PATIENT - Chapter 5: Symptoms
Title: Patient
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: House, Wilson, Cuddy, plus the characters created for Priority’s Exigencies and zeppomarx’s A Gentle Knock at the Door.
Summary: House’s minions find a new patient, one who is reluctant to allow House to treat him. Begins three months after the opening scene of A Gentle Knock at the Door. Part of the Contract universe, which includes DIY Sheep’s intense and angsty The Contract, and Priority’s sequel Exigencies.
Disclaimers: You know the drill. Don’t own `em, never did, never will. Wish I did.
Thanks: To priority and houserocket7 for encouraging me to writing this side story to A Gentle Knock on the Door, and for their faithful diligence in copy editing my sloppy prose.
Warnings, etc.: Generally safe, but references to torture, rape and major character death that has happened in the past. Some chapters are pretty angsty.
Chapter 5:
Symptoms
The next day, Tuesday, was one of House’s days off, so Devi, Foreman and Chase were left to their own devices. They ran more tests. Nope, it wasn’t abetalipoproteinemia. Back to the whiteboard.
In the duplex, House unwillingly prepared himself for the bi-weekly group therapy session with psychiatrist Jacey Liu. A specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder, Liu had been working with House and Rainie Adler individually and together for several months now, ever since Rainie had become House’s patient.
Although it had gotten easier with time, House still resisted therapy, inventing endlessly creative ways to put off the beginning of the sessions. Despite his grumbling and protestations, House found that under Liu’s tutelage, exploring his excruciating past was indeed helping him come to terms with the havoc Robert Thompson’s vendetta had wreaked on his body, his mind and his life. That didn’t make it any easier to start each session, though, knowing wracking tears and devastating flashbacks might accompany the voyages into his mind.
Today, he’d developed a last-minute craving for red velvet cake, insisting that he couldn’t start the session until Linda went out and searched the local groceries until she found some.
Suddenly, from the entrance to the kitchen, a voice interrupted House’s whining. “Come on, Greg,” said Linda wickedly, “face it. Red velvet cake isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. You know where the red in red velvet cake comes from, don’t you?”
She detected a slight twinkle in House’s eye as the kitchen light reflected off his face, lighting up the scars in a disconcerting way. “Mmmmm. Bugs,” he said. “Crushed bugs. My favorite. Yummy.”
She and House exchanged an amused glance, and then Linda smiled to herself. Pretty far, she thought, maternally. He’s come pretty far if he can joke about the days when eating a bug was the only nourishment he got during a day. “Yes,” she said, a little more softly. “Bugs.”
As for the stalling tactic, Jacey Liu was having no part of it. “A-hem,” she said, clearing her throat and drawing House’s attention back to the living room. “No such luck, Greg. Your craving for cake made out of red bugs can wait. Linda can go out while we’re having our session, and if she’s lucky enough to find red velvet cake for you, I’ll let you have some as a treat for behaving yourself during the session. Bugs or no bugs. Now, settle yourself.”
With a drama-queen sigh, House sat down opposite Rainie on the other end of the long, plush couch.
Jacey focused her attention on Rainie.
“Since Greg is so obviously not ready to begin, why don’t we start with you? Tell me what’s going on this week.”
Rainie sat quietly for a moment, and then began.
“Actually, I have a little mystery to solve, and it involves Greg.”
Oh, crap, he thought. Here we go. House squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, grimacing. Goddammit. Even Rainie can’t leave the Tritter business alone. But, as often happened, Rainie Adler surprised him. Not by avoiding the topic of Tritter, but by the way she approached it.
“Back at the beginning,” she began, “before I knew about Robert Thompson, I did a lot of research into Greg’s history. About eight years ago, Greg was arrested and charged with drug dealing. Ultimately, the case was dismissed. The arresting officer was a policeman named Michael Tritter.”
Jacey nodded her head encouragingly, apparently the only one in House’s small universe who hadn’t heard the news about House’s new patient. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw House turn away. Curious, she thought.
“Go on.” While seemingly attentive to what Rainie was saying, Jacey surreptitiously kept an eye on House, wondering where this was going.
“From talking to other people at PPTH, I found out that Tritter had been a patient of Greg’s in the clinic one day. There was some sort of confrontation, which ultimately led Tritter to follow him, arrest him for speeding… and then very quickly it escalated into an ugly situation.”
“And the mystery?” asked Jacey.
Rainie took a breath as she pondered how to word the next phrase.
“I was never able to find out how it all started,” she ventured cautiously. “I really want to know what happened in that exam room-what angered Greg so much that he nearly lost his medical license and his freedom over it.”
House listened as Rainie spun her tale, semi-relieved that his current motives weren’t being questioned. He pretended to be bored, when in actuality, he was anything but. No, he was… well, what was he? Searching around inside himself, he realized that he was anxious. How did it start, back in that other life, to that other person? he thought, starting to feel ill at ease, as his mind approached the issue almost clinically.
Jacey turned to House.
“Greg…?”
Unwillingly, he looked up.
“Can you solve this mystery for Rainie?”
House wavered. He really wanted the subject of Tritter to go away, but so far Rainie’s request seemed benign, even if it was giving him that queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. So far, Jacey seemed unconcerned about why this long-past confrontation had so intrigued Rainie. Blunt attack seemed the best strategy. Then maybe they’d both drop it, and he wouldn’t have to go back there and revisit the moment when everything seemed to go so very wrong. “If you must know,” he said, “he pissed me off and I stuck a thermometer up his butt, and then I checked out of the clinic and went home.”
