Can you hear me now?
*****
House had dubbed the phone The Oracle in his head, and it was proving to be an unwelcome distraction. House found he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Would it ring again? If so, when? Who or what was behind this? What should he do? Should he do anything?
He spent every moment in his janitorial office with his shoulders slighted rounded and his head down, always on the verge of a flinch. His leg pain grew till even Vicodin could not quiet the dragon that tore at his gutted thigh. And as the molten pain, headaches and twisted muscles took their toll; his gait became ever more uneven - leaving him lurching along the hospital hallways like Quasimodo on a jag. He used morphine twice in one week, a development that nibbled uneasily at the back on his mind. And it was with a sense of inevitability that he discovered that his rarely heard inner-voice of rebuke did a splendid job of mimicking James Wilson in lecture mode.
He sent his minions in frantic searches for patients, even going so far as have them poach nearby hospitals in hopes of finding a case that would hold his attention. He accepted patients that usually would have sent him scurrying for the nearest exit - a toddler with Hurler’s syndrome, a trucker with hantavirus and a farmer with histoplasmosis - just to have something to do besides waiting for the damn phone to ring.
In desperation, he even started spending several hours a day treating patients in the clinic. This atypical behavior resulted in his having to field concerned queries not just from Wilson, but from his fellows, Cuddy, Nurse Brenda, and seemingly everyone living on the eastern seaboard.
For nearly a week the phone remained silent. The Oracle did not speak. Then, one morning, just as House was shuffling into his office, the strident jingling of the ringer shocked him into immobility.
He stared at the phone in indecision. For whom did the bell toll this time? Should he answer it? Would it make any difference? Should he leave and shut the door, pretending he hadn’t heard its summons?
On the twelfth ring, he picked up the receiver, hating that his hands were shaking as though he were afflicted with palsy. The handset felt oily in his grip, slick and gelatinous.
At first he couldn’t find his voice, and when he did, his words caught, clogging his throat like sand. He had to spit them out, dry and rasping. “What do you want? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Murmurs rose and ebbed, like distant tides bearing half-formed words. “Maaawwww… ahhhhllllll…”
House gripped the phone tighter. It felt as though his fingers were sinking into the plastic, being swallowed up and consumed, devoured by whatever it was that lived at the other end of the connection.
“Maaaaawwwwwllllllyyyyy… Maaaaawwwwllllyyyy…”
House sighed, and shut his eyes in defeat. “Molly.”
“Gaaaahhhhrrrrr…” The voices seeped, viscous and sodden, trickling through his mind. “Gaaaaarrrrrbbbbrrrrrr.”
“Molly Garber.” House breathed the name, pronouncing the death sentence upon a stranger. A name transmitted over a telephone receiver that seemed to be melting, oozing through his fingers.
Laughter gurgled, slushy hiccups of sound slapping against his eardrums. He shuddered, and gasped for air. He felt himself being pulled under, drowning in madness.
And then…
Blessed silence. The receiver was again heavy and solid in his grip, and he set it back in its cradle gently, so as to leave undisturbed whatever lurked on the other end of the line. He wiped his hand heavily on his jeans, trying to scour away the impression of residual slime left behind, but even he knew the feeling of taint was more psychological than physical.
He fled to clinics. Away from the phone. Away from his office. Away from Wilson and his fellows who might catch sight of his pale face, might note his shaking hands, and ask the wrong questions. Away to lose himself in trivialities.
*****
House rubbed at his eyes and addressed the teenage girl sitting on the exam table and swinging her Converse clad feet. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that? You say you need bigger birth control pills because...?”
He was finding it difficult to keep focused on his current clinic patient. Thoughts of the phone in his office, and the mysterious “Molly Garber,” who was probably expiring this very second, kept distracting him - which was a shame really, as the garrulous teenager sitting on the exam table was proving to be highly entertaining.
The girl blew a large bubble of pink gum and popped it with a smack. “Cause my new boyfriend is, like, really big, you know? So, like I need more!”
“You need bigger pills because you new boyfriend has a bigger penis than your old boyfriend?”
Chomping loudly on her wad of gum, she nodded enthusiastically. “My first boyfriend was really nice, but he was, like, not so, you know, big… so the stuff they gave me then was okay for him. But Jason… is… like, wow...you know?”
“Actually, no, I don’t know… could you, like show me how big? Just use your hands and…” House made some vague measuring type motions with his own hands. “Cause it is important we get just the right power pills for you.”
“Uh, yeah…” The girl spread her own hands apart an impressive distance. “That’s like, when, he’s like, excited… you know?” She giggled.
“That is impressive.”
“He likes me to, like, go down on him, you know? But he’s so big! I think I’m gonna dislocate my jaw!”
House nodded abstractly and began scribbling a prescription for another brand of birth control, drawing the consultation to a close. It was a shameful waste of potential mocking material. Usually, he would have carried on, perhaps requesting the girl return later with exact measurement and called in Wilson for a consult. However, he just couldn’t find it in him to keep up the song and dance at the moment.
