You Already Know How This Will End: Part 1
Title: You Already Know (How This Will End)
Fandom: House M.D.
Pairings: hmm. In order of appearance, though not importance: Wilson/Cameron, Wilson/Cuddy, Cameron/Chase, and House/Wilson pre-slash with a touch of House/Wilson/OFC
Summary: Varying points of view -- House in and post-rehab.
Author's Note: So, I stumbled across the fanfic100 table and copied it down*, and sometime around "Finding Judas" I started to work on some stories out of it. This was mostly as a writing exercise for myself, but it turned into something more interesting (to me). Instead of writing one story per prompt, I started switching point of view between sections, and I made the whole thing into one long arc of story with a lot of different stuff happening. I don't know where some of it came from, really.
Anyway, it goes awry already (AU) because "Merry Little Christmas" doesn't quite fit with the timeline, though if you don't look too closely it still mostly works. I'm sure the next episode will completely ruin all of this.
And it's kind of long, and it's un-beta-read because there's only a day left before the new episode comes out. And... the title comes from a Devotchka song off the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack. And this one, I kind of like.
*please note, this isn't an official entry for fanfic100 or any of its offshoots, and I'm not trying to step on the toes of anyone who's claimed anything over there. Like I said, writing exercise.
So:
1. Beginnings.
They met in a bar. Or, OK, no, back up, too trite, and House hates that start. But it's true, because Wilson says so. And House can't remember the first time they met, so Wilson's opinion counts here.
"We met in a bar," he tells Cameron, when she's sitting across from him making wide, why-aren't-you-more-concerned eyes at him. She's angry, too, there's an attractive flush of red across her cheeks. House likes her riled up like this, likes her when she acts on instinct instead of thought. She's a better doctor when she isn't thinking.
"That doesn't explain this," Cameron says. "What, you met someplace trashy so your friendship means nothing?"
Here it comes, House thinks. Come on, come on -
"He's lost his job!"
She's yelling, now, and her arms are crossed, which is actually anatomically stupid, because she could get more air if she'd stand up and stretch out. But Cameron won't do that, won't loom over him even when she's angry, because she seems to think it's mean. "He didn't lose it," House says, tossing a ball into the air and catching it gracefully, knowing it makes her even angrier. "He quit." He looks up over Cameron's shoulder, to where Chase is holding up the office door and Foreman has been snorting and sighing in response to everything he's said for the last five minutes. "Let that be a lesson, kids: Quitters never win."
Chase scoffs. He seems a little freaked out by the whole thing. Of course, he doesn't have Daddy's money to fall back on, now, so the job suddenly means more to him. He's been looking at other offers - House knows this because his shoes are shined and he hasn't been flirting with the nurses. And Foreman, well, he's here to learn, and he has good perspective on things, seems to understand in his best moments that someday, this could be a great story at another bar, the time my boss almost got arrested, man, you wouldn't believe the shit he pulled, but Cameron's moral outrage always sparks something ugly in him. It's too soon to tell whose side Foreman will come down on.
Cameron's chosen her team. House gives her a week before she goes to Tritter. Maybe less. And that will be a new beginning, too.
2. Middles
James Wilson is a middle child. He's the one the family sent to find his brother, the last one who reached out on a street corner in Trenton, because that's what he does, that's how he was raised. He's always been a fixer.
He can't fix this thing with House. He moves his things out of the hotel and back into his house, a move that his divorce lawyer - not to mention his soon-to-be ex-wife - isn't crazy about, but he has no money and no credit and, hurrah, no job, so there aren't a lot of options. He sits in the den, surrounded by his boxes of books, his suitcases, his diplomas, and wonders what he can sell. He wonders what he can live without.
Cameron comes to see him on the second day, after Cuddy's been through and railed at him, after he's not taken a thousand calls from patients and colleagues and friends.
"I can't believe he's doing this to you," she says, sitting on the couch where Wilson slept the night before. He's sitting in the desk chair, but it feels awkward. He doesn't like having her here, with the door closed against his almost ex-wife's impending arrival home. Cameron has her legs crossed at the ankle, and she's wearing a skirt today, and Wilson doesn't look at her calves or her knees or her wide, sympathetic eyes. He looks out the window.
"Believe it," he says. "This has always been coming." He turns from the window and looks at her, really looks at her. She's the new Wilson, he thinks, and he laughs to himself.
"It's not funny." Her voice is high, offended for him and by him at the same time.
Wilson stares at her legs. "You've come here because you're getting up the courage to turn him in," he says. "You want me to say it's a good idea. You want me to tell you I wish you would do it." He looks her in the eye. She's blushing, just a little, and she leans forward and presses her legs together and her lips are glossed and it's hot in his den and he wants her. And he's probably just become damaged enough for this to work. "I wish you would do it," he says.
She only looks startled for a moment, and he's not sure whether it's because she's surprised at that or if it's the kiss.
3. Ends.
It's not Cameron and it's not Cuddy. It's Wilson. House has to pay himself $200 on that bet. There's no prison for him, but there are new rules and he has to adapt. He tells himself he's good at adapting; it's what people do when they need to get things done, and he gets things done, ergo: good at adapting. So he will adapt, he will roll with the punches and do two months at Seabrook Rehabilitation Center in central Jersey, and when he comes back, he'll deal with whatever else Cuddy throws his way.
Cuddy shows up at his condo on the morning he's supposed to go to Seabrook. He knows the date but pretends to have forgotten. She doesn't yell at him and that makes it all worse. Worse than that, she's come in person to tell him she can't drive him and that Dr. Cameron has volunteered. House takes a handful of Vicodin and hopes he's finally hit his limit, that it will knock him out in the car.
It doesn't, but Cameron doesn't want to talk. They stop twice so he can stretch his leg. He thinks about running away. He thinks about running. He throws up in the bathroom at a rest stop, and when he comes out, Cameron is holding bottles of water for both of them. He knocks the bottle out of her hand and goes inside, buys himself the largest, strongest energy drink in the world, then doubles back and buys another. He drinks all of the first one standing on the curb, while Cameron leans against her car and looks at her watch and sometimes says things like, "You're supposed to be there at 10" and "It's my responsibility to get you there" and then "I slept with Dr. Wilson."
It's the last one, or maybe it's the caffeine rush, that makes House stop and turn. He laughs, big, bubbling laughter, and he thinks I won't be doing this again for a while and he opens the second drink.
"You're perfect for each other," he says. He holds the can in one hand and his cane in the other until Cameron huffs and walks around and opens his door. She leans close and she smells just like always. "That's too bad," he says, wishing for a bit of Wilson on her.
"He's pretty messed up," she says when she's in the car. They're back on the highway, racing toward his punishment - eight weeks of hanging out in white rooms with counselors and girls and boys from the city, probably, who blame their drug habits on Mommy and Daddy and have never had anything more painful than a piercing in their lives - and he starts to laugh again.