Even Jacey seemed a little startled, but she knew that House had a long history of angering patients, so she kept her reaction under control.
Rainie, on the other hand, wasn’t satisfied. She turned toward House.
“How did he piss you off?”
Despite himself, House found that he was becoming engaged in the session. Without realizing he was doing it, he turned his body toward the other two. He couldn’t help wondering where her journalist’s mind was going with this.
“Why does it matter to you? He pissed me off. Isn’t that enough?”
Rainie shook her head. “No, it’s not. Why was he in the clinic?”
“I have no idea.”
“Stop taking me literally,” said Rainie with a mock glare on her face. Articulating very clearly and speaking very precisely, she added, “Now… what medical problem did he have that brought him to the clinic?”
House’s eyes narrowed slightly as he smiled to himself, wondering if he could shock Jacey Liu into changing the subject.
“Crotch rot.”
“Crotch rot?” Jacey never blinked. Damn. He should have known she was shockproof.
“Yeah, crotch rot. A rash, an irritation, around his penis.”
“And what did you suggest?”
She really wasn’t going to let this go.
“I told him to stop diddling himself for a while and it would go away. I also prescribed a medicated lotion.”
“Embarrassing, but reasonable. Why wasn’t that the end of it?”
“He questioned my judgment and insisted that I do some tests-tests that were completely unwarranted under the circumstances.”
“And you said…?” prompted Rainie.
“I told him he was an idiot.”
Greg looked away. Uh-oh. He’d hit on it-the whatever-it-was that was making him want to get out of this conversation. Slowing his breathing, trying to calm himself and clear his head, he pictured the scene.
Clinic duty. Now a thing of the past, it had been the armpit of his existence for years, precipitating the endless fights with Cuddy, the manipulations of his team to get them to take over his shifts and mostly, the stultifying boredom of dealing with the mundane medical crises and moronic patients.
He grabbed the folder with a huff and shoved the exam room door open, itching for a reason to be annoyed.
“I’ve been waiting for an hour,” said the man who turned out to be Det. Michael Tritter, also itching for a fight.
What happened next? He tried to remember. It was pretty much the way he described it, wasn’t it? He hadn’t pulled any punches in what he’d just told them… at least he didn’t think so. Tritter came in with an embarrassing, self-created, minor-very minor-complaint, and House had mocked him for it. In short, a typical day in the clinic. The only difference being that this particular clinic moron was an immovable force unwilling to be bullied by a misanthropic doctor with too much time on his hands and too little regard for the concerns of his patients.
The way House had perceived it then was that clinic patients were there only to make his life miserable. Yeah, miserable. As if he’d had any idea back then what misery really meant. What he wouldn’t trade for an hour of that miserable old life, when his only problems were his leg, his loneliness and his boredom.
Rainie watched closely as House’s cheeks flushed with… what…? His shoulders tensed, those sharply intelligent eyes betraying not only the fact that he was remembering the Tritter incident, but how he felt about it now. Suddenly, he grimaced, his hands twitching and then clenching around a handful of sofa cushion.
“Greg?”
At first, he didn’t hear her. She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed a couple of times, blinking back what might possibly be the beginning of tears.
“Greg?” she repeated, slowly extending her hand toward him. He shook his head, shifting away from her slightly.
House pursed his lips, refusing to look at either Rainie or Jacey Liu. “That was all there was to it. He insisted, I got pissed, and then I put the thermometer up his ass.”
“And…?”
He shrugged. “There is no and. That’s it. He was a jerk.” A quick, sharp inhale. Truth. “And... I was a jerk. End of story.”
Rainie thought about it for a minute.
“That’s it? You got pissed because he was wasting your time, so you put a thermometer up his butt?”
“Yup,” he said, popping the p in an attempt to bring this miserable conversation to a close. There it was again-miserable-that miserable word, the one that miserably defined his whole miserable life. For a few seconds, House thought he might get away with it. But Rainie was too sharp-far sharper than either Cuddy or Wilson had been at the time.
“I don’t think so,” said Rainie finally, shaking her head. “No,” she said again. “You wouldn’t do that.”
House looked startled, uncomfortable… and perhaps a bit annoyed.
“You weren’t there,” he challenged. “How would you know what I would or wouldn’t do?”
She challenged back. “It just doesn’t sound like you.”
He glared at her. “I did it, so it was something I would do. End of story.”
“You said that already.”
“What?” He became uncomfortably aware of how keenly Rainie was scrutinizing him. “I said what already?”
“‘End of story.’ You said it twice.”
Ah. Here was his out. He could get annoyed with her for picking up on his repetition… and maybe get her to change the subject.
“Yeah, so? Don’t you ever repeat yourself?” He glared at her.
After a long pause, Rainie shook her head, never losing eye contact with him. “Nice try, Greg, but I’m not playing.”
Play dumb. “Playing?” he asked, trying to sound confused and innocent.