“Here,” he handed over the slip. “These aren’t larger, but they are much stronger. They’re pink. I mean, that says it all right there, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t even bother to try and explain the realities of birth control to the patient. She wasn’t worth it. Definitely suffered from CVS, or Cranio-vacuous syndrome. At least he was doing his part to make sure she wouldn’t procreate and dilute the gene pool any further.
He wondered if he should tell Cuddy about his restraint. Seems like it should be worth a few brownie points, but she’d probably still find reason to complain.
Maybe he’d get his mojo back over lunch with Wilson, when he could share this particular “stupid clinic patient of the day” story. If he was lucky, he’d get a laugh. If he was really lucky, and he timed the punch line just right, Wilson might aspirate on his ice tea, which was always good for a show. And if he was extremely fortunate, Wilson might actually snort tea out his nose, but that had only happened twice in all the years they’d known each other, so House didn’t tend to count on it.
The girl thanked him profusely. Called him a “great doctor.” He told her to make sure to mention that to as many people as possible on the way out, then sent her off.
When he made his way laboriously out of the Exam room a couple minutes later, both Nurse Brenda and Dr. Cuddy were staring at him as though he’d grown an extra head.
“What did you do?” Cuddy asked, her expression wavering uncertainly between suspicion and disbelief.
House shrugged. “I treated the patient. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Isn’t that why you pay me the big bucks?”
Cuddy stepped closer and took the teenager’s file out of House’s hands. A half smile played over her mouth as she flipped though the pages, reading over his notes. “She liked you…” She peered up at him, blue eyes full of questions. “She said you were a great doctor.”
“I am a great doctor.”
She frowned skeptically. “You are an egotistical, obnoxious, curmudgeon.”
“I am also a great doctor.”
“Good. Then the great doctor will not mind seeing another clinic patient.” She held out a new case file, hip cantered in challenge. She obviously expected him to balk.
Instead House took the file with a slight bow of acquiescence, which also happened to allow him a pleasant view down the front of her low-cut, crimson blouse. “Yes, mistress.”
Cuddy shook her head, studying him distrustfully. “I am afraid to look at this particular gift horse too closely. I suspect it may be from the Trojans. Exam room 3. Complaining of headaches, nausea and malaise.”
House studiously tried to ignore the “Trojans” comment. The quip dancing on the tip of his tongue would only get him into trouble with the boss lady and sour her current, pleasant disposition. And if he was going to be hanging around in the clinic, working closely with Cuddy when she was feeling fond of you was much better than fending off Cuddy when she was in full feed-you-your-balls-on-a-plate mode any day. He began to flip through the folder. “It’s probably the flu.”
“She’s eight months pregnant, and currently under treatment for gestational hypertension. Her mother brought her in.”
House’s gaze flicked to Cuddy. “Why isn’t she seeing her regular obstetrician?”
“He’s apparently out of town on vacation.”
House glanced through the file, drawing in an audible rasp of air as he noted the patient’s name. Molly Garber. “Oh shit!”
“House!” Cuddy hissed under her breath, looking around to see if anyone had noted the doctor’s use of inappropriate language.
But House ignored her, throwing himself towards Exam 3. His bad leg twisted beneath him as he did so, and he half fell, stumbling into the door at a hobble-run.
Flinging himself into the room, he found an older woman gripping the shoulders of a younger, very pregnant blonde lying atop the exam table. The older woman looked frantically towards House as he barged into the room. “Something’s wrong!”
House shoved her aside and began to assess Molly Garber. Her arms and legs were rigid, her teeth tightly clenched, catching the tip of her tongue. Blood painted her lips and chin. She wasn’t breathing.
“Need help here!” House shouted over his shoulder, but Cuddy was already there, having followed him into the room. “Magnesium sulfate,” he barked. “Bolus four grams over five minutes, IV push.” It was too late. Garber had already begun to convulse, jerking violently on the table. Cuddy shouted for a nurse as she tried to hold the patient down to prevent injury. Bloody froth began to bubble from between Molly Garber’s lips.
“Damnit. Damnit.” House muttered to himself, struggling to ready the hold Mrs. Garber down so Cuddy could insert the venous catheter. “We need to intubate her! Get her on oxygen!” he shouted at the nurse who had hurried into the room.
“What is it? What’s wrong with her?” Molly Garber’s mother asked tearfully, melting mascara marring her classic features.
“Get her out of here,” House snapped, and Cuddy nodded agreement at yet another nurse drawn to the commotion.
House cursed again as he noted the blood pooling between Molly Graber’s legs. “Placental abruption…”
“We need to get her to surgery!” Cuddy’s eyes were wide.
“She’s not stable!”
“We’re going to lose them both if we don’t!”
Activity swirled around them, as medical personnel fought to save both mother and baby. But despite every effort, Molly Garber slipped into a coma followed by cardiac arrest and death. Her baby, delivered via caesarean section, was pronounced stillborn.
