Post-Trauma 7.3/ ?
The man who limps into her consulting room looks like he’s made entirely of sharp planes and angles, nothing curved or soft about him. Many of her patients seem stooped and drawn with pain, but he seems to be burdened more heavilly than most, and not just in his leg. He’s followed by another man, shorter and a bit heavier-not fat, but carrying a bit of padding--with a boyish face. The man with the cane is obviously the patient, Greg House. The other one she tentatively labels as his partner.
“I’m Fiona Chen,” she says, getting up and offering her hand.
Greg shifts his cane into his left hand-he uses it in his right hand, the same side as his injury-and shakes her hand. “House. This is Doctor Wilson.”
Wilson shakes her hand too. “I’m just…with him,” he says, apparently at a loss for how to explain his presence.
“That’s fine. A lot of people are nervous about coming to an alternative practitioner for the first time.” She gestures toward the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat. I usually start, with new patients, by talking a little bit about what we’re going to be doing, and why it works. Would you like some tea?”
“We’d love some,” Doctor Wilson says, sitting down and tugging House into a chair.
She heats some water in the electric kettle she keeps in the corner of her office and quickly makes a pot of Jasmine tea.
“Your accent’s unusual,” House says while she’s working on it.
She’s gotten used to people wondering about her ethnicity. It annoys her sometimes, but avoiding the question only creates anxiety and frustration, which makes it more difficult to ease her patients’ pain. “My mother’s Scots by birth, and my father’s second-generation Chinese-American.”
“You grew up in…Toronto, until around sixth grade, and then Detroit. Right?”
“It was seventh grade,” she answers, a little surprised.
He shrugs.
“Close enough,” Wilson says quietly.
She puts the teapot on a tray with three handleless cups, then puts the tray in the middle of her desk. “You’re probably curious about my academic background,” she says, pouring. Doctor Temas had mentioned that House is a doctor, and apparently Wilson is one too, so they’ve got to be wondering if she really knows what she’s doing, or if she got her credentials off the back of a cereal box. “Acupuncture is not a very well-regulated field in New Jersey, so there are practitioners out there with very little formal training. That’s not the case with me. I have a Doctorate in Traditional Medicine from a program run jointly by the Toronto College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and the University of Toronto, where I took a classes alongside students studying conventional medicine.”
“That’s nice. I have a double specialty in nephrology and infectious diseases from the University of Michigan,” House says. “And he’s an oncologist.”
“Excellent. So I don’t have to worry about getting too technical when I explain what I’m going to be doing. Doctor Temas told me that you have chronic nerve pain from an infarction and muscle death in your right thigh.”
“That’s right,” Wilson says, elbowing House sharply in the ribs.
She gets out her human anatomy diagrams and explains where she’ll be placing the needles, around the spinal nerves that affect the right leg. “Most people expect us to place the needles directly in the area where they feel pain or other symptoms, but in fact most acupuncture points are around the spine. There are two explanations, or two types of explanations, for why acupuncture is effective for reducing pain.” She always talks about both classes of reasons, but changes the emphasis according to the patient’s background. “The traditional practitioners who developed acupuncture in China about two thousand years ago believed that illness and pain are caused by an imbalance of energy in the body, which could be caused by a blockage in the meridians, or energy-carrying channels. Inserting needles allows the practitioner to remove blockages and otherwise manipulate the flow of energy in the body.”
Doctor Wilson elbows House again, even more emphatically than the last time. She wonders why he’s being so violent, when all his friend is doing is sitting quietly and looking slightly bored.
“Did you have a question?” she asks politely.
House shifts in his seat. “No. No questions.”
