It squatted half in the snow, partly beneath the barn’s overhang and partly jutted into the barnyard. It seemed to hunker there, sagging a bit from a broken spring in the right rear. Both front tires were flat and both headlights blown, their lenses blackened, giving it the look of a cross-eyed dinosaur. It gave the impression of abandonment, but still seemed to hold a sense of dark power held jealously in reserve.
The barn stood across an icy road from a brick house whose front yard held an abundance of snow-covered bushes and three naked weeping willow trees. From the wide front porch came the rumbles and squeaks of three old wicker rocking chairs and the laughing banter of three young adult male voices.
“I can’t go with you guys tomorrow,” one argued plaintively. “I’m stuck in the clinic all day. It’s a pain in the ass and I hate whiney women and snot-nosed kids, but them’s the breaks. I don’t want back on Cuddy’s shit list ‘cause I just got off it again a week ago.” The speaker rolled his eyes and shrugged narrow corduroy-clad shoulders. His expressive eyes were piercing blue, the chestnut hair curly and tousled. “I’m lucky to get one day a week off anymore, so you guys will have to go on without me.”
“Hell, Gregg, you should have told us earlier. Whose money are we gonna take if you aren’t there to bet on the game?” growled a handsome thirty-something African American with dark penetrating eyes, wide features and deep-in-the-cellar voice that sang in the icy air. “Cuddy got you by the short hairs again, huh?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” Dr. Gregory House glanced at his watch and took a quick slug from the can of beer he held in his opposite hand. “Our good buddy James will probably go along just to get out of the house, and he’s dumb enough to bet on anything.
Which means you guys won’t be losing any money. He’s gotta be the most gullible little shit I ever met. Hell, he should have been here by now. Said he was getting off at noon.”
From across the porch on the third squeaky wicker chair, Vincent Crane, the Chrysler dealer with the vivid red hair and firm build of a French bulldog, added his own comment. “That dude’s gonna be late for his own funeral. Or maybe his old lady’s got a death grip on the reins this week.” He made an elaborate gesture of pulling back on a horse’s bridle. “Whoa boy!!” Vince laughed and plopped his size-nine cowboy boots up onto the porch railing with a thump, then craned his neck to see Gregg beyond the muscular body of Billy Travis, the only R. N. he’d ever known who had a build like an Eagles quarterback. “And you, Young Dr. Kildare of the warm and compassionate heart … you already spend too much time at ol’ ‘Warm ‘n’ Fuzzy’ hospital. You come home smelling like poop and iodine. Yuk! You guys all do. Don’t know how I got mixed up with such a smelly bunch!”
House grinned disarmingly and inclined his head toward the barnyard. “Gotta earn a living, my friend,” he replied. “Gotta support my new dependant.” He paused momentarily, then continued. “My Mom told me last Monday that this place is too big for her since Dad died. Like I didn’t know that already! Says she’s going to sell it … get out from under and move into an apartment in town. So you see, I gotta find some new digs too. I think she’s going to a hi-rise, and if she does, she won’t need me to live with her anymore.”
Vince whistled through his teeth. “Whew! Doesn’t give you much time to fix up that old piece of shit over there, does it?”
“Poor timing,” Gregg admitted. “But maybe I can get the thing going before that happens. And besides, better be careful what you say around Mother Goose. She might hear you and lay a big ol’ exhaust fart on you!”
This time two startled faces met his words. “What did you just call that wreck?” Billy needled him.
Gregg drained his beer can, collapsing it easily within his fist. “Mother Goose,” he repeated brightly. “You know … ‘goose the mother and watch ‘er haul ass!’”
There was a moment of laughter, then Billy Travis shook his dark head, black dreadlocks bouncing. “You silly shit! But seriously, Gregg isn’t your timing a little off? Maybe you should’a waited awhile to see if you gotta move … WHEN you gotta move. Where you gonna keep ‘er?”
Greg sighed, assuming a pained expression. “Damn if I know, but maybe we can get ‘er up and running before then. Then she can go where I go. I can sell the station wagon in a heartbeat.”
“’WE?’” Two voices loudly and in unison.
“Well … yeah. Why not? Between the four of us, we should be able to handle it, right? You know … flesh an’ blood … wires an’ metal; same difference!” He paused a moment, timing their reactions before adding the zinger. “Besides, why do you think I keep you guys around and keep stuffing your faces with hamburgers and beer? Not for your girlish good looks, that’s for sure!”
“Shee-yitt!” Exploded from Vince’s direction.
From Billy: “ Nice! I thought slave labor went out a hundred an’ fifty years ago. Guess not. You talk to him Vince! He’s my boss an’ I have to answer to him, but he ain’t yours!”
“What would be the use?” Vince Crane moaned. “Like he says, he don’t keep us around for our looks. You’re an old-car nut and I sell Chryslers. As for our pal Jimmy Boy with the nice white fingernails … he likes things neat. He’ll stick around to keep the mess cleaned up.”
The sound of big tires crunching down the icy road and the rumble of a powerful engine silenced the trio momentarily. Speak-of-the-devil expressions crossed their faces at the same instant, bringing grins and eye rolling. Nobody had bothered to let Jim know about the addition to the barnyard. James Wilson, another of Billy’s bosses and Gregg’s younger colleague and best friend, had arrived. The beautifully restored F-150 swung into the snow-packed field, swooping dangerously close to a towering tail fin, then braked to a stop. Jim revved the pickup’s engine and killed it. They watched from the porch, not speaking. In the ensuing silence, nothing happened for nearly a minute. Then suddenly the icy air seemed to double its weight from anticipation of what might happen next.
High-pitched laughter rolled upward and across from the porch. The Ford’s driver threw open his door and slid lightly to the ground. He stood motionless for a moment, fists on hips, staring. Jim still wore hospital scrubs beneath his ancient Navy peacoat, and the strings of a white surgical mask dangled beneath the coat’s hem. He turned around very slowly, dark eyes piercing the three of them as they finally came to their feet and started toward him. He cocked his head in disdain. “So! This must be that ‘beautiful classic car’ you said you were going to GO LOOK AT, Dr. House!” He extended his hands, palms up. “My God! It’s a Land Yacht! It’s a Sherman Tank! It’s a for-cryin’-out-loud Upside-Down-Swimming-Pool! Gregory, are you serious?”
House-the-doctor nodded humbly. “You are so perceptive, James. It’s all of that and more.”
“You call that a ‘car’? It’s a monstrosity. Looks like something that got dredged up from the bottom of the river.”
“Amen,” someone added unnecessarily.
“’It’, my boy, dear uninitiated buddy, “ Gregg replied calmly with only a small hint of snark, “is one slightly used, perfectly serviceable beneath all the crud, magnificent feat of Chrysler Corporation engineering known as a ‘concept car’. Their original ‘try-it-and-see-if-it-works’ car. What you’re looking at, my friend, is a real honest-to-God, don’t-make-‘em-anymore, bonafide 1959 DeSoto Firedome coupe, complete with white-wall tires, full vinyl roof and genu-wine Corinthian leather interior. So there!”
“You wasted a lot of time memorizing all that, didn’t you, Gregg?” Jim shook his blondish mop of silky hair and blinked his eyes owlishly. “I think,” he announced in a peevish tone, “you just blew your last gasket, popped your final cork, lost your last marble, threw your last bearing, blew out your last light bulb, crashed the only program you had left, and shredded your one remaining …”
“Oh all right already!!” Greg House knew when he’d been poleaxed by an expert.
Laughter swirled around them in ice-chrystalized puffs. As Jim turned, someone handed him a beer from behind, and when he looked up, Gregg’s arm lay comfortably across his shoulders.
For awhile they stood hunched in a circle, looking at the old car as though it were a strange work of art in an obscure gallery somewhere.
“What’s it gonna take to slap an inspection sticker on the damn thing?” Vince Crane finally asked. “The guy you bought it from … he say anything about what-all it needed?”
Gregg nodded and looked Crane in the eyes. “Yeah, he did.” The doctor’s face became grim, and the others automatically braced for what came next: “He said that If I park her in the back of your shop, that’s where I’d prob’ly find all the MOPAR parts. Not at his place, and not here.”
Vince rolled his eyes and stepped back a step. Billy took over. “What’s the damned thing need to put it back on the road?”
Gregg shrugged, shoulders elevated, eyes wide. “Oh, not so much, I think. The guy said the engine’s in top shape. Tranny too. Twenty thousand on the last overhaul. Needs paint though.”
Vince Crane choked on his beer trying to keep a straight face, but sputtered beer down the front of his jacket anyhow. “Paint ain’t gonna make ‘er run, numbskull. How ‘bout just the stuff it’ll take to make it drivable?”
Having listened long enough to things he couldn’t make sense of, Jim Wilson scrunched his face and tilted his head. “It’s not got much in the way of safety equipment, does it? I mean, look at the seat belts! Lap style. You’d cut off the top of your head if you crashed and hit the steering wheel. Everything on the dash is metal. Clunk clunk crash crash. Got no airbags, no …”
“Whoa!” Billy growled. “Whaddaya mean ‘no air bags’?”
They looked at him questioningly. Jim had obviously been right.
Billy smiled, face bland with innocence. “If it’s you behind the wheel, Jimmy Boy, it’s for sure the damned thing’s got a wind bag!”
Wilson was silent for a moment. Then: “G. F.!”
They enjoyed another laugh, then Gregg began to count on his fingers the list of needed parts. “Tires and headlights,” he began. “Brakes, water pump, springs in the rear, gotta get the ding out of the passenger door … rear universal.”
“Whoa!” Billy interrupted. “Both universals. The new one will blow out the front one if you don’t.”
“Got it,” Gregg said. “Both universal joints! The guy said the battery is new. He got it to try to start the thing, but there’s a flat spot on the starter. He’s not sure about the voltage regulator. It sat in a shed for four years. It’ll probably need hoses, belts, and clamps all of that.”
“Well. Is. That All???” Billy grumbled incredulously. “Really?”
Gregg House held back another grin. The dimples in his cheeks deepened impishly. “Yeah, Bill, I think so. Why? That a lot?”
Jim Wilson stepped closer to his best friend. “Maybe, old buddy,” he suggested, “you could just jack up the steering wheel and run a whole ‘nother car under there.”
Gregg lurched suddenly in the direction of the younger man in mock attack, but Jim saw it coming and jumped nimbly out of the way, narrowly avoiding an elbow in the ribs.
This elicited another laugh. “You’re just jealous,” House said.
“Jealous of what?” Billy asked. “Of a 1959 Deeee-Soto? I don’t think so!”
“You too, mister,” Gregg grumbled. “The only wheels you got to your name are the ones on that pug-ugly Ford Taurus you keep bragging about. But it’s got tin-foil fenders and all of twenty-three miles on the odometer. Give it another twenty-three miles and little bitty pieces will start dropping off along the road.” He was grinning broadly while Billy stood and sputtered.
“Maybe so,” he retorted, “but it’ll last long enough so that you’ll be an old, old man who can’t walk anymore and will have to ride to work in a wheelchair. That’s how long that car is gonna last!”
Gregg pulled up short. That was heavy stuff. *Wheelchair? Yuk!* “Not in a million years!” he scoffed.
More griping and insults passed between them, but after awhile the teasing and laughter dulled, until someone reminded everybody else just how damned cold it was out there. And so they corralled all the empty beer cans and turned back across the road.
Inside the house, the kitchen was warm, there were hamburgers ready to broil, and the only thing still cold was the beer.
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Chapter 2
“Bringing the Body In”
February 27, 1999
Reflections of late afternoon sunlight, which cast long shadows across the polished floor of the executive wing were fast beginning to fade. Subdued night lighting was coming on and accentuated the mounting silence as hospital staff finished their duties and began to depart for home. Princeton Plainsboro’s renowned medical facility slowly began to tuck itself in for the evening. Soon outside lighting units would pop into operation, bathing the grounds with expanding circles of silvery illumination. Here and there in the near distance a door would fall closed dully and footsteps echo, then fade away toward bus stops and parking lots.
Down at the end of the corridor a solitary figure emerged from shadow and came forward toward the bank of executive offices. The attractive dark-haired woman moved with purpose in her stride, arms loaded with staff notes and diagnostic charts, her white lab coat billowing slightly to either side of her body as she walked. Snatches of an old Beatles tune escaped from between her lips in a breathy contralto. She was not overly fond of the Beatles, actually, but Dr. Gregory House, her bad-boy chief diagnostician, had been humming it in a pleasant baritone most of the day before. To her chagrin she could not seem to get it out of her head.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy strong-armed her way into the Chief Administrator’s office and set the stack of manila file folders gingerly on her desk, carefully elbowing a few sliders on top back into place before they landed in a scattered puddle on the carpet. She removed the white jacket and arranged it over the back of the chair, then sat down. She realized she was bone tired, and the day wasn’t over yet. She was an old hand at this, however, for she’d worked very hard, rising steadily through the ranks until finally her predecessor had retired, leaving the position open to the most qualified individual on staff. Herself! That had been almost three years before, and she was rightfully proud of the major accomplishments for which she’d been responsible around the place ever since. The physicians, surgeons and other practitioners under her command composed an eclectic crew, but all of them were friendly and reasonably cooperative for the most part.
Save one. Her very first hire.
Cuddy sighed, stretched her arms above her head for a moment, then slumped again and pushed a stray lock of dark brown hair out of the way behind an ear. She pulled open the middle drawer of the desk and fished around for a pen which wasn’t completely out of ink. * Must remember to get more!* At that moment her cell phone began to emit a muted warble from somewhere behind her. She turned around to the lab coat, pulled the instrument out of the breast pocket and flipped it open. “Dr. Cuddy.”
The voice on the other end was barely understandable; agitated and urgent. “Dr. Cuddy, this is Billy Travis. Please come to the Emergency Room. Stat!”
Cuddy frowned, straining to make sense of the babble and buzz of background noises. “Mister Travis, I can barely hear you. Repeat!” She could hear further commotion now, shouts in the distance, coming closer; doors slamming and the sharp clank of metal hitting metal. “Mister Travis, can you hear me? What’s going on over there?”
Billy’s voice was muffled for a moment, as though he was fumbling the receiver around while trying to talk at the same time. Billy was her most dedicated staff nurse, and it was highly unusual for him to be rattled. But he was clearly rattled now. Then his words sharpened, and she could hear him, razor edged, his tone rigid with control. “It’s Gregg, Dr. Cuddy. Dr. House! The car slipped … pinned his leg. He’s out of his head with pain. Dr. Wilson and …” his voice halted abruptly for a moment, realizing Cuddy and Vince Crane had never met. “… and another guy are bringing him in now. It’s serious, Doctor. There may be a break, and the swelling is bad. They may have to open it up. Hurry! We’ll need a consult. X-rays, MRI, maybe ultrasound …”
The phone suddenly went dead in her hand and Cuddy knew Travis had terminated from his end.
*House? ‘Gregg’??*
A cold spike of alarm took a nosedive down the middle of Lisa Cuddy’s spine. *Car? What car? What the hell was he doing?*
She grabbed the lab coat off the chair and jammed it beneath her arm. She got up quickly, dashed through the door and back into the corridor.
A new silver Tarus sat outside the ER, blinkers flashing. There was no one in it. Right behind it, a light colored older-model pickup truck stood with motor still running, both doors hanging open, its flashers also spiking blood-red halos into the gathering darkness. Cuddy rushed past the transparent sliding doors at the entrance, sped through reception, shrugging into the lab coat, hurrying toward the trauma rooms beyond.
A small group of second-shift staffers milling around outside one of the rooms told her where the action was. She forced her way through the unusually subdued onlookers and entered the room. The filthy dirty patient was, indeed, the usually meticulous Dr. Gregory House, and sudden alarm dropped the bottom out of her stomach.
On a gurney covered by a soiled white sheet where dirty shirt and blue jeans with the right leg already cut off, were being stripped away, Dr. House, face distorted with pain, head moving erratically from side to side as though in stern denial, arched his back rigidly against the hard-rubber mattress beneath him. His long-fingered hands were trembling, clutching at the metal frame of the gurney in restless agitation. His eyes were clenched tightly shut, teeth grinding, tears mixed with sweat rivulets and ground-in dirt streaming down the sides of his face. His breathing came in ragged gasps as though he were holding his breath as long as possible, then allowing it to escape between his teeth and trying desperately to rein back the need to scream. She realized at that moment it would be useless to try to talk to him, ask him what had happened. Billy and James had their hands full and were too busy to think about answering any questions. She could not even be sure whether House was aware of his surroundings. She thought not.
Cuddy let her eyes do a quick diagnostic scan of the room, taking in the unexpected absence of blood and other indications of serious trauma. What in God’s name had happened?
To the right, Billy Travis, R. N., and James Wilson, M. D., both in dirty clothing beneath crisp hospital whites, extended exploring hands, rubber-gloved and sterile, to gently examine the length of House’s damaged right leg, beginning near the hip and extending downward all the way to the ankle. Another attending ER nurse moved calmly, efficiently, hooking up an IV line, its bag filled with painkillers.
Cuddy turned her attention slightly to the left where a stoop-shouldered red-haired man stood stiffly against the wall out of the way, but definitely involved in the goings on. His blue eyes were wide in alarm, both arms crossed in distress across his chest. She did not know him, but he definitely knew Gregory House. She might have inquired of him his purpose there, but there was enough confusion right then, and he would not have paid attention to her anyway. She chose to remain still and observant in order to offer insight and suggestions later, and the moment slipped away.
It took half an hour for the initial examination; the time it required to bathe the crud off him, wash the tortured face, stabilize him and ease his body very carefully into a sterile surgical gown. Cuddy watched intently as his rigid body relaxed by degrees and his ragged breathing began to deepen to unconsciousness.
After the dirty jeans came off, Cuddy could easily see at least part of House’s problem, even from this distance. His knee and thigh were badly swollen and the surrounding tissue darkened by ruptured blood vessels. The front of his thigh had reddened with the expanding mass of a large hematoma, and she suspected there was a bone break and probably severe clotting as well. His quad muscles were bunched and rigid, even in unconsciousness, as though they were attempting to twist themselves free of the bone. The leg was cushioned now with soft pillows beneath it, but the temporary treatment looked even more painful than the injury. Even now his expressive face remained contorted. She frowned. Something here was much more serious than met the eye. Something she was familiar with, but which remained at the back of her mind, elusive.
Gregory House, regardless of his passionate renegade methods and unorthodox diagnostic sleuthing; his no-nonsense approach and brutal honesty with patients and families alike, was the most brilliant physician on her staff. Even the gentle and usually soft-spoken James Wilson couldn’t come close to House’s medical acumen. Gregg was equally disrespectful of clinicians and administrators alike, scoffing openly at the posturing and pretenses of all of them. But there was no denying his skills at tracking down the causes of mystery diseases and the most puzzling of strange maladies, never failing to make a diagnosis and come up with something that worked. His smiling, smirking irreverence was the talk of the hospital, and it was whispered that the biting sarcastic wit, when offset by his disarming and charming smile had left a long string of broken hearts that stretched all the way to Hoboken!
Now here he lay, hurt and hurting, even though deeply sedated. After so many successes for others, he now certainly needed one for himself. It was the very least they could do. They owed him.
But the question remained: *What in the hell was he doing?* Lisa Cuddy meant to find out.
In front of her, meanwhile, the nurse was bundling up the IV bag, getting ready to attach it to the gurney. Wilson was covering him gently with a warm white blanket, and the brakes were being released on the large rubber wheels. Gregg House was indeed on his way to whatever bad news awaited him.
Cuddy prepared to follow.
James Wilson, silent and intense throughout, had not left his friend’s side for a single moment. And now his smooth doctor’s hands guided the front of the gurney, sensitive fingers lightly touching Gregg’s right cheek. None of this devotion was lost on Cuddy, who raised a speculative eyebrow, for she had never before witnessed such a close bond between them. After a moment she turned her head discreetly away.
On the other end of the gurney, Billy Travis pushed from his position at the rear. Further back, the redhead moved away from the wall and followed solemnly. Cuddy did not question it. *The Fourth Musketeer!*
Through the doors the little procession moved past a still-lingering group of silent staffers. Paying homage, perhaps? It continued down the length of the corridor to the bank of elevators at the end.
X-ray. MRI. Ultrasound. Emergency surgery.
Someone needed to call House’s mother. Soon!
It was going to be a long night.
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Chapter 3
“Nuts ‘n’ Bolts”
December 12, 1998 - 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
“Greg-O-Reeee … ?”
It was Saturday morning and Gregg was under the car, both hands full, trying to line up the exhaust pipe with the tail pipe to get the new muffler into place. On the other side of the car, Vince Crane laughed a muffled explosion into his shirtsleeve. “You’re being paged,” he observed dryly.
“Uh huh,” came back with a touch of humor and a clank of the wrench ricocheting off the side of the undercarriage. “Ouch! Shit! I heard.” House twisted his head around in the direction of his buddy the Chrysler dealer and muttered, “Ask her what she wants, willya?”
With a scuffle of cowboy boots in the dirt of the barnyard, Vince stood up and shaded his eyes, looking toward the front porch of the house. “He’s under the car, Francie. What’s up?”
The woman’s voice came back to them, shrilled a tad with the effort of raising the volume. “Jimmy’s on the phone, boys. Wants to know if there’s anything you need before he comes on out. He’s going to pick up William and they’ll both be here shortly.”
“Can you think of anything?” Gregg’s voice from under the car sounded as though he were underwater.
“Beer?” Vince suggested.
“Oh. Yeah.” Shoe scrapings below told Vince that Gregg had shifted position.
“Okay.” He straightened and leaned thick elbows across the DeSoto’s vast hood. It was like looking down the length of a pool table. “Ask them to bring along a case of brewski!” he shouted.
A pause. Then: “A what??”
