Housefic: Changing Pastures
Title: Changing Pastures
Author: nightdog_barks
Characters: Dr. Haight Jefferson (an OC), House, Wilson
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: Yes, for the Season 8 series finale arc.
Summary: It's the best damn story he's ever heard, and one that he never intends to retell. 1,884 words.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Author Notes: This is set in the Riververse -- the ficverse of A River Out of Eden, and takes place in Two Pigs, only a few days after the central event of that story. The cut-text is from a poem by Wendell Berry, The Gift is Balanced.
Beta: My intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to blackmare and deelaundry.
Changing Pastures
It's after he's treated old Mrs. Magnusson's cows for mange, and he reaches across the truck cab because the driver's side flip-down visor is broken and the sun's shining in his eyes that he realizes it's gone.
Haight sinks back in his seat a little and leans his head against the rest. Lisa'll skin me alive, he thinks, and she'll be right. Third one this year. He can just hear her: "Haight, hon, what is it with you and hats? And here your birthday's not for another three months." And then she'd sigh. Haight sighs himself, just thinking about it.
So where'd he leave it? He taps at the steering wheel, runs through his last few calls, tries to remember the last time he wore it ... not here with Helga Magnusson, even though he'd been inside her trim little kitchen and she'd offered him tea cookies. Not with George Taylor and his colicky lambs, nor with Travis Belmont and his ringworm-y horse, nor Peter Calhoun and his bald llama. Then ... of course. It had been his human patient. That Wilson guy. James Wilson and his bucket-list friend Doc Bell.
Haight starts the truck and puts it in gear. The Be-Tide Inn is close enough; he can swing by on his way home for lunch. It's been two days already, so if Wilson and Bell have already checked out, well ... that'll be that. And Lisa can sigh at him all she likes.
The two bikes are still there, parked in front of Room #13. Haight knocks on the door, and it's opened almost immediately by Dr. Bell. He looks surprised, and more than a little uneasy, so Haight hastens to reassure him with a friendly nod.
"Dr. Bell," he says, "I'm sorry to disturb y'all, but I think I may have left -- "
"Kyle?" another voice calls from inside the room. "Who is it? Who's there?"
Dr. Bell looks at him a moment more, then nods back and steps aside, inviting Haight to enter.
Wilson is in bed, but sitting up against a nest of pillows and looking a lot better than when Haight last saw him. He's got a mug of something by his side, wisps of steam curling up from it.
"Mr. Wilson," Haight says agreeably. "I don't suppose you remember me, but I'm -- "
"Haight Jefferson," Wilson says, and smiles. "Dr. Bell told me all about you."
"Only the good parts, I hope," Haight says, and Wilson's smile grows.
"Like the part where you thought he might be trying to kill me." Wilson pauses for a sip from the mug, and Haight catches the scent of peppermint tea, doubtless to soothe his still-sore throat. "Don't worry about that. You're not the first."
Bell, who's been just standing there, limps over to the room's only chair, turns it around, and sits down. "I'd offer you something to drink," he says, "but this place has none of the comforts of home."
"Oh, that's okay," Haight says. "I just dropped by to -- "
"Kyle," Wilson says mildly, "aren't there some bottled waters in the refrigerator?" He looks at Haight, coughs a little, swipes at his lips with a tissue. "The room came with one of those mini-refrigerators."
Kyle gives his friend a dark look, but gets up anyway and pokes around in the compact fridge. Haight takes the opportunity to look around.
The little motel room hasn't changed much in the couple of days since he's been here -- if it weren't for the open saddlebags on the dresser and the helmets perched on the desk, he'd say it seems like any other temporary space, someplace where people stop and rest on the way to somewhere else. One thing that has changed is the smell. Before, when he'd stepped inside, the air had been stale, marked with the rank bouquet of sickness and unwashed sheets. Now it just has that lived-in laundry smell he remembers from his days at UGA that comes with guys bunking together.
"Here," Bell says, and tosses a cold plastic bottle to Haight, and what the hell, he is thirsty, so he opens it up and takes a good long drink.