“Oh, stop,” she said, almost, but not quite, smiling. “You think if you pick this little semantic argument with me that I’ll forget where we were going.” She eyed him, a severe look on her face but her mouth twitching in amusement. “That might work with those idiot clinic patients, but it won’t work with me.” She searched his face; he looked away involuntarily. “Hmmm… Maybe I’m getting close to something… or you wouldn’t be trying so hard to get me off track.”
Jacey leaned back, resting her elbows on the arms of the overstuffed chair, and pressing the tips of her fingers together. Watching the two of them battle it out as they struggled to reclaim their lives and their sanity was like watching supreme athletes at work-this was the World Series or Wimbledon of her profession.
House tried to wait Rainie out, staring unblinking at his red tennis shoes until his vision swam and the color bled into the bland rug underneath. Just as stubborn as House, Rainie simply waited him out until finally, his shoulders sagged and she knew she’d won.
When he spoke, it was so quiet, she couldn’t understand him until he repeated what he’d said.
“I deserved it,” he mumbled under his breath. Then, slightly louder: “It was my fault, and I deserved it.” Just like I deserved what Thompson did to me. It was my fault, and I deserved it. “You know that when we kill Dr. Cameron that it will be your fault, don’t you, Greg?” “Yes,” he’d replied, and he had believed it. He still believed it.
Sensing that her patient was no longer talking just about Tritter, Jacey leaned forward, her hands reaching toward House on the far side of the sofa from Rainie.
“What was your fault, Greg? What did you deserve?”
He shook his head, as if he could shake off the unwanted thoughts and the attendant feelings that came with them.
“I deserved it,” he repeated, for the first time remembering the moment in that exam room when things went from a typical day with a typical clinic patient to something far worse. “I was a jerk, and I deserved it.”
Rainie let out a slow breath. “I know you-and I know enough about how you behaved back then. This isn’t in character. Yes, you probably behaved like a jerk, but that doesn’t explain what came next. I don’t believe you could have done anything to deserve that. That’s why I know something else happened in that room. You wouldn’t have retaliated against this guy unless he did something to you-something that made you angry enough to strike back at him. Pushing you to order unnecessary tests wouldn’t have done it.”
There was no way he was going to tell the next part. House began to fidget, quite sure he didn’t like where this was going.
“What was it, Greg? What did he do to you? What did you deserve?”
She caught his unsettled glance and refused to let it go.
A long, uneasy silence settled over the room.
Finally…
“Come on, Greg. What did he do? What’s the missing piece here?”
After another long, tense silence, House finally spoke, almost unwillingly, his soft voice barely audible. His eyelids flickered just slightly-what Jacey and Rainie had both learned was a “tell” that House was struggling to contain a strong emotional reaction-and then he looked away.
“He tripped me.”
“What?” asked Jacey, who had been unable to hear his answer.
“I said,” repeated House, raising his voice just slightly, annoyed that he not only had to say it in the first place, but now had to repeat it, “he tripped me. As I was leaving the room, he knocked my cane out from under me, and I fell against the door.”
This time, Jacey Liu was shocked. Rainie sat quietly, processing what he’d said.
“So the man’s a bully,” she whispered.
“Well, duh,” said House, which brought a smile to Jacey Liu’s face.
Rainie remained focused on House, clearly not finished. “That’s what made you assault him with the thermometer, and that’s why you insisted on fighting him, even if it was going to cost your license and your freedom. Bullies don’t like it when someone stands up to them. You weren’t going to let a bully get away with it.”
For just a second, their eyes met. Then House looked down again, and began fidgeting with the corner of the tan throw pillow next to him on the sofa.
“Am I right?” asked Rainie, making it clear she expected an answer.
Finally, House bobbed his head. The part he wasn’t going to say aloud was that perhaps Tritter had been standing up to a bully, too.
“So, actually, you were standing up for what you thought was right,” said Rainie. “It’s wrong to attack a cripple-what kind of person would do that? Someone had to stand up to him. And then he used his power as a police officer to get even with you. Still a bully. But a bully with the law behind him.”
Somehow sensing she was done, House looked into her eyes once more, softly nodded in agreement, and his eyelids flickered once more. He clearly intended to say as little more on the subject as possible.
“Thanks,” she said decisively, as if the subject was now closed. “Now it’s clear to me.” She picked up a travel mug with both shaky hands, took a sip of water, and turned away from him.
Whew. But just when he thought the topic had played itself out, Jacey spoke up again. Damn.
“How did that make you feel, Greg?”
No, no, no. He was not going to go there. Didn’t matter. Wasn’t important.
After a long, uncomfortable pause, Jacey tried again.
“Greg?”
“Well, if you must know, it tickled my insides and made me think of butterflies and sunshine.”
“Greg…” This time, Jacey used that tone of voice mothers use when it’s really truly time to put down the toys and come to dinner.
He sighed heavily.
“Okay. Since you asked so nicely, it made me angry.”
She shook her head. Not good enough.
“Of course it did. We know that part. Why did it make you angry? And what other feelings did you have?”
Nothing.
She drummed her fingers on the edge of the wingback armchair.
House sighed heavily, beginning to get annoyed. “Oh, come on. You’re not really going to make me do this, are you? What is this-Embarrass House Day? It’s not bad enough I had to answer Rainie’s question, now I’ve got to try to remember what I felt for a few seconds eight years ago? Give me a break.”
He folded his arms, once again turning his body away. Forty-five minutes after the session began and he was back in the position he’d been in when the session started.