They both laughed quietly. Gregg’s mom was so innocent in many ways. “A case of beer, Francie!” Vince yelled again.
“Oh … I see. Well, okay then,” and she turned to disappear back into the house.
Frances House O’Neill was a small motherly woman with a weird naïvete about her, which often drove Gregg and his friends up the walls. She insisted on addressing the four of them with names which none would ever have called themselves. James Wilson did not think of himself as “Jimmy”; nor Vince, “Vincent”; or Billy, “William”. Even Gregg allowed himself to be labeled “Gregory” only by his mother. No one else! But Francie just didn’t get it. Or if she did, she had always done a masterful job of masquerading that fact from her “boys”, whom she adored.
Gregg remembered little about his natural father who had died while his son was still a boy. What he did remember, however, was the man’s sarcastic sense of humor. That fact was realized very soon as it became more and more obvious that he had passed this gift to his only child. Gregg’s mom never let him forget it, often remarking that, “Thank God Gregory’s not a girl! Things he says should never come out a girl’s mouth!” Her first husband’s full name had been Seymour Whitney House, and since he’d spent his entire lifetime working on the railroad, his close friends had soon shortened it to “ShitHouse”. Gregg had always laughed his rear end off at the thought of it, and his mother, through no fault of her own, had always seemed embarrassed by it. Whit always told her: “The better they like you, the more they insult you! Don’t worry about it, Francie!” Ancient family history of course, at this late date.
Three years after Whit’s death, Frances married a military man. Air Force Colonel R. E. “Bud” O’Neill. Bud was the closest thing to a father Gregg had ever known, and he had been a difficult taskmaster to his adopted son. He was harsh, but fair, and when he took time off from his SAC duties, he took interest in everything Gregg did. That included the boy’s determination to become a physician; his early interest in the game of La Crosse; the dramas he watched on television, including his penchant for Starsky and Hutch and General Hospital. Those had been good times. Bud had spent the last ten years before retirement stationed at McGuire AFB, not far from where they lived, and life had been good. Gregg never had a problem calling him “Dad”.
Bud died of a heart attack in 1997, by which time Gregg was already a renowned diagnostic physician at Princeton-Plainsboro and up for promotion to chief-of-staff. The hospital’s administration had, at that time, been newly revamped with a complete turnaround in leadership and personnel, and Dr. Gregory House stood to benefit greatly. The only problem was, Gregg’s new boss was a sharp-tongued woman, and the two of them butted heads constantly. He soon dubbed his work place “Ol’ Warm-and-Fuzzy-Ha-Ha- Hospital”, which ran through the wards and hallways like wildfire for awhile. The inbred sarcasm escalated. He had told his mother many times that the only thing that really mattered to him was the work. He griped constantly that his patients were all “huge pains in my ass”, but he relished his chosen profession and Francie had already known for years that he was superbly gifted and intuitive. She had always supported him as he left no stone unturned in the pursuit of his life’s most cherished dream, and she loved him with her heart and soul. Although she would never have termed her talented son a “Momma’s Boy”, the two of them were very close. As Gregory grew in stature from an ambitious youth to a sunny, wise-cracking adult and drew a few friends with like-minds toward him as confidants, Francie drew them also into the fold of her motherly generosity. She was “sixtyish” now, but looked ten years younger. Gregory was almost forty. And he was starting to look it. His charming demeanor was building to a harder edge lately, and she knew he was working too hard. She held her tongue when he pooh-pooed her and said he was fine. Was he? Working on that old car with his friends over in the nasty, muddy barnyard was relaxing and exhausting and seemed to ease his tensions. But not enough. Thank heaven for the boys! Having Vincent, William and Jimmy around most weekends helped keep him on an even keel.
Francie looked forward to cooking for them, allowing them to tease her mercilessly, and being allowed the privilege of teasing them in return. Also mercilessly.
Back in the kitchen, she picked up the phone and told Jimmy to hurry on out there after he stopped for William, because she had spaghetti on the stove and it would soon be done. She also reminded him to remember to pick up some … “brewski”… on the way, and then wondered why his laughter nearly broke her eardrum.
“Ahhh, Saturdays. I will surely miss this when I sell this place and move into town. I hope Gregory and my boys will find another place to take things off that ugly old car … and put them back on …”
Francie hung up the phone and turned back to the spaghetti pot.
*Every boy needs pasta at least once a week!*
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Chapter 4
“It’s All About the Leg”
May 10, 2005 – 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
James Wilson walked slowly, turning the wheelchair in front of him to the left out of Orthopedics, and proceeded down the hall toward the elevators. The chair’s leg rest on the right side was raised as far as it would go and Dr. Wilson stared in sorrow at the limb, which rested upon it. His patient was not, in the strictest sense, “his patient”. Rather, the patient in the wheelchair was his friend, and this was James’ day off.
To Jim, especially during the past month or two, a day off meant simply that he was under no obligation to be in his designated area, and not responsible for seeing or treating patients. This obligation in front of him, however, was personal. He was here because Gregory House needed him to be here, and because there was no one else Gregg trusted to see him falling apart under the harsh ministrations of the orthopedic doctors. His appointment had been for ten o’clock that morning, but they had kept him until almost noon, poking, prodding, laying their superbly trained hands upon the most sensitive areas of Gregg’s damaged leg. James sat and watched critically and sympathetically from the stool he’d pulled up as close to the examination table as he could get. How the older man managed to hold it together and not cry out in agony, James had no idea. The bone-bending team manipulated the dead thigh muscles, bent and re-bent the shrunken knee joint, then moved downward in meticulous examination of the early atrophy in the calf. It had been brutal, but James and Gregg both understood why it had to be done. When they were finally finished, they confirmed what Gregg already knew without a doubt: his leg was getting worse.
Week upon week of little or no sleep, increased need for the despised Vicodin and sudden stabs of pain even when shifting his weight slightly in his seat, first warned Dr. House that things were not right. He ignored it and intensified his habit of prowling the corridors, hoping the increased activity would ease it. It didn’t. He sat in the lounge in the comfortable black chair, flexed his knee and pulled his lower leg toward his body until he couldn’t stand it any further in an effort to relax the muscles. They didn’t. He focused his attention more intensely onto the TV, idiot fan magazines, sour-fruit lollipops, anything he could think of to turn his attention away from the dreaded spasms and the shaking. Nothing helped. His moods deteriorated and he became more argumentative, more intense, more sarcastic. Everyone who came into contact with him noticed and took extra pains to keep out of his way. The limp was becoming grotesque. His shoulder hurt from leaning so heavily on the cane. The Ducklings scattered every time he came near; even Cameron. He began to contemplate switching to crutches.
*Goddammit! I won’t!*
He knew he could not take his problem to Francie’s door. She loved him dearly, but the original accident, years before, had almost broken her gentle heart. She could not be expected to deal with this also. So he went to James. He knew his friend could be trusted to keep his own counsel and at least most of his opinions to himself.
James had set up the appointment in Orthopedics; then when Gregg’s ordeal was almost over, he had made a short phone call.
And now, here they were.
James backed slowly into the open elevator and pulled the wheelchair gently across the threshold behind him. Gregg was still pretty much out of it. His head lolled to the right, the wavy chestnut hair drawn into tight curls from sweat and exertion. He’d been heavily sedated after the session was over, the only way possible to stop the pain in its tracks and give him a chance to recover from the trauma. His graceful artist’s hands lay relaxed across his lap, and he wore a simple light gray sweat suit, the most comfortable and non-restrictive clothing James could find. One snazzy blue sneaker adorned his left foot, but the right one, the one elevated on the footrest atop an extra white pillow, revealed only a heavy white sock. Gregg’s foot had been swelling again.
James hit one of the buttons inside the door of the otherwise empty elevator, and the machinery hummed as they descended.
Down in the ambulance bay, the big silver Cadillac lurked in shadow, a gurney and two attendants waiting beside it. They had responded to his phone call very quickly. “Afternoon, Dr. Wilson.” Both men eyed the one in the wheelchair. “Isn’t he one of ours?” one of them inquired.
James acknowledged the greeting politely and instructed them to be especially careful with the injured right leg. As both nodded in understanding, he added: “Yes. It’s Dr. House.”
One man remarked with a grim twist in his voice. “Ahhh …yeah. I seen him before. He’s the dude that walks with the cane!”
“That’s the one,” James acknowledged, then stood back and watched as they gently lifted Gregg from the wheelchair and settled him onto the gurney. Carefully they replaced the pillow beneath his knee.
“Where are we taking him then?” Came the question.
“Home,” James said with a sigh. “341 East Side Drive. Apartment eight. And please load up the wheelchair too, would you? He’ll be needing it for awhile.”
Nodded acknowledgment; then: “Will you be riding with him, Dr. Wilson?”
James nodded. “Oh yeah … he can’t be left alone right now.”
They climbed aboard and the Cadillac’s big engine roared to life.
Gregg House was going home. Maybe forever.
* * * * * * * * *
He surfaced by degrees, feeling light as a bubble rising through water. At first he could not define the difference in sensations or the blank spaces, which seemed to briefly cloud his reason. His body felt alienated from his own person, almost as though it might still be afloat somewhere, not even attached to the rest of him. He could not understand how that could be happening. He could feel his head and shoulders hard against a surface of some kind, and then his hands and arms joined him, relaxed across his abdomen, returning from off somewhere, and his buttocks gradually showed up beneath him also. The bubble was back again, still on the rise. He took a deep breath and expelled it, but continued to float. It was quiet where he was, the silence of deep night; a silence that sang comfortably inside his head. There was a gentle breeze blowing. It came toward him from the edge of his consciousness, barely audible and oh so lightly lifting the hairs of his right arm. Gradually he opened his eyes. It was as black out here as it had been behind his eyelids. He concentrated on the blackness, and as he did so the space around the edges began to lift and lighten. Dim shadows somewhere to his right lazily formed a familiar outline, a respected presence coalescing almost at his elbow and uniting pleasantly with the breeze caressing his arm.
*James.*
Wilson was there, right by his side. Gregg’s mind rose quickly to full awareness. He was in his own bed and Jim’s face was on a level with his own. The sandy head was down lightly on the edge of the bed, asleep, and breathing softly onto Gregg’s arm He smiled, couldn’t help himself. He lay perfectly still and contemplated the youngish unlined face. Somewhere way off beyond Jim’s head he glimpsed a tiny glitter of polished metal. Two chrome rods rising vertically, then bending to horizontal. He swallowed convulsively. There was a wheelchair here in his apartment. In his bedroom!
The realization hit him like a thunderclap. Worse. Instant panic. His body stiffened with the sudden realization that there had been a vast difference between this coming to consciousness and the other comings to consciousness he had been experiencing recently. He was awake. Fully awake.
And there was no pain. He could not feel his legs. Either one of them!
His right hand gripped the edge of the mattress, dislodging the head of his sleeping friend. James started and awoke with a gasp. He looked across, horrified, at the same moment Gregg House’s back arched high off the bed.
//////////////////////
Chapter 5
“The Day It Happened”
February 27, 1999 – 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
A break in the weather came late in February with balmy temperatures, melting snow, mud and goop. The beater sat right where it had landed in front of the barn where Gregg had it towed back at the end of November. The only noticeable difference was that it no longer “squatted”. The body stood evenly on four new radial whitewall tires and most of the nickel-and-dime repairs were completed. The engine ran beautifully and smoothly, just as its previous owner had promised, and no telltale black smoke escaped from the new tailpipe. The four “boys” had worked diligently the past six weeks in the effort to get the old DeSoto to running condition before Francie found a buyer for the farm and they all had to hurry and get their stuff out of there, and before Gregg had to find himself another place to live.
Today they were going to tackle the transmission with the reasonable hope that they could get it hooked into the drive train before daylight began to leave the sky about five P. M. Billy and Vince jacked up “Mother’s” front end and pushed stout jack stands beneath the front axles, which gave them wiggle room in order to do the work. Now it was ready for the removal of the bell housing and side shields so they could get their sockets and wrenches inside to recheck all the hookups they had done the week before. It was tedious work, but at least the nuts and bolts were free of rust, since they’d been removed the first time just to check it out, then replaced to keep it clean. It was going to be tricky aligning the main drive shaft by hand so that when the engine was put into gear, the vibrations didn’t yank out the newly installed universal joints. Billy was the expert on this and they left him take charge of the operation. Together, he and Vince Crane tackled the job with only a large hunk of stout plastic sheathing between them and the encroaching mud.
Up top, Gregg fussed around with the minor details of reattaching loose body chrome, and replacing missing screws and clamps. James Wilson walked around the old car with a razor-blade scraper in his hand, removing ancient bumper stickers and other blemishes from the chrome. After each sticker came off, he sprayed the remaining residue with blasts from a bottle of Goo-Gone and rubbed the areas to a shining glow with vigorous strokes of an old chunk of tee-shirt material. Each clean spot stood out like a sore thumb against the still-cruddy appearance of the car. From a few feet away, Gregory House watched his friend surreptitiously with a tolerant and understanding amusement born of long friendship. Jim would never admit it, but they all knew he hated getting his physician’s hands dirty, and when addressing any messy project he worked with prim and prissy hand movements, which they secretly thought of as “girlish”, even though they knew there was nothing “girlish” about the man. Of course, if Wilson had known they thought of him that way, there would have been hell to pay. So of course they never let on. It was an equitable arrangement.
From beneath the car, two pairs of muddy shoes stuck out beneath a rocker panel in scraping motions of valiant effort, followed by two male voices in a litany of curses that would put a longshoreman to shame. “Having a little trouble, are we?” Greg teased, stooping to peer into the gloom below the undercarriage.
“Aaaaagh!” Vince’s voice sounded strained with some kind of effort. “Go screw yourself, House! Go tell it to the Preacher! Summabitch! Can’t get the freakin’ bolt to line up with the hole! An’ I dropped the damned nut!”
Greg watched as the tight beam of a flashlight flitted, searching, across the wrinkled sheet of plastic, then stopped on the telltale hexagon shape of a large metal nut. “I found it, Vince! Hold on a minute.” The flashlight’s beam skittered erratically for a moment, then flicked out of the way and landed ghostlike in Vince’s face!
“Aaaaagh!” Rolled forth for the second time. “Dammit Billy, get that light outa my face! You’re blinding me!”
“Whoops … sorry …”
Gregg laughed and stood up, wriggling his eyebrows sarcastically at Wilson. He should let them alone. They were having a hell of a good time under there! “They seem to be doing a good job … I think,” was what actually came out of his mouth. He chuckled again and continued with his project of chrome replacing. God knew this old tub had more than a lion’s share of that!
From the house across the road, the front door slammed. Gregg and Jim both looked up from what they were doing and waved. “Hey Mom!?” Her son called.
“Hey Francie, how’s my girl?” Jim echoed.
She smiled toward them and waved in return. “I’m just fine, Jimmy. How are you, sweet boy?”
Wilson’s chin dropped to his chest, face reddening in embarrassment. Oh how he wished she wouldn’t do that to him in front of his friends. But he’d asked for it. He sighed and called back to her while Gregg snickered softly at his side. “Just fine, Francie. What can we do for you?”
“Oh, nothing really. I was just checking to see how you boys were doing. Is there a stopping place soon? Lunch is almost ready.”
From under the car, Billy’s muffled voice reached out. “Tell her as soon as ‘fumble-fingers’ here gets the rest of the nuts on the tranny and the housing put back on … yeah.”
“Pretty soon, Mom,” Gregg called. “Unlock the door to the back porch, will you? We’re pretty scruffy out here. We’ll need to brush off and wash up.”
“I’ll do that right away, Gregory. You boys hurry on now, won’t you?” She turned as usual then, and disappeared again inside the house.
They did get the transmission hooked up soon after that. The thought of Francie’s home cooking did as much to hurry their movements as guarding against the deadline of darkness. They were able to beat that with a couple of hours to spare.
Lunch was a pleasant hour of jokes and teasing, shoptalk and car talk, the latest happenings on General Hospital and compliments to the chef for their generous repast of salad, chicken and waffles and creamed corn with homemade bread pudding for dessert. They helped clean off the table, dispose of the residue on each plate and then place everything in the dishwasher. Afterward they all sat together in the living room, enjoyed a tall can of Coors and sat watching the Weather Channel with its predictions of more balmy weather for the remainder of the week. The four musketeers finally left to go back across the road and resume their nuts-and-bolts activities, leaving Francie to her House and Garden Channel with profuse thanks for the great lunch. They knew they were missing some great college basketball games on TV, but it couldn’t be helped. She kissed each on a scruffy cheek and ruffled her hands through their hair, except for “William”, with whom such ruffling was impossible. She had once asked him why he insisted in wearing his hair in “pigtails”, rendering him for an extended moment, speechless.
The padding on the inside of the passenger door had been removed. Billy attacked the small ding in the metal with a rubber hammer, expertly smoothing out the edges with the hammer’s edge, coaxing the metal to finally pop outward where it belonged. The other three lined up like curious children, leaning against the side of the car watching him work. The weight of their bodies pressing against the metal caused the DeSoto to shift subtly to the left, and unnoticed by each, the corresponding jack stand shifted minutely to the left along with it, but then caught precariously on the edge between standing and toppling. Billy finished repairing the dent and reassembled the padding and handles to the inside of the door.
Later in the day, everyone found himself a small project to keep busy with until the daylight gave out. About 2:30 P. M. a car drove up in front of the house and stopped. A horn sounded. The woman driving extended a hand out the window and waved. They all waved back. “Isn’t that once of Francie’s buddies?” Billy inquired.
“Yup,” Gregg said. “That’s Jenny. They must be going out to dinner and a movie.” They watched as a moment later, Francie in blue jeans and a car coat, stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind her. “We’re going to dinner and a movie, boys” she called across. “Have a nice evening!” She got into the car, and they pulled away and disappeared beyond a bend in the road.
“You called that one, ‘Greg-o-ree’!” James laughed at his own joke and the others shook their heads. Presently they all returned to their puttering.
Billy and Vince wandered into the barn, checking around in the piles of debris, hunting for another length of plastic to replace the muddy one beneath the car. They still had a few bolts and nuts to go to finish up attaching the transmission housing, but could do nothing more, for they were fresh out of nuts and bolts, and there was no more plastic to be found which was usable enough to serve their needs. “Goin’ to town for nuts an’ bolts … an’ plastic,” Billy announced to the others. “Gotta finish this up today, dammit!” He summoned Vince with a crook of his hand, and they walked off toward Vince’s old K Car. No way in hell would Billy condone riding in his new Taurus with their skuzzy old clothes. The K Car was rusty and beat up, with paint coming off the body like a dog with the mange, but it ran like a top. They crawled in and that car also disappeared past the bend in the road.
Gregg and Jim stood looking at one another for a moment. Then Gregg walked slowly in the direction of the DeSoto’s huge hood. “Gotta get the battery hooked up so we can see what we got,” he said. His body twisted, head turning left and right, searching for something.
“What are you hunting?” Wilson asked, turning his body from side to side also, but having no idea what he was looking for.
“Flashlight,” Gregg answered. “It’s got to be around here somewhere.”
“Billy put it on the kitchen counter when we went in for lunch. I’ll go get it. I know right where it is.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” Wilson turned toward the house and walked away.
Gregg sighed, rubbed a dirty arm across his brow, leaving a smear of black on his forehead. He was tired. It had been a very long day, but it was almost over now. There were just a few minor things to do yet before they could actually start up the motor and see if the tranny caught and ran in synch with it. He could only imagine how tired Vince and Billy must be also, having done the brunt of the work by themselves today. All that was left to be done now was the interior and sending it over to Vince’s paint shop to be painted. *what color?* he wondered. *Eeny meeny miney mo … black maybe!*
Clearing his mind of inconsequential thought, he lowered himself wearily onto the wide front bumper. That’s when the tilted jack stand let go with a screech and fell over into the mud.
Gregg House felt the car going out from under him like a rowboat sliding smoothly off the shore and into the water. Gently. Expected, yet not. The left side of the bumper lowered drunkenly and the huge old car settled around like a motion picture running frame-by-frame, its operator knowing what was coming but helpless to do anything to stop the inevitable.
Too late, House’s brain picked up on the details. He started to come to his feet and twist his body to leap out of the way. At least that’s how his brain had it planned. His body, however, was half a tick behind; just enough that the top half of the bumper caught his right thigh between it and the door of the barn, pushing both slowly and relentlessly backward.
The barn door cracked and gave inward. The DeSoto rammed forward against one of the heavy uprights, which if it had not been there, might have amputated Greg’s leg clean, directly above the knee.
Two things happened at once: Gregory House cried out in agony and James Wilson stepped out onto the porch of the house across the road, closing the door carefully behind him. Jim froze for an instant at the unexpected blood-curdling scream, then looked up and realized with horror what must have happened. He dropped the flashlight on the floor of the porch and willed his feet to take wings. He was at Gregg’s side in ten seconds, before his mind even caught up with what his body was doing.
There was no way to push the car off him. James assessed the situation in moments, then rushed into the barn through the larger sliding door and pulled desperately backward on the hinged one where Gregg was pinned. “Can you get any leverage to push backwards?” he screamed to his friend. “We’ve got to force the fuckin’ door off its hinges!”
“I’ll … try …” Gregg hissed. James pulled like a bull terrier, with all his considerable strength, further empowered by the panic of desperation. Reluctantly it seemed, the wood began to give, splintering about the hinges, then slowly caved inward. James skittered back, avoiding it as it fell, and held out his arms in frenzied anguish, as his best friend dropped backward like a stone, into his waiting embrace.