“The conventional medical explanation is that inserting the needles releases endorphins, which, as I’m sure you know, work to block pain. Of course, that doesn’t explain how acupuncture works on problems other than pain, such as immune system or gastrointestinal conditions. Acupuncturists generally believe that there’s more going on than just endorphin release, and a lot of studies have been done, but there’s no consensus on what other mechanism or mechanism may be at work. Most patients are satisfied with the fact that they feel less pain after the treatment, even if it’s not clear why they’re feeling less pain. I can give you copies of some articles on the subject, if you’re interested in knowing more.” She remembers reading an interesting one on slowing degenerative kidney failure, which might be of interest, since he’s in nephrology.
House nods. “Thanks. Yeah.”
She goes on to take a history, asking about the nature and location of the pain, as well as about House’s daily routine and activities. “Let’s see, your work is mostly sedentary. What about outside of work? How would you characterize your activity level?”
House shrugs, and says, “Average, for a crip-” and then goes very still. His eyes get cold and glassy, like her epileptic old dog’s when he was having a seizure, the kind where he’d pant and drool and walk in circles, and go into a frenzy of barking and snapping if you tried to touch him. “Normal,” he says in a voice drained of affect.
The man’s friend doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, so she decides to continue with her questions. “What kind of things do you do in a typical day?”
“Normal things,” he says in that flat voice. “I watch television.”
Doctor Wilson turns to look at him now. “House? You okay, buddy?”
“I’m better now,” he says.
“Yeah.” Wilson catches her eye and shrugs slightly. “Yeah, you’re great.” He picks up one of the teacups. “Here, drink some of this.”
Obediently, he drinks. At the second sip, his eyes soften, and he makes a sort of wry expression. “What is this crap?”
“Tea,” Wilson says. “You okay now?”
He nods. “Yeah.” After another sip, he asks her, “Where were we?”
“Are you all right? Was that a seizure, or….” He hadn’t mentioned any neurological problems when she took his medical history.
“Flashback,” Doctor Wilson supplies. “But you’ve only had two today, haven’t you?”
“No, I had one in the MRI room,” House says. “But that one was only about five seconds.”
“What kind of flashback?” Fiona asks.
“Post-traumatic,” Doctor Wilson says. “It’s not anything organic; shouldn’t interfere with what you’re doing here.”
“All right,” she agrees. “I was asking about your daily activities.”
“Video games and hookers.”
House asks him to stay in the room where Chen (he’s not sure if she should be “Doctor Chen” or “Ms Chen”-does a Doctorate in Traditional Medicine make you a doctor? Or is it like a Doctorate in Political Science?) works on him. He stays, of course, even though he’s not particularly eager to watch his best friend be turned into the human pincushion. If he’s nervous about it, he can only imagine how House feels.
Wilson stands where House can see him, and House watches him for the first part of the treatment. Then after the first six or seven needles are in, his eyelids droop, and a few minutes later, he falls asleep.
“That’s normal,” Chen tells him quietly, inserting the last needles. “We’ll just let him rest for a while.”
Wilson pulls up a chair and sits next to House, watching him sleep. He’s seen House asleep; he’s seen him comatose; he’s seen him unconscious; he’s seen him passed out. But he’s not sure he’s ever seen him quite like this. It looks like natural sleep, not a drugged stupor, but he’s more completely relaxed than Wilson’s ever seen him.
He wakes up when Chen comes in to take the needles out, but lays bonelessly limp on the table until she’s done. “Wilson, have you been staring at my undraped form this whole time?”
“Your form is draped,” Wilson points out. “Literally.” He had to take his shirt and jeans off for the treatment, but he’s covered to the waist with a sheet.
“You’re evading the question,” House points out.
“How does your leg feel?”
“Not bad, actually. Get out, so I can get dressed, unless you want to give me a happy ending.”
Wilson goes back into Chen’s consulting room. “Does he have those flashbacks often?” she asks.
“Uh…not sure, yet.”
House comes out, dressed, limping a little less heavily than before. “Leg feels good,” he says. “When do we do this again?”
“Some people come once a week, some twice.” She opens an appointment book. “I have Thursday afternoon, same time. Does that work?”
