Lockdown
Please notify hospital personnel or police immediately if you see anything suspicious.
He sighs as he hears the announcement just as he's called the elevator; he is on his way up to the roof - he hasn't been up there in awhile and it was always a good place to get some thinking done.
He knows the protocol for a Code Seven and he briefly considers trying to get up there, but he knows they'll stop his elevator.
He's on the second floor and not too far from the doctor's lounge, so he decides to head there.
Walking quickly down the hall, he sticks his head around a corner and finding it empty, starts down it.
We cannot allow anyone to leave the hospital at this time. All personnel should remain in their staging areas unless otherwise instructed by security.
He turns at the sound of someone clearing their throat; seeing that it's a guard, he figures it's not worth the effort to try and get to the lounge and settles for the closet patient room.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotta clear the -" he mutters, moving his hand to indicate he's going into the room next to him.
He slides open the door and steps in.
Thank you for your patience and cooperation.
---
He pulls his phone out and sends two texts - one to Wilson to find out where he is and another to Cuddy find out why the Code Seven was called to lock down the hospital.
He puts his phone back in his pocket and surveys the room he is in. Besides his name, Nash, the man lying in the bed's personal history hadn't had much written in it.
"No cards, no flowers, not even a phone call. Let me guess: Lighthouse keeper, " he prompts.
"I was a classics professor at Princeton for 26 years. Mostly research," Nash replies.
"So your closest colleagues died 2,000 years ago. That must be it. Not that you have no friends because, say, you're a miserable bastard," he pokes, not particularly kindly as he didn't appreciate this man throwing in his face that he hadn't taken his case.
"What do you care?" Nash asks snidely.
He stares at him before speaking."The next few hours are gonna be grim. There'll be nausea, pain, no company, as soon as I can get myself out of here. I can unlock the regulator. You can put yourself in a narcotic haze, sleep blissfully to the end," he offers as a sort of conciliation prize.
"Oh, is that a favor to me or to you?"
"Win-win," he responds with a slight grin.
The other man laughs shortly. "No, thanks."
"Are you trying to guilt me for not taking your case?" he asks point blank.
"You think a classicist doesn't believe in fate?"
"You think Odysseus would lie whimpering like a loser in a hospital bed?" he says, getting up from the dresser and approaching Nash. "Come on, take my offer. Take the drug holiday. Numb yourself out."
"I think you're the one who wants to numb himself out," Nash comments, his voice and eyes full of insight he shouldn't have.
The phone in his pocket beeps and pulls it out giving the other man a thoughtful look, before he sits back down and responds to his new messages without saying another word.
---
He stands on the other side of the room, far from the bed and facing away from the man in it as he sends back a text to Cuddy and gives Wilson a question to ask Thirteen. He pockets his phone and picks up the emesis basin, dumping the water into the sink and cutting the tap.
"So this is what it comes down to in the final hours. Deifying some lost love. Hoping to get her on the phone and make everything perfect. It's pathetic. Either you left her for a reason or she left you for a reason.”
He turns from the sink and walks toward Nash still holding the basin that he was washing. "A phone call is not -"
"It's my daughter," Nash admits.
This he wasn't expecting, but it doesn't stop him from continuing to prod. "So why isn't she here?"
"I left my family... when Gracie was six. I was sort of forced out, actually, after I'd had an affair with a student."
"For sex or love?"
"Neither. I'd only married Gracie's mother because of the baby. But I didn't think I could handle commitment, and, like any decent academic, I proved myself right".
"And what time it is matters because?"
"She's a dance teacher in Atlanta. She gets home from work at 9:00, and I just wanted to speak to her one more time. That's my story. What's yours?"
"Same thing. Pretty much."
"I'm gonna be dead in a few hours. Your secrets couldn't be safer. Unless you're keeping them from yourself."
"I like being alone. At least I convince myself that I'm better off that way. And then I met someone… at a psychiatric hospital, of all places. She changed me. And then she left. We're better off alone. We suffer alone. We die alone. Doesn't matter if you're a model husband or father of the year. Tomorrow will be the same for you."
"But yesterday would have been different."
"You didn't want it to be."
"And you didn't either?"
---
"I think I'm ready to take you up on your offer." Nash tells him.
He doesn't hesitate and opens the morphine pump and keys in the override code. He looks down at Nash and quickly over his shoulder when he hears the door slide open.
"Dr. House? Lockdown ended a few minutes ago," the guard who is now standing at the door informs him.
"Yeah. I know." He says dismissing him and returning his attention to Nash, "I'm sorry I didn't take your case."
"Me too." Nash replies honestly and lays quietly before he continues, "Gracie... was the cutest six-year-old you ever saw."
"I lied," he confesses. "It wasn't the woman at the psychiatric hospital that changed me - it was the woman that was the reason I went there in the first place."
But Nash doesn't hear him, because he is already out.
He leaves the room and takes the elevator up to his office and grabs his stuff, sending a text to Wilson telling him to meet him in the lobby. He wants dinner and he needs his BFF to pay for it.
As he exits the elevator, he sees two of his fellows leaving and notes that since one of them is Thirteen, meaning Wilson should be down soon. His eyes then fall on Cuddy standing at the reception desk; she is reading through some pages on a clipboard and her hand lifts to move a lock of hair behind her ear.
He watches her as he walks towards her thinking that he's seen her do this so many times. He's so tired of just watching her from afar.
She looks up as though she senses him and holds his gaze until he comes to a stop behind her.
"So the patron saint of the lost child succeeds again," he mocks.
She smiles."Very funny. It was one of the nurses. I noticed her having a pilomotor seizure and then the number of towels in the room was off." She waves her hand as if to finish the sentence.
"How very me of you."
"So where were you texting me from?" she asks, looking back down at the paperwork she was doing.
He looks at her pensively, his thoughts going back to his first interaction Nash.
His silence doesn't go unnoticed and she looks up at him. She tilts her head and lifts a hand, placing it on his upper arm. "House?"
"I was in a room with a man who's case I didn't take. He'll be dead before we go to bed tonight."
She has never seen him like this. She has long known that she was giving death sentences to many of the cases she received that she didn't pass on to him. Still, there were plenty that she did give him that he didn't take. "House you can't be-" she begins, only to be cut off by Wilson.
"Hey you two," Wilson greets, his expression immediately filling with concern when he looks at them. "House?" he asks, turning his attention to his friend.
House looks at Cuddy and nods his head signaling that he doesn't want to discuss this. "You ready to go?" he asks turning to Wilson and stepping away from Cuddy's hand.
"Yeah," Wilson replies slowly, looking at Cuddy with his eyes full of questions.
She shakes her head. "Goodnight guys."
"Goodnight," House responds, walking towards the exit.
"Goodnight, Cuddy," Wilson whispers, placing his hand over hers and giving it a comforting squeeze before following after his friend.