Both she and Rainie sat quietly, waiting him out.
After nearly a minute, he glanced back over his shoulder to see if they were still paying attention. When they caught him looking, he knew Jacey had outlasted his stubbornness. He shifted his body incrementally in their direction before speaking.
“It wasn’t fair,” he mumbled at last. “I was just trying to do my job, and he picked on me. Because of the damned leg.” Again, he was still so quiet that Rainie had to strain to understand him.
“And you were sensitive about your leg injury anyway. So it wasn’t fair for him to attack you at your weakest point, was it?” Jacey kept her voice low, learning that House was more likely to respond if he didn’t feel challenged.
Yet another barely perceptible nod issued forth.
“How else did you feel? How did you feel just before you got angry enough to strike back?”
“I was embarrassed.” The words tumbled out before he had a chance to stop them. Damn.
“Greg… look at me a moment, would you?”
Unwillingly, House glanced back up at Jacey Liu.
“When you were a little boy, moving from school to school, did the school bullies pick you out because you were new, or maybe because you were different-did they pick on your weaknesses?”
“Of course,” House snapped, protecting himself by pitching back into professional mode. “Human nature.”
“And what did you do about it?”
“Not much,” he said, remembering the bloody noses and the black eyes, and then the admonishments from his father afterward.
You’re the son of a Marine. You need to live up to the standards of the Marines. Don’t get in fights. Take it like a man.
“But you still knew it wasn’t right for a bully to get away with attacking someone, especially someone weaker than they were, right?”
House agreed.
“So when Tritter came along and attacked your weakness, you felt you had to try to keep him from getting away with it.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fine. But I was a bully, too. So I deserved it.”
Jacey Liu looked at him sharply. “Are you telling me that you really believe that Tritter attacking someone with a disability by knocking his cane out from under him was a just punishment for you being rude?”
He huffed out his frustration, his soft voice getting louder as he got more agitated. “Yes. Yes, I believe that. How many times do I have to say it? I deserved it.”
“And you think that because you… let’s say, behaved badly… that somehow you deserved to be arrested, humiliated and nearly lose your career-just for standing up to this bully?”
Well, presented that way, his sense of… guilt, embarrassment, shame … did seem a little out of whack. He started to nod his head, then changed his mind halfway through, switching to a no headshake. His hands fluttered, and then finally he shrugged his shoulders, flinging his hands into the air and gesturing confusion.
“Let me put it this way, Greg. If you had to do it again, would you do the same thing again?”
Rainie watched House’s face closely, his expressive eyes reflecting his thoughts as he worked through his answer; they shifted around the room, looking toward the ceiling, flickering toward her and then Jacey, before settling back on his red sneakers.
“I… I don’t know. Maybe. Minus the first part, where I was a total asshole. I'd probably do that differently. Otherwise, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“Maybe it was the right thing to do. But can you see that the way you reacted just now-believing that you deserved to be punished in that situation-completely understandable given everything that’s happened since then-might be a little out of proportion… just as Tritter’s was toward you? That maybe you didn’t deserve everything that happened, no matter how badly you might have behaved?”
Just as House was beginning to feel like a bobble-head doll, Rainie interjected.
“Ah, but wait. There’s something else. Let me ask this: Because you were embarrassed, did you ever tell Lisa or James why you were so obstinate about Tritter-why you kept insisting you were in the right, even when it was about to cost your freedom and your livelihood?”
House said nothing, which she interpreted as a no, he hadn't told them.
“You didn’t, did you? You were too embarrassed to let them know there might be a reason why you refused to give in to Tritter-even if… just maybe… you overreacted. You’d rather let them think you’d been an ass for no reason, tormenting Tritter because he was stupid, when actually you stood up to a bully. No wonder you felt so strongly about it. No wonder you allowed it to escalate. You kept hoping someone would trust you, didn’t you? That maybe they would understand that bullies have to be stopped… that just maybe, for once, someone would give you credit for having a reason for your behavior… even if you never told anyone that reason.”
This time, he didn’t have to respond. She was right and she knew it.
To his great relief and delight, the rest of the session was spent on other topics. House couldn’t fathom why Rainie had been compelled to extract that miserable moment from him. At least she hadn’t questioned his objectivity now that Tritter was his patient. And, much to his surprise, neither she nor Jacey had agreed with him when he said he had deserved it.
Maybe there was something here he hadn’t considered. Maybe just because he’d been a jackass to patients, he didn’t actually deserve to have his cane knocked away, or to be hounded by Tritter. Maybe he’d been right in the first place, right to stand up to the detective. And just maybe he didn’t deserve everything that had happened since. Maybe.
As the meeting wound down, nearly an hour later, an odd thing occurred to House. Somehow-somehow-he felt a slight weight lifted from him, now that he’d confronted his former behavior and confessed his embarrassment about Tritter and the cane. The really odd thing was that when he told them how he felt, neither Jacey Liu nor Rainie Adler had laughed at him.
Once the session was done, Linda handed him a fork and plate. On the plate was a large piece of red velvet cake.
* * * *
The phone on Evan Schuster’s desk rang at 10:33 a.m.
“You’ve reached the desk of Evan Schuster of The New York Times. Please leave your message after the tone.”
“Hey, Evan, it’s Rainie. I could use your help on something. Call me when you get this."