“Yeah, okay. I get out of therapy at four.”
“Good. I’ll see you then. You can stop at the desk for your bill.”
House wanders out the front door, leaving Wilson to pay his bill. There’s a discounted rate for ten sessions; he goes ahead and puts it all on his Mastercard.
Cuddy stops by the Clinic after lunch. House is on the schedule from eleven to two; for the last five months, he’s been present, on time, for every shift.
She checks the sign-in book. House’s signature is there, with “10:59” written for “time.” But it’s under Smythe’s signature, and he came on at 12:30.
She smiles. “Brenda, what room’s Doctor House in?”
“Three. Is something wrong?”
“No,” she says, still smiling. “Nothing’s wrong.”
As she turns toward exam room three, the door opens and a teenage girl is propelled out into the hallway. “Are you sure it’s not an STD?” she demands. “It burns when I pee.”
“Posion ivy on your hoo-hoo can have that effect,” House says, scribbling something on a prescription pad, tearing it off, and handing it to her. “Keep that in your purse. Refer to it next time you’re choosing a place to do the nasty. And try not to scratch.”
The girl walks off, an annoyed expression on her face.
“What did you give her?” Cuddy asks.
“Picture of what poison ivy looks like.” He steps back into the exam room; she follows.
“How’s your leg?” she asks. Wilson had told her they were leaving early yesterday for an acupuncture appointment. Even after five months of the strange new House, she can’t quite imagine him going for something like that.
He hops up onto the exam table. “Not bad, actually. I think I’ll ask her to do something about my shoulder next time, too. I usually don’t notice it much because the leg hurts more. Did you know that the hospital’s benefit plan doesn’t cover alternative medicine?”
“I…didn’t,” she admits.
“I’m thinking of filing a complaint,” House informs her.
“You do that.” She hesitates. “Wilson said…he didn’t really say what happened.”
House looks at everything in the room except her. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he finally says.
“I understand, but if it’s affecting your work--”
“Wilson can tell you,” he interrupts.
“He said I should ask you.”
“And I’m saying you should ask him.”
She comes to his office toward the end of the day. Something-the timing, her expression-tells him it’s not about hospital business; it’s about House. “He said I should ask you,” she says.
He sighs. He doesn’t quite know how to explain it, which, if he’s being honest with himself, is the reason he tried to get House to do it. “He was…brainwashed.” The words feel ridiculous in his mouth, sound even more ridiculous hanging in the air. People aren’t brainwashed in real life; House isn’t the Manchurian candidate. “They pumped him full of drugs-thorazine, sodium pentathol, we’re not sure exactly what all the ingredients were-and…told him things. It was apparently some kind of conspiracy-the rehab center in Nevada, his psychiatrist here, probably more. One of the other patients was driven to suicide, a little over a month and a half ago. That’s when the whole…thing started to come to light.” He looks at Cuddy. “You think I’ve gone insane, don’t you?”
“I would, if I hadn’t seen House the last few months,” she says. “What kind of ‘things’ did they tell him?”
“I’m not completely sure. The key thing-the one that’s giving him the most trouble-is that if he didn’t behave himself he’d have to go back to rehab. And they tortured him there, so naturally, he doesn’t want to go back.”
“Tortured him how?”
“You don’t want to know. Trust me.” He wishes he didn’t. “He has times when he seems normal. Himself, I mean. But he’s still very fragile. Don’t…there’s going to be a point when he’s acting so much like himself that you’ll want to give him hell for it. Try not to. I think he’s going to be okay, but it’ll take some time.”
She nods. “He seemed to be doing well when I saw him in the clinic today.”
Wilson’s about to remind her not to make too much of it, when House appears in his doorway, with his jacket on and clutching his umbrella. “Wilson, can we go home now?” he asks plaintively.
“Soon, House.”
He comes in. “Hi, Cuddy,” he says, looking at her intently.
“Hi,” she says cautiously, clearly wondering why he’s staring.
