So This is Your Scrap of Dignity VIII
"That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today"
"Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way"
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
"And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"
--Bobbi Gentry, “Ode to Billie Joe”
He makes the cab stop at a church he once attended with Stacy. He takes Cameron here because he loves Schaendenfreud.
(This time it’s a woman on the bed. He avoids glancing at her head.)
She smacks him on the shoulder when she sees the building looming in front of them. He mounts the steps and she has no choice but to follow.
(The only familiarity throughout history is the fervor that religion produces. Religions beget easy excuses.)
He pushes open the wooden door and holds it open for her, ushering her through in a gesture of decorum that reeks with sarcasm.
(It’s always something different. He takes a seat by her side and attempts indifference.)
She stiffens when she sees the pastor, but he doesn’t mind and waves to the man of God.
(Jesus in toast, the Virgin Mary on the wall. Nuns run bald through Vatican halls.)
He grabs her hand and makes her follow him to the front of the large room of worship. Pews to his right, pews to the left, vaulted ceiling above their heads-it’s a church.
(He looks into her eyes. They burn and make him feel as if he’s five.)
They reach the front of the room and the preacher opens his mouth.
(Long live the king, and God save the Queen! Bullshit, the whole thing is just so obscene.)
The pastor talks and he feels her straighten because she’s a good girl who was raised a Christian, but turned her back on faithless religion.
(He takes the patient’s hand. Humanity, one must understand.)
“You must realize,” the man talks and he sees Cameron cringe as he drones on about the Apocalypse, the Apostles, and the Archangels.
(Holy declarations and divine rights. These things have never prevented petty fights.)
“Excuse us, could we have some private time?” Cameron asks for both of them and the priest is flummoxed at the request.
(The fingers stroke. Sometimes, he chokes.)
“Of course. But I am here if you need me,” he tells them.
(There are too may religions. He feels like a confused pigeon.)
“I prefer to worship God-” she sneers, “-in the peace of my own sinful mind.”
(Fingers to lips. Hands to hips.)
The Father looks affronted. House rolls his eyes and contains his shock and surprise at Cameron’s ballsy gesture.
s
(There was once a Children’s Crusade. How badly they were betrayed.)
“Excuse my companion. She’s a doctor, but her bedside manner is rather…weak,” he smiles full of butter and grease.
(Appendages travel upward. He’s such a bastard.)
“Shut up,” she mutters, but the priest is gone. House knows the clergyman will throw him out if any desecration occurs.
(Popes were never holy men. They mated, fucked, and went around again.)
“Why’d you take me here?” She whirls on him now. God is her secondary target. House-he’s tangible-they don’t even know if God is real.
(She’s a patient. Cuddy wouldn’t like this duet-this try at accompaniment.)
“To see you squirm,” he steps closer.
(And they turn their back when it really matters. How can one be oblivious as the world shatters?)
She does not speak, so he bends his head to be closer to her ear.
(He retreats from the bedside. There is no convenient place to hide.)
“You said you trust me. You want to be like me. Welcome to my God damn sanctuary. You asked for this, Eve. You’re standing there and you’re begging me to make you understand me. You can’t. You never will. I am not understood.”
(There’s a rector, at St. Patrick’s in New York, he recalls, who screwed the secretary in a motel. Great behavior for God’s management personnel.)
“You also said that I’m everything you can’t be. Well, if I’m everything you can’t be, then I’m also a church-going man.”
(Now he’s pacing. Always, pacing, running…racing.)
He moves his head back to his position on top of his neck. He straightens and walks to the front of the church, where the pews end and the pulpit begins. He kneels to pray and spite and plead with God. She stands in her place before her anger tumbles over Bibles, chrysanthemums, and Him.
(There was Solomon and Noah. Cain and Abel. Cane and fucking able.)
“You have no idea why God means nothing to me!” She inappropriately shouts at his back and he can feel the sound waves hitting him. Hard.
(He drops his cane. This situation resembles something infinitely more mundane.)
“Please,” the priest enters from stage left, “this is a house of God.”
(The priests in Boston molest little boys. What’s a little noise?)