Chapter 6...
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: House, Wilson, Cuddy, plus the characters created for Priority’s Exigencies and zeppomarx’s A Gentle Knock at the Door.
Summary: House’s minions find a new patient, one who is reluctant to allow House to treat him. Begins three months after the opening scene of A Gentle Knock at the Door. Part of the Contract universe, which includes DIY Sheep’s intense and angsty The Contract, and Priority’s sequel Exigencies.
Disclaimers: You know the drill. Don’t own `em, never did, never will. Wish I did.
Thanks: To priority and houserocket7 for encouraging me to writing this side story to A Gentle Knock on the Door, and for their faithful diligence in copy editing my sloppy prose.
Warnings, etc.: Generally safe, but references to torture, rape and major character death that has happened in the past. Some chapters are pretty angsty.
Chapter 5:
Symptoms
The next day, Tuesday, was one of House’s days off, so Devi, Foreman and Chase were left to their own devices. They ran more tests. Nope, it wasn’t abetalipoproteinemia. Back to the whiteboard.
In the duplex, House unwillingly prepared himself for the bi-weekly group therapy session with psychiatrist Jacey Liu. A specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder, Liu had been working with House and Rainie Adler individually and together for several months now, ever since Rainie had become House’s patient.
Although it had gotten easier with time, House still resisted therapy, inventing endlessly creative ways to put off the beginning of the sessions. Despite his grumbling and protestations, House found that under Liu’s tutelage, exploring his excruciating past was indeed helping him come to terms with the havoc Robert Thompson’s vendetta had wreaked on his body, his mind and his life. That didn’t make it any easier to start each session, though, knowing wracking tears and devastating flashbacks might accompany the voyages into his mind.
Today, he’d developed a last-minute craving for red velvet cake, insisting that he couldn’t start the session until Linda went out and searched the local groceries until she found some.
Suddenly, from the entrance to the kitchen, a voice interrupted House’s whining. “Come on, Greg,” said Linda wickedly, “face it. Red velvet cake isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. You know where the red in red velvet cake comes from, don’t you?”
She detected a slight twinkle in House’s eye as the kitchen light reflected off his face, lighting up the scars in a disconcerting way. “Mmmmm. Bugs,” he said. “Crushed bugs. My favorite. Yummy.”
She and House exchanged an amused glance, and then Linda smiled to herself. Pretty far, she thought, maternally. He’s come pretty far if he can joke about the days when eating a bug was the only nourishment he got during a day. “Yes,” she said, a little more softly. “Bugs.”
As for the stalling tactic, Jacey Liu was having no part of it. “A-hem,” she said, clearing her throat and drawing House’s attention back to the living room. “No such luck, Greg. Your craving for cake made out of red bugs can wait. Linda can go out while we’re having our session, and if she’s lucky enough to find red velvet cake for you, I’ll let you have some as a treat for behaving yourself during the session. Bugs or no bugs. Now, settle yourself.”
With a drama-queen sigh, House sat down opposite Rainie on the other end of the long, plush couch.
Jacey focused her attention on Rainie.
“Since Greg is so obviously not ready to begin, why don’t we start with you? Tell me what’s going on this week.”
Rainie sat quietly for a moment, and then began.
“Actually, I have a little mystery to solve, and it involves Greg.”
Oh, crap, he thought. Here we go. House squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, grimacing. Goddammit. Even Rainie can’t leave the Tritter business alone. But, as often happened, Rainie Adler surprised him. Not by avoiding the topic of Tritter, but by the way she approached it.
“Back at the beginning,” she began, “before I knew about Robert Thompson, I did a lot of research into Greg’s history. About eight years ago, Greg was arrested and charged with drug dealing. Ultimately, the case was dismissed. The arresting officer was a policeman named Michael Tritter.”
Jacey nodded her head encouragingly, apparently the only one in House’s small universe who hadn’t heard the news about House’s new patient. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw House turn away. Curious, she thought.
“Go on.” While seemingly attentive to what Rainie was saying, Jacey surreptitiously kept an eye on House, wondering where this was going.
“From talking to other people at PPTH, I found out that Tritter had been a patient of Greg’s in the clinic one day. There was some sort of confrontation, which ultimately led Tritter to follow him, arrest him for speeding… and then very quickly it escalated into an ugly situation.”
“And the mystery?” asked Jacey.
Rainie took a breath as she pondered how to word the next phrase.
“I was never able to find out how it all started,” she ventured cautiously. “I really want to know what happened in that exam room-what angered Greg so much that he nearly lost his medical license and his freedom over it.”
House listened as Rainie spun her tale, semi-relieved that his current motives weren’t being questioned. He pretended to be bored, when in actuality, he was anything but. No, he was… well, what was he? Searching around inside himself, he realized that he was anxious. How did it start, back in that other life, to that other person? he thought, starting to feel ill at ease, as his mind approached the issue almost clinically.
Jacey turned to House.
“Greg…?”
Unwillingly, he looked up.
“Can you solve this mystery for Rainie?”
House wavered. He really wanted the subject of Tritter to go away, but so far Rainie’s request seemed benign, even if it was giving him that queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. So far, Jacey seemed unconcerned about why this long-past confrontation had so intrigued Rainie. Blunt attack seemed the best strategy. Then maybe they’d both drop it, and he wouldn’t have to go back there and revisit the moment when everything seemed to go so very wrong. “If you must know,” he said, “he pissed me off and I stuck a thermometer up his butt, and then I checked out of the clinic and went home.”