"He always has been," he says.
Cameron doesn't take her eyes off the road. "Do you even miss him? He's your best friend."
Was, he thinks, and then he says it aloud.
4. Insides
Wilson goes back to work. He thinks about conditions. He goes to Cuddy's office on his first day back and she says, "I have an opening on the fourth floor. Glover's office."
He wants to say yes. A new start, a new office. It would make sense, even, because Dr. Glover's office is closer to the oncology wing, closer to the patient floors. But he likes his office, likes the balcony, likes the distance from his staff. And he doesn't want anyone to think he's running away. "It's fine," he says. "I'm fine."
He settles back in to the office, which has been cleaned but otherwise untouched since he left it two weeks ago. His diplomas fit back on the wall, his photos go back on the shelves, but his filing cabinets stay empty.
Wilson calls a department meeting, and they crowd into the oncology lounge after lunch. Usually, he sits on the table at the front and he lets everyone talk for a while and he tells some jokes and they go over whatever procedural stuff they have to, they set up a call schedule, and then they go. Today he stands in front of them and he wears a suit coat and no lab coat.
"We need to talk about making some internal changes," he says, and people shift uncomfortably. He's always run a good ship, a learning ship, but a loose ship. They have one of the lowest burnout rates in the country. Three of the guys who started with him are still here. He looks at them and wishes he could fire them all, wishes he could scare them all away, so that he could start new. Instead, he makes himself smile. "If you had all the money in the world, and you had to spend it on this department, what would you do?"
The answers are what he's expected: better equipment, better salaries for the support staff and for the docs on call, better access to clinical trials and new drugs, more funding for research.
"And better coffee," Sherilyn, their head of nursing, says.
"I can get you that by Friday," he says. The group smiles. "So this is my job. I'm going to focus on money. I'll consult when I'm called, you know I'm happy to do it, but I'm not taking any new patients right now." He looks around, sees the surprised glances. He's always led by example, led by being a good doctor. But the people in the room with him, they're all good doctors, too, and he's tired and this is where he can be most helpful, right now. "I'm pretty good at my job," he says, and only a few people look away. He keeps smiling. There is nothing to distract him from this. "I'm going to get better at it."
5. Outsides
After the detox is over, House is allowed to join the rest of the group on outings, to pick up pizzas or rental videos, to play kickball in the park, to go outside for a few hours and enjoy the sunshine. They put him in a wheelchair, and for this, he will never forgive Tritter.
He makes allies, not friends. He picks Darien, a guy who reminds him of Foreman, a little, because he's black but also because he's smart and he's a little twitchy. Darien is a good guy to know because he's been through other programs, "and this one, man, it's primo. They got the TV, they got the good kitchen, it's good."
Darien doesn't talk about the place's success rate - it's in the sixties, if the pep talk from the nursing staff is to be believed - or about his own. Half of the people in the program seem to be around just so they can learn how to act like normal people. House isn't quite sure which side Darien falls on - it depends on the day.
Darien sits next to House in the grass by the softball field in the park. In front of them, a few of the people are playing a listless game while the counselors lounge near the bleachers, making sure that no one's going to make a run for the fences. Seabrook has a 40 acre campus, and escaping seems like a very bad plan, particularly considering that it's a voluntary program - at least for most people. Darien, for instance, has signed up for a three-month course, and is only on week two, Phase 1. House can check himself out at any time, too, but if he leaves, he gives up his medical license and probably the next seven to 10 years of his life. He stays in the grass, for now.
The wheelchair is a few yards away, because the softball field is a half-mile from their sleeping quarters and House can't walk this far. He has some mobility, because he's been getting carefully-monitored injections every morning for the pain. It barely takes the edge off, but it's better than the previous week when he had nothing. The in-house doctor is a complete waste of space, though, and has no understanding of the words "built-up tolerance to pain killers," which House finds pretty appalling in a man making his living treating drug addicts. So he gets the same non-opiate shots each morning.
"So, you, I figure, cocaine," Darien says.
"And for you I figure black tar heroin," House replies. "Not the designer East Cost stuff, because you've got signs of venous sclerosis. Also, judging by your slightly sallow complexion, several years spent in the bottom of a bottle of whatever was closest by."
Darien's smile is slow and unashamed. "Whatever works, you know?" House shrugs. On the field, a very skinny girl - diet pills, he thinks, escalating to crystal meth - swings a bat and manages to connect with the ball, though the effort nearly knocks her over. "So, am I right?"
"Hydrocodone."
"Fancy. I knew a lady, she was on my route when I was delivering for the appliance store, she tried to get me to sell her something like that one time. I says, lady, I ain't sellin' what I can't spell."
"I would guess that was a severe limitation on your business plan," House mutters.
Darien shrugs. He's endlessly good natured. Hanging around Darien lets House slide a little bit under the radar of the counselors, who seem to know that Darien is harmless and probably beyond helping. "Why you here?"
House glares, because, duh.
"No, I mean, like, they gonna ask you, in group, you gonna have to give your tipping point."
House narrows his eyes. He knows there are a few good candidates, all of them lies. "I'm here," he says, "because my former best friend cut a deal with a prosecutor so that I could keep my medical license and he could keep his job. And because the case against me sucked and was completely invented out of the mind of a sick and vengeful bully."
Darien smirks. "You ain't got it down yet."
"What, I'm supposed to cry on cue and say it's all because I'm an addict and I've brought shame to my friends and family?"
"Now you're getting it," Darien says. He claps when another guy from their wing hits a softball into the outfield. House closes his eyes. He thinks about Vicodin, about music, about the last, best case he solved, about everything he's left behind. He pushes himself up and shakes off Darien's offered assistance, finds the wheelchair and pushes it toward the counselors, using it as an aid.
"I'm going inside," he says, and they all turn to look at him. "I assume, since you monitor everything from what I eat to when I poop, you're going to care about this, and mark it in some chart somewhere - subject has aversion to sunlight or something like that. When you do that, make sure you get this part right: I'm going in because I'm tired of being outside and I'm in pain and everyone on your softball team is a degenerate who shouldn't be allowed within a hundred yards of athletic equipment. Two of those people have classic signs of cardiac distress when they're sitting still."
The counselors almost all look the same - healthy, white-clad, white-bred blondies with ready-in-a-second smiles. "Everyone here has a thorough physical before they can participate in athletics."
House snorts. "Which was why you're letting an anoretic minor handle a baseball bat even though about 50 percent of anorexics develop osteoporosis, so there's a fair chance she'll break at least one of those bones before the day's up." He sits in the wheelchair and looks up. "Would one of you hurry up and get me inside before that happens? I'm a doctor and I'd hate to have to break my oath."
The closed-mouth counselor, Carl, the one he hasn't quite figured out yet, gets up slowly and walks over, nods to the rest, and pushes House all the way back to the hospital. He says nothing, and House decides that maybe Carl will be his ally on the inside instead.