"So Dr. Bell here gave me to understand you folks are off on a bucket list," he says, after replacing the cap on the bottle. "You done anything interesting? Besides coming down with scarlet fever, I mean." He waves the bottle to indicate he's including both men in a general question.
Wilson nods. "I've been bungee jumping," he says, "but to be honest, just getting on a motorcycle was almost adventure enough." He smiles again, and Haight can't help but think it's what Lisa would call a wistful smile. "Kyle here's trying to get me to go skydiving, but I don't think I have enough time to talk myself into jumping out of a perfectly good airplane." He looks at Haight. "Five or six months," he says, answering the unasked question.
Haight winces. "I'm sorry," he says, and he means it. James Wilson seems like a nice guy -- that dry cough, he's probably got lung cancer, esophageal, something else deep in the chest.
"My uncle did that," Haight offers. "Went on a bucket list and jumped out of a plane."
"Really?" Wilson says. "What did ... does he have?"
"Did. And it was mast cell leukemia."
"Ah," Wilson says. "I assume a splenectomy was done?"
Haight is just starting to take another sip of water. He stops. "Now don't tell me you're a doctor, too."
Wilson's smile turns shy. "I'm ... I was an oncologist," he admits.
"And you still are," Bell rumbles.
"No," Wilson says firmly. "I'm not."
"Roy had a splenectomy," Haight says, smoothing the waters. "Got better for awhile, went downhill again after he got back from the Grand Canyon. Died before they could start chemo or look for a stem cell match."
Wilson holds up his hands. "Acute myeloid leukemias are aggressive beasts," he says quietly. "Median survival after diagnosis is only about six months, more or less."
"Boo hoo," Bell growls. "Everybody dies."
"And what about you?" Haight says.
"What about me what?"
"What do you have?"
"Nothing worth talking about," Bell snaps back, but there'd been a hesitation, an almost imperceptible pause, and because Haight is a man accustomed to listening to the soft breathing of animals, he hears it.
Gotcha.
"Kyle, don't be an ass," Wilson says, and wonder of wonders, Bell looks abashed. Wilson scrubs at his face with both hands and shakes his head. "So," he says from behind his hands, and "so" again as he drops them. "Dr. Jefferson. Anything in this area you'd recommend seeing? Once I'm up and around, that is?"
"New strip mall on Route Three's been drawing a lot of interest," Haight says teasingly. "Or there's the Olive Garden grand opening over by the Parkway."
Wilson chuckles. "There were enough strip malls and Olive Gardens back in New Jersey to satisfy anyone for a lifetime. What else you got?"
Haight starts to explain about the caverns not too far away, the Civil War monuments and former battlefields, the microbreweries that have sprung up around Ghost Creek, but all the time his mind is working on this puzzle. He's caught Dr. Bell in a falsehood, he knows he has, but what it means ... Haight has no idea.
"Now, Haight, you leave these nice people alone, you hear?" It's his wife's voice, piping up inside his head. She's right, of course.
So he pays attention to it, and talks a little more, and manages to make Dr. Wilson laugh a little more, and he's halfway home before he realizes he never got his hat.
It's not until a few weeks later that Haight finds what he's looking for. He'd meant to Google Dr. Wilson right away, but he'd sat down and had lunch with his wife, and then he'd gone out on a call, and then he'd gone back to his office, and then Frances Fox had called, afraid that her goats might have coccidiosis, and the long and the short of it was, he just hadn't gotten around to it, or to dropping by again for his hat. When he finally sits down at his laptop with a glass of good bourbon, it's late on a Friday night and Lisa is already upstairs, asleep.