Even Jacey seemed a little startled, but she knew that House had a long history of angering patients, so she kept her reaction under control.
Rainie, on the other hand, wasn’t satisfied. She turned toward House.
“How did he piss you off?”
Despite himself, House found that he was becoming engaged in the session. Without realizing he was doing it, he turned his body toward the other two. He couldn’t help wondering where her journalist’s mind was going with this.
“Why does it matter to you? He pissed me off. Isn’t that enough?”
Rainie shook her head. “No, it’s not. Why was he in the clinic?”
“I have no idea.”
“Stop taking me literally,” said Rainie with a mock glare on her face. Articulating very clearly and speaking very precisely, she added, “Now… what medical problem did he have that brought him to the clinic?”
House’s eyes narrowed slightly as he smiled to himself, wondering if he could shock Jacey Liu into changing the subject.
“Crotch rot.”
“Crotch rot?” Jacey never blinked. Damn. He should have known she was shockproof.
“Yeah, crotch rot. A rash, an irritation, around his penis.”
“And what did you suggest?”
She really wasn’t going to let this go.
“I told him to stop diddling himself for a while and it would go away. I also prescribed a medicated lotion.”
“Embarrassing, but reasonable. Why wasn’t that the end of it?”
“He questioned my judgment and insisted that I do some tests-tests that were completely unwarranted under the circumstances.”
“And you said…?” prompted Rainie.
“I told him he was an idiot.”
Greg looked away. Uh-oh. He’d hit on it-the whatever-it-was that was making him want to get out of this conversation. Slowing his breathing, trying to calm himself and clear his head, he pictured the scene.
Clinic duty. Now a thing of the past, it had been the armpit of his existence for years, precipitating the endless fights with Cuddy, the manipulations of his team to get them to take over his shifts and mostly, the stultifying boredom of dealing with the mundane medical crises and moronic patients.
He grabbed the folder with a huff and shoved the exam room door open, itching for a reason to be annoyed.
“I’ve been waiting for an hour,” said the man who turned out to be Det. Michael Tritter, also itching for a fight.
What happened next? He tried to remember. It was pretty much the way he described it, wasn’t it? He hadn’t pulled any punches in what he’d just told them… at least he didn’t think so. Tritter came in with an embarrassing, self-created, minor-very minor-complaint, and House had mocked him for it. In short, a typical day in the clinic. The only difference being that this particular clinic moron was an immovable force unwilling to be bullied by a misanthropic doctor with too much time on his hands and too little regard for the concerns of his patients.
The way House had perceived it then was that clinic patients were there only to make his life miserable. Yeah, miserable. As if he’d had any idea back then what misery really meant. What he wouldn’t trade for an hour of that miserable old life, when his only problems were his leg, his loneliness and his boredom.
Rainie watched closely as House’s cheeks flushed with… what…? His shoulders tensed, those sharply intelligent eyes betraying not only the fact that he was remembering the Tritter incident, but how he felt about it now. Suddenly, he grimaced, his hands twitching and then clenching around a handful of sofa cushion.
“Greg?”
At first, he didn’t hear her. She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed a couple of times, blinking back what might possibly be the beginning of tears.
“Greg?” she repeated, slowly extending her hand toward him. He shook his head, shifting away from her slightly.
House pursed his lips, refusing to look at either Rainie or Jacey Liu. “That was all there was to it. He insisted, I got pissed, and then I put the thermometer up his ass.”
“And…?”
He shrugged. “There is no and. That’s it. He was a jerk.” A quick, sharp inhale. Truth. “And... I was a jerk. End of story.”
Rainie thought about it for a minute.
“That’s it? You got pissed because he was wasting your time, so you put a thermometer up his butt?”
“Yup,” he said, popping the p in an attempt to bring this miserable conversation to a close. There it was again-miserable-that miserable word, the one that miserably defined his whole miserable life. For a few seconds, House thought he might get away with it. But Rainie was too sharp-far sharper than either Cuddy or Wilson had been at the time.
“I don’t think so,” said Rainie finally, shaking her head. “No,” she said again. “You wouldn’t do that.”
House looked startled, uncomfortable… and perhaps a bit annoyed.
“You weren’t there,” he challenged. “How would you know what I would or wouldn’t do?”
She challenged back. “It just doesn’t sound like you.”
He glared at her. “I did it, so it was something I would do. End of story.”
“You said that already.”
“What?” He became uncomfortably aware of how keenly Rainie was scrutinizing him. “I said what already?”
“‘End of story.’ You said it twice.”
Ah. Here was his out. He could get annoyed with her for picking up on his repetition… and maybe get her to change the subject.
“Yeah, so? Don’t you ever repeat yourself?” He glared at her.
After a long pause, Rainie shook her head, never losing eye contact with him. “Nice try, Greg, but I’m not playing.”
Play dumb. “Playing?” he asked, trying to sound confused and innocent.
“Oh, stop,” she said, almost, but not quite, smiling. “You think if you pick this little semantic argument with me that I’ll forget where we were going.” She eyed him, a severe look on her face but her mouth twitching in amusement. “That might work with those idiot clinic patients, but it won’t work with me.” She searched his face; he looked away involuntarily. “Hmmm… Maybe I’m getting close to something… or you wouldn’t be trying so hard to get me off track.”