James lowered him to the floor of the barn as gently as possible while Gregg writhed and sobbed within his grasp. His doctor’s first instincts were to quickly access the damage, but the front of the blue jeans pant leg was not torn and there was no blood. Gregg’s hands were grasping his thigh; his body folded nearly in half bending over it, trying to cope with the pain. James simply kept his arms encircled protectively about the man’s upper body, pressing Gregg’s face against his chest, absorbing the sweat, the dirt and the tears and carefully massaging the tendons of the rigid shoulders until finally the wracking sobs and hiccupping breaths began to lessen.
He seemed to be getting control of himself now. He shifted within Wilson’s caress and Jim let him be free to move if he could. House looked up and into his friend’s worried face, managing half a smile and a whispered, “Thanks.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I never had anything hurt like that before in my whole life,” he said, wheezing, still trying hard to regain part of his lost control. “For a second I thought I was dead.”
“For a second you weren’t the only one,” James assured him in a shaky voice. “Do you think it’s broken?”
“Don’t know yet,” House gasped. “Can’t move it.” His face tightened against another stab of pain. “Oh God, Jimmy … this is terrible!” His shoulders began to shake again, body trembling against all his efforts at further control. “Please don’t touch me down there!”
“I won’t, Gregg. I won’t. No way!” James sat still and just held him. Let the pain recede a little, then check for damages. It seemed, however, that Gregg had no desire to move.
They remained locked together for a half hour while the day slowly faded around them and grew darker. When the K Car rolled back into the barnyard a short time thereafter, James knew that their friends had seen the damage to the front of the barn, and the fact that the DeSoto was skewered into the broken door. He shouted to them at the tops of his lungs, and Gregg House shuddered with pain within the circle of his arms. He was getting shocky.
Billy and Vince came around to the other side of the sliding door and stopped in their tracks. “Oh Jesus!” Billy whispered, taking in the scene with a frightened expression twisting his dark face. “Gregg? Boss? Buddy? What the hell happened?”
James answered because House was not able. “Car came off the jack. Pinned him. Don’t know how bad it is yet. He won’t let me look.”
House’s head came up slowly. “Sorry guys,” he managed through clenched teeth. “I think I spoiled the party.” He gasped again, but continued. “Could you all help me up? I’ve got to see if this can take any weight. Don’t think it’s broken, but it hurts so damn bad I can’t tell for sure.”
They gathered around him and gently lifted from beneath his arms, easing him carefully away from the protective embrace of James’ body warmth. He groaned heavily as he gathered the unhurt leg beneath himself to lever upward. When he touched his right foot to the floor of the barn, he screamed.
And fainted.
//////////////////////////
Chapter 6
“Vigil at the Hospital”
February 27, 1999 – 8:45 p.m. - Midnight
Francie got the word while they were still at the movie. Some silly thing with Sandra Bullock. She and Jenny Macon were laughing, exchanging whispered comments, completely immersed in the events taking place on the screen. Dim lights close to the ceiling running from the front to the back of the theatre were the only external illumination. That’s the reason she was so startled when a presence suddenly materialized from the gloom and the figure of a man knelt quietly at her elbow. “Mrs. House?”
Francie turned with a frown. *Mrs. House?* No one had called her that in years. She turned and looked down at him. He was a policeman. Youngish. Short dark hair reflected soft highlights at the edge of shadow. “O’Neill,” she corrected him.
The man’s fingers moved lightly to her forearm and she felt the prickle of alarm begin at her hairline and twitter down her spine. “Are you the mother of Dr. Gregory House, ma’am?”
Francie turned sharply in her seat to face him eye to eye. The twitter was becoming an alarm bell. “Yes I am. Is something wrong?” Her voice was louder than she’d intended and Jenny shifted at her side and turned her attention outward. Other theatre patrons stared.
The cop rose to his feet, indicating the rear of the auditorium with a small movement of his head. “Would you come with me, please?” He asked. The tone was soft, but commanding. Francie touched Jenny’s sleeve and started to rise in order to follow.
“Jen … come on. We’ve got to go.”
The lobby was empty. It was a small theatre and no one had yet arrived for the second showing. The young officer held his service cap in both hands and turned to speak to both of them. “Dr. House,” he began, “has had an accident.”
Both women pinned him with restrained stares and he continued. “He’s been taken to the emergency room of Princeton-Plainsboro, and is in surgery as we speak.”
Tears were already spilling over onto Francie’s cheeks. She did nothing to halt them. “Is he going to be all right?” was the only question she could gather up in her mind to ask. Beside her, Jenny’s hand on her arm and dark concern in her eyes, demanded the same answer.
The officer shook his dark head. “I don’t have that information, Mrs. O’Neill,” he replied. “I was simply told to find you here and bring you to the hospital.”
Francie turned to her friend, but Jenny already understood. “Go!” She said. “Go to him and call me when you can. I’ll be home the rest of the night.”
“Thanks Jenny. I will.” Francie had already turned on her heel to follow the officer out onto the street.
The ride across town to PPTH did not take long. The young officer did not resort to lights or sirens, but neither did he waste any time traversing the main streets. Careening wildly around corners whenever he had the chance, tramping the gas pedal on straightaways and swerving through back streets and into the type of shortcuts that only a motor patrolman would have reason to know about, brought them to the emergency entrance of the large medical complex fifteen minutes later. “Here we are,” he announced unnecessarily, and reached across to open the door for her. She started to get out, then leaned back as she caught his voice say something very quietly. “I hope your son will be all right, Mrs. O’Neill.”
Francie nodded, choking up all over again. She caught the name on his nametag very briefly. J. HENRY. “Thank you, Officer Henry. Thank you very much. Your voice to God’s ears!”
And she was gone.
Billy Travis and Dr. Lisa Cuddy were waiting for her in the lobby of Emergency as Francie turned the corner from the entry door. She did not know Lisa very well, having only met her once or twice before, but Billy made for her with his strong arms outstretched, and gathered her into his supporting embrace like a mountain gorilla gathers its young to its breast. “Ah Francie… Francie …” His big voice was choked with emotion, and she gathered him to her in motherly affection.
“Hello my beautiful William … how are you? And how is my boy?”
Billy released her gently and turned to his companion. Cuddy came closer, wearing a thin smile. She was a small woman, Francie suddenly noticed, not much taller than she was herself, and strikingly pretty in a professional way. “I’m Dr. Cuddy,” she said, reintroducing herself. “I believe we’ve met before on occasion.”
*Get on with it!* Francie’s mind almost screamed.
“Yes we have. I remember. Please … what’s happened to Gregory? How is my son, and when can I see him?”
“He’s badly hurt,” Cuddy admitted, skipping the preliminaries. She recognized that this woman expected the whole truth. She looked across, indicated Billy with an outward thrust of her chin. “Mr. Travis, Dr. Wilson and a man named Chase …”
“Vincent Crane,” Francie clarified “and William. Go on …”
“Yes. Vincent Crane said they were all there when it happened. Or at least, Dr. Wilson was there. The other two arrived just after. Dr. Wilson …”
“Jimmy.”
*Jimmy?*
“Uh, yes … James was there when it happened. He said the old car your son was restoring slipped off a jack and pinned his leg between the bumper and the door of your barn.”
“Oh God!” Francie covered her face with both hands. “I was so afraid. But he loved doing it. They all did.” She was crying. The tears came like warm, salty ocean waves. Billy Travis gathered her into the strength of his embrace once again and held her without saying a word. Swayed her small body within the rhythm of his own until she began to calm down. Then Francie stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
Lisa Cuddy watched them, not even beginning to understand. She continued. “Dr. House … uh … Gregory, that is, has a stress fracture of the bone in his thigh.” She made sure to keep the description in laymen’s terms so Mrs. O’Neill understood the problem thoroughly. “The large muscles at the front of his upper leg were compressed to the point that they collapsed, forming a large blood clot behind them. Very difficult to diagnose, and we missed it at first. The delay caused what we call an ‘infarction’ of his thigh muscles. If they had been able to get him to the hospital immediately, we might have had a better chance to process the problem, but the intense pain he was suffering made it impossible to move him right away. He could not stand for them to touch him.
“By the time they got him here, it was too late; he had experienced muscle death in the injured leg.” Cuddy’s voice broke off abruptly, as though the reality of the situation had only at that moment begun to penetrate her ongoing concept of reality. Her brilliant insane-genius-diagnostician was going to remain disabled for the rest of his life. *Goddammit! It was us! We fucked him up, and most of the fault is mine!*
Francie glared. “What does that mean … ‘too late’?”
It was Billy who finally answered, his great voice shaking with emotion. “He’s going to be a cripple, Francie.”
“No!! Oh no!”
Determinedly and angrily, she turned to Cuddy. “I want to see my son! Now!”
Cuddy did not argue. Her face was white, pained. “Take her up, Billy,” she said tightly. “Dr. Wilson will be there.” Her voice trailed off and she turned, walking stiffly in the opposite direction. If House ever found out, he would never forgive her. *Oh God! What have we done? I knew there was more to it than the hematoma … more than just the break. Oh dear sweet Jesus, we’ve crippled him! Crippled Gregory House for life!*
///////////////////////
The private hospital room was dim. Nearly dark, except for night lighting which barely illuminated the walls along the floor. Inside, the tall bed and the patient within it lay flat, the slender body barely raising a human-shaped contour above the surface. At the foot of the bed, however, a system of ropes and pulleys supported the patient’s right leg on a white canvas apparatus that resembled a miniature travois, the American Indian method of transporting food and animal skins. There was a traction device incorporated in the thing, but it was hooked in only loosely, barely realigning the patient’s foot with the rest of his leg. The man’s thigh, temporarily encased in thick, loose bandages, lay immobile at about a forty-five-degree up-angle from his body.
There was a visitor’s chair on the right side of the bed, the same side as the injury, and the man in it slumped there, eyes fixed steadily on the unconscious face of the patient. The watcher did not move; only the deep brown eyes traveled the length of his friend’s body, watching and listening for any sign of change in movement or respiration. An IV attached to the bed on the opposite side dripped morphine slowly, one drop every thirty seconds, into the tube which led to the patient’s arm.
It was nearly ten p. m., and James Wilson was weary beyond measure; weary, angry and heartsick. His dearest friend, Gregory House, would never be the same. His promising future in medicine lay in tatters, the brilliant diagnostic mind halted in midstride with layers of uncertainty ahead, and the robust physicality of his active lifestyle shattered and strewn like a glass figurine crushed in a vise. Dr. Wilson felt cheated. Cheated out of Gregg’s warm friendship, cheated out of his crazy sarcastic wit, his silly smile, the idiotic faces he created with his handsome rubber-like features. And cheated of his love. All of this already, and Gregg hadn’t even regained consciousness yet. Despite all efforts not to let go of his control, James knew his eyes were tearing up yet again. He could not seem to keep any of his emotions in check now, and he felt his throat constrict, the gorge rising. He swallowed convulsively, forcing it down, clenching his fists until he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. *Get hold of yourself!* And the first wave of sobbing washed up and over him. There was no containing it. It was just there like a tidal wave, drowning him in dread and self-pity. *Oh God! What am I going to do? How am I going to face you to tell you what’s happened to you? How can I tell you you’ll never walk on that leg again? Never walk at all without crutches … arm-canes …
Jesus, Gregg … what the hell am I ever going to do?! *
His face was still wet with tears when he heard the door open slowly behind him, and he turned to see Francie O’Neill step silently into the room. He got up to greet her, swiping a hand carelessly across his face, trying to wipe away the tears before she saw them. If she did, he knew they would both cry together.
Francie smiled tiredly. She knew, and he went to meet her, arms circling her small shoulders, burying his face near her cheek, deep in the softness of her old car coat. She embraced him. Smoothed the tears from his face with her hands.
“Darling boy,” Francie soothed. “Your beautiful heart is broken …”
He moaned his sorrow, his breath hot at the crook of her neck. “Not me, Francie … not me. Gregg is …” He could not go on.
“I know, sweet Jimmy. Oh I know. But Gregory will be all right. He will work with this. He is so strong, Jimmy. So strong! And so are you. He loves you, Jimmy. The two of you will do it together.”
James pulled back, puzzled. *Does she think Gregg and I are in love? Oh no! Have I lead her to believe …?*
He was suddenly at a loss for words. Francie thought they were lovers. He and Gregg, partners. Long-time companions. A homosexual couple. How could he have been so blind? Did Gregg know?
He closed his eyes, tried to let it go. Anything he said now would only make it worse. *God bless her though, for loving him enough to support any lifestyle he might choose.* Just wait til he told Gregg about this! Or would he? It might not be taken in jest!
Francie ruffled his hair. “Gregory looks peaceful, Jimmy. Sleepy. I haven’t seen him sleep like this since he was a little boy.”
James sighed. He could not bear to tell her that just below the threshold layer of his narcotic-induced euphoria, Gregg was not all right! He kept it to himself in order to spare her.
But he was certain they would never see that old Gregg again.
Wilson went to the lounge for another chair. Side by side, James Wilson and Francie O’Neill settled in for the night.
///////////////////////////
Chapter 7
“Gregg Faces the Truth”
February 27-28 – Midnight – 3:00 a.m.
*I’m falling!*
My world has dropped from beneath me and I am going down like a stone thrown off the edge of a cliff. My body is spiraling, head lolling drunkenly in the wind shear, and I am dizzy. My stomach heaves and I experience the urge to throw up. Then it backs off and I recognize the texture of the sheet on the bed beneath me. In that instant I am struck with the pain. Hurricanes; typhoons of it, and I am like a canoe in the wake of a powerboat.
Helpless, windswept, frightened. I am buffeted and thrown about by forces over which I have no control, and by a power which is so overwhelming it takes my breath away. The pain grinds at me and rakes across every inch of skin surface, saws across every bone and wrings the fiber from every muscle. I am overwhelmed and paralyzed. I make an effort to flex the fingers of my right hand, but they are somewhere distant and do not respond.
I cannot move. I can find no emotional release, but I need to weep. I am mute. I can find no voice and yet I need to scream. The pain is intolerable. I want only to die. *What is happening to me?*
My eyes cast about listlessly over my head and I catch a glint of transparent tubing. I watch a tiny drop of liquid as it breaks loose, releases, falls. With all my being I believe that it will never hit bottom. But it does. After an unknown passage of time, the edge of the agony dulls and the pain backs off, though it still lurks in shadow, waiting for any opportunity to strike again.
The room is dark. Small illumination glows thinly above the baseboards. I have seen this phenomenon many times in the past, but it has been from a much higher perspective than this. I use it as a distraction and focus my attention on the light. *Put your concentration on something solid, stupid!* I admonish myself. The focus holds for a short time and then falls away. It is too soon. I have chided my patients to use such tactics in refocusing their own pain, but I find I am unable to follow my own advice.
*Fuck it!* The pain is sneaking back, looking for a place to reinsert itself. Building and mounting.
Drip and recede. Drip and recede. Fifteen minutes? A half hour? *Oh God! How much longer?*
I’m scared. I’ve never been so scared in my life. As my consciousness continues to clear and dark clouds lift further from my mind, I turn my head on the pillow to look around me, and I am instantly dizzy again. The pounding pain resumes and my breath catches in my throat. I try to relax and let the kaleidoscopic display recede one more time. * I must not do that again!*
So I rely on my eyes to obtain information. My scope and my focus are both limited. I feel as though my eyeballs are little marbles rolling around in a saucer, trying to see over the rim. It’s discouraging, but it’s all I have for the moment, unless I’d like to return to the fiery desert of pain that consumes me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
I look down to the bottom of the bed and spy the train wreck that used to be my right leg. God only knows what the hell it is now! There is a mighty throb that tells me I have had surgery there, but I am puzzled by the dressings; or maybe the lack of dressings. I remember while we were still in the barn … this is all beginning to flood back to me like a tidal wave … Oh God! When I tried to put my foot down, the pain vibrated all the way to my hip like I was being stabbed by a dozen ice picks. I know I went down and passed out for awhile, because when I woke up again, Wilson had me around the shoulders. My shoes were off, my leg was in a splint made out of newspapers, and I was shivering like a dog shitting bones. He just held me … close … trying to keep me warm, I think. I was pretty shocky by then. I could hear him talking to me … I don’t remember what … some kind of nonsense stuff I think … and I went out like a light again. I remember screaming and sobbing when they lifted my crummy ass into the back seat of Billy’s new Taurus. Christ! They could have taken my old station wagon. They should have! Now Billy’s back seat probably looks like a shit house. Ha! That was my real Dad’s nickname. Why am I remembering this crap now? I can also remember on the way to the hospital, when the car went over the railroad tracks … the ones before you go across the bridge … I yelled my head off then too. I figured the leg was certainly busted. But there’s no cast on it. Unless it was so bad they had to pin it! But I know there are stitches. I can feel those! In the car, Billy hollered back to me: “Jesus, Gregg … I’m sorry!” when the tires hit those tracks. But dammit, it wasn’t his fault!
After that I don’t remember much. Not til now, anyway. God it hurts, even with the morphine drip. How long am I going to have to put up with this?! The leg’s elevated on one of those sling gizmos they keep over in Ortho. I’d wriggle my toes just to see if I can do it … but I’m afraid to. I shouldn’t be in this much pain! Something is more wrong than just a busted leg. Something I don’t even dare think about right now.
I wonder if they got Mother Goose out of the damn barn. Christ! I think I’ve got to fix the barn door too, after I get back on my feet. Hope I don’t have to fix more stuff on the car too. Wouldn’t that be a bitch? Or maybe Mom will have the farm sold before I even get my skinny ass back in shape. What if she sells the place in the meantime? …And I’m standing around somewhere on crutches … watching. I won’t even be able to help her, except maybe packing up some of the smaller stuff. I’m going to have to find an apartment too, if she sells it. This shit couldn’t ‘ve happened at a worse time.
Oh God … here it comes again! Crawling up my leg like a boa constrictor, grabbing at my knee, and it’s all the way into my ass cheek this time. I’m cramping! The thing feels like it’s in a vise. Oh my God, it’s spasming. I’m shakin’ like a leaf. I’m going to fall right off this bed!
“Oohhhhh … God! Help me …”
Jim Wilson and Francie O’Neill had been dozing in two lounge chairs when they both jumped into wakefulness at Gregg House’s cry of agony.
Francie was at her son’s head in a heartbeat, both hands pressing the sides of his face gently, letting him know he was not alone, soothing away the beads of sweat that stood out across his brow. Lovingly she twined a finger in a tight chestnut curl that fallen over his forehead and pushed it back toward his hairline. James had been checking her son’s hurt leg, expert fingers running lightly upward, looking for a rise in temperature, fearing the onset of infection. Would he have to debride more of the muscle? He moved gradually toward the upper part of his friend’s body and paused there, pulling out a tiny light to check pupil reaction, feeling about at the base of his neck, placing the palm of his hand across Gregg’s forehead. Francie moved quickly out of his way, allowing him the room he needed to do his job. James leaned directly over Gregg’s face.
“Hey, my friend! It’s time to come back to the real world now. Can you hear me? You’re in a shitload pain, aren’t you?”
The blue eyes opened, blinked, focused. Not quite a smile, but at least the effort. “Oh yeah. Hellish. And constant. Hi Mom. I love you. James … this isn’t just a busted bone, is it??”
Francie stayed back, blowing him a kiss, giving him a smile of encouragement. She cringed when he spoke though. His voice was strained. Cracking. She knew what Jimmy’s answer was going to be … if he answered the question honestly so soon after Gregory’s trauma. Then her heart sank when the truth actually came tumbling out. If nothing else, these two had always been brutally honest with one another.
“No Gregg. I’m sorry. Not just a broken bone.”
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Chapter 8
“The Fear of Things to Come”
Sunday, February 28, 1999 – After 6:00 a.m.
Vincent Crane and Billy Travis stood outside the emergency room of PPTH, sometimes pacing nervously like expectant fathers. It was after three in the morning and nothing had come down yet. Not a shred of information about Gregg House’s condition. From long experience, Billy knew it was useless to harangue the nurses or their aids in search of news. They would be effectively stonewalled with muttered platitudes and blank stares designed to discourage anyone who was not a close relative of the patient.
Travis knew he could probably strong-arm his way inside and insist on going up to the third floor where emergency patients were usually taken after surgeries, but he could not be certain that Gregg was even out of recovery. Since Wilson had not put in an appearance either, he thought probably not. Neither did he want to interrupt while Francie O’Neill remained at the side of her son, and according to Billy’s own strict code of conduct; one just simply did not do that!
And so they waited.
Vince Crane paced like a caged tiger. Back and forth on the concrete pad he traipsed, eyes furtive, half watching the parking lot for he knew not what. His cowboy boots clacked nervously across the ground. Vince’s hands were shaking like a man with palsy, his stomach tied in knots and his brain working overtime like a VCR on fast-forward. What he had seen of Gregg’s injury had rattled him to the core. At James Wilson’s curt orders he had gone to the house for scissors and they’d cut away the leg of their friend’s blue jeans.
*Whoa!*
Vince caught his breath and had to look away, but the picture froze in his mind. The skin was distended, darkly bruised, red-centered and swollen all the way to the knee. He’d had to swallow hard to keep from losing his lunch. Even worse, he’d had to turn his back like a coward while Billy scoured the house and barn for old newspapers so they could improvise a splint to stabilize the leg long enough to get him to the hospital. It was Wilson and Travis who’d lifted Gregg, unconscious and in shock, into the back seat of Billy’s car for the tedious trip they would have to make.
Gregg woke about halfway to the hospital. Billy was driving with care, avoiding what he could of the rough places in the road while Vince, half turned around in the front seat, kept a worried eye on their passenger. When Billy hit the railroad tracks on Bridge Street just before they crossed the river, Gregg cried out in pain and began to breathe in huge ragged sobs. Vince remembered biting down hard on the knuckles of his hand in the effort to not betray himself as a coward. He wanted out of that car so bad he could taste it. When they reached the hospital’s emergency room, stopped the car and threw open the doors, James Wilson pulled in behind them and jumped out of his truck without even turning off the ignition.