He taps his chest and says, “Would you mind undoing your top button, there?”
Her hand goes to her chest. “What for?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a good look at those holy hills,” he explains.
“House!” Shaking her head, she does up another button, just to be sure.
He shrugs. “Worth a shot.”
“House, you’re a pervert,” Cuddy says matter-of-factly. “How’s the new case going?”
“We’ve ruled out trauma and vitamin deficiencies,” he says. “And most of the clotting disorders. The team’s got him stabilized but I haven’t figured out an underlying cause for the bleeding. Yet.” It’s a puzzle he can sink his teeth into; he’s only in a hurry to go home because it doesn’t look like any new evidence will be forthcoming, and there are some books at home that he wants to check. “Foreman’s going over the MRI results with a magnifying glass looking for a brain bleed, Cameron’s researching obscure autoimmune diseases, and Chase is preventing the patient from dying before we figure it out. I’m leaning toward poison. Not warfairin, though; we already tested for that.”
Cuddy asks him another question, but House doesn’t quite hear her. His stomach turns to ice, and he blood rushes through his ears with a sound like an oncoming train. He shouldn’t be here; Cuddy and Wilson are serious people, real doctors. He’s just a filthy addict; he has nothing to say to them. He shouldn’t be wasting their time.
Most of the addicts at the rehab center were unemployed; Staff had spent several Group sessions telling them what kind of jobs were appropriate for people like them. Janitorial work, garbage collection, fast food jobs. Maybe factory work, after they’d been clean for a few years and proven they could be reliable. “Don’t think you’re better than any of these others,” they’d told him, and Pauline, and a few others who’d managed to hang onto professional jobs. “No one wants an addict doing their taxes--” Pauline was an accountant “-and they definitely don’t want an addict taking care of them when they’re sick. Maybe you can treat bums and welfare cases, if somebody watches you to make sure you don’t steal drugs, but nobody wants somebody like you anywhere near their loved ones. When that hospital throws you out with the rest of the trash, you’ll need to know what kinds of jobs real people can trust an addict with.”
He can’t lose this job. It’s all he has. All he is.
No. All he is is an addict. Trash. But they let him treat the trash that comes into the clinic. Other people who don’t deserve any better.
“I’m sure you’re right,” he tells Cuddy. Whatever she said, she must be right; he’s the addict, not her.
And even if she’s not, he has to behave himself, so he doesn’t lose his job, or worse.
“House?” she says, tilting her head to the side like a bird, looking up at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, trying to remember what he’s done.
“It’s okay, House,” Wilson says.
But it’s not okay. Sometimes people try to make you feel better about being an addict, because it makes them uncomfortable that they let someone like you into their lives. You can’t believe them, when they try to minimize how worthless and disgusting you really are.
“What’s happening?” Cuddy asks, somewhere far away. She’s not talking to him, and it’s not nice to eavesdrop.
“Flashback,” Wilson says. “He’ll come out of it before too long. I haven’t figured out yet if anything I do helps.”
“What triggered it? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“I don’t know.” Wilson starts closing file folders and putting things in his briefcase.
A flashback. That’s what this is. Some stimulus-a sound, a smell, something he hasn’t consciously noticed-activated emotionally charged memories stored in his medial temporal lobe, and his brain stem is reacting just as if what he remembers is really happening. But it’s not. Just because it feels real, doesn’t mean it is.
It’s the end of the work day, and he’s in Wilson’s office. This is what’s real. Wilson and Cuddy, his colleagues, his friends. His own office is next door. He’s treating a case no one else can solve, because that’s what he does. He takes a deep breath, and wills his heart rate to slow.
“I’m back,” he tells them, shaking his head slightly to clear it.
Wilson smiles. “Good. How many is that today?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not keeping track.” If he lets himself think about it, he’ll figure out the number, but he doesn’t want to know. If he keeps track, then if the number goes up, it’s a bad day.