Jacey leaned back, resting her elbows on the arms of the overstuffed chair, and pressing the tips of her fingers together. Watching the two of them battle it out as they struggled to reclaim their lives and their sanity was like watching supreme athletes at work-this was the World Series or Wimbledon of her profession.
House tried to wait Rainie out, staring unblinking at his red tennis shoes until his vision swam and the color bled into the bland rug underneath. Just as stubborn as House, Rainie simply waited him out until finally, his shoulders sagged and she knew she’d won.
When he spoke, it was so quiet, she couldn’t understand him until he repeated what he’d said.
“I deserved it,” he mumbled under his breath. Then, slightly louder: “It was my fault, and I deserved it.” Just like I deserved what Thompson did to me. It was my fault, and I deserved it. “You know that when we kill Dr. Cameron that it will be your fault, don’t you, Greg?” “Yes,” he’d replied, and he had believed it. He still believed it.
Sensing that her patient was no longer talking just about Tritter, Jacey leaned forward, her hands reaching toward House on the far side of the sofa from Rainie.
“What was your fault, Greg? What did you deserve?”
He shook his head, as if he could shake off the unwanted thoughts and the attendant feelings that came with them.
“I deserved it,” he repeated, for the first time remembering the moment in that exam room when things went from a typical day with a typical clinic patient to something far worse. “I was a jerk, and I deserved it.”
Rainie let out a slow breath. “I know you-and I know enough about how you behaved back then. This isn’t in character. Yes, you probably behaved like a jerk, but that doesn’t explain what came next. I don’t believe you could have done anything to deserve that. That’s why I know something else happened in that room. You wouldn’t have retaliated against this guy unless he did something to you-something that made you angry enough to strike back at him. Pushing you to order unnecessary tests wouldn’t have done it.”
There was no way he was going to tell the next part. House began to fidget, quite sure he didn’t like where this was going.
“What was it, Greg? What did he do to you? What did you deserve?”
She caught his unsettled glance and refused to let it go.
A long, uneasy silence settled over the room.
Finally…
“Come on, Greg. What did he do? What’s the missing piece here?”
After another long, tense silence, House finally spoke, almost unwillingly, his soft voice barely audible. His eyelids flickered just slightly-what Jacey and Rainie had both learned was a “tell” that House was struggling to contain a strong emotional reaction-and then he looked away.
“He tripped me.”
“What?” asked Jacey, who had been unable to hear his answer.
“I said,” repeated House, raising his voice just slightly, annoyed that he not only had to say it in the first place, but now had to repeat it, “he tripped me. As I was leaving the room, he knocked my cane out from under me, and I fell against the door.”
This time, Jacey Liu was shocked. Rainie sat quietly, processing what he’d said.
“So the man’s a bully,” she whispered.
“Well, duh,” said House, which brought a smile to Jacey Liu’s face.
Rainie remained focused on House, clearly not finished. “That’s what made you assault him with the thermometer, and that’s why you insisted on fighting him, even if it was going to cost your license and your freedom. Bullies don’t like it when someone stands up to them. You weren’t going to let a bully get away with it.”
For just a second, their eyes met. Then House looked down again, and began fidgeting with the corner of the tan throw pillow next to him on the sofa.
“Am I right?” asked Rainie, making it clear she expected an answer.
Finally, House bobbed his head. The part he wasn’t going to say aloud was that perhaps Tritter had been standing up to a bully, too.
“So, actually, you were standing up for what you thought was right,” said Rainie. “It’s wrong to attack a cripple-what kind of person would do that? Someone had to stand up to him. And then he used his power as a police officer to get even with you. Still a bully. But a bully with the law behind him.”
Somehow sensing she was done, House looked into her eyes once more, softly nodded in agreement, and his eyelids flickered once more. He clearly intended to say as little more on the subject as possible.
“Thanks,” she said decisively, as if the subject was now closed. “Now it’s clear to me.” She picked up a travel mug with both shaky hands, took a sip of water, and turned away from him.
Whew. But just when he thought the topic had played itself out, Jacey spoke up again. Damn.
“How did that make you feel, Greg?”
No, no, no. He was not going to go there. Didn’t matter. Wasn’t important.
After a long, uncomfortable pause, Jacey tried again.
“Greg?”
“Well, if you must know, it tickled my insides and made me think of butterflies and sunshine.”
“Greg…” This time, Jacey used that tone of voice mothers use when it’s really truly time to put down the toys and come to dinner.
He sighed heavily.
“Okay. Since you asked so nicely, it made me angry.”
She shook her head. Not good enough.
“Of course it did. We know that part. Why did it make you angry? And what other feelings did you have?”
Nothing.
She drummed her fingers on the edge of the wingback armchair.
House sighed heavily, beginning to get annoyed. “Oh, come on. You’re not really going to make me do this, are you? What is this-Embarrass House Day? It’s not bad enough I had to answer Rainie’s question, now I’ve got to try to remember what I felt for a few seconds eight years ago? Give me a break.”
He folded his arms, once again turning his body away. Forty-five minutes after the session began and he was back in the position he’d been in when the session started.
Both she and Rainie sat quietly, waiting him out.