House turns his head to see Cameron’s look of malice shoot towards the father. House and Cameron talk at once.
(He picks it up. Dreaded sense of feeling floats back to his leg and this is all post-breakup.)
“Go-”
“She’s addled-”
“Shut up!” To him and not the priest. To Him and not he.
(Jesus died on the cross. There has never been a bigger loss.)
“Miss, I must ask you to-”
“Mrs.,” she breathes and House almost collapses.
(His weight’s too much. And she’s laughing at his need for a crutch.)
“And is this your husband?”
(Where was God when Hitler reigned? Why hasn’t any clergymen explained?)
“My husband,” she smirks, “is dead because of the God you worship. There’s a structure to Heaven, but your God is a merciless one who thrives on human suffering!”
(He’s sinking again. In this memory, he’s never right-he’s never certain.)
“Allison,” he whispers.
(And what about evolution? God’s prized story-creation-is still fighting against Darwin in educational institutions.)
“Not now,” she responds and lets her chin point at the reverend.
(But it’s Stacy and then Cameron and Stacy and Cameron and they’re all dying. And all he can hear is crying-crying!)
“God is compassionate,” the priest attempts.
(God bless America. God bless America.)
“If there was one deity, one deity, who looked over us all and controlled our every movement, and he was compassionate, why wouldn’t he save us from pain?” She shouts again.
(And then Cameron’s in a bed in a church. He’s full of regrets and he hallucinates and sees a black angel sitting on a perch.)
“It’s not a deity’s fault the human race is a disaster. We bring it upon ourselves,” House growls at Cameron.
(Jesus had a wife. Then again, many rumors play out after life.)
“Please, God loves all his children.”
(He’s the one who should be laying in the bed! He bled!)
“Hitler? Bin Laden? He let’s them live, but He couldn’t let a decent man survive!”
(What people do in the name of God. They use Him as a justifiable façade.)
“God has a plan for everyone.”
(It was his leg. Let them live, he’ll beg.)
“What about me?” They ask in unison.
(Scripture’s bitter. The Bible’s a broken religious transmitter.)
“God has a plan for everyone,” the priest reiterates.
(He didn’t have a plan for him. Well-He did, but it involved him losing muscle from a limb.)
House stands and starts to slowly thump out of the church. He lets his cane swing by Cameron’s leg because he can’t touch her himself-flesh-to-flesh contact is too unnatural for him.
(The Jews escaped slavery. As told in The Ten Commandments, the human race is decidedly unsavory.)
“Then why doesn’t he tell us?” Cameron inquires.
(What if it had been she-Allison or Stacy-in his place? Could he make the same decision and then look into their face?)
“God is a mysterious being. He works in His own way. Perhaps his plan involves us never knowing what his plan is.”
Cameron snorts at the cliché and starts walking after House.
(Adam and Eve-garden of paradise-Eden. Their lives and paradise will never be that golden.)
House turns to the still-shocked priest.
“Thank you,” he tells him. He one-ups Cameron at her job of sympathy.
(He keeps the muscle in a jar. It’s less disgusting than his scar.)
“One more question,” she chirps from her position behind him, right before the door.
(And they bit the apple. This shouldn’t be happening in a chapel!)
“Yes?” And there’s dread in that response from the preacher.
(He decides that he couldn’t have made that decision. He’s a doctor but that doesn’t mean he still can’t have emotional incisions.)
“Why can’t He be a She?”
(God’s son died for Homo sapiens’ sins. Yet we still continue to poke His Voodoo dolls with pins.)
“Political correctness has no place in a church.”
Cameron frowns and pushes past House out the door. He follows quickly and quietly.
(He may be missing part of his leg, but he’s still able to decide whether or not he believes in God. And being with Stacy-a believer-made him want to not believe, and now with Cameron-a non-believer-he wants to believe.)
That’s it. He wants to believe.
(But why the Hell would he want to sacrifice himself to God? To reach some God-run ruin in the sky?)
“So, Chase is afraid of nuns and you can’t stand priests?”
(She doesn’t believe and now that he does, he’s not sure he can tell her.)
“Sounds about right.”
(What he does for God.)
(No.)
What he does for her.