“There was the one in the car on the way here in the morning, and the one in the clinic, and the one in the hallway with the patient’s father,” Wilson counts on his fingers.
“I’m not keeping track,” House repeats.
Wilson catches on and shuts up.
“I’m Fiona Chen,” she says, getting up and offering her hand.
Greg shifts his cane into his left hand-he uses it in his right hand, the same side as his injury-and shakes her hand. “House. This is Doctor Wilson.”
Wilson shakes her hand too. “I’m just…with him,” he says, apparently at a loss for how to explain his presence.
“That’s fine. A lot of people are nervous about coming to an alternative practitioner for the first time.” She gestures toward the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat. I usually start, with new patients, by talking a little bit about what we’re going to be doing, and why it works. Would you like some tea?”
“We’d love some,” Doctor Wilson says, sitting down and tugging House into a chair.
She heats some water in the electric kettle she keeps in the corner of her office and quickly makes a pot of Jasmine tea.
“Your accent’s unusual,” House says while she’s working on it.
She’s gotten used to people wondering about her ethnicity. It annoys her sometimes, but avoiding the question only creates anxiety and frustration, which makes it more difficult to ease her patients’ pain. “My mother’s Scots by birth, and my father’s second-generation Chinese-American.”
“You grew up in…Toronto, until around sixth grade, and then Detroit. Right?”
“It was seventh grade,” she answers, a little surprised.
He shrugs.
“Close enough,” Wilson says quietly.
She puts the teapot on a tray with three handleless cups, then puts the tray in the middle of her desk. “You’re probably curious about my academic background,” she says, pouring. Doctor Temas had mentioned that House is a doctor, and apparently Wilson is one too, so they’ve got to be wondering if she really knows what she’s doing, or if she got her credentials off the back of a cereal box. “Acupuncture is not a very well-regulated field in New Jersey, so there are practitioners out there with very little formal training. That’s not the case with me. I have a Doctorate in Traditional Medicine from a program run jointly by the Toronto College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and the University of Toronto, where I took a classes alongside students studying conventional medicine.”
“That’s nice. I have a double specialty in nephrology and infectious diseases from the University of Michigan,” House says. “And he’s an oncologist.”
“Excellent. So I don’t have to worry about getting too technical when I explain what I’m going to be doing. Doctor Temas told me that you have chronic nerve pain from an infarction and muscle death in your right thigh.”
“That’s right,” Wilson says, elbowing House sharply in the ribs.
She gets out her human anatomy diagrams and explains where she’ll be placing the needles, around the spinal nerves that affect the right leg. “Most people expect us to place the needles directly in the area where they feel pain or other symptoms, but in fact most acupuncture points are around the spine. There are two explanations, or two types of explanations, for why acupuncture is effective for reducing pain.” She always talks about both classes of reasons, but changes the emphasis according to the patient’s background. “The traditional practitioners who developed acupuncture in China about two thousand years ago believed that illness and pain are caused by an imbalance of energy in the body, which could be caused by a blockage in the meridians, or energy-carrying channels. Inserting needles allows the practitioner to remove blockages and otherwise manipulate the flow of energy in the body.”
Doctor Wilson elbows House again, even more emphatically than the last time. She wonders why he’s being so violent, when all his friend is doing is sitting quietly and looking slightly bored.
“Did you have a question?” she asks politely.
House shifts in his seat. “No. No questions.”
“The conventional medical explanation is that inserting the needles releases endorphins, which, as I’m sure you know, work to block pain. Of course, that doesn’t explain how acupuncture works on problems other than pain, such as immune system or gastrointestinal conditions. Acupuncturists generally believe that there’s more going on than just endorphin release, and a lot of studies have been done, but there’s no consensus on what other mechanism or mechanism may be at work. Most patients are satisfied with the fact that they feel less pain after the treatment, even if it’s not clear why they’re feeling less pain. I can give you copies of some articles on the subject, if you’re interested in knowing more.” She remembers reading an interesting one on slowing degenerative kidney failure, which might be of interest, since he’s in nephrology.