6. Hours
Cameron stays late. She has nothing to do at work and less to do at home. She sits in House's chair and uses his phone to call her parents. Her mother talks about the weather, and Cameron rests her hand over House's yo-yo. It's raining back home. It's raining in Princeton, too.
The walls are thin, so she can hear Dr. Wilson's door open, can hear him opening a drawer, sitting in his chair. She tells her mother she loves her, loves her dad, is doing just fine, is learning a lot. They love her, too. She hangs up and sits quietly, not moving. It's already nine o'clock. She's put in a 13-hour day. Lunch was a half-hour in the cafeteria with the nurse from pediatrics who wanted to cry about her latest break-up. Cameron eats with her because she feels like she needs more female friends. She wishes there was a female fellow.
Another drawer opens and closes next door. The tenor purr of Wilson's voice, dictating or returning a call, comes through, his words indistinguishable. Cameron sets the yo-yo down and goes into the hallway and then knocks on Wilson's door. The balcony is not hers to use.
"Come in."
She stands in the dark by the door, because he only ever turns on his desk lamp. He looks at her for a minute and then settles back in his chair, keeps looking at her. Wilson is wearing a suit, now, a full suit, a nice silvery color with a blue tie. New leather chairs with studded arms sit in front of his desk, and there's a new painting on the wall, abstract, with broad strokes of color that match the rusty leather on the chairs and the bloody mahogany of his desk. He is trying so hard, Cameron thinks, and she steps away from the wall. She sits on the edge of the desk, facing him, her hand resting on a stack of charts, her legs not crossed. He can't help looking at them, and this makes her bold.
"I told him," she says, "that we slept together."
"There wasn't any sleeping," he says, looking up. His face is cool and calm, though his hand has clenched on the armrest. "That's good, though. He probably needed to hear it."
She nods. She doesn't know how to proceed from here. It's never occurred to her that he might not want more. "Are you still living at, ah, home?" she asks. The line feels clumsy, but Wilson just smirks.
"I moved in to House's place," he says. Cameron gapes, but Wilson smiles. "I still had a key. And it seems like the least he can do, since he cost me a month's pay and all of my patients."
"Does he know you're there?" she asks.
"Not yet, but I'm sure he'll figure it out when he gets back."
She wants to ask him about the future, about how things will be when House gets back, about how Wilson can even say his name, much less live among his things. And she knows she is asking this just by being here.
He shifts forward, and his hand palms her knee, but his smile is friendly. "Come on," he says, and he stands up. "Let's drink his liquor and mess up his sheets."
Cameron wants to scowl, but she pictures Wilson in House's spare, unhappy apartment, pictures herself there, knows he'll find out, and suddenly wants that. It's something House would do, she thinks, and that almost changes her mind, but she laughs and takes Wilson's arm. "Sounds great."
7. Days
Foreman stays late on Thursday in the office next to Wilson's, doing paperwork. He's the acting head of diagnostics, again, though with House off campus things have been very slow. The fellows spend most of their time writing up old cases for publication and doing odd jobs for other departments. He stays late anyway, because it's quiet and easy, and because he'd like to take the weekend off, away.
His plans are ruined. The next day, they have a patient for the first time in two weeks: seventeen-year-old male presents with a cyclic fever, rash, and trouble breathing. By the evening, he's progressed into seizures. Foreman has to tell the parents that they're doing everything they can, but he doesn't really believe it himself.
Cuddy hovers and tries to offer guidance, but she's most useful in calming the parents. The symptoms don't change, but they do get worse overnight.
"At this rate, he'll be dead within a matter of days," Chase says. It's not his usual snark - there's real alarm in his voice, and Foreman feels it, too. They're killing this guy.
The difference between these days and those, before House left, is that there won't be a last-minute save. Foreman sits on one side of the table, next to Cameron. He starts to make a list of tests they can still do.
Wilson comes in just before lunch. He's well dressed and not in a lab coat, and Foreman looks up at him and thinks, When did Dr. Wilson grow up? Wilson has them take him through the case step by step, disagrees with Cameron's push for a second MRI but agrees with Chase's idea for a PET Scan. He asks to see the MRI scans from yesterday. Foreman hands them over without mentioning that Wilson has no jurisdiction, because he's happy to have someone there, someone between him and the patient.
"Not to sound like an oncologist," Wilson says, studying the scans and then the symptoms, after Chase and Cameron have left to do the PET Scan, "but this feels like lymphoma."
They thought of that, but the seizures threw them off and they still can't explain them. But they do the scan and then a biopsy, and the tests come back with a diagnosis: Nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin's lymphoma, rare enough that it feels like a victory to have spotted it. Foreman goes with Cuddy and Wilson to tell the parents and then the kid. He follows Wilson back to the office, and Wilson stops him just outside.
"Foreman," he says, crossing his arms, "don't make me hear you guys struggling through the walls."
Foreman wants to shake him off, but this is the man, after all, who's been House's sounding board for years. He nods and claps Wilson on the shoulder. "Thanks, Dr. Wilson."
8. Weeks
During his third week at Seabrook, they bring in an old man, a professor, to talk to House. "And now I should be all inspired, because it's not just suburban moms and skater boys who kick the habit?" House says, sitting on his bed and staring across at the old man.
"Well, it would certainly waste less of my time if you would be inspired just by the sight of me," he says. "But I have a feeling you're going to be far more tiresome than that."
"I have that reputation."
"Hard-earned, yes, I know." The old man sits straight up in the desk chair, one leg crossed, looking at House. He's wearing a tweed suit and expensive shoes, and he looks comfortable. House can't find anything wrong with him. He begins to wonder if he's a hallucination. "I'm Dr. Earle."
House connects the dots as fast as he can. "Vance Earle?" Earle nods. Not a hallucination, then, he thinks, leaning slightly forward. Vance Earle is a vascular specialist and chief-of-staff at Massachusetts General for something like fourteen years, though House thinks he semi-retired sometime recently. There'd been a big work up about it in the Harvard Journal, since Earle had been one of their big NIH funding draws. Most recently, he's been chosen as the first-ever president of the American Board of Vascular Medicine. House narrows his eyes. "I read you last article in JAMA," he says. Earle nods again. "It wasn't complete crap."
"You'll forgive me if I don't put that stunning assessment on my C.V."
"So, what's your story then, Doctor? Let me guess: you hit the flask too hard back when you and Marcus Welby roamed the halls as young men."
"Now that would hardly be exciting, would it?" Earle says. He stares at House, doesn't look away. "You know, I think the problem here may be that you're smart."
"Brilliant, actually," House corrects. "And it's often been the problem before."
Earle barely smirks. "Just smart enough to think that you'll actually be able to get away with it."
House frowns. "And you're here to give me the homily on why I can't or won't get away with it, and then to tell me about how your wife left you and your career is nearly destroyed, right?"