He types in "James Wilson M.D. New Jersey," and the first hit that pops up is an obstetrician in Ocean City. "Ha," Haight mumbles to himself, and adds "oncologist" to his query. This time the first entry is an oncologist, but he's a radiation doc and his full name is actually John James Wilson. The second entry, though ... Haight clicks on the link and a familiar face looks back at him. A little fuller, with a close shave, but the same dark eyes, the same high cheekbones and heavy brows. He whistles out a low, soft breath. Not just a doctor, but a department head at a teaching hospital in Princeton. The hospital's got a whole tribute page to Wilson -- we'll miss you, a legacy of caring, your patients and colleagues thank you -- all the happy platitudes spelled out in Comic Sans Serif. Of Dr. Kyle Bell, however, there's no sign. Haight digs a little deeper, every now and then taking a small sip of the smooth, smoky liquor.
And then there he is, standing at Wilson's side, both of them in tuxedos for some hospital charity event. He's a doctor, only his name's not Kyle Bell. It's Gregory House. Next step: Google House.
Haight's eyes grow wide. He reaches for his bourbon and sticks his fingers in it instead, then almost turns the glass over. "Holy crap," he murmurs, and keeps reading. When he's finally done he sits back, still staring at the screen.
"You slick son of a bitch," he whispers. "You faked your own death." Haight starts to smile. "You faked your own death," he says again, and then, "Well, why not?" He takes a gulp of bourbon; the liquor burns its way down his throat. "You're not dying. You faked your own death so you could run off with your boyfriend." He grins. "You crazy bastard. You crazy, crazy bastard."
And suddenly Haight is laughing, laughing so hard he damn near falls out of his chair, laughs until his wife comes downstairs to ask, sleepily, Haight, what the hell are you laughing about, are you okay, honey?
Haight hits a few keys, logs off and turns off his laptop, stands up and stretches until his back pops. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm fine, sweetheart. I was just reading a story."
"Must have been a good story," Lisa says.
"It was," Haight says. "It was about a man who threw everything away just to get what he wanted." Because it was clear Gregory House did have everything he wanted, right in that little motel room.
"Haight, what?" Lisa's eyes narrow. "Are you sure you're not drunk?"
Haight takes his wife by the hand. "Nope," he says. "I'm not drunk. But I am tired." He slips an arm around her waist. "Let's go to bed." They start up the stairs.
"You know," Haight says, "we should take a little vacation. How'd you feel about a road trip?"
~ fin
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Author: nightdog_barks
Characters: Dr. Haight Jefferson (an OC), House, Wilson
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: Yes, for the Season 8 series finale arc.
Summary: It's the best damn story he's ever heard, and one that he never intends to retell. 1,884 words.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Author Notes: This is set in the Riververse -- the ficverse of A River Out of Eden, and takes place in Two Pigs, only a few days after the central event of that story. The cut-text is from a poem by Wendell Berry, The Gift is Balanced.
Beta: My intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to blackmare and deelaundry.
Changing Pastures
It's after he's treated old Mrs. Magnusson's cows for mange, and he reaches across the truck cab because the driver's side flip-down visor is broken and the sun's shining in his eyes that he realizes it's gone.
Haight sinks back in his seat a little and leans his head against the rest. Lisa'll skin me alive, he thinks, and she'll be right. Third one this year. He can just hear her: "Haight, hon, what is it with you and hats? And here your birthday's not for another three months." And then she'd sigh. Haight sighs himself, just thinking about it.
So where'd he leave it? He taps at the steering wheel, runs through his last few calls, tries to remember the last time he wore it ... not here with Helga Magnusson, even though he'd been inside her trim little kitchen and she'd offered him tea cookies. Not with George Taylor and his colicky lambs, nor with Travis Belmont and his ringworm-y horse, nor Peter Calhoun and his bald llama. Then ... of course. It had been his human patient. That Wilson guy. James Wilson and his bucket-list friend Doc Bell.
Haight starts the truck and puts it in gear. The Be-Tide Inn is close enough; he can swing by on his way home for lunch. It's been two days already, so if Wilson and Bell have already checked out, well ... that'll be that. And Lisa can sigh at him all she likes.
The two bikes are still there, parked in front of Room #13. Haight knocks on the door, and it's opened almost immediately by Dr. Bell. He looks surprised, and more than a little uneasy, so Haight hastens to reassure him with a friendly nod.