House nods. “Thanks. Yeah.”
She goes on to take a history, asking about the nature and location of the pain, as well as about House’s daily routine and activities. “Let’s see, your work is mostly sedentary. What about outside of work? How would you characterize your activity level?”
House shrugs, and says, “Average, for a crip-” and then goes very still. His eyes get cold and glassy, like her epileptic old dog’s when he was having a seizure, the kind where he’d pant and drool and walk in circles, and go into a frenzy of barking and snapping if you tried to touch him. “Normal,” he says in a voice drained of affect.
The man’s friend doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, so she decides to continue with her questions. “What kind of things do you do in a typical day?”
“Normal things,” he says in that flat voice. “I watch television.”
Doctor Wilson turns to look at him now. “House? You okay, buddy?”
“I’m better now,” he says.
“Yeah.” Wilson catches her eye and shrugs slightly. “Yeah, you’re great.” He picks up one of the teacups. “Here, drink some of this.”
Obediently, he drinks. At the second sip, his eyes soften, and he makes a sort of wry expression. “What is this crap?”
“Tea,” Wilson says. “You okay now?”
He nods. “Yeah.” After another sip, he asks her, “Where were we?”
“Are you all right? Was that a seizure, or….” He hadn’t mentioned any neurological problems when she took his medical history.
“Flashback,” Doctor Wilson supplies. “But you’ve only had two today, haven’t you?”
“No, I had one in the MRI room,” House says. “But that one was only about five seconds.”
“What kind of flashback?” Fiona asks.
“Post-traumatic,” Doctor Wilson says. “It’s not anything organic; shouldn’t interfere with what you’re doing here.”
“All right,” she agrees. “I was asking about your daily activities.”
“Video games and hookers.”
House asks him to stay in the room where Chen (he’s not sure if she should be “Doctor Chen” or “Ms Chen”-does a Doctorate in Traditional Medicine make you a doctor? Or is it like a Doctorate in Political Science?) works on him. He stays, of course, even though he’s not particularly eager to watch his best friend be turned into the human pincushion. If he’s nervous about it, he can only imagine how House feels.
Wilson stands where House can see him, and House watches him for the first part of the treatment. Then after the first six or seven needles are in, his eyelids droop, and a few minutes later, he falls asleep.
“That’s normal,” Chen tells him quietly, inserting the last needles. “We’ll just let him rest for a while.”
Wilson pulls up a chair and sits next to House, watching him sleep. He’s seen House asleep; he’s seen him comatose; he’s seen him unconscious; he’s seen him passed out. But he’s not sure he’s ever seen him quite like this. It looks like natural sleep, not a drugged stupor, but he’s more completely relaxed than Wilson’s ever seen him.
He wakes up when Chen comes in to take the needles out, but lays bonelessly limp on the table until she’s done. “Wilson, have you been staring at my undraped form this whole time?”
“Your form is draped,” Wilson points out. “Literally.” He had to take his shirt and jeans off for the treatment, but he’s covered to the waist with a sheet.
“You’re evading the question,” House points out.
“How does your leg feel?”
“Not bad, actually. Get out, so I can get dressed, unless you want to give me a happy ending.”
Wilson goes back into Chen’s consulting room. “Does he have those flashbacks often?” she asks.
“Uh…not sure, yet.”
House comes out, dressed, limping a little less heavily than before. “Leg feels good,” he says. “When do we do this again?”
“Some people come once a week, some twice.” She opens an appointment book. “I have Thursday afternoon, same time. Does that work?”
“Yeah, okay. I get out of therapy at four.”
“Good. I’ll see you then. You can stop at the desk for your bill.”
House wanders out the front door, leaving Wilson to pay his bill. There’s a discounted rate for ten sessions; he goes ahead and puts it all on his Mastercard.