Vince was the one who ran for the gurney and wheeled it outside, followed closely by an orderly, a nurse and one of the nighttime attending physicians. He was glad to step back while the others extracted Gregg, gently as possible from the dirty back seat and lifted him upward, still sobbing, moaning, onto the gurney. Vince had to turn away yet again and hurry to the nearest public trashcan where he experienced a nasty bout of the dry heaves.
Some faceless being came down from upstairs about five-thirty in the morning with the news that they would be allowed to visit their friend briefly, and they would find him in a private room on the third floor’s east wing.
Billy and Vince thanked the person, bilious green and androgynous within the thick disguise of hospital scrubs, and retreated to the entrance, then took the closest elevator to the third floor east.
Gregory House was awake. Barely. The hurt leg was elevated and looked like nothing more than an anonymous lump at the foot of the bed. There were two IV drips, one in each arm, and he appeared very small and very sick beneath the white blanket. His skin looked almost as pale as the blanket. His breathing was shallow, his eyes not quite focused, but one corner of his mouth twitched upward as the two men appeared within his line of sight.
“G-guess I’m a real pain in the ass, right?” He croaked thickly. He sounded intoxicated and his voice, normally strong and melodic, came out hoarse and cracking.
By his right side, Jim Wilson hovered close by, monitoring the IV feed, adjusting the pillow and the blanket, which covered him to the chin. Only his motionless hands and forearms showed beyond the coverings, both taped to boards and IV tubes taped to his arms. “He’s pretty much out of it,” James said unnecessarily. “He’s doped to the gills and still in pain.”
“How bad …?” Billy gestured to the injured limb.
Wilson’s eyes closed in a different kind of pain. He shook his head slowly from side to side out of Gregg’s sight. To Gregg, he said, “You’ve always been a pain in the ass, House! Why should things be any different now?”
Behind him from the lounge chair in a dark corner came the sound of a muffled sob, and right after that, the choked whisper of quiet laughter. Francie O’Neill rose and came forward into the dim light. “Hello darlings,” she said hesitantly. “It seems that lately I just can’t seem to decide between laughing and crying. Even though Gregory can’t acknowledge you the way he’d really like to, I know he’s very glad to see you.” She walked up to Billy and Vince and placed a hand on each dejected shoulder. “Please don’t let him see you hurting so. It hurts him too. He doesn’t wish to be the cause of your pain.”
Both men enfolded her small body within their embrace. Francie was so very vulnerable right now. They both vowed to do anything they could to help. And while in Gregg’s presence they promised to wipe the misery off their faces. Even if it killed them.
They stayed for another hour, silently, watchfully, half in support of Wilson who continued to monitor relentlessly while Gregg House slept on in drug-induced oblivion.
At seven a.m. Billy left to take a shower. He still had to pull day shift before he could go home for some much needed sleep.
Vince bid the others a farewell and left the hospital alone. It was only a short walk to his dealership, and although the place didn’t open until 11:a.m. on Sunday, he could pull another used car off the lot to go home in. Brad Dent, his assistant manager could hold down the fort today. Vince had things to do. He had to try to get the old DeSoto pried away from the barn door and check both it and the door for damages. Then he had to fix what he could fix and see if the car would run.
He had to go back for Brad at the end of the day and run him out to the farm for the other car and return both it and the old K Car to the lot. Brad would then have to return him one more time to get the DeSoto to bring it back to be parked in the back of the shop. If it hadn’t suffered too much damage, he would instruct the body shop foreman to have his crew sand it down to bare metal to get it ready for its paint job, after which they would use it to pick up Gregg the day he was discharged from the hospital. It was the damn car’s fault that Gregg got hurt. It was the least the damned thing could do … take him back home. Wherever “home” happened to be when he got out of there. He figured Gregg would probably want to sell it … get rid of the monster which had crippled him for life.
Vince had a lot of thinking to do. After his moral obligation to Gregg House was finished, then what? He was afraid to his core of the dread he’d tried to conceal about Gregg’s disability. Thinking of that vital man in a wheelchair or on crutches for the rest of his life was something Vince was just not sure he could handle.
He must get busy. Get to the farm and get things done and do a lot more thinking. What was he going to do about this sudden aversion to being in the presence a crippled man? And what, in the name of self-preservation was it that was forcing him to run away as far as he could get?
Vince sighed. It was not in his nature to be a hypocrite, but he was beginning to feel like one. And this man … this genius physician who had deigned to befriend a lowly grease monkey like himself … was one of the best friends he had ever had in his life. Was he about to betray the man? He was afraid so, and he had not the slightest idea why.
Vince Crane sighed deeply. There was no answer.
He spoke to himself out loud and in anger. “Oh fuck! This stinks to high heaven!”
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Chapter 9
“Wilson’s Thoughts”
March 1, 2005 – All Day
Oh, I remember very well the incident that made Cuddy finally take notice of the problem with Gregg. It was an in-hospital seminar on infectious diseases where Dr. House was the main speaker. He hadn’t wanted to do it. When does he ever? Didn’t want to be bothered, would rather hide in the ob/gyn lounge, pig out on junk food, turn his back on a blaring TV and read punk-rock magazines. Of course, I knew why he did that sort of stuff, but Cuddy didn’t. That’s why she put her size-six foot down firmly and insisted. “The interns and residents around here need to hear from someone in this hospital who knows what he’s talking about on this subject, Dr. House. You WILL put together a presentation and be the keynote speaker!”
And that was that. So Gregg got ready to do it. He bitched to me and the Ducklings the entire time he worked on the text, but we were so used to his ranting that it went into four sets of ears and came out four sets of ears, and finally he got it finished. He presented it to me to proofread. It was brilliant. I’d already known it would be.
“Whaddaya think?” he asked. His voice came to me muffled by having to speak around a sour-apple lollipop.
“It’ll do,” I told him.
“Well thanks a heap,” he grumbled. (I knew he wanted more recognition than that; much more. That’s why I didn’t give it to him!) Had he been able to stomp off, I’m sure he would have done so. As it was, I think he went back to the lounge and spent the rest of his shift ignoring a long string of soap operas.
The following day it was obvious he didn’t feel well when he got here. He was snappish and distant, and the way he curled his body over his cane, I figured it would go down hill from there. He made himself scarce all morning, and I had patients to see, so I didn’t bother trying to keep track of him. He showed up at lunch in the cafeteria with nothing but a Styrofoam cup of brackish coffee. I think he came there on purpose expecting me to ask what was wrong, but I didn’t. The seminar was set to begin at 2:00 p.m. and he left the caff at noon on the dot. The next time we saw each other was at the big auditorium where the other speakers were gathering, going over their notes and making last-minute changes, or pacing around telling dirty jokes and gulping gallons of hospital coffee.
Gregg was not there among them, but I hadn’t expected him to be. He didn’t care much for any of them, nor they for him. At first I was alarmed and then angry, feeling sure he had found a way to blow the whole thing off. For a short time I walked around backstage, pretending not to look for him, and then Dr. Cuddy came around the corner from the little dressing room near the lighting panel and announced that she had been looking for me! *Uh oh* I shrugged, pretending again; this time nonchalance. “Just making sure everything is ready back here,” I stammered, and the nonchalance took a tumble into the toilet.
“Did you see House?” She asked point blank, and I knew I was screwed.
“Ahhh … no,” I said in as calm a manner as possible. Why let her know everything was turning to crap!
She looked at me with raised eyebrows for a moment, and I thought: *Oh boy! Here we go!*
“Well, I just spoke to him, and he wondered where the hell you were!” Her pronouncement was so matter-of-fact, and my reaction so blatantly filled with relief, she could not help but tumble to the fact that I’d been clueless.
“Where-izzee?” My shrillness must have conveyed the same staggering relief a parent must feel when told that her missing child is in the arms of the police. *Gregory House, so help me God, I’m gonna kick your good leg right out from under you!*
Cuddy merely smirked and thrust a thumb behind her shoulder a couple of times toward the dressing room. “In there!” she said smugly and walked away toward the auditorium.
I waited for her to clear the area, then bolted for the door where she said he’d been doing … what??
Oh yeah, he was there. Slouched way down on an old couch with his legs propped on a folding chair and his presentation folder in his lap. I noticed he looked pained, but that could have been more attitude than anything physical. I put my hands on my hips when I stared down at him. Nonchalance. “Care to explain what in hell you’ve been up to?” I asked him, quite prepared to bite his head off, but denying myself the pleasure.
“Just doing some editing on my little Gettysburg Address here,” he said softly, “and getting all the ducks in line.” His tone darkened from there. “Following orders!” he snarled. There was mounting anger in his tone. And more. Obvious to an old hand like me around this guy. Pain. Deep and profound.
“House, are you all right?” I turned the conversation professional, so I knew he could see a clinician’s concern within the question.
“I’m fine!” He barked, and in the sharpness of the answer, of course, I knew he was not.
I had no opportunity to pose any further questions. I watched as he struggled up from the couch, grabbing his cane from the seat alongside, levering upward with difficulty. I backed off and allowed him to do it alone. *Proud son of a bitch!*
By the time he’d got himself turned around and headed for the door, I’d already gone on ahead of him and retreated to the audience out front. The next time I saw him, he was on stage, conducting his presentation with professional aplomb. He looked pale and tired. The timbre of his voice told me that speaking was an effort. *Oh shit! Is he gonna tank?*
But he continued brilliantly. He always does, even if it kills him. Around us in the auditorium, you could have heard a pin drop. He was that good.
Halfway through his presentation, Cuddy poked me in the ribs. I looked down, wondering if the jab had been accidental. It wasn’t. Cuddy looked a little puzzled. “Wilson?”
I had my eye on Gregg, by now feeling a little antsy. He was beginning to lean his head backward in an effort to relieve tension in his shoulders; never a good sign. “Ummm?”
Cuddy sounded a tad unsure of herself. “Does Dr. House look just a little …” she hesitated fractionally, “a little off center to you?”
I pulled all my security guards close to my flank. “Uh … how do you mean, ‘off center’?” Pretending not to understand what she meant.
“Well, he looks a bit … oh I don’t know … ‘pained’ to me. Do you think he’s okay?”
I sighed. She was onto him, which meant she was beginning to finally learn the signs be believed he always hid so cleverly. *Sorry, my friend, but I guess you didn’t get your ducks lined up enough!* “Dr. Cuddy, what I’m going to say has to stay between the two of us. If he ever discovers I ratted him out, he will never speak to me … and I like to think he needs me for a sounding board now and then. So I’d like to keep it that way.”
Cuddy scowled and the vertical lines between her eyes deepened. “I can be trusted to keep a confidence, Dr. Wilson,” she said.
I had no reason to doubt her. She was, after all, a professional, and professionalism was important to her. “Watch him,” I said. “Watch the way he moves, or the way he doesn’t move. Do it so he doesn’t know you’re watching. You’ll have to be careful because his antennas are always up for this kind of stuff. Any scent of sympathy or pity sends him right up a wall.”
Cuddy continued to frown as her gaze shifted between House and me. “Why do you think I would pity him?”
“Because he’s in pain … twenty-four-seven.”
Cuddy’s face was one huge question mark. “He is? His pain is still chronic? No one can alleviate it? I didn’t realize that. He never lets on, and I just thought he was a sarcastic, whining bastard!”
“He is.” I let myself shrug cautiously. “And now you know part of the reason why. See how he’s standing with his head leaned back?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen him stand like that a lot. And it’s supposed to mean something? Like, it’s a clue of some kind?”
“Oh yeah. When his head goes back to the point he can rest it between his shoulders, you know he’s in serious pain. He can’t take much more, and he’s looking for a way out. You might keep that in mind, Dr. Cuddy, and cut the guy a break. Next time, give him one!”
“Really? You’re telling me you can actually tell when Gregory House is in pain and is about to lose it?”
I nodded. “I can. We’ve known each other a long time”
“Then you knew him way before that damned old car …”
“Yes. Our fathers worked together. Gregg was eighteen and I was ten when I first met him. He was smart. Funny. He used swear words I wasn’t allowed to use, but I hung around until he’d taught me all of them. I worshipped the ground he walked on. Then he went away to college, med school, internship. I wanted to be a doctor because he was a doctor. And here we are!”
On stage, meanwhile, Gregg was wrapping up his talk. His forehead was beaded with perspiration, his complexion pale, the fabric of his blue shirt was darkening about the collar, and his head was laid back between his shoulder blades. He acknowledged the polite applause and tapped his papers on the table to straighten them. Then he grabbed his cane and exited backstage. I knew he’d been afraid to attempt the three steps that led from the stage to the floor of the auditorium. Gregg didn’t like steps and I could understand that, but he didn’t usually balk at three.
I excused myself from Cuddy and went after him. Her lingering stare which pierced the center of my back told me she knew where I was going, and why.
He was in the dressing room, back on the couch. He had a death grip on the cane with one hand, and with the other he was thumbing open the Vicodin bottle.
“Gregg?” He looked like the wrath of God. The full force of his pain had hit him between the stage and here. Or more likely, he had finally allowed it to hit him! I hurried across and sat down next to his injured side, allowed the back of my hand to slip across and touch his thigh. It was too warm. I withdrew while he was distracted and pulled away from his personal space. He had not noticed.
He finally acknowledged me, took a deep breath and leaned forward protectively over his leg. I could not begin to fully understand what he must be going through, but his eyes said it all. When he looked at me, tears filled them to the brims and threatened to spill over. Deep wells of misery. “I would give anything, my friend, if I could only share some of this for you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
He shook his head. I expected a retort to help distract him from the pain. But he held back. “No. Thanks. I just need to get home. The car’s outside. I don’t think I can be trusted to drive. After the auditorium empties out, will you help me?” The snarky attitude was gone. He was very vulnerable at that moment, and I wondered how much of this he would remember in the morning after too much Scotch and too much Vicodin.
“Consider it done. Do you think you can walk?”
He sighed, his breathing shaky and difficult. He tried to laugh, but it failed. “Damned if I know.”
“Doesn’t matter, Gregg. We’ll handle it.”
He nodded wearily. “Okay.”
That was the moment I figured Cuddy must have gone on home.
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Chapter 10
“Vince Visits Himself”
February 28, 1999 - Afternoon
Vince Crane toweled himself off and shook his heavy mop of red hair, watching while water droplets peppered the steamy mirror and the bathroom walls all around him. He pulled on fresh jockeys and reached for clean blue jeans and a heavy hooded sweatshirt. It was still a little cold out there to go without, and there was still work to do. He was tired. It had been a long, confusing night and his thoughts remained disjointed and uncertain where his friend Gregory House was concerned. In his mind it was almost as though Gregg had done this horrible thing to himself with the intention of distancing himself from all his friends; most of all, Vince. And Vince knew he was full of shit for even thinking such crap. He mopped up after himself with the damp towel and scooped up his filthy clothing from the bathroom floor. Jeannie would not appreciate having to clean up after her errant husband so early in the day especially after coming home from night shift at the research lab where she’d worked for fifteen years.
The dirty blue jeans did a little jingle as he bundled them beneath an arm and he suddenly remembered the change in one of the pockets, and the only set of keys any of them had to the old DeSoto. He stopped and rooted through the pockets until everything dropped out into his hand, along with a receipt from Sears for twelve yards of plastic sheeting and a box of carriage nuts and bolts. He pocketed the former in his clean jeans, and disposed of the latter in the bathroom wastebasket. All the stuff he and Billy had purchased to finish off the undercarriage of the old beater was still over at Francie’s place in the back seat of the K Car. Another job to do. Finish replacing the rest of the bolts on the transmission housing and hook up the battery. Wilson had told him Gregg hadn’t gotten around to the battery before the car fell on him. He’d reminded him also, that the flashlight still lay somewhere on the porch of the house. Vince hoped he would remember everything. But if he didn’t now, he certainly would as each chore came up in turn.
Vince Crane foraged in the depths of the refrigerator for something to munch on. There wasn’t a helluva lot, so he grabbed a pack of Oreos from the counter and a small container of orange juice from the fridge’s top shelf. Ugh! Cookies and Orange juice! Well, sometimes beggars just couldn’t be choosers. He jammed the little OJ into the wide pocket of the sweatshirt and tore open the Oreos even as he closed the back door behind himself and walked over to his own brand new Jeep Cherokee.
He found the O’Neill place exactly as they had left it the evening before. Lights were on in the house and on the front porch. He picked up the flashlight and stuffed it in alongside the OJ and went across to the barnyard. Conditions over there looked like a two-car pileup. The front end of the DeSoto was angled sharply down on the left side where it had connected with and slammed against Gregg’s right leg and the, thank God, rotted and broken door. Vince’s eyebrows lifted in amazement as he stared at it. Not only were the rotted parts broken away from the frame, but the hinges as well, ripped by brute force from the other side where they’d been fastened securely into a panel of much newer wood. Christ! James Wilson didn’t know his own strength! The damned thing looked like it had been hit with a pile driver! It was astounding what one human being could draw from within himself when the safety of a friend or loved one was at stake. Jim Wilson was not “girlish” by any definition of the word, and Vince vowed never to call him that again, even in his own mind.
Back beyond the accident scene, the old K Car stood at a tire-wrenching angle just shy of the DeSoto’s big front fender, its driver’s side door still half open, and Vince took a moment to be thankful that the interior light no longer worked, otherwise he would never get it started to return it to town. He climbed into the driver’s seat and hit the key that was still in the ignition. The old car fired up immediately. He spun the wheel toward the middle of the barnyard and backed it off. No problem. He swung the wheel in the opposite direction and aligned the passenger-side tires with the edge of the road, just a few feet in. He shut the engine off and the little putt-puttery car silenced like an old cat with a dish of warm milk.
Vince chugged the OJ on his way back to the DeSoto, whipped its keys out of his pocket and climbed in, tossing the empty bottle into the back seat. *Well, ol’ Mother Goose, here goes nuthin’!* He turned the key and nothing happened. *What? Oh shit! Wait! The damn battery’s not hooked up. Fuck!* Out he got, opened the hood, put the battery cables in place and banged them down with the butt of the flashlight. Didn’t look as though anything was hung up in the front of the car though, so he should have no trouble pulling it out of there. All he had to do was back it out slowly and let it come down easy off the other jack stand. Piece of cake! The right side of the huge bumper was still tight against the bent and broken doorframe, but that didn’t seem like a problem either. He turned slowly and walked back and got in. This time when he turned the key, the big eight-cylinder engine purred to life like the well-oiled machine it had been designed to be way back in 1959. He revved it a few times and it responded so quickly that the entire vehicle rocked lazily from side to side. He could hardly imagine what it might do on the road. *Holy shit, old girl … you got some balls! If we got everything right, you’re gonna run like a raped ape!*
Vince checked the wide dashboard beside the deep-planted oval steering wheel. Every button on the transmission panel was lit from behind, and the big push-button transmission felt more than ready to go. He pushed the “R” cautiously and hit the brake, releasing the emergency brake at the same time. The car bucked backward, rolling off the remaining jack stand in a graceful rocking motion, straining eagerly against the controlling restraint of the foot brake. Again: *Holy shit! She wants to MOVE!* He let off the brake by degrees and the monster dragged smoothly away from the doorframe, away from the scattered pieces and the debris underneath until she rested in the middle of the barnyard, all ugly, dirty and proud.
*We got it right!* Vince sighed. When he got her to the shop, it would be a simple matter to put her on the hoist and finish the transmission housing from there. *What a beast!* She was definitely getting that paint job. New upholstery too. Black. Big black car with black leather upholstery. Fitting and proper for a metal witch such as this. If need be, later … much later … hand controls maybe, for a man who was going to be spending the rest of his life as a cripple. If he didn’t sell it out of anger and hurt. Vince would do this for Gregg if he could. If he needed to. Eagerly. He was still not sure if he could bear the pain of being in Gregg’s company, but this he could do because he still loved him.
Vince thought about Gregory House continually as he spent the rest of the afternoon shoring up the broken barn door and replacing it on its hinges with a new panel bolted to the side of the frame where Jim Wilson’s desperation had manhandled it off only twenty-four hours before. He thought about Gregory House as a man experiencing such pain that he had screamed out loud, his shattered voice ragged and feral like a wild animal’s; like some crazed creature caught in the steel jaws of a trap, or a graceful, defenseless plant- eater locked in the teeth of a lion. His friend Gregory House, grievous and desperate beneath the relentless pull of pain, had been almost more than he could stand, as he stood and watched a man he cared for losing all control of himself and turning into the baseless savage of his ancient ancestors. Pain could do that to a person, Vince had discovered, in the wink of an eye, an instant in time. The transformation within Gregg’s personality, Vince feared, was a rabid and frightening thing that could easily last for a lifetime.
He shivered. *Oh God! This still sucks!*
Late that afternoon when the Chrysler dealership had closed, Vince Crane and Brad Dent rode back to the O’Neill farm with Billy Travis, fresh off shift and bleary eyed with fatigue, on his way to catch a few hours’ sleep. Billy did not stop to check on the DeSoto, but continued toward home, promising to see Vince the next day, Monday, and return to the hospital to visit Gregg House.
Vince answered in monosyllables, but Billy didn’t notice. It was just as well.
They took the K Car and the old DeSoto back to the used car lot and the big body shop at “Crane’s Chrysler Motors”, where they dropped both cars, and Vince took Brad home in the Jeep Cherokee. From there he returned home where he received a hug and a kiss from Jeannie just before he went in to pound his own pillow for the next thirteen hours.