*****
House half heartedly nibbled at the edge of a potato chip then tossed the remainder to the small scattering of pigeons that had staked out his bench. He took some pleasure in watching them squabble over the scrap of deep fried potato. If he noted with special interest the bold fellow with the deformed left foot, who was hobbling among the rest, and made a particular effort to insure it got more than its fair share of the chips, who was to complain?
When Wilson found him, he was down to his last Lay’s Kettle Cooked.
“House?”
Uh oh. Hands on hips, feet shuffling, brown eyes brimming with concern beneath a clouded brow. It was Worry-wart Wilson, and House wasn’t sure he had the energy to fend him off.
He let his forehead bounce off the handle of his cane as he stared at the ground and the milling pigeons. “Wilson?”
“Cuddy said you had a difficult case.”
“Difficult how? Difficult as in having no time to even get a BP before my patient is apparently in tonic stage eclampsia and crashing in the clinic. Or difficult as in the patient died along with her baby, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it?”
House watched Wilson’s fancy, French leather shoes shift uncertainly. That was the problem with Worry-wart Wilson. He was so unused to being indulged, that if you did give him an opening, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
“You do know it wasn’t your fault.”
House snorted and glanced up into Wilson’s apprehensive face. “You think that is what this is about? I feel responsible?”
“Don’t you?”
“No.” He poked at the pigeons with his cane. They dodged, flapping in agitation. “She didn’t belong in the clinic. She should have gone to the ER. Her obstetrician should have better prepared her. She had gestational hypertension. She should have been told she was at risk for pre-eclampsia or HELLP and known what to look for.”
“All true. So why are you brooding?”
“I’m not. I’m feeding the pigeons.”
“Right.”
A moment of silence settled between them. Pigeons minced around their feet and cooing hopefully. One pecked at Wilson’s pant’s cuff and he gave his foot a shake. He tried again. “Cuddy also said you twisted your leg.”
House reached down and ran a hand over his thigh. Only a slight twinge now, but he knew he would feel it when he stood. “Vicodin took the edge off.”
“How bad?”
“I’ll live.”
“Need a ride home?”
House smiled to himself. “Need a ride home” was Wilson-speak for “Let me give you a ride home, invite myself in and cautiously mince around in that mess of tripwires you call a mind till you throw me out or it blows up in my face.”
“Nope. I can drive. Got my license and everything.”
“You shouldn’t try to ride your bike when your leg…”
House swung his cane, scattering pigeons in a flurry of wings, which apparently was enough of a warning. Wilson subsided.
“I’m just…”
“Yeah, you do that well.”
“House…”
House twirled his cane through the air, letting it spin in lazy arcs. His words were distant as were his thoughts. “I let it beat me. I got close enough to touch this time, and I still let it beat me.”
That got Wilson’s attention. The French shoes stilled in place… “Let what beat you?” That slight shift in intonation, curious, but feigning disinterest to keep House talking. House’s cane stilled. He smirked. They knew each other too well.
But House wasn’t about to indulge Wilson’s meddling, inquisitive streak, not if he didn’t want to be taking a detour to the Psych Ward.
Well, see Wilson, there’s this voice on the phone that tells me who is going to die, and then I get to try and save them. But so far, I’ve struck out every time.
No. Definitely not going there today.
Instead he scooted over a bit, surreptitiously offering half the bench. Wilson took the hint and sat down beside him.
“Do you know the story of Cassandra?”
“Cassandra?” Wilson thought for a moment, staring up at the overcast sky. In the diffuse light shadows seemed to cling to his crisp lab coat turning it dingy and grey. “From Greek mythology?”
House grunted affirmation. “Apollo apparently thought she was one hot babe, so he gave her the gift of prophecy in hopes he’d get her to lift her skirt. She told him to get lost, so he cursed her so no one would ever believe her predictions.”
“So,” Wilson noted. “If we are applying your analogy to the current situation, are we casting you in the role of Apollo, Greek god of medicine and ideal of manly beauty, or as Cassandra, the saucy wench?”
Despite his mild, mannered exterior, Wilson possessed a sharp mind, and House has already said more than was safe around him. He chose to remain silent. He pushed himself up from the bench, wincing as his thigh screamed in protest over the move.
But Wilson was already connecting the dots. “House? How did you know about Edwardo Flores?”
House froze for a moment, then gave Wilson a long look. A humorless smile twisted one corner of his mouth, and he gestured at the pigeons scuttling around their feet. “A little bird told me.”
*****
House sat spinning his cane between his palms and staring at The Oracle.
Elizabeth Nolan. Edwardo Flores. Molly Garber and her unborn child. What was the connection?
He’d pulled their files. Read them cover to cover. Nothing in common.
Besides being dead.
Was this a game? If it was, he was getting his ass whupped. On his mental whiteboard, the score stood at Oracle III, or maybe three-point-five. Either way, it was still House zilch.
Seriously whupped.
He should just yank the damn phone out of the wall, but that would be admitting defeat, and House didn’t like to lose.
*****
Link to THE_ORACLE:PART_V