"Dr. Bell," he says, "I'm sorry to disturb y'all, but I think I may have left -- "
"Kyle?" another voice calls from inside the room. "Who is it? Who's there?"
Dr. Bell looks at him a moment more, then nods back and steps aside, inviting Haight to enter.
Wilson is in bed, but sitting up against a nest of pillows and looking a lot better than when Haight last saw him. He's got a mug of something by his side, wisps of steam curling up from it.
"Mr. Wilson," Haight says agreeably. "I don't suppose you remember me, but I'm -- "
"Haight Jefferson," Wilson says, and smiles. "Dr. Bell told me all about you."
"Only the good parts, I hope," Haight says, and Wilson's smile grows.
"Like the part where you thought he might be trying to kill me." Wilson pauses for a sip from the mug, and Haight catches the scent of peppermint tea, doubtless to soothe his still-sore throat. "Don't worry about that. You're not the first."
Bell, who's been just standing there, limps over to the room's only chair, turns it around, and sits down. "I'd offer you something to drink," he says, "but this place has none of the comforts of home."
"Oh, that's okay," Haight says. "I just dropped by to -- "
"Kyle," Wilson says mildly, "aren't there some bottled waters in the refrigerator?" He looks at Haight, coughs a little, swipes at his lips with a tissue. "The room came with one of those mini-refrigerators."
Kyle gives his friend a dark look, but gets up anyway and pokes around in the compact fridge. Haight takes the opportunity to look around.
The little motel room hasn't changed much in the couple of days since he's been here -- if it weren't for the open saddlebags on the dresser and the helmets perched on the desk, he'd say it seems like any other temporary space, someplace where people stop and rest on the way to somewhere else. One thing that has changed is the smell. Before, when he'd stepped inside, the air had been stale, marked with the rank bouquet of sickness and unwashed sheets. Now it just has that lived-in laundry smell he remembers from his days at UGA that comes with guys bunking together.
"Here," Bell says, and tosses a cold plastic bottle to Haight, and what the hell, he is thirsty, so he opens it up and takes a good long drink.
"So Dr. Bell here gave me to understand you folks are off on a bucket list," he says, after replacing the cap on the bottle. "You done anything interesting? Besides coming down with scarlet fever, I mean." He waves the bottle to indicate he's including both men in a general question.
Wilson nods. "I've been bungee jumping," he says, "but to be honest, just getting on a motorcycle was almost adventure enough." He smiles again, and Haight can't help but think it's what Lisa would call a wistful smile. "Kyle here's trying to get me to go skydiving, but I don't think I have enough time to talk myself into jumping out of a perfectly good airplane." He looks at Haight. "Five or six months," he says, answering the unasked question.
Haight winces. "I'm sorry," he says, and he means it. James Wilson seems like a nice guy -- that dry cough, he's probably got lung cancer, esophageal, something else deep in the chest.
"My uncle did that," Haight offers. "Went on a bucket list and jumped out of a plane."
"Really?" Wilson says. "What did ... does he have?"
"Did. And it was mast cell leukemia."
"Ah," Wilson says. "I assume a splenectomy was done?"
Haight is just starting to take another sip of water. He stops. "Now don't tell me you're a doctor, too."
Wilson's smile turns shy. "I'm ... I was an oncologist," he admits.
"And you still are," Bell rumbles.
"No," Wilson says firmly. "I'm not."
"Roy had a splenectomy," Haight says, smoothing the waters. "Got better for awhile, went downhill again after he got back from the Grand Canyon. Died before they could start chemo or look for a stem cell match."
Wilson holds up his hands. "Acute myeloid leukemias are aggressive beasts," he says quietly. "Median survival after diagnosis is only about six months, more or less."
"Boo hoo," Bell growls. "Everybody dies."
"And what about you?" Haight says.
"What about me what?"
"What do you have?"
"Nothing worth talking about," Bell snaps back, but there'd been a hesitation, an almost imperceptible pause, and because Haight is a man accustomed to listening to the soft breathing of animals, he hears it.
Gotcha.