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Chapter 11
“Gregg Faces the Worst”
February 28, 1999 - Daytime
They had raised the head of his bed a little. One of the IVs had disappeared to who-knew-where and he could bend his right hand, wiggle the fingers. There was a band-aid with a thick wad of gauze under it stuck to his skin just below the bend of his arm, so it hadn’t been gone for very long. On the other side, the morphine drip was still activated and his left arm still pinned to the board with tape. He counted the seconds between drops; still thirty, so nothing new there. He took a chance and turned his head to the right, and nothing felt as though it would explode, so he let himself be a little braver and turned it all the way back to the left. No one was there, and he was quite alone.
Gregory House sighed, and as he did, the bullshit from yesterday hit his consciousness like a ton of bricks. The slow-motion of that giant of an old car coming at him while his mind had been elsewhere, giving in to the fatigue from the DeSoto’s ongoing restoration while still working six days a week in the damned clinic, had been the death of him. Again and again he relived the horror and the agony of having his leg squeezed until all life had drained right out of it, and he was pinned helpless and screaming against the unyielding door of the barn; beating against it with his fists, reaching down with his hands to the huge bumper, trying unsuccessfully to back it off him. The pain, overwhelming, unrelenting and demanding, had consumed him from the inside out.
Then Wilson was there, growling deep in his throat, demanding that he push with his unhurt leg and lean backward as hard as he could. He had tried to comply, but the voice of the pain was louder. Stronger. Even more demanding than his friend. One desperate shove from his left side toward the rear and the bottom had dropped out. The rest had been all James.
James, with a snarling bellow that rumbled out of his throat, tearing at the wood with clean-scrubbed meticulous doctor’s hands, had pulled the hinges off the doorframe with a rending of the wood like lightning snapping a tree trunk. James had pulled him free and they’d both gone backward in a heap, Gregg curling around his badly injured leg, and Jimmy with a sob of desperation, curling himself around Gregg.
Gregg House closed his eyes and tried to swallow the lump that formed in his throat. James had saved his leg, surely, and perhaps his life as well. There were no words in any language to properly thank something like that. He blinked rapidly, but the tears ran anyway, and would not be quelled.
He needed to turn his attention to something else; anything. He searched for a distraction upon which to focus while he regained self-control. Across the room on the wall opposite the bed a television screen fluttered with the images of his favorite soap opera. It must be three o’clock. He watched for a time, letting it grab his attention until the final commercial told him it was almost four. Hell, it was nearly over by the time he’d noticed it. Well, he’d probably be laid up awhile with the leg, so he supposed he’d be able to catch up before too long. He looked around for other diversions.
The leg! With the absence of pain, he’d been ignoring it. The white blanket was drawn up over his body and then turned down at the waist. The travois-sling-thingy was gone and he wondered why. He pulled the covering and the surgical gown aside and stared. He was hooked to a catheter and he could see the tube extending over the edge of the bed to disappear somewhere below. A large gauze bandage had been applied to his thigh with adhesive strips. Had he been hallucinating yesterday when he’d thought he had surgery? Other than the swelling and discoloration that ran all the way to the ankle, it didn’t look so bad. It was bent slightly at the knee and propped up on two pillows. He smiled to himself. This was nothing! He would be up on crutches within a day or two, and probably be back on the job and harassing the nurses and Cuddy with a cane in just a few more weeks. Gregg resettled the blanket where it had been before and leaned back on the pillow. He closed his eyes and eventually slept.
James Wilson and Francie O’Neill returned to Gregg’s room at five p.m. He was asleep, the lines of pain and the horror of his ordeal finally combed from his face. He looked peaceful and they did not bother him.
James had gone home for a few hours of well deserved sleep and Francie had allowed Dr. Cuddy, polite and accommodating, to make arrangements for her to occupy a bed at the local Ronald McDonald House. James picked Francie up about three p.m. and they had gone to dinner together downtown, then drove back to the hospital refreshed and again ready to tackle whatever new challenges Gregg House might have ahead of him.
At six p.m. he began to turn restless and toss about. The morphine drip was no longer controlling Gregg’s pain. Jim increased the dosage, but it didn’t seem to help. His restlessness mounted and beads of moisture appeared across his forehead. Ten minutes later his body stiffened and he awoke with a groan.
Francie stood on his right, holding his hand in her own when Billy Travis walked into the room and immediately recognized the fact that there was a problem. Without a word, he shot a glance to Wilson. Their eyes met and Jim nodded curtly. Billy turned on his heel and left. He was back in five, carrying another IV on a portable stand. He kissed Francie on the top of her head and she stepped aside, knowing they would do all they could to help her boy. Billy attached the second IV with expert hands, and Gregg’s right arm gave up its short liberty to be taped to another board. Shortly the threshing eased and House settled down. His eyes opened. What they got was a grimace rather than a smile, but at least he was back among the living.
The first words out of his mouth: “What the fuck happened? …uh … Sorry Mom.”
Billy hushed him. “Don’t worry about it, Boss,” he said. “Just one more noxious potion from your favorite ‘Nursie’ … right Doc?”
Wilson smiled briefly and continued to monitor the electronic boards with the printouts of Gregg’s condition. His breathing had slowed and the heart rate was normal. But he would bear close watching, regardless.
Francie stood expectantly by, trusting them completely. She tiptoed to Billy and kissed his cheek, reaching up playfully to pull one of his “pigtails”. In the dim lighting it was impossible to see Billy blush, but they all knew he did. On the bed, Gregg House did his best to smile, but it was hard work.
Billy escorted Francie to the cafeteria for coffee while Wilson checked the bandage on Gregg’s leg. With blunt-ended dogleg scissors he cut the tape and lifted the dressing from Gregg’s thigh. As Gregg watched, he felt along the damaged quad muscles and around to the adductors, carefully searching for distensions or patches of swelling they might have missed before. When he straightened his body, Gregg was able to see for the first time the deep incision where they’d gone in to pin the fracture, debride the muscle area and remove the blood clots. It was at that moment that he knew just how debilitating his injury was and would be. The former healthy skin around Gregg’s quadricep muscles had turned almost gray, and there was no spring, no animation left there. His eyes clenched tightly, as did both fists in spite of the IVs, and his handsome face became a mask.
Wilson picked fresh dressings from the tray on the bedside table and quickly taped them back in place. No one needed to see the devastation; not Gregg at that moment, nor Francie ever! He finished running his palms gently down over the swollen knee, down across the calf and on toward Gregg’s foot. Nothing new there, but then he hadn’t expected there to be. He replaced the blanket at Gregg’s waist and placed his hand lightly near his friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, best buddy, for being so crude, but I just couldn’t find a way to tell you in words. I had to do it this way even if I did take the chance of crying my eyes out in front of your Mom.”
His answer was a flat expression and a faint nod. When he looked at Gregg’s eyes, they were pale imitations of their usual blue, and his stare was fixed on the silent television, still tuned to whatever station, attached to the wall across from the bed.
It was almost Nine p.m.
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Chapter 12
“Vince Fesses Up”
March 12, 1999 - Noonish
Vince Crane languished sloppily, one foot crossed over the other, leaning on the outside shelf of the observation window and watching as the final coat of black lacquer misted the rejuvenated body of Gregg House’s 1959 DeSoto. He smiled to himself, thinking of the Olds commercial of a few years back, which declared: “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile!”
No, it certainly was not! This was a beautiful, fully restored antique automobile with an air of aristocracy unparalleled by anything Vince had seen before. He was anxious to see it unveiled in the sunlight in all its splendor, with the rags off the tires, masking tape removed and the major chrome pieces replaced. Only Gregg had foreseen its potential and he had certainly been right. It was magnificent. It was royalty. It looked like the Queen Mary, and it was difficult to believe that this had all been accomplished in less than two weeks.
Vince turned away at last and headed back in the direction of his office. A lot of paperwork awaited him and he needed to get on the computer. There were two convoys arriving later in the day with specially ordered new cars, and a shipment of the innovative Chrysler 300’s. He needed to cut some checks and begin to notify customers that their vehicles had arrived. He angled down the hallway, then cut to the right toward the showroom and his office beyond. As he did so, the showroom door opened and Billy Travis walked in with a purposeful stride.
*Uh oh!*
Vince slowed his pace and met Billy halfway across the showroom floor, halting beside a P. T. Cruiser convertible and wondering if he was going to catch hell. He was.
“Well well … Mister Crane. Here you are in the flesh. Francie and James and Gregg and me … we all thought you’d died. Where you been?”
There were no “hiyas”, “how-ya-doin’s”, “kiss-my-ass” or “thank yous”. Just: “Where ya been?” It was an obviously honest question that begged an obviously honest answer. Vince was not too sure he had one. He might have pleaded innocent by telling his friend that the joint was jumping at Crane Chrysler, but Billy would know that was bullshit. Vince owned the place. He was the boss, and his employees were professionals who knew their business, and couldn’t care less if he was there or not. Customers came in. Cars got sold. End of excuse.
He indicated the direction of his office with a thrust of his head. “C’mon back, Billy,” he said. “We can talk in the office. I need to tell you some stuff anyhow, and it’s actually nobody else’s business.” He led the way to the small office and closed the door behind them.
Vince sat down in his chair and Billy took the one opposite the desk. “I just want to know,” he began, “hell, we all want to know … what it is that’s so damned important you haven’t stopped over to the hospital to see Gregg. He’s asked about you, and we don’t know what to tell him. So what do we tell him, Vince?”
Crane sighed and ran a hand through his fiery hair. He was nervous. Would the things he had to say make any sense to Billy? To any of them? Especially Gregg, whose car he had worked so hard to finish in an attempt to appease the guilt he’d been feeling for days on end. If you’re hemmed in by giant tacklers from the opposing team, you make a lateral run toward the opposite side of the field. “The DeSoto is finished, Billy. It’s beautiful, just like Gregg said it would be. The only thing left is putting in the hand controls. I can show it to you later if you’d like …”
“Who cares about that fuckin’ old car!” Billy growled. “He can’t drive it anyway. Probably never will. Especially since he can’t walk yet. Can’t even sit up by himself. Can’t take a piss or a shit without somebody holding him up from both sides. You know what that does to a man, Vince? Knowing you’re so weak that somebody else even has to hold your pecker for you to take a leak? He’s nuts with the pain. Wilson weaned him from the morphine drip before he became hopelessly addicted, and replaced it with Vicodin. Vicodin, Vince! Less than half the strength, and he hurts so bad. His leg is mush. There’s nothin’ left above the knee, and he can’t put his foot down to rest it on the floor because that’s even worse. He can’t hold it up either because it puts a strain on the muscles that do still work, and that causes him more pain. He’s a mess, Wilson’s a mess, I’m a mess and Francie’s a basket case. The only one who’s not a mess is you, Vince, because you don’t come to see him.”
Vince Crane leaned back in his chair as far as it would go and let his chin fall to his chest. *Oh God! I did not need to hear this. I did not need to hear how really sick my friend is. I did not need to hear that his leg is dying, and I did not need to know what an asshole I am for not spending time at his side. I already know I’m an asshole and a coward. I just don’t know if I can tell anyone else that I’m an asshole and a coward!*
Vince sighed and lifted his head again to look Billy Travis in the eyes; dark eyes which now shot accusatory sparks in his direction. “I know what you’re thinking,” he finally said. “I know you think that I don’t give a shit what happens to Gregg. But you’d be wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong. I do care, and everything you just told me turns my guts inside out.”
“So do something about it!” Billy said softly. “Come along back to the hospital with me. You can tell him about his damned old car. You can ask him if he wants to keep the freakin’ thing, or palm it off on the nearest sucker. I don’t give a shit what else you do, but you need to go to Gregg. He needs you to, and we need you to because he does! Get it now?”
“I always ‘got it’, Billy. Always. But I can’t. If I go up there and see him like this, I’m going to throw up all over him and me and everything else within ten feet. Even thinking about what you just said makes me want to lose my breakfast. Someone in that much pain … especially someone I care about as much as I care about Gregg House … I can’t handle it, Billy. I just can’t handle it. I can’t go, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am … but I can’t!”
Billy frowned. Both black eyebrows knitted in the middle of his forehead. “Oh Christ! You have to learn to take what is, Vince … and you deal with it! Circumstances don’t evolve with anyone’s convenience in mind! Don’t tell me you’re one of those spineless assholes whose skin starts to crawl whenever they have to be near somebody with a physical handicap! That’s about the cheesiest excuse I ever heard. You know what those people are, Vince? They’re idiots who are afraid of being ‘inconvenienced’ by a person with a disability. The handicapped don’t move very fast. They can’t keep up with you, and you have to help them sometimes. They waste your valuable time and they sometimes hurt a lot. But this isn’t someone you read about in some stupid layout in ‘Time’ or ‘Reader’s Digest’. This is one of the best friends you’ve ever had in your life, and he would never do this to you! Never!”
Billy rose to his feet and stood looking down. “So I’ll tell him you still have his ugly old car, and you’re so busy selling your goddamned fancy NEW cars that you can’t visit him in the hospital. I’m sure it’ll make his day.” He turned to leave and placed a hand on the doorknob.
Vince looked up at him again, a plea for understanding in his voice. “I’m sorry, Billy. More sorry than you … or Gregg … will ever know. Maybe if he gets a little better …”
“Yeah,” Billy said sarcastically, “when horses shit gold bricks! See ya, Vince. I’ll tell Gregg you said ‘Hi’!”
The door closed softly behind him and his retreating footsteps echoed hollowly on the smooth concrete floor of the showroom.
Vincent Crane lowered his head onto the crook of his folded arms and wept softly onto the soft fabric of his expensive sport jacket.
*Gregg … I am … so … sorry!*
New Stuff Starts Here!
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Chapter 13
“The Leg Gets Worse”
May 24, 2005 – a.m.
“He is so thin!” Francie whispered as James Wilson tinkered with the feed on the IV bag above Gregg House’s head. “He needs to gain a few pounds, Jimmy.”
Wilson smiled indulgently at her prattling. She was so worried, and this was the second time around for her, watching her son occupying a hospital bed and hooked up to vials and tubes she couldn’t begin to understand. This time though, she had ordered a cot right next to Gregg’s bedside in his own apartment in case he should need anything while she was there and Jimmy or Billy were busy at the hospital. He watched her walk around the bed, touch the heavy green blanket lovingly and try to hide her face while tears tracked hotly down her cheeks. Jim sighed. He understood how she felt, but he had brought his own grave concerns for his friend under rigid control days before. This bout was not as bad as the first go-around, nearly seven years ago now, and Gregg was being given a gourmet’s mix of concentrated medications to combat the infection which had begun to spread outward from the constricted vessels in the damaged and disfigured leg. Jim knew such infections would always be a danger for this man, and even though things were a little better now, Gregg’s weakness and loss of motion had worsened and his friendly oncologist was no longer sure there was a way to bring it back even to the point where it had been before the infection began to do its dirty work.
Wilson finished his ministrations and walked around to the other side of the bed. Francie was silent now, watching her son as he slept and caressing the shining gray-speckled chestnut hair with the tip of one finger. She would not risk the chance of waking him while he was peaceful and temporarily free of pain, but Jim knew she could not keep her hands off him, so afraid he would be taken from her, this gifted son of high intelligence and great personal courage, and her eyes never strayed from him for long.
James walked up behind her and placed both hands flat upon her narrow shoulders, then applied just enough pressure to turn her around to face him. “Francie?”
“Yes, Jimmy?” Her eyes were huge and blue and questioning, just like Gregg’s, and Wilson smiled with affection as he looked deeply into them.
“The more weight he has to carry on his body, the more he must try to place on that leg. And the leg can’t take it anymore. If he’s ever going to get out of that wheelchair and onto crutches … and then by some miracle back to his cane … he needs to strengthen it as much as possible. I agree with you that he’s too thin, but medically speaking it’s better for him right now. He swears he’ll be back to the cane within three months. I can’t agree with him, but he’s determined and I hope he’s right. If he were heavier, he might make it to crutches, but certainly no further than that. Even when this infection is completely gone, he’ll have no control, only the pain of trying to keep it moving, and you’ll probably see some pretty nasty muscle spasms. He hates this, and I’ve never seen so much anger in him before. But the madder he is, the harder he’ll work, and you know what he’s like when he sets his mind to something.”
She nodded at the reminder and reached up to squeeze Jim’s hand in one of hers. “I certainly do! Bull in a China shop. Fox in a henhouse. And more. But I wouldn’t dream of contradicting him when his mind is set on something.” She paused for a moment, thinking. Then: “Do you think Gregory’s staff people … those children he works with … will come over here to help him out?”
James nearly had to turn away to hide a moment of laughter that forced its way into his throat. *Children?* They were three very competent young adults, well into their twenties. He had been known to refer to them as Ducklings, though only to House. But Foreman, Cameron and Chase … Children? It struck him as extremely funny, but he could understand why Francie might refer to them that way. To her, they were children.
He shrugged, complete with an eye roll beyond her line of vision. Not likely! Gregg would do his best to drive them up the walls. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure their boss wouldn’t want them to see him like this. It’s a little hard to manage a staff while flat on your back. Besides, they have duties that would keep them at the hospital trying to cover for your son! His shoes, such as they are, are still pretty hard to fill.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I guess you’re right.” She had moved back to the head of the bed and reached a hand upward to touch Gregg’s hair once again. He moved suddenly beneath her and she stepped back. “Jimmy?”
Wilson hurried to the bank of monitors on the stand by the bed, then stepped close to Gregg House’s side. “Hey, Friend … are you awake?”
“Ummm … hurts … Mom, they’re not children! Foreman is thirty. Cameron is twenty-nine. Even Chase is twenty-seven. They’re kids … but not children. And by the way, James … thanks for the goddamn lopsided compliment, but the only one who’s going to fill my shoes is going to be me! Now will someone please get me some water and a couple of pain pills!?”
“Guess he’s awake,” Wilson observed unnecessarily.
“Yes,” she replied with a smile. “He certainly is. How do you feel, darling?”
“Like I’ve been on a twenty-four hour drunk. Wilson, where’s my pain pills? I’m hurting here!”
Jim returned from a trip to the bathroom around the corner with a small glass of water and a single Vicodin. He handed both to Francie, then went to his friend and lifted his head, pillow and all.
“That’s all I get? Just one? Christ, I could be dead and you’d drop one lousy pill on my grave.”
“That’s all you deserve!” Wilson smirked.
Fracie placed the Vicodin on her son’s tongue and offered him the water. Gregg took a few sips and pulled his head back, indicating that it was enough. When James lowered him to the bed again, beads of perspiration were already forming across his brow. Both fists were clenched and his eyes glazed over with concentration in the attempt to focus outside the pain, which had already begun to tear at him relentlessly. God, how he wished he could move. Walk it off and get away from it; turn his attention to something puzzling, riveting, demanding. Take a sharp turn from his own existence and get outside himself where there was no torment and no constant struggle just to keep from screaming.
Gregg knew he was losing the battle. His leg was going to spasm; he could feel it hitching up as the few remaining healthy muscles raged in protest of the abuse, which had been heaped upon them all those years ago. He reached down to his thigh and grasped it between both hands, trying to still wave upon wave of involuntary cramping; shaking that threatened to tear the bed clothing right off the bed. The spasm reached its peak and he rode it down again, bucking like a Brahma bull, until it died in weakened, diminishing death throes, right into the ground.
“Aaaaaaahhhhh …” The sound came out of his throat unbidden, rasping across his vocal cords until they were raw and burning. He should be used to it by now. He should be used to it and he should have learned to control it before it had wrung out every last ounce of his composure and turned him into a sobbing, defenseless creature that made him hate himself and his weakness. But it was useless. He was already that. He knew he was gasping and crying and his voice was nearly gone. He lay helpless and panting like a dog in the desert. Dying.
It was over. His hands dropped from his leg, all extremities twitching with the aftermath of exertion. He became aware again of his surroundings and there was a comforting touch of another’s hands upon his shoulders. He opened his eyes to see the incredibly dear face of his friend James Wilson, compassionate face wet with tears, supporting his head with strong hands, drawing him in, shoring him up with his own towering strength.
On the other side, his mother’s hand was tangled in his hair, her eyes brimming, with a gentle smile on her face. He turned his head slightly and kissed her cheek. “Hi Mom. I’m okay.”
To James, he said merely: “Thank you for saving my life.” He didn’t mean today.
Wilson looked slightly nonplussed as he backed away.
“Any time,” he replied softly.
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Chapter 14
“Sea Change”
Rehab: March, April, May 1999
Gregory House’s ongoing rehabilitation had turned into just one more hassle; one more swampy acre in the continuing landscape of pain which had become the core of his existence over the past few months. He’d been moved, under fierce protest, to the residential rehab unit all the way across town from the main complex. He’d hated the idea from the get-go and let everyone around him know it in no uncertain terms. His physical therapy got underway even before the broken bone in his leg was completely healed, due to the fact that if he did not begin to bend his knee and keep the joint lubricated, there was a danger that it would freeze in place, further crippling him to the point that he would never get out of the wheelchair. This thought alone had been enough of an incentive to make him want to move forward in spite of the agony it caused, and the strength it sapped from him every day when therapists manhandled his leg to the point of reducing him to a wrung-out dishrag. Gradually he forced himself to ride the crest of it without crying out, but the two women who worked with him were growing used to seeing tears run down his face and his fists clenched into whitened balls.