"No," Earle says. "I'm here to tell you about how I nearly destroyed not only my own career but that of my best friend, cost my hospital 100 million dollars, and was almost sent to prison for ten years because my junkie ways were just too cool for me to give up, much less apologize for." Earle almost smiles as he says this. "I'm here to talk about how I was one of the most brilliant diagnosticians in the world until I just about wrecked my chances of ever practicing medicine again by being a complete and utter jackass."
House clears his throat. "That's plagiarism."
"Not if I don't write it down." Earle folds one hand over the other. "I'm guessing that you're stuck on step one, still. It's sad, really, after all these years of overachieving, that you're being beaten up the twelve-step ladder by a bunch of suburban moms."
"Religious suburban moms," House says.
"Ah, yes, well, that makes all the difference, knowing as you do the proven correlation between religious zeal and IQ." He sighs, an elegant, annoyed sigh. "You can be your own higher power, you know. Feel free to give me a call when you figure that one out."
House snorts. "I'm not going to like you, am I?" he asks.
"No, I doubt it," Earle says. "But you're supposed to be leaving this place in five weeks, so I'm going to be your sponsor anyway."
9. Months
Wilson spends a lot of time with Cuddy, now, strategizing for their new capital improvement plan. He has two major donors lined up; between them, he thinks he can get funding for a GEMINI TF PET/CT scanner. The time-of-flight technology on the machine is outstanding. "I saw it demonstrated at Penn last spring," Wilson says. "Images you wouldn't believe."
Cuddy nods. "You know every time you get a new toy, you're just going to have to fight nuclear medicine for it."
"And House," Wilson says, sighing, stabbing at his salad. He doesn't eat in the cafeteria anymore, because he doesn't want to see his old patients; he takes a lot of lunches out, with prospective donors and sometimes just with thick books of finance charts. When House gets back next month, he figures he'll either be eating in the cafeteria again, or he'll be taking all of his meals out.
"But at least he'll only be after it once a month, maybe twice." Cuddy opens a plastic container of yogurt. "I offered to let his fellows out of their contracts," she says.
"Let me guess: Foreman's still thinking, Chase said no thanks, and Cameron asked for an extension."
Cuddy snorts and sets the yogurt down so she can take a sip of water. "They all asked for extensions. They've been without supervision for six months."
The shooting and the drugs have taken up the last year. It's been the worst twelve months of Wilson's life, and it's all been because of House, and House has only been around for half of it. He stops picking at his salad.
"It's amazing," Cuddy says. "He's turned them all into junkies."
Wilson has to clear his throat to be able to talk. "In the end, I suppose they'll all be able to go anywhere they want."
"Probably, if House will even let them go."
He laughs. It's almost like old times, imagining House and the schemes he'll invent to keep his new playthings around. "They'll be lucky if he doesn't just drop them off the balcony."
Cuddy smiles. She smiles at him a lot, now, and Wilson knows that it's the suits and the seriousness and the fact that he is now decidedly on her side of any argument. He's an administrator. She picks up her yogurt again and twirls the spoon. "Do you want to go to dinner?" she asks.
He sets his plastic fork down. "Just to be clear - would it be a date?"
She looks down, blushes a little, but her voice stays steady. "Yes."
There are a hundred ways he could answer this - but he's always found that honesty is the best policy. "Sure," he says. "That would be nice."
She smiles again, broader, an almost nervous smile, and nods fast. "Great. Friday?"
"Sounds good," he says. "Shall I pick you up?"
10. Years
Lisa spends a lot of time shopping. Mostly online. Once a week, though, usually on a Tuesday night, sometimes on a Thursday or a Saturday morning, she goes out and shops in person. It's not relaxing, really, it's not rewarding - it's just something she does, something she likes to do, that gets her out and circulating in the world. She spends most of her days either in the hospital or thinking about the hospital, and sometimes it's nice to get beyond those walls. It's also, she'll admit, nice to see the fruits of her labors, to be able to walk into almost any store and ask for any object and know that she can afford it. She doesn't let herself forget this benefit, because sometimes, during the really hard times, it helps.
There are stores where she's known - the boutique in the Plainsboro Village Center where she buys most of her serious suits can usually be counted on for something, and the jeweler next door often has a new brooch to show off - but sometimes, on days like this, she stays away from the known places. Today, she goes to a new development in Princeton township, a bunch of boxy retail stores all clustered near each other, but not sharing a roof, not wanting to be a mall. She buys matching hat and glove sets for her nieces at The Gap and picks up a new pink top with a frilly neckline for herself. Maybe she'll wear it when she meets Wilson - James - for dinner tomorrow.
She carries her bags through the Baby Gap section of the store and pauses in front of a tiny stand of even tinier shoes. One little sandal barely fits two of her fingers. She looks at the next rack over, where pairs of khaki pants hang in descending order from itty-bitty to small. Lisa thinks of the years that each size dictates, the growth of a boy from birth, from wearing finger-sized sandals, to wearing pants like these, pants made for swing-sets and bicycles and catch in the front yard.
"Can I help you find anything?" The salesgirl is pert and bright-eyed and probably used to seeing women get all teary-eyed looking at baby shoes. It doesn't make Lisa feel any better to think this.
"No, I'm - thank you, I'm fine," she says. She lets the little shoe fall back to its rack and walks out of the store. On the sidewalk, she pauses to wipe her eyes, then takes the bags to the car. Inside, she rests her hands on the steering wheel and watches a family walk into the building. This is pathetic, she thinks. There is so much of that that she doesn't want. She watches a wife smile at her husband as he opens the door, watches two boys bounce wildly around on the sidewalk and ignore their parents' pleas for order. It's all so messy and disorganized, it's all so time consuming. The process is depressing, and there's always that possibility that the results will be, too.
And yet she wants it, wants a child, wants to be a mother not just in the flashy consumer way of these parents before her but in the way that she once wanted to be a doctor. She wants this because she knows she can do it well, and because she knows it's what she's built for. She is a firm believer in biology.
Her phone flashes and begins to ring, and she pulls it out of her purse and stares at the number. Wilson. Probably wanting to confirm for tomorrow night. Or to cancel, she thinks, but that seems improbable. Without House around, his life has to be even more boring than hers. She picks up the phone. "Hello, James," she says.
"Lisa!" He sounds surprised, even though he's the one calling. Maybe it's the first name that's thrown him off, but she can't do what she wants and still think of him as just Wilson, just a colleague, just another doctor. "I just wanted to check on times for tomorrow night."
"Still on," she says. "Seven o'clock? I have reservations for 7:30."
"Sounds excellent. I have a meeting at four, but it won't last much beyond an hour."
"Great, so, I'll see you at my place at seven." She smiles. "And you don't need to wear a jacket."
He laughs. "Good to know. OK. I'll see you tomorrow."
She makes one other stop on her way home, at the drug store. She doesn't buy condoms: she buys pregnancy tests.