"Kyle, don't be an ass," Wilson says, and wonder of wonders, Bell looks abashed. Wilson scrubs at his face with both hands and shakes his head. "So," he says from behind his hands, and "so" again as he drops them. "Dr. Jefferson. Anything in this area you'd recommend seeing? Once I'm up and around, that is?"
"New strip mall on Route Three's been drawing a lot of interest," Haight says teasingly. "Or there's the Olive Garden grand opening over by the Parkway."
Wilson chuckles. "There were enough strip malls and Olive Gardens back in New Jersey to satisfy anyone for a lifetime. What else you got?"
Haight starts to explain about the caverns not too far away, the Civil War monuments and former battlefields, the microbreweries that have sprung up around Ghost Creek, but all the time his mind is working on this puzzle. He's caught Dr. Bell in a falsehood, he knows he has, but what it means ... Haight has no idea.
"Now, Haight, you leave these nice people alone, you hear?" It's his wife's voice, piping up inside his head. She's right, of course.
So he pays attention to it, and talks a little more, and manages to make Dr. Wilson laugh a little more, and he's halfway home before he realizes he never got his hat.
It's not until a few weeks later that Haight finds what he's looking for. He'd meant to Google Dr. Wilson right away, but he'd sat down and had lunch with his wife, and then he'd gone out on a call, and then he'd gone back to his office, and then Frances Fox had called, afraid that her goats might have coccidiosis, and the long and the short of it was, he just hadn't gotten around to it, or to dropping by again for his hat. When he finally sits down at his laptop with a glass of good bourbon, it's late on a Friday night and Lisa is already upstairs, asleep.
He types in "James Wilson M.D. New Jersey," and the first hit that pops up is an obstetrician in Ocean City. "Ha," Haight mumbles to himself, and adds "oncologist" to his query. This time the first entry is an oncologist, but he's a radiation doc and his full name is actually John James Wilson. The second entry, though ... Haight clicks on the link and a familiar face looks back at him. A little fuller, with a close shave, but the same dark eyes, the same high cheekbones and heavy brows. He whistles out a low, soft breath. Not just a doctor, but a department head at a teaching hospital in Princeton. The hospital's got a whole tribute page to Wilson -- we'll miss you, a legacy of caring, your patients and colleagues thank you -- all the happy platitudes spelled out in Comic Sans Serif. Of Dr. Kyle Bell, however, there's no sign. Haight digs a little deeper, every now and then taking a small sip of the smooth, smoky liquor.
And then there he is, standing at Wilson's side, both of them in tuxedos for some hospital charity event. He's a doctor, only his name's not Kyle Bell. It's Gregory House. Next step: Google House.
Haight's eyes grow wide. He reaches for his bourbon and sticks his fingers in it instead, then almost turns the glass over. "Holy crap," he murmurs, and keeps reading. When he's finally done he sits back, still staring at the screen.
"You slick son of a bitch," he whispers. "You faked your own death." Haight starts to smile. "You faked your own death," he says again, and then, "Well, why not?" He takes a gulp of bourbon; the liquor burns its way down his throat. "You're not dying. You faked your own death so you could run off with your boyfriend." He grins. "You crazy bastard. You crazy, crazy bastard."
And suddenly Haight is laughing, laughing so hard he damn near falls out of his chair, laughs until his wife comes downstairs to ask, sleepily, Haight, what the hell are you laughing about, are you okay, honey?
Haight hits a few keys, logs off and turns off his laptop, stands up and stretches until his back pops. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm fine, sweetheart. I was just reading a story."
"Must have been a good story," Lisa says.
"It was," Haight says. "It was about a man who threw everything away just to get what he wanted." Because it was clear Gregory House did have everything he wanted, right in that little motel room.
"Haight, what?" Lisa's eyes narrow. "Are you sure you're not drunk?"
Haight takes his wife by the hand. "Nope," he says. "I'm not drunk. But I am tired." He slips an arm around her waist. "Let's go to bed." They start up the stairs.
"You know," Haight says, "we should take a little vacation. How'd you feel about a road trip?"
~ fin
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