During the second month there, he was allowed to try walking between two stout parallel bars. Two steps at first, then three, then four. At first he experienced a debilitating pain in his left shoulder which made him wonder if he would be able to do it, until he suddenly remembered the injury he had sustained in college while playing LaCrosse on a muddy field. He was determined to work around it and kept silent about the old injury. He knew they wouldn’t find it in his records because he had never reported it. They gave him stout white sneakers to wear, just to keep his ankles from turning. They were the first shoes he had worn in over three months, and he was exhilarated. As his arm strength slowly mounted, he found he could walk from one end of the bars to the other, and though this accomplishment was small, it was a milestone for Gregg. He hoped they would soon let him use crutches. The beginning of the third month, they did. Haley, the shorter therapist, brought him the aluminum arm canes while he sat in his wheelchair waiting for his turn at the bars. At her side, Nicole, the taller of the two, grinned like a Cheshire cat, and Gregg grinned back as he reached out to accept them
They put the hand brakes of the wheelchair on tightly, then lowered the footrests. With one of them standing support at each shoulder, he tried to lever himself up very slowly. At first it didn’t work. The crippled leg went every-which-way and threatened to spasm. But between the support of the stout canes and both women lifting from each side, he finally made it upright. They let go of him gradually and *OH GOD!* He was standing alone! His leg turned out to be both painful and clumsy and would allow no weight to be placed upon it. When he took a step it dragged, just as it had done at the parallel bars. He had to shift his weight precariously and reposition from the hip to get it to move even marginally. *What a pain in the ass! Literally!*
After that, he wasn’t allowed the arm canes. “Not yet,” they told him. “You’re not ready. You need to practice … find better control.” At first he was frantic, believing it meant he was back to the wheelchair. But they brought him underarm crutches, the kind which made people look at you with pity, and he hated them at first sight. But one thing was obvious. They worked. He found that he could use them with no distress to the old shoulder injury, and if he swung his lower body forward as a unit with each step, he could once again cover as much ground as he had before he was hurt. His healthy leg took all the weight, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Haley and Nicole let him play around with his newfound freedom for one whole day before they broke the bad news. They told him to cut it out!
“Why, for God’s sake? It gives me freedom from sitting around like a lump in my room. If I let my imagination go for a minute, I can almost believe I’m actually walking again. And it helps distract me from the pain. If I have something to concentrate on, it actually gets a little better. Please don’t tell me I can’t even do this anymore! Jesus! I’m a doctor. I can’t practice my craft if I can’t even move around …”
They shook their collective heads. “Sorry. You need to be able to take one step at a time. You need to slow down and practice. You need to get some mobility into the leg. You have to! If it doesn’t work and you can’t move it, we need to know. If it just hangs there and you let it hang there … so many other things can go wrong. You may eventually lose it!”
“I won’t lose it!”
“Then use it! Ever hear the phrase ‘Use it or lose it?’ Well, it’s very true in your case. You told us once that you wanted to be able to use just a cane, remember?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, Dr. House, you have to do this a day at a time. Like an alcoholic doesn’t drink … a day at a time. You have to do this … even a minute at a time if you have to. You’re going to hurt and there are going to be times when you think you can’t go on with it. But you can. You can, and you’d better! Or we’ll both be very angry with you!”
Gregg scowled. “You two are pretty damn bossy, aren’t you?! You think you can just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, because you both know better than me? I’m the one with the M. D. after my name around here, right?”
They smiled politely. “Uh huh.”
He shrugged, pulled a wry face and then smiled. “Okay, you two are the bosses for now. I reserve the right to be an ass if the pain gets too bad. Okay with you?”
“Yes, Doctor. We understand. We can start tomorrow.” They grinned. They had come to love this man.
This … in spite of everything he might have done to have it otherwise!
*********
Francie sold the farm while Greg was in rehab.
A corporate lawyer with two kids, a wife, two dogs and four horses made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. The realtor’s sign had been up all of five days. Her name had been on the waiting list for one of Princeton’s senior-citizen high rises for a long time, and when she called to check on her status, she found an upcoming opening at the first place she called. One bedroom, custom kitchen, all utilities furnished except telephone and cable, and it would be available within thirty days. Seventh floor. Would that do?
*Of course, you silly goose!* Francie thought through the telephone receiver. What she actually said was: “It will do indeed, and I thank you.”
The female voice continued: “You will need your first month’s rent, last month’s rent, plus security deposit, Mrs. O’Neill. That comes to …” there was a short pause, “… thirteen hundred dollars. Please stay on the line while I take down all pertinent information …” And that was it. Francie had procured a new home and disposed of an old one, all in the same week. She sighed happily.
Now she had to tell Gregory. She would go to him that same night and let him know that things had been settled. She was taken care of and her future was secure. Now he was free to do the same for himself.
Francie got back on the phone to relay the good news to her friend Jennie Macon. The high-rise in the four hundred black of East Side Drive would make them almost-neighbors. She wouldn’t wait until tonight to tell Gregory! She rang off from talking to Jennie and quickly punched in the number at the PPTH Rehab Center.
“May I have Room 212, please,” she said when the phone system picked up. She was always polite to it, even though it was only a machine. There was a pause and series of clicks, then his phone was ringing. Six rings later, he still had not answered. She decided he was either in physical therapy or somewhere prowling the halls. No matter. She would see him later. Francie went to her kitchen and sat down at the table. Already her mind was drifting to a mental checklist of things to be done. What to take with her, what to leave behind, what to sell, what to give away to friends, and of course, to Gregory. What was there around here that he might actually want. His piano, of course. Would he want to keep his old station wagon? It was doubtful. It had a manual transmission, and he could no longer shift gears, could he? That would probably have to go. *Hmmmm …* Antique doll collection? Undecided.
////////////////////////
James sat in his office. At his desk. Absently he ran a pencil eraser through his thick mop of sandy hair and stared out the window. The paperwork still in front of him was the furthest thing from his mind. He was in no mood to go home and face another chorus of: “Jesus Christ, James! It’s about time you come home from that Goddamned hospital!” He shivered. Uh uh! He would rather be boiled in oil than go home and listen to that again. Somewhere down the line he could foresee another divorce. God! He was falling into a pattern. Had already fallen into a pattern! What was it with clingy women who thought they needed to be hanging onto a man all the time? Julie was accomplished and intelligent. She could make anything of her life that she wanted to. But she chose to make him her life’s work, trying to mold him to suit her own ever-changing tastes, confirm to her own demands and wrap him about her like a mink stole. Well, this “mink stole” wasn’t having any. He was a doctor, dammit. He could not run a nine-to-five life even if he’d wanted to, which he certainly didn’t.
Jim closed his eyes and let the pencil fall to his blotter. He wished House were there to talk to. He wished House were there to tease him, pull all his strings and push all his buttons until he was ready to climb the damn walls. He wished House could be at his side right now, giving him a hard time, grumbling about some idiot patient who wouldn’t stop lying to him, or telling him bluntly that if he wasn’t satisfied with his life as it was, then get the hell out and change it. He wished House could be here bugging him to hurry-the-hell up and finish with his paperwork so they could go out for a beer. Everything that was good; everything that was enjoyable in his life lately began and ended with Gregory House. And House couldn’t be there. House was in rehab, busting his ass to try to learn to walk again; trying with his heart and soul to find a way back to the profession he loved, the life he didn’t know if he could ever learn to live without. *Oh God, Gregg … I miss you.* The thought of not having him around made James Wilson want to scream.
What did this mean?
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Chapter 15
“The Visit”
June 15, 1999
He arrived at PPTH in the rehab’s ambulance. Incognito. Nobody looked twice at the arrival of another ambulance down by the service entrance. He got out of the front seat very gingerly, flanked by both the driver and an attendant. He was painfully thin, hollow cheeked and gaunt. His hair was longer than usual, and his natural wave, which he’d taken great pains to keep trimmed before, had become a tangle of gray-flecked curls that framed his long face with a rakish look that brought out the blue of his eyes and the sharp lines of his brow and nose. He had a three-day growth of beard and even that was gray-flecked, but not unattractive when gauged by the rest of him. He wore a gray sweat suit that hugged his frame and blended with the whole very nicely. Actually he looked quite urbane. Grace with ripples!
He stood on the sidewalk for a minute or two, gathering strength perhaps, to take the plunge and venture inside. He was ambivalent, for he was coming here to visit, not to work, and it galled him that he knew he was not yet ready to test the waters or offer his services as a member of the profession he loved. The ambulance stood there, its cadre still enshrined like sentinels awaiting their commander’s decision. He turned to look at them, shifting his weight very carefully on the crutches; still not sure he had the strength to make it down to Cuddy’s office before collapsing into a puddle somewhere in the hallway. Presently, he decided he did. Just standing in the open air was exhilarating, and energizing. He would gain the strength he needed as he progressed from one pre-plotted point to the next. He had long looked forward to this.
Gregory House turned to gaze at his determined guardians by the ambulance and nodded his head deeply. He would be okay, and it was all right for them to leave. They knew he would signal them whether to come help him back to the ambulance or give him the freedom to strike out on his own for the first time in seven months. They both nodded back, and one of them gave him a huge grin and a “thumbs up” sign, which Gregg acknowledged with a small smile in return. He waited until the ambulance pulled away from the curb, left the circular driveway and entered traffic before he summoned the nerve to actually turn around and start for the door.
The ever-present pain in his leg intensified and he knew it was due in part to his nervousness at the new situation. He had never attempted to walk this far before, and the leg didn’t like it. He’d been dogged in his determination to rehabilitate himself, but even now he had only minimal control over the limb, which he knew could go into spasm, and throw him to the concrete sidewalk at any moment. He must move before he took a nosedive. Movement was his best defense against the spasms and he steeled his concentration to take it one step at a time. He began to walk toward the entrance, very slowly. Most of his weight was on the crutches, and even though he gave the appearance of walking, he could tolerate very little pressure on the right side. One step. Then another. And another.
Passers by were turning to stare at him, feeling sorry for him, pitying him, and the anger he felt toward that sort of thing gave him further strength to push onward. Let them look! He was above their pity, far beyond their anxious and nervous glances. When he looked up and met their eyes, none could hold his gaze. To the man, they all turned away. He was livid. *At least have the guts to look me in the eye, damn you!* But they would not, and at that moment he hated people with all his heart. *God! Humanity is overrated!*
Someone had the courtesy to hold the door open for him, and he gathered himself to go in, nodding curtly at whoever-it-was who had condescendingly accommodated the crippled guy. He stood inside the entrance for a moment, sweating, resting the leg. He would turn to the right and strike out down the corridor in a minute. But right now, a problem was rearing its ugly head and he had no idea how to deal with it. He had worn the white sneakers from rehab. Haley and Nicole had helped him get dressed and Nicole had tied the right one more loosely than the left. But now it felt heavy, hot and stinging. And much too tight. His foot was beginning to swell and the pain flared upward toward his knee and into the damaged thigh. He had no choice but to go on and hope he could make it to Cuddy’s office before it gave out completely. His doddering ascent through the hallway was a blur in his senses.
Suddenly he heard someone call his name. “Gregg! Dr. House! Wait! House!”
*Wilson! Oh thank God!* He halted in his tracks, wavering, barely holding onto a precarious balance.
Then his knees were buckling, the crutches falling, and his friend’s strong arms picked him up bodily and carried him the last few feet to Lisa Cuddy’s cavernous office.
The next thing he remembered was someone shoving a glass of cold water into his fist. He sipped at it gratefully, then handed it off again and leaned his head back between his shoulder blades. Some of the pain and the tension slid away and he looked about. “My shoe,” he mumbled, “… get the right shoe off!”
Wilson was there in front of him; supporting his body even as it tried to careen into the side of the couch they had placed him on. He felt the laces come loose and the bothersome shoe slide off. He sighed with relief, then realized that James was gently kneading the swollen foot. “I’ll give you an hour to cut that out!” He growled, and then suddenly laughed. Why had the remark seemed so funny? He thought he might be losing it.
They gave him time to recover. Someone shoved a leather stool in front of him and he was aware that Wilson had lifted his leg carefully and placed it on top. Dr. Cuddy came around from her desk and settled herself close to his uninjured side. “I almost hate to ask you this, Dr. House,” she began, “but tell me … what the hell are you doing here? You are supposed to be over at rehab.”
He looked across at her with a scowl. “Ever been in jail. Doctor? Ever spent the night in a drunk tank? Or get pinched for reckless driving?”
“No! Why? Have you?”
He nodded. “Yep. All of the above. It ain’t fun. You don’t get much fresh air. The food sucks. And you never get to see any of your friends. Unless you get paroled.”
“What has all this got to do with my question? Doctor?”
“Well,” he replied smugly, “today I am on parole. They asked me if I wanted to go anyplace special. I said ‘yeah … over to see my good pals Jimmy and Lisa.’”
From his place on the floor by the couch, James Wilson laughed softly. Lisa Cuddy said nothing; just looked at him in astonishment. “Oh really?”
“Yeah.” House grimaced a moment as the pain in his leg began to heat up again. He fumbled in the pocket of the sweat pants for a Vicodin. Palmed it. Took it dry. They looked at him, but did not comment.
Across the room there was movement at the door. Billy Travis walked in with one of Gregg’s crutches in each hand. “Somebody found these in the corridor,” he began, then saw his boss on the couch. “Gregg!” It was a bellow of delight and it was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Oh my God, you look like death warmed over! How are you? I didn’t know you were out of rehab.” He stifled himself and looked at the crutches in his hands. “These are yours, aren’t they, Boss? Are you all right?”
“Hello Billy,” House rasped. “It’s good to see you too, and if one more person asks me if I’m all right, I’m going to pound the piss out of ‘em!”
Travis came over to the couch and propped the crutches into it. “Oh yeah? You and what army?” He then sat down on Gregg’s other side, not too close to the injured leg. He reached across and placed a muscular arm across House’s shoulders. “God, man, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Hey! I talked to that asshole Crane a couple months ago. He said to tell you he still has that damned old ugly car. Asked me to see if you still wanted it. But who gives a damn about that, right? I ‘m not goin’ back over there again until the big jerk gets his shit together.”
Gregg smiled. He was so glad to see these people … even Cuddy who’d sat quietly through this whole exchange. Guy talk! She had nothing in it, couldn’t contribute, so didn’t. He was feeling better. Wilson, sitting on the floor in front of him, still massaged his foot with his doctor’s gentle touch. The sensation went up his leg and the nerves there interpreted the touch as medicinal. Some of the angry ones backed off a little.
Wilson drove him back to rehab that evening. Right up to the front door. Walked inside with him. Pulled a wheelchair out of the nearest corner and raised hell until he sat down in it. Carried his crutches and the abandoned sneaker back to his room, as well as pushing the wheelchair … and Gregg … ahead of him; walked into his room right behind it. Turned to him, and allowing no nonsense, placed his hands beneath Gregg’s arms and lifted him onto the bed.
“Now, you stubborn son-of-a-bitch, put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!”
There was no comment from the bed.
Wilson undressed him, checked his leg to be sure there was no further damage and noted with relief that the swelling had gone down again. He helped Gregg into a nightshirt, fluffed his pillows and covered him with a light blanket, then stood back and eyed his friend with a stare that dared him to make something of it.
Silence greeted him. “Nice to see you understand the logic of the situation.”
“Christ!” House finally growled, “You sound just like Spock!”
“Aye, Captain!”
“That’s Scotty!”
“Indeed!”
“That’s better.”
“Goodnight, Gregg.”
“Goodnight John-Boy!”
Wilson shook his head and rolled his eyes in the dark after he snapped the light off. He closed the door quietly when he left.
////////////////////////////////
Chapter 16
“Hot Shower”
Rehab: July 16, 1999”
There were grab bars and grab rings throughout the locker room, toilet stalls and shower area, for which he was eternally grateful, as any attempt to navigate this slippery place on forearm crutches would probably mean certain disaster. He was not the most graceful of individuals anymore. Never had been, actually, although those attributes which he had once judged to be about a seven on his private scale, had taken a nosedive in recent months and now hovered somewhere around minus-zero. Today he was stiff and sore to the point of bone grinding from the latest bout of physical therapy, and he needed to try to melt some of it out of his system with a shower that ran hard and hot as he could stand it. He sat down on the wooden bench and took his time getting the ever-present gray sweat suit off. He had taught himself to be patient with these maneuvers as they were still quite difficult; especially the putting on and taking off of the white socks and white sneakers. No matter how careful he was, and how many precautions he took, he still had to lean forward over his thigh to unlace, spread the sides and pull the shoe off his right foot, and it was quite impossible to keep his leg stretched out straight while doing this! The sock was even more of a challenge, and when it was finished he was often breathless. He was also determined. He could not condone other people removing his clothing, plus dressing him again, for the rest of his miserable fucking life!
Movement had gotten a little easier the past couple of weeks since he had been allowed to graduate back to the aluminum arm canes. They were lighter and more maneuverable than the heavier underarm crutches he had hated so. He still remembered the humiliation of collapsing off them in the main corridor of PPTH a month before, and having to be carried bodily into Cuddy’s office in the arms of his best friend. His face still turned fiery red when he thought about it. He hadn’t been back there since. Now he used the crutches to push himself carefully to his feet. When he’d first begun to use them on a daily basis, he’d felt a warning cramp in the old injury to his shoulder, and wondered if it would persist to the point of making them useless to him. But with further practice, the twinge had diminished and his arms had continued to strengthen. To look at them now, they had the stringy, sinewy appearance of an athlete’s, and he was beginning to take a certain amount of pride in that. Now, if he could only coax the same kind of muscle tone into the leg … *HAH! When pigs fly!* And this pig wasn’t about to fly anytime soon.
He made it to the entrance of the shower area in timely fashion and hung the crutches on hooks made specifically for them. The floor was wet. Although the area was empty now, he knew someone had been in here just before him, and he hopped carefully over to where he could comfortably grasp the first grab bar and move under the first showerhead. He rested a moment, hitching his bare right hip onto the bar and letting the angry leg dangle in the air. He was able to touch the toes of this foot to the floor now, without causing pain to cascade upward in nauseating waves, but he avoided it except when Haley and Nicole were around to admonish him to get on with it. At those times he had reveled in throwing their own words back in their faces, accompanied by a snarky grin that always made them roll their eyes. “A day at a time, girls. Remember? Gotta do this a day at a time. A minute at a time if I have to …” It never failed to shut them up.
He straightened, finally, and turned the shower on, giving the feed very little cold water into the mix. He moved under it and the water hit him full force, down his face, shoulders and body, pummeling his back with stinging tattoos of sensory joy. Turning slowly, he lifted both arms and positioned them against the wall of the shower, equalizing his weight on three sound limbs, allowing the lame one to absorb the brunt of the heat and shotgun massage. It felt so good on the back of the gimpy leg, and he relished the fact that it was almost taking the pain away for a few precious minutes. He sighed with the release of tension and let even his mind relax into the warm cocoon of it. *Oh God!*
Steam rose from the concrete floor and formed a misty halo around him. He did not notice.
The hallway door opened just a crack, far behind him, and a sandy head peered around the corner of the entry dogleg. “Gregg?”
House was in temporary heaven. He did not hear.
James Wilson had been visiting Gregg a bit more often recently, since his Mom was so busy with all the details of moving from the big old farmhouse to the confines of a big city apartment. She still managed to visit him at least once a week, keeping him informed of how the sale of the place was progressing, and news of when the closing might be. She had asked “Jimmy” to please urge her son to let her know if there was anything at the farm he wished to keep, other than the things in his room, the old station wagon, the piano and his sports equipment, which he would probably never be able to use again anyway. She had not been able to get a straight answer from him. Only grunts and shrugs, accompanied by rubbery face-making and looks of “who-the-fuck-cares”.
This night, Jim came straight to the rehab after work, not even stopping at home for a bite to eat or to change clothing. He was still in suit and tie when he walked down the corridor toward Room #212. He found the door ajar, the desk light on and the unmade bed in shreds with pillows strewn all over the place. The TV set was dark and blank, which was a miracle. Greg, of course, was not there.
Nicole Macoviak and Haley Robinson were finishing up their paperwork down by the attendant’s station at the hub of the second floor, and Jim walked over to them to inquire as to Gregg’s whereabouts.
“Hi, Dr. Wilson,” they both chorused. “Have you come to see Dr. House?”
“Yes I did,” he replied. “He’s not in his room. Would you have any idea …?”
Nicole, the taller one with dark hair, frowned. “Ah, poor baby. He had a nasty therapy session today. We had to try to get him to put some weight on his leg. It hurt him soooo bad!”
“Yeah,” Haley added. “And there was some scar tissue built back up in his knee, and we had to break that loose. He’s probably in some serious pain right now. Why don’t you check the showers? He may have gone there to try to loosen himself up again.”
James nodded, trying not to allow his concern to show. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll look there first.”
As he turned away, he could not help overhearing. “Ooooh … he is gorgeous!”
And the reply: “Yeah, but I heard he’s … married!!!”
He could feel his face getting redder. He quickened his pace. They were so damned …young!
The shower room was steamy when he cracked the door and stuck his head inside. Somewhere toward the back of the cavernous room a shower ran full tilt. He called out cautiously. “Gregg?”
There was no answer, but then he didn’t really expect there to be.
Wilson took a deep breath and stepped inside. Quietly he moved to a position where he could peer around the dogleg to scan the room without startling anyone who happened to be there. The running shower got louder and its enveloping cloud of steam nearly obscured the body of the man standing there on one leg, arms spread-eagled against the wall. My God, he was skinny! Except for the rapidly developing musculature of his arms from the necessity of walking with crutches, the rack of his ribs and the hollows of his ass cheeks attested sadly to the weight Gregg had lost over the months of his ordeal.
This was the first time Jim had ever seen his friend actually naked, and the sight of him was almost enough to break his heart.
Jim withdrew from his hiding place before Gregg could catch him lurking. He would be furious if he thought he was being stared at. Wilson backed away and went instead around the corner to walk over behind the lockers. He spied the discarded sweat suit and sneakers and sat down on the bench next to them to wait.
After a long time the shower water stopped and the echo in the room diminished. Another long interval passed before Wilson heard the clump of the crutches on the concrete floor. House came up behind him, raised a crutch and tapped him on the shoulder, unperturbed at finding his friend there. “You lost?” He inquired. “Or did Julie throw your ass out?”
Jim did not turn. House’s nudity was private. “Neither.” He said. “I bring a message from Garcia.”