Notes in Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3 : Part 4 : Part 5
Fandom: House M.D.
Pairings: hmm. In order of appearance, though not importance: Wilson/Cameron, Wilson/Cuddy, Cameron/Chase, and House/Wilson pre-slash with a touch of House/Wilson/OFC
Summary: Varying points of view -- House in and post-rehab.
Author's Note: So, I stumbled across the fanfic100 table and copied it down*, and sometime around "Finding Judas" I started to work on some stories out of it. This was mostly as a writing exercise for myself, but it turned into something more interesting (to me). Instead of writing one story per prompt, I started switching point of view between sections, and I made the whole thing into one long arc of story with a lot of different stuff happening. I don't know where some of it came from, really.
Anyway, it goes awry already (AU) because "Merry Little Christmas" doesn't quite fit with the timeline, though if you don't look too closely it still mostly works. I'm sure the next episode will completely ruin all of this.
And it's kind of long, and it's un-beta-read because there's only a day left before the new episode comes out. And... the title comes from a Devotchka song off the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack. And this one, I kind of like.
*please note, this isn't an official entry for fanfic100 or any of its offshoots, and I'm not trying to step on the toes of anyone who's claimed anything over there. Like I said, writing exercise.
So:
1. Beginnings.
They met in a bar. Or, OK, no, back up, too trite, and House hates that start. But it's true, because Wilson says so. And House can't remember the first time they met, so Wilson's opinion counts here.
"We met in a bar," he tells Cameron, when she's sitting across from him making wide, why-aren't-you-more-concerned eyes at him. She's angry, too, there's an attractive flush of red across her cheeks. House likes her riled up like this, likes her when she acts on instinct instead of thought. She's a better doctor when she isn't thinking.
"That doesn't explain this," Cameron says. "What, you met someplace trashy so your friendship means nothing?"
Here it comes, House thinks. Come on, come on -
"He's lost his job!"
She's yelling, now, and her arms are crossed, which is actually anatomically stupid, because she could get more air if she'd stand up and stretch out. But Cameron won't do that, won't loom over him even when she's angry, because she seems to think it's mean. "He didn't lose it," House says, tossing a ball into the air and catching it gracefully, knowing it makes her even angrier. "He quit." He looks up over Cameron's shoulder, to where Chase is holding up the office door and Foreman has been snorting and sighing in response to everything he's said for the last five minutes. "Let that be a lesson, kids: Quitters never win."
Chase scoffs. He seems a little freaked out by the whole thing. Of course, he doesn't have Daddy's money to fall back on, now, so the job suddenly means more to him. He's been looking at other offers - House knows this because his shoes are shined and he hasn't been flirting with the nurses. And Foreman, well, he's here to learn, and he has good perspective on things, seems to understand in his best moments that someday, this could be a great story at another bar, the time my boss almost got arrested, man, you wouldn't believe the shit he pulled, but Cameron's moral outrage always sparks something ugly in him. It's too soon to tell whose side Foreman will come down on.
Cameron's chosen her team. House gives her a week before she goes to Tritter. Maybe less. And that will be a new beginning, too.
2. Middles
James Wilson is a middle child. He's the one the family sent to find his brother, the last one who reached out on a street corner in Trenton, because that's what he does, that's how he was raised. He's always been a fixer.
He can't fix this thing with House. He moves his things out of the hotel and back into his house, a move that his divorce lawyer - not to mention his soon-to-be ex-wife - isn't crazy about, but he has no money and no credit and, hurrah, no job, so there aren't a lot of options. He sits in the den, surrounded by his boxes of books, his suitcases, his diplomas, and wonders what he can sell. He wonders what he can live without.
Cameron comes to see him on the second day, after Cuddy's been through and railed at him, after he's not taken a thousand calls from patients and colleagues and friends.
"I can't believe he's doing this to you," she says, sitting on the couch where Wilson slept the night before. He's sitting in the desk chair, but it feels awkward. He doesn't like having her here, with the door closed against his almost ex-wife's impending arrival home. Cameron has her legs crossed at the ankle, and she's wearing a skirt today, and Wilson doesn't look at her calves or her knees or her wide, sympathetic eyes. He looks out the window.
"Believe it," he says. "This has always been coming." He turns from the window and looks at her, really looks at her. She's the new Wilson, he thinks, and he laughs to himself.
"It's not funny." Her voice is high, offended for him and by him at the same time.
Wilson stares at her legs. "You've come here because you're getting up the courage to turn him in," he says. "You want me to say it's a good idea. You want me to tell you I wish you would do it." He looks her in the eye. She's blushing, just a little, and she leans forward and presses her legs together and her lips are glossed and it's hot in his den and he wants her. And he's probably just become damaged enough for this to work. "I wish you would do it," he says.
She only looks startled for a moment, and he's not sure whether it's because she's surprised at that or if it's the kiss.
3. Ends.
It's not Cameron and it's not Cuddy. It's Wilson. House has to pay himself $200 on that bet. There's no prison for him, but there are new rules and he has to adapt. He tells himself he's good at adapting; it's what people do when they need to get things done, and he gets things done, ergo: good at adapting. So he will adapt, he will roll with the punches and do two months at Seabrook Rehabilitation Center in central Jersey, and when he comes back, he'll deal with whatever else Cuddy throws his way.
Cuddy shows up at his condo on the morning he's supposed to go to Seabrook. He knows the date but pretends to have forgotten. She doesn't yell at him and that makes it all worse. Worse than that, she's come in person to tell him she can't drive him and that Dr. Cameron has volunteered. House takes a handful of Vicodin and hopes he's finally hit his limit, that it will knock him out in the car.
It doesn't, but Cameron doesn't want to talk. They stop twice so he can stretch his leg. He thinks about running away. He thinks about running. He throws up in the bathroom at a rest stop, and when he comes out, Cameron is holding bottles of water for both of them. He knocks the bottle out of her hand and goes inside, buys himself the largest, strongest energy drink in the world, then doubles back and buys another. He drinks all of the first one standing on the curb, while Cameron leans against her car and looks at her watch and sometimes says things like, "You're supposed to be there at 10" and "It's my responsibility to get you there" and then "I slept with Dr. Wilson."
It's the last one, or maybe it's the caffeine rush, that makes House stop and turn. He laughs, big, bubbling laughter, and he thinks I won't be doing this again for a while and he opens the second drink.
"You're perfect for each other," he says. He holds the can in one hand and his cane in the other until Cameron huffs and walks around and opens his door. She leans close and she smells just like always. "That's too bad," he says, wishing for a bit of Wilson on her.
"He's pretty messed up," she says when she's in the car. They're back on the highway, racing toward his punishment - eight weeks of hanging out in white rooms with counselors and girls and boys from the city, probably, who blame their drug habits on Mommy and Daddy and have never had anything more painful than a piercing in their lives - and he starts to laugh again.
"He always has been," he says.