After nearly a minute, he glanced back over his shoulder to see if they were still paying attention. When they caught him looking, he knew Jacey had outlasted his stubbornness. He shifted his body incrementally in their direction before speaking.
“It wasn’t fair,” he mumbled at last. “I was just trying to do my job, and he picked on me. Because of the damned leg.” Again, he was still so quiet that Rainie had to strain to understand him.
“And you were sensitive about your leg injury anyway. So it wasn’t fair for him to attack you at your weakest point, was it?” Jacey kept her voice low, learning that House was more likely to respond if he didn’t feel challenged.
Yet another barely perceptible nod issued forth.
“How else did you feel? How did you feel just before you got angry enough to strike back?”
“I was embarrassed.” The words tumbled out before he had a chance to stop them. Damn.
“Greg… look at me a moment, would you?”
Unwillingly, House glanced back up at Jacey Liu.
“When you were a little boy, moving from school to school, did the school bullies pick you out because you were new, or maybe because you were different-did they pick on your weaknesses?”
“Of course,” House snapped, protecting himself by pitching back into professional mode. “Human nature.”
“And what did you do about it?”
“Not much,” he said, remembering the bloody noses and the black eyes, and then the admonishments from his father afterward.
You’re the son of a Marine. You need to live up to the standards of the Marines. Don’t get in fights. Take it like a man.
“But you still knew it wasn’t right for a bully to get away with attacking someone, especially someone weaker than they were, right?”
House agreed.
“So when Tritter came along and attacked your weakness, you felt you had to try to keep him from getting away with it.”
“Yeah. Okay. Fine. But I was a bully, too. So I deserved it.”
Jacey Liu looked at him sharply. “Are you telling me that you really believe that Tritter attacking someone with a disability by knocking his cane out from under him was a just punishment for you being rude?”
He huffed out his frustration, his soft voice getting louder as he got more agitated. “Yes. Yes, I believe that. How many times do I have to say it? I deserved it.”
“And you think that because you… let’s say, behaved badly… that somehow you deserved to be arrested, humiliated and nearly lose your career-just for standing up to this bully?”
Well, presented that way, his sense of… guilt, embarrassment, shame … did seem a little out of whack. He started to nod his head, then changed his mind halfway through, switching to a no headshake. His hands fluttered, and then finally he shrugged his shoulders, flinging his hands into the air and gesturing confusion.
“Let me put it this way, Greg. If you had to do it again, would you do the same thing again?”
Rainie watched House’s face closely, his expressive eyes reflecting his thoughts as he worked through his answer; they shifted around the room, looking toward the ceiling, flickering toward her and then Jacey, before settling back on his red sneakers.
“I… I don’t know. Maybe. Minus the first part, where I was a total asshole. I'd probably do that differently. Otherwise, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“Maybe it was the right thing to do. But can you see that the way you reacted just now-believing that you deserved to be punished in that situation-completely understandable given everything that’s happened since then-might be a little out of proportion… just as Tritter’s was toward you? That maybe you didn’t deserve everything that happened, no matter how badly you might have behaved?”
Just as House was beginning to feel like a bobble-head doll, Rainie interjected.
“Ah, but wait. There’s something else. Let me ask this: Because you were embarrassed, did you ever tell Lisa or James why you were so obstinate about Tritter-why you kept insisting you were in the right, even when it was about to cost your freedom and your livelihood?”
House said nothing, which she interpreted as a no, he hadn't told them.
“You didn’t, did you? You were too embarrassed to let them know there might be a reason why you refused to give in to Tritter-even if… just maybe… you overreacted. You’d rather let them think you’d been an ass for no reason, tormenting Tritter because he was stupid, when actually you stood up to a bully. No wonder you felt so strongly about it. No wonder you allowed it to escalate. You kept hoping someone would trust you, didn’t you? That maybe they would understand that bullies have to be stopped… that just maybe, for once, someone would give you credit for having a reason for your behavior… even if you never told anyone that reason.”
This time, he didn’t have to respond. She was right and she knew it.
To his great relief and delight, the rest of the session was spent on other topics. House couldn’t fathom why Rainie had been compelled to extract that miserable moment from him. At least she hadn’t questioned his objectivity now that Tritter was his patient. And, much to his surprise, neither she nor Jacey had agreed with him when he said he had deserved it.
Maybe there was something here he hadn’t considered. Maybe just because he’d been a jackass to patients, he didn’t actually deserve to have his cane knocked away, or to be hounded by Tritter. Maybe he’d been right in the first place, right to stand up to the detective. And just maybe he didn’t deserve everything that had happened since. Maybe.
As the meeting wound down, nearly an hour later, an odd thing occurred to House. Somehow-somehow-he felt a slight weight lifted from him, now that he’d confronted his former behavior and confessed his embarrassment about Tritter and the cane. The really odd thing was that when he told them how he felt, neither Jacey Liu nor Rainie Adler had laughed at him.
Once the session was done, Linda handed him a fork and plate. On the plate was a large piece of red velvet cake.
* * * *
The phone on Evan Schuster’s desk rang at 10:33 a.m.
“You’ve reached the desk of Evan Schuster of The New York Times. Please leave your message after the tone.”
“Hey, Evan, it’s Rainie. I could use your help on something. Call me when you get this."
Chapter 6...