There was a grunt of laughter. “Mom asked you to check up on me.”
“Um hum … so I’m checking. So sue me!”
“Sue you? Sorry, can’t afford it. I’m slightly out of work, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Gregg lowered himself gingerly onto the bench slightly to the right of Wilson. “She wants me to decide what I want to take off the farm, right?
“Uh huh. Care to give her a clue?” James turned far enough to look into his best friend’s haggard face. “Jesus Christ, House … you look like you’ve been run over by a Mack truck!”
“I FEEL like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck! So?”
“C’mon Gregg … I need to talk to you about this. Get dressed.”
“Can’t.”
“What?” By this time Wilson had turned all the way around to stare at the man warily.
“I said … I can’t. If you want to help me get dressed, fine. If not, then get up and go home. Julie needs you more than I do.”
Wilson blinked. Had he heard right? “Gregg?”
“What!?” The word was an expletive in itself. “Don’t fuck with me right now, Wilson. Just don’t … fuck with me. I’m in pain, I’m nauseated and I may pass out. If you’re not gonna help me, then please … just leave, willya?”
“I … I thought you were all right. You were in the shower a long time. Thought you were okay.”
“I was. I’m not now.” He slumped; would have toppled over if James hadn’t caught his shoulders.
Back in his room, in bed in a clean nightshirt, a cup of soup and a Vicodin in his belly, and his leg highly elevated, Gregg’s face had taken on a bit of color and he was relaxed to the point of melted butter. His crutches were propped against the wall by the bedside, and Jim Wilson, now down to shirtsleeves and no tie, sat in a chair across the room. “Feeling better?” he asked warily. “I’m beginning to feel like your ‘Mommy’!”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Therapy was a bitch today. It felt so damn good when it was over. I guess I was weaker than I knew … Mommy!”
“Yeah,” Wilson said, “I talked to the Bobbsey Twins, and they said you’d had a rough time.”
They sat and looked at each other awhile, their familiarity with one another requiring no conversation, just the pleasure of the company. Wilson sat with his arm propped on the arm of the chair, the side of his head resting on an open hand, waiting for Gregg to sleep before he took the liberty of leaving him for the night. He’d sneaked his friend out of the shower in a wheelchair; draped in a towel, dirty clothing in his lap. He’d lifted him into bed easily, astounded that he’d lost even more weight since the day he’d collapsed at the hospital and Jim had been forced to carry him into Cuddy’s office. He couldn’t afford to lose much more.
A low snicker from the man on the bed brought him back to the present. “Better keep your hand over your ear when you get out of that chair.”
“What? What are you talking about?” James came to attention and leaned forward.
“Uh oh … too late. Some of the peas are already falling out of there.”
Wilson frowned, then quickly smiled, glad for the diversion. “Smartass!” he said. “You are, always were, and will be forever … a smartass! You’re a burden on my soul; you know that, you jerk? You really are. ‘Take a step, drag House! Take another step, drag House!’ Burden on my soul, man …”
“Thank you. I love you too. Now go home. I’m okay. Tell Mom she can get rid of whatever she wants. All I want is the piano and the stuff that’s in my room. She can put it all in storage and I’ll get it out if I ever find the right apartment. She can give the old Buick to anyone who wants it. I sure can’t ever drive it again. Maybe I’ll keep Mother Goose. Wasn’t her fault I pushed her off the damn jack stand. But don’t tell Mom I said that. Okay?”
James smiled again, slowly. There was no reply to the last statement; at least none he could speak out loud about to his best friend. “I’m leaving. Will you be okay?”
“Sure. See ya soon?”
“Very soon!”
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Chapter 17
“I Hate Myself, I Hate My Life, and I Hate You”
Rehab: November 17, 1999 - Daytime
It was coming up on a year; an entire year out of his life. A year of grinding pain; a year of anger, despair, indignation, diminishing attitude, social alienation, self-hatred and overwhelming inconvenience. He had been prodded, pummeled, traumatized, humiliated, violated and thoroughly embarrassed. His attitude around people he didn’t know sank to the lowest level of his life. He could not have cared less. The only thing that still remained was his fierce pride, and he hung onto that the way a bulldog holds onto a bone. The sunny, wisecracking demeanor had disappeared like dust in the wind, finally, and what was left of Gregory House was a vastly changed human being from the one who had been so badly injured the year before.
Only his determination to learn to walk … or rather to even be able to walk … with just one cane and return to being as near normal as he could possibly get, drove him to his physical limits and beyond. There were three people left who could stand to be around him anymore, and sometimes even they despaired when his anger flared and he demanded to be left alone with his misery and continuing pain. His Vicodin intake increased exponentially, as did his surly and sullen state of mind. After awhile even Billy Travis, staunch supporter and true friend, gave up on the one man he had always loved and respected as a mentor, and began to pull away.
Billy had sought out James Wilson, finally, and told him that if Gregg ever needed anything, to give him a call and he would do anything in his power to give it, but he was sad and heartsick to see the shadow of the man Gregg used to be. He told James that he was beginning to understand the coward part of Vince Crane who had perhaps seen this coming and had bailed out early. After that, Billy Travis put in fewer hours at the hospital. Eventually he found himself a nice girl, a happier life, and was thinking about getting married. Wilson understood, but was saddened by the withdrawal of the second member of their former close-knit group. He did not try to talk Billy out of it. He’d been honest enough to confess the truth of his feelings and not just walked away without a word as Vince had. The two men shook hands and left it at that.
That had been in September, and this was November.
At the rehab, Gregg still labored beneath the stress of further physical therapy. His leg would never be right; never recover any further than it had up to that point. He abused it, forced it, overextended it until the pain he caused himself melted him again and again into a trembling puddle in the middle of his bed. Relentlessly he prowled the corridors day and night. His body was lean and muscular and he was beginning to resemble an athlete; the distance runner of his youth, the LaCrosse player, the leader of the happy group of touch-football heroes. When he sat in his room, in his chair at the rehab, and the arm canes were hidden beneath the edge of the bed and the crippled leg hitched up on the stool in front of him, it was impossible to tell anything was wrong. Visitors and other passersby would look in at him and wonder what in the world this man was doing there, at a rehab, occupying a patient’s room. Later, however, when they saw him hobbling about on the crutches, they would understand. He became very good at obscuring the obvious.
Just before Thanksgiving he became determined to put the crutches away for good, and announced to Haley and Nicole that their work with him was completed. He needed to get out of there, find himself another place to live, and try to get on with his life. The girls were alarmed at first, half afraid that if his reckless disregard for the weakness in his leg were allowed to continue, he would be right back there, in worse shape than ever. But he told them no. He had fooled around and tested himself in every manner he could think of while he was still here, and if he’d got himself in trouble, someone was always around to help. He would not be stupid enough to punish himself like that when he was living on his own.
They understood. They had misgivings, but they understood. Nicole went to the supply room and brought back a plain wooden cane, matched to his height and weight. “Let’s try it,” she suggested, handing it over.
“Take it with your left hand, Gregg,” Haley told him. “We’ve talked about this before. You use the cane on the opposite side from the injury because you need to be stabilized. You haven’t put this much weight on your foot before, and it’s going to hurt. You must take it very slowly. Very cautiously. Your leg will probably try to buckle on you the first few times you try it.”
He looked from one of them to the other, anxious to get on with it. Leaving the arm canes leaning across the bench, he grasped the cane with his left hand and began to push himself up. One of them stood on each side of him to aid with balance. He felt suddenly vulnerable and the leg began to shake. He had to do it now!
The disaster came not from his leg, but from his shoulder. The sharpness of the jab deep inside at the location of the old shoulder injury struck him with a vengeance. It had been all right most of the time when his weight had been equally distributed on the arm canes. But taking his full weight was something it could not tolerate. His arm buckled and went numb. The cane flew from his hand and he went down on his left side like a ton of bricks.
“OW! Goddamn it, ow!” He found himself suddenly on his side with no strength in his arm and no way to pick himself off the floor.
Both girls’ jaws dropped open. “Gregg!” An alarmed squeal in feminine duet. “Oh God, Gregg … what happened?” Haley was the first to ask.
He was dishrag strength. Again. Yet. It would have been funny if they weren’t all so frightened and surprised. And if it hadn’t hurt like a son-of-a-bitch!
They rocked him on his butt until he was sitting upright. He scrunched his face and rode it out. His leg banged away in rhythm with his heart. And so, also, did his shoulder. He guessed it was time to tell them he would not be using the cane on the correct side. But what difference did it make, really? He was not an orthopedist or a physical therapist. What the hell did he know?
Using the cane on the right side presented an immediate problem. His leg was not strong enough to even begin to cooperate with the indignities it would have to endure with his screwed-up center of gravity. He was forced to return to the arm canes, and the disappointment, just one more in a long line of them, did nothing at all for what was left of his disposition. Surly and incommunicative, he locked himself in his room for the next two days.
Nicole put in a call to James Wilson at Princeton-Plainsboro and related their tale of woe. James showed up at the rehab the following evening. “What in hell is going on around here?” He wanted to know.
The girls told him everything that had transpired during the last forty-eight hours, and Jim’s confusion mounted. “You’re telling me something’s wrong with his shoulder?? What in hell is that about? He never said anything to me, and I’m certain there’s nothing in his medical records. By now I’m very damned familiar with them!”
The girls shrugged. “We can’t help you, Dr. Wilson. He just told us it was something that happened when he was in college. We checked with our boss, and she looked up his records on the computer and couldn’t find anything. Only trouble is, he won’t come out of his room, and he won’t talk to anyone. He had to go back to the arm canes and he hates it.”
Wilson shook his head. If it wasn’t one goddamned thing with this guy, it was half a dozen others! Not coming out of his room, huh? Well guess what! It was ass-kicking time and he was exactly the right guy to do it. Grimly, Wilson turned on his heel and made a beeline for Room #212.
To his utter surprise, the door to Gregg’s room was standing open. The TV was on low. The object of his search was in his chair; leg hitched up on the stool, leaning back wearily, his face a blank slate. He straightened as Wilson paused in the doorway with his brown eyes shooting sparks. “Ahhh Jimmy! You are so-o-o-o fuckin’ sexy when you’re angry!” Came the snarky comment.
“House!!” Wilson found himself shouting and instantly regretted it. He toned it down a few thousand decibels. “ The Twins said you’d locked yourself in your room.”
His friend snorted derisively. “Yeah, well … look out my window, Jimmy! That’s the parking lot out there, see? And see that fancy blue thing sitting there in the middle? Guess what! That’s your car. I watched it pull in. I watched it stop. I watched you get out of it and walk over to the front door. I gave you …” he glanced down at the big watch on his wrist. “… Ten minutes before you tried to break my door down … and since I know you don’t like to get those pretty hands dirty, I thought I’d better open it. No more splinters …” his voice turned hard. “Like the last time! I don’t want to be rescued again! Your efforts didn’t really turn out too well nine months ago.”
James blanched. “My God, Gregg. What an asinine thing to say! What in hell’s going on with you? And while I’m at it, what’s wrong with your shoulder? The Twins told me it caved on you when you tried to use the cane. What do you know that I don’t? And how long have you been holding out on me?”
The curly head turned to the window again. “Doesn’t matter much, does it? Messed up rotator cuff. Happened while I was in college. You were still in grammar school. I never reported it because I didn’t want to get pulled from the team. End of story. Period, paragraph.”
Wilson sighed. He could not stay mad. Gregg had suffered enough. He moved into the room and perched on the edge of the bed. House looked over at him expectantly. “What?”
“Are you all right? Do you need to be checked out?”
There was a snicker. “Sorry, friend, but you’d be about twenty-five years too late. I’ll just learn to use the cane in my right hand. No problem.”
“It’ll throw you off balance … make your lameness worse.”
“Can’t get much worse than it is now, can it?”
“Gregg, listen to yourself! Does this mean you’re giving up? Going to spend the rest of your freaking life on crutches? Funny, I never thought of you as a quitter.”
The look he got in return was murderous. Good! Keep him pissed off. Gregg had always done great things when he was pissed off. The more pissed off, the greater the things.
“Fuck you!”
James got to his feet. It was time to let him do some thinking. “I’ll see you Saturday morning. I’ll bring you a better cane than that thing …” indicating the rough looking implement angled into the corner across the room. “… And we’ll have our first lesson in ‘improper’ cane use.”
“Okay. G’nite. Go home and have a beer. Have one for me too, while you’re at it!”
“Good night Gregg. Have a care …”
James was well aware of the blue eyes boring deeply into his back, and so he slowed his pace on purpose all the way to his car.
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Chapter 18
“A Hitch in the Gitalong”
Rehab: December 11, 1999 – a.m.
He’d ordered four “men’s size-medium” short-sleeve sweatshirts on line from Target. He would love to have had more of them, but they were the only ones left in his size, and left over from last year to boot. There were two gray and two navy blue. He wished he’d been able to choose from a better selection of colors, but, as had been the case too often recently, beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was always warm in this facility and these were more comfortable than the long-sleeve variety. He chose the blue from among them; something different, and laid them out on his bed.
Gregory House stood beneath the needle spray of the shower for a half hour, enjoying the heat, which melted into his bones, and as usual stood spread eagled with the lame foot a few inches off the floor. After all this time, he was learning to manage his disability to a better extent than before, and he thought he might even be able to switch from the nasty arm canes to the regular cane again very soon. He had come to the locker room on the crutches, of course. It was still too far for him to attempt with just the cane, and that one clunking along on the wrong side of his body as well. He had been using it a lot for shorter distances lately, but the lameness and pain often made him look absurdly incongruous. His right shoulder had strengthened to the point that the difference in balance didn’t bother him much anymore, but in passing by the large glass windows of the rehab’s dayroom, he could not help noticing his reflection showed that his gait tended to lurch too much to the right and his head jerked slightly in that direction also as he automatically minumized the weight he was forced to place on the damaged leg. At those times he was reminded of the remark Wilson had made to him one time in passing: “Grace With Ripples, Bro!” It took him awhile to realize James had meant it as a compliment.
He did not hurry, but took his time as the Bobbsey Twins had taught him, and so his dalliance in the shower room lengthened to an hour, then an hour and a half. Later he took a clean bathrobe from his locker and shouldered into it. It was soft against his skin and he reveled in the luxury. He knew the long days in the tortures of rehab would soon come to a close as his most recent medical evaluations showed that he had healed as much as it was possible to do so in his case, and his discharge was imminent. He would miss the people here, especially the Bobbsey Twins, even though he hid the fact very well, and was a little nervous about striking out on his own as a new tenant of his own apartment. It was time to sink or swim. He sat down on the wooden bench and slid his left foot into the slipper which he’d placed there, thinking to himself that in the very near future he’d be wrestling with two of them, not just the one.
Back in his room, Gregg lowered himself onto the bed and removed the bathrobe. Slowly he drew on underwear, then began with the socks. These were difficult since socks always seemed to require a pointing of the toes, and Gregg could not do that. Patiently he worked them upward and cursed loudly as beads of sweat and effort popped out on his forehead.
Jim Wilson rapped lightly on his door, as he was about to tackle the sneakers. The moppy sandy head peered around the doorframe as usual, and the rest of him followed until he was standing in front of the bed with his head tilted, feet planted firmly. Both hands were concealed behind his back, holding something that still managed to stick out above his left shoulder.
Gregg looked his friend up and down and pulled a wry face. “You look like a chicken on steroids standing like that,” he observed sarcastically.
Wilson wasn’t about to let that one go. “Yeah,” he agreed, “but I’m still ‘finger lickin’ good!”
House clamped his mouth shut, tilted his head back and turned his gaze to the other side of the room. *Whoa!*
Neither of them dared take it any further than that. “I found you something,” Wilson continued finally. “I’ll give it to you if you promise not to hit me with it.”
Both Gregg’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “Oh yeah? And why shouldn’t I hit you with it? With what?”
The cane was long and black and polished and expensive. The handle was encased in black cowhide and there was a silver band around the top where the leather met the wood. “Not the most anticipated gift you’ve ever received, I guess,” Wilson said, “but you’ve got to admit it’s practical. Probably easier to handle than that thing they gave you out of the supply room. Here. You check it out and I’ll give you a hand with your shoes.” Wilson did not wait for an answer, but knelt willingly to the floor in front of his friend’s legs. Gently he placed each foot into a white sneaker, then tied them both securely, making sure the right one’s laces were a bit loose. “If your foot begins to swell today, you … will … tell me. Right?”
“Yes, Mom. I … will … tell you!” House mimicked. He grew serious. “Thanks for doing the shoes. Shoes and socks are still the biggest damned pain in the ass I run into with getting dressed. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? I never gave it a second thought before. Now it’s nothing but a freakin’ sideshow! And thanks. I guess. For the cane. I think I’ll try it out today. Give it a test drive … break it in … put a few miles on it … you know …” He ran out of comical things to say; things which were not funny, but laced with pain and regret. Neither of them laughed.
“Gregg …”
“Aw, fuck! I know. The shitty nasty sarcastic crap gets all after awhile. You gotta look past it sometimes, I guess. ‘Cause sometimes I just don’t know what else to say. And if I stay serious all the damn time, I think I might bawl like a little kid. Jesus, Jimmy … all this crap really sucks sometimes. Big time!” Gregg’s voice caught in his throat and his gaze dropped to his lap. “Fuck me!! I’m sorry.”
James Wilson stood up and sat on the bed as close to his friend as propriety would allow. He looked across into the intense face and just regarded Gregory House with silent, unobtrusive support. He thought he might like to hold the man, enfold him tightly within his own solid embrace in the same manner with which he had done it so many months ago on the floor of the old barn. But this was a different kind of pain. This was the kind of pain where a man searches the bank account of his own inner strengths and comes up short, not knowing if he had made enough deposits in the accounts labeled: “honor”, “integrity”, “courage”, and all that other stuff you never thought about until you questioned your own motives and somehow found the most important things still lacking. It appeared that Gregg was beginning to do this now, and wasn’t sure what to do with the long-contained emotions, the uncertainty of his future and his own pre-conceived ideas of his own worth; his own value in the world.
Finally, with his mind in turmoil of not knowing how his actions would be received,
James Wilson turned and gathered his friend into his arms. He pressed the man’s weary head onto his shoulder and held it there, allowing his own strength to shore up the trembling body and absorb the sudden release of the wracking sobs, which Gregg had been containing for so long. “You’ve needed to do this for awhile, haven’t you?” He crooned. “A long time. So let it come out. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll do this for as long as it takes, and believe you me, it’s a relief to finally realize that my rotten-tempered friend still has a few scraps of humanity left in him. I suspected so, but I could never be sure. Verisimilitude, right?”
Against his shoulder a rift of ragged laughter broke through the quiet sobbing and fanned upward. House lifted his face to peer painfully at this most trusted of all people, and suddenly he recognized the other half of himself. “Pretty big word for a kid like you,” he grunted. “You started carrying a dictionary around with you while I wasn’t looking?”
Wilson smiled. This was the Gregg he loved. He released him from the embrace and they drew apart. “You might want to blow your nose, piglet. I think you got snot all over my shirt.”
House frowned, drawing his mobile face into something vaguely reminiscent of a Bertie Wooster-like knot. “If I got snot on your shirt it’s because you asked for it. I left my mark on you, see? You’re mine! Like a dog pissing on a fireplug, right? If the fireplug is in my yard, then it’s my fireplug! Right?”
The conversation ground to a halt, both men suddenly struck with the implications contained in their words; words, which they had never dreamed of ever saying to each other before, even in jest. They let it go then; mutually distanced from it by unspoken consent, and each a little rattled about where it might have gone if they’d allowed it to continue.
It was going on noon. They had planned to have lunch somewhere and then begin a search for the apartment Gregg knew he must procure before too much longer. He would also need furniture, cookware, groceries, a place to set the huge piano and a generosity of uncluttered space as an accommodation to his possible future use of canes, crutches, a wheelchair. That one had not gone over very well, but James had convinced him to take it into consideration, since his disability could go unstable at any time and necessitate back-and-forth changes in his modes of mobility and transportation. Bare floors were a must, with Berber a distant second. They’d been over it and over it.
An evening spent at dinner in Francie’s new apartment threw the conversation completely in “Jimmy’s” corner. Gregg’s mom agreed with the gentle oncologist in every respect, and Gregg soon found himself outvoted. No sharp corners. No throw rugs. No fancy built-ins to jab a hip or catch a cane or crutches upon. He hated the whole idea, but had to admit their reasoning was sound. That night had been two weeks ago.
“Well,” Gregg said at length, “shall we get this little show on the road? I’m hungry. Let’s go eat someplace where we can grab a beer. I haven’t had a beer in so long I forget what it tastes like.” He reached across the bed to grasp the new cane.
James placed a firm hand atop Gregg’s hand, staying his movement. “No!”
Gregg’s eyes shot a question upward. An eyebrow lifted and the familiar snark was back in a flash. “What!?”
“I said ‘no’! Not the cane. Not today. It’s either crutches, or I’ll make you ride the wheelchair. Take your choice, but no cane. It’s going to be hard enough for you all day with crutches. But the cane would make it impossible.” James shouldered into his jacket and handed Gregg his own from the back of the desk chair. “Just concede to the logic of the situation for once, willya?”
House sighed. Loudly. “Whatever you say, Mr. Spock.”
“Oh cut that out! Come on, get your ass in gear and let’s go. I’m hungry too. My belly thinks my throat’s been cut.”
“Oh har-de-har-har! You cut it out!” Leaning heavily on the crutches, Gregg followed his friend out the door.
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Chapter 19
“The Apartment”
Last Days of Rehab: December 11, 1999 – p.m.