Cameron doesn't take her eyes off the road. "Do you even miss him? He's your best friend."
Was, he thinks, and then he says it aloud.
4. Insides
Wilson goes back to work. He thinks about conditions. He goes to Cuddy's office on his first day back and she says, "I have an opening on the fourth floor. Glover's office."
He wants to say yes. A new start, a new office. It would make sense, even, because Dr. Glover's office is closer to the oncology wing, closer to the patient floors. But he likes his office, likes the balcony, likes the distance from his staff. And he doesn't want anyone to think he's running away. "It's fine," he says. "I'm fine."
He settles back in to the office, which has been cleaned but otherwise untouched since he left it two weeks ago. His diplomas fit back on the wall, his photos go back on the shelves, but his filing cabinets stay empty.
Wilson calls a department meeting, and they crowd into the oncology lounge after lunch. Usually, he sits on the table at the front and he lets everyone talk for a while and he tells some jokes and they go over whatever procedural stuff they have to, they set up a call schedule, and then they go. Today he stands in front of them and he wears a suit coat and no lab coat.
"We need to talk about making some internal changes," he says, and people shift uncomfortably. He's always run a good ship, a learning ship, but a loose ship. They have one of the lowest burnout rates in the country. Three of the guys who started with him are still here. He looks at them and wishes he could fire them all, wishes he could scare them all away, so that he could start new. Instead, he makes himself smile. "If you had all the money in the world, and you had to spend it on this department, what would you do?"
The answers are what he's expected: better equipment, better salaries for the support staff and for the docs on call, better access to clinical trials and new drugs, more funding for research.
"And better coffee," Sherilyn, their head of nursing, says.
"I can get you that by Friday," he says. The group smiles. "So this is my job. I'm going to focus on money. I'll consult when I'm called, you know I'm happy to do it, but I'm not taking any new patients right now." He looks around, sees the surprised glances. He's always led by example, led by being a good doctor. But the people in the room with him, they're all good doctors, too, and he's tired and this is where he can be most helpful, right now. "I'm pretty good at my job," he says, and only a few people look away. He keeps smiling. There is nothing to distract him from this. "I'm going to get better at it."
5. Outsides
After the detox is over, House is allowed to join the rest of the group on outings, to pick up pizzas or rental videos, to play kickball in the park, to go outside for a few hours and enjoy the sunshine. They put him in a wheelchair, and for this, he will never forgive Tritter.
He makes allies, not friends. He picks Darien, a guy who reminds him of Foreman, a little, because he's black but also because he's smart and he's a little twitchy. Darien is a good guy to know because he's been through other programs, "and this one, man, it's primo. They got the TV, they got the good kitchen, it's good."
Darien doesn't talk about the place's success rate - it's in the sixties, if the pep talk from the nursing staff is to be believed - or about his own. Half of the people in the program seem to be around just so they can learn how to act like normal people. House isn't quite sure which side Darien falls on - it depends on the day.
Darien sits next to House in the grass by the softball field in the park. In front of them, a few of the people are playing a listless game while the counselors lounge near the bleachers, making sure that no one's going to make a run for the fences. Seabrook has a 40 acre campus, and escaping seems like a very bad plan, particularly considering that it's a voluntary program - at least for most people. Darien, for instance, has signed up for a three-month course, and is only on week two, Phase 1. House can check himself out at any time, too, but if he leaves, he gives up his medical license and probably the next seven to 10 years of his life. He stays in the grass, for now.
The wheelchair is a few yards away, because the softball field is a half-mile from their sleeping quarters and House can't walk this far. He has some mobility, because he's been getting carefully-monitored injections every morning for the pain. It barely takes the edge off, but it's better than the previous week when he had nothing. The in-house doctor is a complete waste of space, though, and has no understanding of the words "built-up tolerance to pain killers," which House finds pretty appalling in a man making his living treating drug addicts. So he gets the same non-opiate shots each morning.
"So, you, I figure, cocaine," Darien says.
"And for you I figure black tar heroin," House replies. "Not the designer East Cost stuff, because you've got signs of venous sclerosis. Also, judging by your slightly sallow complexion, several years spent in the bottom of a bottle of whatever was closest by."
Darien's smile is slow and unashamed. "Whatever works, you know?" House shrugs. On the field, a very skinny girl - diet pills, he thinks, escalating to crystal meth - swings a bat and manages to connect with the ball, though the effort nearly knocks her over. "So, am I right?"
"Hydrocodone."
"Fancy. I knew a lady, she was on my route when I was delivering for the appliance store, she tried to get me to sell her something like that one time. I says, lady, I ain't sellin' what I can't spell."
"I would guess that was a severe limitation on your business plan," House mutters.
Darien shrugs. He's endlessly good natured. Hanging around Darien lets House slide a little bit under the radar of the counselors, who seem to know that Darien is harmless and probably beyond helping. "Why you here?"
House glares, because, duh.
"No, I mean, like, they gonna ask you, in group, you gonna have to give your tipping point."
House narrows his eyes. He knows there are a few good candidates, all of them lies. "I'm here," he says, "because my former best friend cut a deal with a prosecutor so that I could keep my medical license and he could keep his job. And because the case against me sucked and was completely invented out of the mind of a sick and vengeful bully."
Darien smirks. "You ain't got it down yet."
"What, I'm supposed to cry on cue and say it's all because I'm an addict and I've brought shame to my friends and family?"
"Now you're getting it," Darien says. He claps when another guy from their wing hits a softball into the outfield. House closes his eyes. He thinks about Vicodin, about music, about the last, best case he solved, about everything he's left behind. He pushes himself up and shakes off Darien's offered assistance, finds the wheelchair and pushes it toward the counselors, using it as an aid.
"I'm going inside," he says, and they all turn to look at him. "I assume, since you monitor everything from what I eat to when I poop, you're going to care about this, and mark it in some chart somewhere - subject has aversion to sunlight or something like that. When you do that, make sure you get this part right: I'm going in because I'm tired of being outside and I'm in pain and everyone on your softball team is a degenerate who shouldn't be allowed within a hundred yards of athletic equipment. Two of those people have classic signs of cardiac distress when they're sitting still."
The counselors almost all look the same - healthy, white-clad, white-bred blondies with ready-in-a-second smiles. "Everyone here has a thorough physical before they can participate in athletics."
House snorts. "Which was why you're letting an anoretic minor handle a baseball bat even though about 50 percent of anorexics develop osteoporosis, so there's a fair chance she'll break at least one of those bones before the day's up." He sits in the wheelchair and looks up. "Would one of you hurry up and get me inside before that happens? I'm a doctor and I'd hate to have to break my oath."
The closed-mouth counselor, Carl, the one he hasn't quite figured out yet, gets up slowly and walks over, nods to the rest, and pushes House all the way back to the hospital. He says nothing, and House decides that maybe Carl will be his ally on the inside instead.