Cuddy stops by the Clinic after lunch. House is on the schedule from eleven to two; for the last five months, he’s been present, on time, for every shift.
She checks the sign-in book. House’s signature is there, with “10:59” written for “time.” But it’s under Smythe’s signature, and he came on at 12:30.
She smiles. “Brenda, what room’s Doctor House in?”
“Three. Is something wrong?”
“No,” she says, still smiling. “Nothing’s wrong.”
As she turns toward exam room three, the door opens and a teenage girl is propelled out into the hallway. “Are you sure it’s not an STD?” she demands. “It burns when I pee.”
“Posion ivy on your hoo-hoo can have that effect,” House says, scribbling something on a prescription pad, tearing it off, and handing it to her. “Keep that in your purse. Refer to it next time you’re choosing a place to do the nasty. And try not to scratch.”
The girl walks off, an annoyed expression on her face.
“What did you give her?” Cuddy asks.
“Picture of what poison ivy looks like.” He steps back into the exam room; she follows.
“How’s your leg?” she asks. Wilson had told her they were leaving early yesterday for an acupuncture appointment. Even after five months of the strange new House, she can’t quite imagine him going for something like that.
He hops up onto the exam table. “Not bad, actually. I think I’ll ask her to do something about my shoulder next time, too. I usually don’t notice it much because the leg hurts more. Did you know that the hospital’s benefit plan doesn’t cover alternative medicine?”
“I…didn’t,” she admits.
“I’m thinking of filing a complaint,” House informs her.
“You do that.” She hesitates. “Wilson said…he didn’t really say what happened.”
House looks at everything in the room except her. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he finally says.
“I understand, but if it’s affecting your work--”
“Wilson can tell you,” he interrupts.
“He said I should ask you.”
“And I’m saying you should ask him.”
She comes to his office toward the end of the day. Something-the timing, her expression-tells him it’s not about hospital business; it’s about House. “He said I should ask you,” she says.
He sighs. He doesn’t quite know how to explain it, which, if he’s being honest with himself, is the reason he tried to get House to do it. “He was…brainwashed.” The words feel ridiculous in his mouth, sound even more ridiculous hanging in the air. People aren’t brainwashed in real life; House isn’t the Manchurian candidate. “They pumped him full of drugs-thorazine, sodium pentathol, we’re not sure exactly what all the ingredients were-and…told him things. It was apparently some kind of conspiracy-the rehab center in Nevada, his psychiatrist here, probably more. One of the other patients was driven to suicide, a little over a month and a half ago. That’s when the whole…thing started to come to light.” He looks at Cuddy. “You think I’ve gone insane, don’t you?”
“I would, if I hadn’t seen House the last few months,” she says. “What kind of ‘things’ did they tell him?”
“I’m not completely sure. The key thing-the one that’s giving him the most trouble-is that if he didn’t behave himself he’d have to go back to rehab. And they tortured him there, so naturally, he doesn’t want to go back.”
“Tortured him how?”
“You don’t want to know. Trust me.” He wishes he didn’t. “He has times when he seems normal. Himself, I mean. But he’s still very fragile. Don’t…there’s going to be a point when he’s acting so much like himself that you’ll want to give him hell for it. Try not to. I think he’s going to be okay, but it’ll take some time.”
She nods. “He seemed to be doing well when I saw him in the clinic today.”
Wilson’s about to remind her not to make too much of it, when House appears in his doorway, with his jacket on and clutching his umbrella. “Wilson, can we go home now?” he asks plaintively.
“Soon, House.”
He comes in. “Hi, Cuddy,” he says, looking at her intently.
“Hi,” she says cautiously, clearly wondering why he’s staring.
He taps his chest and says, “Would you mind undoing your top button, there?”
Her hand goes to her chest. “What for?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a good look at those holy hills,” he explains.
“House!” Shaking her head, she does up another button, just to be sure.
