know what it was like? It was like being locked up for three months with my father. He’s been trying my whole life to convince me I’m a worthless sack of shit.” The numbers on the cards go blurry; he blinks to clear them. “I was pretty good at not believing him. Now, it’s like….like I have to swallow whatever shit they shove at me. Even if I know it’s not true, I still believe it. Y’know?”
Wilson nods, even though House can’t imagine how he would know. Wilson who everybody likes, who nobody’s ever wanted to take down.
“Even though I know they can’t make me go back, I also know they can. And that my leg doesn’t hurt. And that addicts don’t have friends. And that if you’re an addict you only have yourself to blame for it, and for what they have to do to you to try to make you better. And you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are.” He’s halfway sure that no one at rehab ever said that one, that he just dredged it up from his childhood and it got mixed in with the rest of the poison they were pumping into his head.
“You’ve always been good at holding two contradictory ideas in your head at once,” Wilson points out.
“Yeah. Who knew that talent would later be my undoing, huh?” He puts his cards down carefully. “But even if I know which one is true, it’s like the lie’s wired into my limbic system. Even if I don’t think it, I still have to feel it.”
“That sort of makes sense,” Wilson says thoughtfully. “Not only were you drugged up to the eyeballs when they told you those things, you were cold, and in pain, and sleep-deprived. You weren’t exactly in ideal shape for higher reasoning.”
It helps, a little bit, thinking about what happened to him as a biochemical process.
“You do know,” Wilson continues, “that none of what they did to you was your fault.
That-even though House is ashamed to admit it-that helps, too.
He’s woken, this time, not by the creak of bedsprings but by a strangled scream. Wilson jumps out of bed before he’s even fully awake. House, on the top bunk, is pressed back against the wall, eyes wide and glittery, his mouth contorted in a snarl. He freezes when he sees Wilson. “Go,” he says, in a harsh, urgent whisper. “Before they see you. They won’t let you go.”
Wilson reaches for him. “House, it’s me. You’re safe.”
House takes Wilson’s hand. “You can’t stay. You don’t belong here.”
“House, it’s okay. You’re not there anymore. You’re with me.”
Sanity slowly takes over his face. He drops Wilson’s hand and scrubs it over his face. “Fuck,” he says, flopping back against his pillow, breathing hard.
“Bad dream?” Wilson asks inanely.
He nods.
“That happen often?”
“No.” He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “But I have a feeling it’s going to.”
“Want some help getting down?” Wilson offers.
“No, just, out of the way.” Wilson steps back, and he slides down. “PTSD, you think?”
Wilson shrugs. “Maybe. Do you want to talk about it? The dream?”
“Not much to tell.” House limps out into the living room, followed by Wilson. “Do we have any hot chocolate?”
“No, sorry. I could make you some warm milk.”
“Ugh.” He sits down on the sofa, rubbing at his thigh. “I was back at rehab. They were having a special Group to show everybody what happens if you try to escape.”
“What happens?” Wilson asks, sitting down next to him. He doesn’t want to know, but he’s sure that House needs to say.
“In the dream, your buddy who helped you escape has to start the program, too. And you have to sit there and watch while the Staff beat the crap out of him with your cane until he admits he doesn’t want you to get better. And then they make you tell him you never want to see him again. And he believes you.”
“Oh,” Wilson says softly.
“In real life, the one woman who tried to escape while I was there didn’t get as far as the front door. They beat the crap out of her, then left her four-pointed on a gurney in the dayroom until she pissed herself, and then wrote ‘addict’ on her face in permanent marker so she wouldn’t be able to pass for normal if she did get out. And she was on permanent level One for the rest of the time I was there. You know, completely normal hospital stuff like we’d do if someone tried to leave AMA.” He shrugs. “Mostly they watch you closely enough that it’s obvious there’s no point. They don’t even let you take a crap by yourself until you’re on Four. And everybody knows you can move up levels faster if you rat people out to Staff. Only you can’t call it that. If you help the other addicts by telling Staff when someone is hindering their own recovery.” He leans back. “Orwellian shit like that. Telling someone they’re a worthless sack of shit, or screaming ‘whore’ at them when Staff tells you do, or telling Staff that you saw somebody talk to a One, or helping Staff do a take down, if you’re a Five, is called helping them. Telling someone you’re sorry they got raped by their dad, or letting somebody who’s on Two borrow your fork, is hindering their recovery.”
“Your fork?” Wilson asks, trying to keep up.
“Yeah, you had to be on Three to get silverware. I did that the day I was on Three. Because it was spaghetti night. It’s very difficult to eat spaghetti with your hands.”
“Wait, they basically wanted you to be a complete asshole to everyone else there, and you had trouble with that?”
“Strangely, yes. So then after the big Fork Incident I got busted back to Two, and in Group they explained that by letting Pauline use my fork I was enabling her to continue avoiding the consequences of her actions. If you enable somebody you have to stand up in Group and tell them that you hate them and don’t want them to get better. And then they have to thank you.”
“They didn’t want the patients forming alliances, I guess,” Wilson says. “If you compared notes, or developed any kind of support system, it would be easier to resist.”
House nods. “Yeah. I guess. So you can see why, if you were there with me…I mean, it was bad enough watching strangers get shat on for trying to be nice to you. And I know you wouldn’t stop. No matter what they did to you, you wouldn’t stop trying to help me.”