6. Hours
Cameron stays late. She has nothing to do at work and less to do at home. She sits in House's chair and uses his phone to call her parents. Her mother talks about the weather, and Cameron rests her hand over House's yo-yo. It's raining back home. It's raining in Princeton, too.
The walls are thin, so she can hear Dr. Wilson's door open, can hear him opening a drawer, sitting in his chair. She tells her mother she loves her, loves her dad, is doing just fine, is learning a lot. They love her, too. She hangs up and sits quietly, not moving. It's already nine o'clock. She's put in a 13-hour day. Lunch was a half-hour in the cafeteria with the nurse from pediatrics who wanted to cry about her latest break-up. Cameron eats with her because she feels like she needs more female friends. She wishes there was a female fellow.
Another drawer opens and closes next door. The tenor purr of Wilson's voice, dictating or returning a call, comes through, his words indistinguishable. Cameron sets the yo-yo down and goes into the hallway and then knocks on Wilson's door. The balcony is not hers to use.
"Come in."
She stands in the dark by the door, because he only ever turns on his desk lamp. He looks at her for a minute and then settles back in his chair, keeps looking at her. Wilson is wearing a suit, now, a full suit, a nice silvery color with a blue tie. New leather chairs with studded arms sit in front of his desk, and there's a new painting on the wall, abstract, with broad strokes of color that match the rusty leather on the chairs and the bloody mahogany of his desk. He is trying so hard, Cameron thinks, and she steps away from the wall. She sits on the edge of the desk, facing him, her hand resting on a stack of charts, her legs not crossed. He can't help looking at them, and this makes her bold.
"I told him," she says, "that we slept together."
"There wasn't any sleeping," he says, looking up. His face is cool and calm, though his hand has clenched on the armrest. "That's good, though. He probably needed to hear it."
She nods. She doesn't know how to proceed from here. It's never occurred to her that he might not want more. "Are you still living at, ah, home?" she asks. The line feels clumsy, but Wilson just smirks.
"I moved in to House's place," he says. Cameron gapes, but Wilson smiles. "I still had a key. And it seems like the least he can do, since he cost me a month's pay and all of my patients."
"Does he know you're there?" she asks.
"Not yet, but I'm sure he'll figure it out when he gets back."
She wants to ask him about the future, about how things will be when House gets back, about how Wilson can even say his name, much less live among his things. And she knows she is asking this just by being here.
He shifts forward, and his hand palms her knee, but his smile is friendly. "Come on," he says, and he stands up. "Let's drink his liquor and mess up his sheets."
Cameron wants to scowl, but she pictures Wilson in House's spare, unhappy apartment, pictures herself there, knows he'll find out, and suddenly wants that. It's something House would do, she thinks, and that almost changes her mind, but she laughs and takes Wilson's arm. "Sounds great."
7. Days
Foreman stays late on Thursday in the office next to Wilson's, doing paperwork. He's the acting head of diagnostics, again, though with House off campus things have been very slow. The fellows spend most of their time writing up old cases for publication and doing odd jobs for other departments. He stays late anyway, because it's quiet and easy, and because he'd like to take the weekend off, away.
His plans are ruined. The next day, they have a patient for the first time in two weeks: seventeen-year-old male presents with a cyclic fever, rash, and trouble breathing. By the evening, he's progressed into seizures. Foreman has to tell the parents that they're doing everything they can, but he doesn't really believe it himself.
Cuddy hovers and tries to offer guidance, but she's most useful in calming the parents. The symptoms don't change, but they do get worse overnight.
"At this rate, he'll be dead within a matter of days," Chase says. It's not his usual snark - there's real alarm in his voice, and Foreman feels it, too. They're killing this guy.
The difference between these days and those, before House left, is that there won't be a last-minute save. Foreman sits on one side of the table, next to Cameron. He starts to make a list of tests they can still do.
Wilson comes in just before lunch. He's well dressed and not in a lab coat, and Foreman looks up at him and thinks, When did Dr. Wilson grow up? Wilson has them take him through the case step by step, disagrees with Cameron's push for a second MRI but agrees with Chase's idea for a PET Scan. He asks to see the MRI scans from yesterday. Foreman hands them over without mentioning that Wilson has no jurisdiction, because he's happy to have someone there, someone between him and the patient.
"Not to sound like an oncologist," Wilson says, studying the scans and then the symptoms, after Chase and Cameron have left to do the PET Scan, "but this feels like lymphoma."
They thought of that, but the seizures threw them off and they still can't explain them. But they do the scan and then a biopsy, and the tests come back with a diagnosis: Nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin's lymphoma, rare enough that it feels like a victory to have spotted it. Foreman goes with Cuddy and Wilson to tell the parents and then the kid. He follows Wilson back to the office, and Wilson stops him just outside.
"Foreman," he says, crossing his arms, "don't make me hear you guys struggling through the walls."
Foreman wants to shake him off, but this is the man, after all, who's been House's sounding board for years. He nods and claps Wilson on the shoulder. "Thanks, Dr. Wilson."
8. Weeks
During his third week at Seabrook, they bring in an old man, a professor, to talk to House. "And now I should be all inspired, because it's not just suburban moms and skater boys who kick the habit?" House says, sitting on his bed and staring across at the old man.
"Well, it would certainly waste less of my time if you would be inspired just by the sight of me," he says. "But I have a feeling you're going to be far more tiresome than that."
"I have that reputation."
"Hard-earned, yes, I know." The old man sits straight up in the desk chair, one leg crossed, looking at House. He's wearing a tweed suit and expensive shoes, and he looks comfortable. House can't find anything wrong with him. He begins to wonder if he's a hallucination. "I'm Dr. Earle."
House connects the dots as fast as he can. "Vance Earle?" Earle nods. Not a hallucination, then, he thinks, leaning slightly forward. Vance Earle is a vascular specialist and chief-of-staff at Massachusetts General for something like fourteen years, though House thinks he semi-retired sometime recently. There'd been a big work up about it in the Harvard Journal, since Earle had been one of their big NIH funding draws. Most recently, he's been chosen as the first-ever president of the American Board of Vascular Medicine. House narrows his eyes. "I read you last article in JAMA," he says. Earle nods again. "It wasn't complete crap."
"You'll forgive me if I don't put that stunning assessment on my C.V."
"So, what's your story then, Doctor? Let me guess: you hit the flask too hard back when you and Marcus Welby roamed the halls as young men."
"Now that would hardly be exciting, would it?" Earle says. He stares at House, doesn't look away. "You know, I think the problem here may be that you're smart."
"Brilliant, actually," House corrects. "And it's often been the problem before."
Earle barely smirks. "Just smart enough to think that you'll actually be able to get away with it."
House frowns. "And you're here to give me the homily on why I can't or won't get away with it, and then to tell me about how your wife left you and your career is nearly destroyed, right?"