He shrugs. “Worth a shot.”
“House, you’re a pervert,” Cuddy says matter-of-factly. “How’s the new case going?”
“We’ve ruled out trauma and vitamin deficiencies,” he says. “And most of the clotting disorders. The team’s got him stabilized but I haven’t figured out an underlying cause for the bleeding. Yet.” It’s a puzzle he can sink his teeth into; he’s only in a hurry to go home because it doesn’t look like any new evidence will be forthcoming, and there are some books at home that he wants to check. “Foreman’s going over the MRI results with a magnifying glass looking for a brain bleed, Cameron’s researching obscure autoimmune diseases, and Chase is preventing the patient from dying before we figure it out. I’m leaning toward poison. Not warfairin, though; we already tested for that.”
Cuddy asks him another question, but House doesn’t quite hear her. His stomach turns to ice, and he blood rushes through his ears with a sound like an oncoming train. He shouldn’t be here; Cuddy and Wilson are serious people, real doctors. He’s just a filthy addict; he has nothing to say to them. He shouldn’t be wasting their time.
Most of the addicts at the rehab center were unemployed; Staff had spent several Group sessions telling them what kind of jobs were appropriate for people like them. Janitorial work, garbage collection, fast food jobs. Maybe factory work, after they’d been clean for a few years and proven they could be reliable. “Don’t think you’re better than any of these others,” they’d told him, and Pauline, and a few others who’d managed to hang onto professional jobs. “No one wants an addict doing their taxes--” Pauline was an accountant “-and they definitely don’t want an addict taking care of them when they’re sick. Maybe you can treat bums and welfare cases, if somebody watches you to make sure you don’t steal drugs, but nobody wants somebody like you anywhere near their loved ones. When that hospital throws you out with the rest of the trash, you’ll need to know what kinds of jobs real people can trust an addict with.”
He can’t lose this job. It’s all he has. All he is.
No. All he is is an addict. Trash. But they let him treat the trash that comes into the clinic. Other people who don’t deserve any better.
“I’m sure you’re right,” he tells Cuddy. Whatever she said, she must be right; he’s the addict, not her.
And even if she’s not, he has to behave himself, so he doesn’t lose his job, or worse.
“House?” she says, tilting her head to the side like a bird, looking up at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, trying to remember what he’s done.
“It’s okay, House,” Wilson says.
But it’s not okay. Sometimes people try to make you feel better about being an addict, because it makes them uncomfortable that they let someone like you into their lives. You can’t believe them, when they try to minimize how worthless and disgusting you really are.
“What’s happening?” Cuddy asks, somewhere far away. She’s not talking to him, and it’s not nice to eavesdrop.
“Flashback,” Wilson says. “He’ll come out of it before too long. I haven’t figured out yet if anything I do helps.”
“What triggered it? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“I don’t know.” Wilson starts closing file folders and putting things in his briefcase.
A flashback. That’s what this is. Some stimulus-a sound, a smell, something he hasn’t consciously noticed-activated emotionally charged memories stored in his medial temporal lobe, and his brain stem is reacting just as if what he remembers is really happening. But it’s not. Just because it feels real, doesn’t mean it is.
It’s the end of the work day, and he’s in Wilson’s office. This is what’s real. Wilson and Cuddy, his colleagues, his friends. His own office is next door. He’s treating a case no one else can solve, because that’s what he does. He takes a deep breath, and wills his heart rate to slow.
“I’m back,” he tells them, shaking his head slightly to clear it.
Wilson smiles. “Good. How many is that today?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not keeping track.” If he lets himself think about it, he’ll figure out the number, but he doesn’t want to know. If he keeps track, then if the number goes up, it’s a bad day.
“There was the one in the car on the way here in the morning, and the one in the clinic, and the one in the hallway with the patient’s father,” Wilson counts on his fingers.
“I’m not keeping track,” House repeats.
Wilson catches on and shuts up.