"No," Earle says. "I'm here to tell you about how I nearly destroyed not only my own career but that of my best friend, cost my hospital 100 million dollars, and was almost sent to prison for ten years because my junkie ways were just too cool for me to give up, much less apologize for." Earle almost smiles as he says this. "I'm here to talk about how I was one of the most brilliant diagnosticians in the world until I just about wrecked my chances of ever practicing medicine again by being a complete and utter jackass."
House clears his throat. "That's plagiarism."
"Not if I don't write it down." Earle folds one hand over the other. "I'm guessing that you're stuck on step one, still. It's sad, really, after all these years of overachieving, that you're being beaten up the twelve-step ladder by a bunch of suburban moms."
"Religious suburban moms," House says.
"Ah, yes, well, that makes all the difference, knowing as you do the proven correlation between religious zeal and IQ." He sighs, an elegant, annoyed sigh. "You can be your own higher power, you know. Feel free to give me a call when you figure that one out."
House snorts. "I'm not going to like you, am I?" he asks.
"No, I doubt it," Earle says. "But you're supposed to be leaving this place in five weeks, so I'm going to be your sponsor anyway."
9. Months
Wilson spends a lot of time with Cuddy, now, strategizing for their new capital improvement plan. He has two major donors lined up; between them, he thinks he can get funding for a GEMINI TF PET/CT scanner. The time-of-flight technology on the machine is outstanding. "I saw it demonstrated at Penn last spring," Wilson says. "Images you wouldn't believe."
Cuddy nods. "You know every time you get a new toy, you're just going to have to fight nuclear medicine for it."
"And House," Wilson says, sighing, stabbing at his salad. He doesn't eat in the cafeteria anymore, because he doesn't want to see his old patients; he takes a lot of lunches out, with prospective donors and sometimes just with thick books of finance charts. When House gets back next month, he figures he'll either be eating in the cafeteria again, or he'll be taking all of his meals out.
"But at least he'll only be after it once a month, maybe twice." Cuddy opens a plastic container of yogurt. "I offered to let his fellows out of their contracts," she says.
"Let me guess: Foreman's still thinking, Chase said no thanks, and Cameron asked for an extension."
Cuddy snorts and sets the yogurt down so she can take a sip of water. "They all asked for extensions. They've been without supervision for six months."
The shooting and the drugs have taken up the last year. It's been the worst twelve months of Wilson's life, and it's all been because of House, and House has only been around for half of it. He stops picking at his salad.
"It's amazing," Cuddy says. "He's turned them all into junkies."
Wilson has to clear his throat to be able to talk. "In the end, I suppose they'll all be able to go anywhere they want."
"Probably, if House will even let them go."
He laughs. It's almost like old times, imagining House and the schemes he'll invent to keep his new playthings around. "They'll be lucky if he doesn't just drop them off the balcony."
Cuddy smiles. She smiles at him a lot, now, and Wilson knows that it's the suits and the seriousness and the fact that he is now decidedly on her side of any argument. He's an administrator. She picks up her yogurt again and twirls the spoon. "Do you want to go to dinner?" she asks.
He sets his plastic fork down. "Just to be clear - would it be a date?"
She looks down, blushes a little, but her voice stays steady. "Yes."
There are a hundred ways he could answer this - but he's always found that honesty is the best policy. "Sure," he says. "That would be nice."
She smiles again, broader, an almost nervous smile, and nods fast. "Great. Friday?"
"Sounds good," he says. "Shall I pick you up?"
10. Years
Lisa spends a lot of time shopping. Mostly online. Once a week, though, usually on a Tuesday night, sometimes on a Thursday or a Saturday morning, she goes out and shops in person. It's not relaxing, really, it's not rewarding - it's just something she does, something she likes to do, that gets her out and circulating in the world. She spends most of her days either in the hospital or thinking about the hospital, and sometimes it's nice to get beyond those walls. It's also, she'll admit, nice to see the fruits of her labors, to be able to walk into almost any store and ask for any object and know that she can afford it. She doesn't let herself forget this benefit, because sometimes, during the really hard times, it helps.
There are stores where she's known - the boutique in the Plainsboro Village Center where she buys most of her serious suits can usually be counted on for something, and the jeweler next door often has a new brooch to show off - but sometimes, on days like this, she stays away from the known places. Today, she goes to a new development in Princeton township, a bunch of boxy retail stores all clustered near each other, but not sharing a roof, not wanting to be a mall. She buys matching hat and glove sets for her nieces at The Gap and picks up a new pink top with a frilly neckline for herself. Maybe she'll wear it when she meets Wilson - James - for dinner tomorrow.
She carries her bags through the Baby Gap section of the store and pauses in front of a tiny stand of even tinier shoes. One little sandal barely fits two of her fingers. She looks at the next rack over, where pairs of khaki pants hang in descending order from itty-bitty to small. Lisa thinks of the years that each size dictates, the growth of a boy from birth, from wearing finger-sized sandals, to wearing pants like these, pants made for swing-sets and bicycles and catch in the front yard.
"Can I help you find anything?" The salesgirl is pert and bright-eyed and probably used to seeing women get all teary-eyed looking at baby shoes. It doesn't make Lisa feel any better to think this.
"No, I'm - thank you, I'm fine," she says. She lets the little shoe fall back to its rack and walks out of the store. On the sidewalk, she pauses to wipe her eyes, then takes the bags to the car. Inside, she rests her hands on the steering wheel and watches a family walk into the building. This is pathetic, she thinks. There is so much of that that she doesn't want. She watches a wife smile at her husband as he opens the door, watches two boys bounce wildly around on the sidewalk and ignore their parents' pleas for order. It's all so messy and disorganized, it's all so time consuming. The process is depressing, and there's always that possibility that the results will be, too.
And yet she wants it, wants a child, wants to be a mother not just in the flashy consumer way of these parents before her but in the way that she once wanted to be a doctor. She wants this because she knows she can do it well, and because she knows it's what she's built for. She is a firm believer in biology.
Her phone flashes and begins to ring, and she pulls it out of her purse and stares at the number. Wilson. Probably wanting to confirm for tomorrow night. Or to cancel, she thinks, but that seems improbable. Without House around, his life has to be even more boring than hers. She picks up the phone. "Hello, James," she says.
"Lisa!" He sounds surprised, even though he's the one calling. Maybe it's the first name that's thrown him off, but she can't do what she wants and still think of him as just Wilson, just a colleague, just another doctor. "I just wanted to check on times for tomorrow night."
"Still on," she says. "Seven o'clock? I have reservations for 7:30."
"Sounds excellent. I have a meeting at four, but it won't last much beyond an hour."
"Great, so, I'll see you at my place at seven." She smiles. "And you don't need to wear a jacket."
He laughs. "Good to know. OK. I'll see you tomorrow."
She makes one other stop on her way home, at the drug store. She doesn't buy condoms: she buys pregnancy tests.
Notes in Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3 : Part 4 : Part 5