The first place they looked at was a first-floor deluxe. Low ceilings, indirect lighting, a kitchen with built-in appliances, washer-dryer and folding station all in one. Island in the middle with bar stools, cook top and sink. In the rest of the place, including the two bedrooms and the huge living room, carpeting so deep they sank into it up to their ankles. There was plenty of space for the piano, and nothing dangerous to Gregg’s crucial safety factors except the carpet. It would only take once to hook an unsuspecting toe in its deep pile to send him careening into who-knew-what kind of damage.
“Sorry,” Wilson told the landlord, concierge or whatever he was who had accompanied them, “he can’t live here.”
“And just why not?” The man wanted to know. “These are some of the finest accommodations in this city.”
“I know,” James replied politely. “But not for this man.” Behind him, Gregg leaned against the wall just inside the front door, holding back a smirk and a smartass comment.
Did James have to spell it out for this jerk?
The man stole a glance at Gregg’s crutches and bent leg. “I see what you mean,” he finally conceded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more help to you gentlemen.”
The second place was even worse. Plush carpeting and a sunken living room barely large enough to accommodate a couch, let alone a grand piano the size of Gregg’s. Not only that, but it had three steps up into the kitchen and three steps up into the single bedroom. “Oh brother!” Wilson exclaimed when they were first let inside. It had the smell of strong disinfectant and House wrinkled his nose disdainfully right in the landlord’s face.
“They had dogs here,” the man explained.
After which Gregg made another face. “Really? I would have thought camels!”
They did not stay long. As they left, they heard the man mutter: “I hope he falls down and breaks the other goddamned leg!” They did not even wait until they were out of earshot before they burst out laughing.
By the time they got to the third place, Gregg was once again in pain. He took a Vicodin while they were still in the car, and leaned his head backward into the top of the seat. James slowed their speed and took a few quick glances at his friend’s face. Gregg’s mouth was set in a straight line, his expression strained. By the time they pulled up in front of the third apartment complex, he was moaning. “Should have let you bring the fucking wheelchair!” He rasped.
James reached across to touch Gregg’s shoulder. “Do you want to go home? We can do this another time.”
“No. I’m just being a coward. Give me a little while for the meds to kick in. Then I think I can make it.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Wilson indicated the back of the car with a motion of his head. “Because I put one of the chairs from ‘ol’ Warm ‘n’ Fuzzy’ in the trunk before I left this morning.”
House closed his eyes and snorted softly through his nose. “Someone needs to pin a medal on this man’s chest,” he muttered mostly to himself.
A half hour later James pulled the portable wheelchair from the Avalon’s trunk and set it up beside Gregg’s door. All he had to do was slide over into it. After he had done so, James raised the right footrest a tad. From their vantage point across the street, they looked at the building they were going over to check out. It was imposing; all white concrete and stainless steel. The sign out front read: “Plainsboro Housing Authority. Gateway Complex, East side.” The street number was 341. There were a series of steps up to what looked like an office or Information Station. Tucked behind the steps, however was a long gradual wheelchair ramp that led to the same accommodations, and further down from that was a smooth walkway that looked like it led to a long series of individual apartments. Gregg House craned his neck to look around. James could tell he was already interested. They made their way to the office and were pleasantly surprised that the door was on an electric eye and parted smoothly to allow the wheelchair egress.
There was a low-set counter near the middle of the sunny open room, behind which several people seated at computer stations, clacked away on their keyboards. In the middle, a young woman in a beige pantsuit rose slowly from her seat to greet them, and both men were a little taken aback by the fact that she also used two arm canes. She grinned as they approached. “Hi. I’m Susan. How can I help you?”
“I’m soft of … uh … looking for an apartment,” Gregg stuttered, still in a state of shock that she seemed to be in the same boat as he.
“Well, you’re in the right place, I guess. Are you the one who’ll be doing the renting? Or both of you?” She seemed unimpressed that the two of them might be a couple.
Greg’s eyes widened at what he suspected she was thinking. “Uh … me. I guess. For now.” *Why in hell,* he wondered, *am I stammering?*
She smiled at his hesitation, then slowly allowed the smile to build into a low, melodious laugh. “Come with me, guys. We have three units available at the moment. Two regular, and one handicapped. Which would you like to see first?”
Gregg bristled at the word “handicapped”. *Fuck!* “Can we see what the regular one looks like first?”
“Sure.” She maneuvered past the wheelchair and started off briskly down the hall ahead of them.
Both men watched her movements with clinical interest. And more. Susan’s problem seemed to be more about her motor coordination than anything else. She did not move the arm canes in tandem, but rather one at a time as she brought each leg forward. Her legs seemed to have minds of their own and did not always function in a rhythmic pattern. The erratic motion of her gait caused her pretty butt to wiggle enticingly as she fell into her own loosely connected stride, and both doctors came to the same conclusion through separate paths of logical diagnosis. Spinal cord injury.
Susan stopped in front of the first apartment. This was one of the ones meant for use of those without specific physical needs. She opened the door into a large, well-lit airy space with plenty of room and almost no interior accommodations. It was a blank slate, ready and willing to be turned into anything its tenant chose for it. It also had deep wall-to-wall beige carpeting. James did not take the wheelchair inside. “Well,” he said, “we can scratch that one.”
Susan grinned. “I would have bet on that,” she said softly, looking into Gregg’s eyes and wincing slightly. “You’re pretty sore right now, aren’t you?”
Gregg frowned, and behind him, James frowned also. How had she known? Was the pain in Gregg’s face that obvious?
“Yeah,” he finally answered. “Mostly. How did you know? Is there a sign on my forehead?” The question was full of snark, meant to warn her away.
Susan didn’t seem to notice. “I can tell,” she answered softly. “I’ve had a lot of time to practice, and I can usually just … tell.” She eyed his position in the wheelchair with a steely stare. “It’s in your leg, isn’t it? And it’s permanent.”
He glared. James wished there was a way to warn him away from what he was thinking. But there wasn’t. He steeled himself for what he was sure was coming.
“Yes. And yes.” House’s answer was unusually calm. Unusually accommodating. Maybe it was because he was speaking to a kindred spirit. “The pain never leaves,” he was saying. “Eases sometimes, but never goes away completely.”
“You taking anything for it?”
“Vicodin. Four a day.”
“Ouch! They’re nasty. Do you still want to see the other apartment?” She’d changed the subject without missing a beat.
“Sure.” This was from James. He knew Gregg soon needed to get out of there. Susan was delightful, and a welcome diversion, but she couldn’t contain Gregg’s pain for much longer.
Susan turned and led them in the opposite direction, turned down another walkway and they came out further down the complex to where a single apartment door faced an entirely different street. “This is Apartment Eight,” she said. “Kind of isolated, but the lady who lived here really appreciated her privacy. It was built to her specifications about five years ago. She died in September and we decided not to rent it to just anybody. Would you like to come in and see if you like it?”
Intrigued, they agreed.
Susan unlocked the door, flicked the lights and stepped back. The front room was cavernous. Indirect lighting was set into the fairly low ceiling. Large windows with slate-blue-gray drapes pulled closed, lent an old-world charm. Beautiful mahogany bookshelves lined one entire wall and wrapped around to occupy half of another one. The floors were medium hardwood of some kind, unmarred and meticulously maintained. They entered silently, looking around and appreciating the ambiance. There were two large bedrooms, one a subdued gray-green, the other a dark, unidentifiable earth tone with tan woodwork. Nothing to hook a crutch on or snag the hub of a wheelchair. The bath had separate tub and shower stalls. Easy access to everything. The tile floor was done with a rough surface. No slipping when it got wet. The kitchen was a graduation of countertops. If you were in a chair, you could use the lowest ones. If you were on crutches, you could work from the ones a little higher. There was even a stool on wheels for added mobility. There were no handles, nooks, crannies, electrical outlets or light panels, which couldn’t be accessed by someone with little or no motor control. And yet it did not look like a “handicap” apartment. James watched Gregg’s eyes poking into every corner and liking what he saw.
“Niiice!” House said. “Susan, you said you weren’t going to rent this to ‘just anybody’. So why are you showing it to me? Us?”
“Because I like you,” she said simply. “I liked you both from the moment I saw you come in. Is that a good thing?”
“It’s a good thing. So. Where do we go to sign up?”
She grinned again. Wider, if that was possible. “Back at the office. Shall we go?”
Once again behind her desk, Susan extended an application across the counter. Greg took it and began filling it out. James waited patiently nearby, entertaining himself with the perusal of a display of vacation and travel brochures on the opposite wall.
When Gregg finally finished writing down his life story and handed the application back, Susan read his name and her jaw dropped. “Gregory House?” She said in a voice laced with awe. “DOCTOR Gregory House? From PPTH?”
He looked up at her owlishly. His leg was beginning to grind with pain long overdue for rest. “Have I just committed a felony or something?”
“Oh God!” She said. “You’re the doctor who saved my life three years ago!”
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Chapter 20
“Reconciliation”
February 26, 2000
They knew he was coming, and they were prepared.
They hung around the garage all morning, pulling open the large cardboard box, removing the chromed pipes and rubber handle grips. They poured over the instructions and lined up all the washers, screws, bolts and nuts according to size and location in the finished construction of it. They had to get it right, although neither of them had ever installed one of these strange contraptions before. Fortunately it was easier than it looked, and it installed easily and completely, and didn’t look all that bad when it was completely attached. Any casual observer who walked by the car and happened to glance inside could not readily tell that its driver was using hand controls. The gas feed was located beside the steering wheel, and the brake handle was locked in right next to that with an easy-to-use bar control. The body shop’s auxiliary maintenance driver had taken the car out into the lot and washed off the accumulation of shop dust early that morning. They had then taken a bottle of saddle soap to the interior and shined up the leather until it sparkled.
When it was finished, Vince Crane himself opened the wide back doors to the showroom, removed a big Dodge Caravan and replaced it by driving inside with the magnificent Mother Goose. After that it didn’t take long for a small crowd of people to line up at the front window and press their noses to the glass. “What is that car?” “Get a load of those tail fins!” Oh my God, it’s a Boat!” “Boy, Betty, that sure is an oldie!” “Hey man … get a loada this! Cool Wheels!” The comments floated in through the open front door while Vince and Billy Travis watched and listened with glee.
Gregg House had been ready. He’d always known where the car was, and what had finally been done with it. It had taken him a long time to resolve himself to the fact, however, that an inanimate object such as an old automobile had had nothing to do with the fact that his life had taken a complete U-turn since the day he’d placed a thousand dollars in a farmer’s hand and had the thing towed home. It had been a long time, but he was ready to drive again. He had been depending on Wilson, and the three kids they’d allowed him to hire to help him out at the hospital, to chauffeur him about. He was much stronger now. His body was fit, his arms were like twisted steel (“twisted steel and sex appeal”, he’d bragged to James one evening, and the poor boy had been scandalized), and he knew he was ready to own a car. So House told Wilson he was going down to Crane’s Chrysler Motors next Saturday to pick up the DeSoto.
“You’re what???”
“You heard me.”
Early Saturday morning, Wilson called Billy Travis at home. “Gregg wants to pick up the car next week.”
Billy’s voice was a thunder of delight. “No shit! Ah God, Doc, that’s great. I talked to him about a week ago, and he seems to be doing fine with the crutches. He looks really good, but says he still has a lot of pain in his leg. Anyhow, it was good to see him back to work. He doin’ all right with that?”
Wilson chuckled slightly at the question. “Well, he’s working mostly in the clinic right now because it’s a minimum of moving around, and Cuddy insists. You know he hates it, and he’s hell-on-wheels about it, but he’s doing it. You’d never know it, but he’s damned glad to be back. The pain in his leg will never go away, Billy, and that worries me sometimes. I think he may be depending on the damn Vicodin too much, but I don’t see any other way for him to manage it. So I just watch him like a hawk and hope for the best.”
“I know you do, Doc,” Billy told him quietly. “You always did.”
Wilson frowned into the phone. *What’s that supposed to mean?* “Do me a favor Billy, will you? Ask Vince to go ahead and install the hand controls on that old crate. I know he had them on order. I think it was you who told me that one time. There’s no way Gregg can possibly use the foot controls. His leg is beginning to go into contractrure a little at the knee and he’s losing some muscle tone. It’ll never be right, and I’d like him to be able to drive safely.”
“I’ll call Vince and tell him right away. And Doc … ?”
“Hmmm?”
“Give Gregg my best, willya?’
“I will, Billy. I always do. S’long.”
“Bye,” Billy replied and clicked the phone.
Now it was a week later, and Gregg House was due any minute.
He arrived just after 1:00 p.m. Wilson dropped him off at the door in his Toyota Avalon, then drove away. This was Gregg’s show. He worried about his friend’s first turn at the wheel with the unfamiliar equipment, but this was none of his business and he knew
Gregg would probably call him later to let him know how it had gone.
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Some people were simply not meant to have to use crutches to be able to walk. Some of them were their own worst enemies when it came to the manipulation of these aids, and gave the appearance of toy robots, listing and wobbling, dipping and clunking and forever threatening to topple beneath the sheer weight of their own innate clumsiness. Others, however seemed to possess the fluid movements of well lubricated machinery, their bodies attuned to the differences in balance and handling the inconvenience of movement with a combination of fluid confidence and a grace more often observed in professional dancers. Gregory House was, fortunately, a man of the second extreme. He moved like a person who’d been born with three legs and had lived that way all his life. Outward appearances gave no indication of his personal struggles to smooth out painful and jerky movements. He had learned to hide frequent leg spasms with relaxed motion, which disguised them, and combed the pain from his face with bland expressions and icy determination.
Gregg was keeping all this in mind as he maneuvered his way toward the open door of the big Chrysler Motors showroom. He was tired and sore and the day was not yet half over. Wilson had questioned him about the wisdom of using the arm canes, since he’d been having another bout of problems with his foot swelling, and not being able to wear a shoe. He’d pooh-poohed his friend’s warning with a sarcastic sneer, telling him his biggest problem would probably be with getting the white sock dirty. After that, Wilson clammed up about it and left it alone.
He was watching himself very carefully as he stepped inside, also becoming keenly aware that two pairs of eyes, in turn, were watching his every movement. He eased across the threshold and turned right, then looked up.
The sight, which greeted Gregg’s gaze, was almost staggering, and he found himself leaning against the doorjamb in awe. Mother Goose was not just restored, she was powerfully beautiful in her coat of black lacquer and shining wide white wall tires, and for an object which had been born into existence the same year as he had, he thought she looked a hell of a lot better than he did. Gregg gathered himself and started to move toward his car, and at that moment an office door opened across the showroom space and Vince Crane and Billy Travis walked slowly to meet him.
It was an awkward moment, this first meeting of three dear friends who had become estranged due to personal conflict over a tragic accident. Gregg knew Billy was all right with his changed personal status, but neither one was certain of Vince’s thoughts on the subject, for he had never expressed them. Gregg stood still, resting his right foot atop the left sneaker, and allowed Vince to assess the situation to his own satisfaction. For a moment he felt like a piece of meat on display at a butcher shop. But when he looked up to get some idea of what Vince might be thinking, he discovered that the man’s eyes were brimming and there were tears on his cheeks. Vince had been suffering too. Their gazes locked and Gregg tried a smile. A small one. “How ya been, Vince?” he asked softly.
Vince’s answer was to open his arms wide, offering the first step at reconciliation, looking half afraid that he would harm the fragile body, which stood facing him with such vulnerability. “If I give you a hug, I won’t hurt you, will I, buddy?”
“No,” Gregg replied. “You won’t hurt me.”
The redhead moved in with a gentleness none of them had known he possessed, and they embraced warmly and at length. “I’m sorry, Gregg … so damn sorry … I just couldn’t take seeing you hurt so bad. I got no excuse, but that’s how it was.”
Behind them in the mouth of the hallway to the body shop, two of Vincent’s crew, bent on a different mission, halted at the sight of their boss and a man on crutches locked in an embrace they didn’t understand, until one of them poked the first one in the ribs. “Hey!
That’s the doctor! That’s Gregory House, the guy who owns that old DeSoto we restored. Looks like the poor bastard got a bum foot out of the mess when the car hit him.”
“Yeah, sure looks like it. Can’t even wear a shoe. The whole leg is skinnier than the other one. Damn if I’d want to keep that freakin’ car if I was him.”
“Well, that’s why you aint him, I guess. “Cause he’s here to pick it up. The boss an’ Billy put hand controls in it for him…”
“Jeez, you mean he can’t even press the gas pedal or put on the brake?”
“Guess not. Boss says he’s crippled for life.”
“Aw fuck! What a goddamn shame.”
“Yeah, aint it though!”
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Vince drove the DeSoto onto the rear parking lot and returned the Caravan to its former resting place. After that they sat in the office. Vince located an old stool somewhere, which allowed Gregg to elevate his foot, and the three of them sat and caught up on old times. When Gregg finally indicated it was time for him to go home, his face was grey with fatigue and it was impossible for the other two to miss it. He politely declined their efforts to persuade him that they drive him home and deliver the car to his parking space at his own apartment. “I’ve waited a long time to drive this car,” he assured them, “and the time is now!”
He understood the use of the hand controls from the time he moved behind the wheel. His lame leg stretched almost comfortably across the wide transmission hump, and the deep pile carpeting absorbed most of the shock from the street. This was one space where he had no trouble with carpeting.
Greg drove his handsome old car into the underground parking garage of the apartment complex, found the parking spaces for Number Eight, then rode the elevator up to his place. He undressed in the bedroom, then hobbled carefully into the bath and spent a half hour under the penetrating needle spray of the shower. By the time Wilson arrived later in the evening, he was stretched out on the couch with pile of pillows under his leg, a Scotch in his hand and the bottle of Vicodin on the end table.
Wilson’s only question was: “So how did it go?”
“It went fine,” Gregg replied. “Billy and Vince and I had a long talk and everything seems to be patched up.”
“Did you bring the car back?”
“Yeah. It’s downstairs.”
“You okay with the hand controls?”
“I’m fine with ‘em. It’s nice to have wheels again.”
The knock came at the front door while they were eating a sandwich and watching JEOPARDY.
Wilson ambled over to answer the knock and they were both surprised to see Susan Heintzleman standing there. “I was just downstairs staring at your gorgeous car, Gregg,” she said. “I brought a paper along for you to sign that gives us the license number, registration number, handicap sticker number and the other stuff we need for insurance purposes.”
James beckoned her inside and offered her a chair. He took the paper she dug from her pocket and handed it to Gregg. While he looked it over and signed it, Wilson poured Susan a glass of Scotch and they talked small talk.
They had looked up Susan’s medical records at PPTH when Gregg first moved in, and discovered that her spinal cord had been injured in a swimming accident. She had messed up a dive, hit the edge of the board with disasterous results and been paralyzed from the waist down for six months. Dr. House had not quite saved her life as she had at first thought, but he’d poked around studying her case until he’d figured out a way for her doctors to do a procedure by going in through her abdomen, placing her vital organs aside and mending the injury from the inside out. The surgery had become the subject of a classic JAMA article, and for awhile Gregg’s name had become a household word in medical circles.
For a time she had gushed at him with effusive gratitude for the miracle he had accomplished for her. It soon turned to puppy love and a mad crush. He finally had to put a stop to it by telling her he would never speak to her again if she didn’t cut it out. Slowly she’d backed off and the three of them became friends, talking into the wee hours, usually on Saturday nights when they were all lounging around with nothing to do. She would join them in beer-and-piano sessions (they discovered she had a nice singing voice and knew many of the same songs they did.) She had an eclectic appreciation for certain kinds of jazz music and liked most of the same TV shows they watched.
Tonight they debated the merits of NFL, NASCAR and the extravagant prices of new household furnishings, and things turned a little beery. Toward the end of the evening Gregg began to get restless and showed signs of serious pain. Susan knew it was time to leave. She folded the vehicle paper and shoved it in her pocket, picked up her crutches and got ready to bid her newest friends good night.
At the door, she turned and looked at them both with a puzzled frown. “So why the hell don’t you guys just move in together? You’ve been pussyfooting around each other ever since I first met you, and it’s obvious you can’t live without one another. Even a blind man could see it, and it took me about five minutes to put it together.”
They stared at her in astonishment. “But … we don’t …” It was lame.
She tossed her auburn curls and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “The hell you don’t! Were you going to tell me you don’t swing that way? Well guess what, guys … I bet everyone who knows you thinks the same way I do. Bet me!”
Shortly after that she smiled at them both with a wide grin and winked so hard they could hear the clank of her eyelids slamming together. She undulated to the door, turned and backed slowly out of it, waggling her fingers in a silent good night. If Francie had been there, she might have stood up and cheered.
The silence, which remained behind filled Gregg’s comfortable apartment like a two-hundred-piece symphony orchestra.
“Oh shit!”
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Chapter 21
“The Pause That Doesn’t Refresh Much”
May 29, 2005 – Sunday
When he finally awoke Sunday morning, sunshine was streaming in his bedroom window and he felt relaxed and fuzzy. Events of the past four or five weeks did not warrant any conscious thought he might once have cared to give them. They were lost in a fog of intense misery and best left far behind if possible. His thigh was a whirlpool of dull ache at the moment, almost bliss compared to the state it had been in the past few months. His mind was mucked up royally and it was difficult to gather any coherent thoughts into any kind of together-lump. Whatever! He rolled onto his left side, dragging the right leg overtop the left and tested the waters by attempting to bend the knee and draw his leg upward. His body’s hinges were rusty to the point that he could almost hear them screeching their resistance, but everything was functioning. He could feel the bottom sheet of his bed rubbing across the skin of his foot, ankle, calf. The feeling was returning and he was delighted. He could have argued that now he was experiencing the beginnings of a little too much feeling on the wrong side of comfort, but he believed also that he preferred this total body-anger sensation to the emptiness of nothing at all below his ass cheeks. He was so tired! His brain hurt and his mouth felt thick with something or other he could not identify. He didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, even what year it was. Guess what! He didn’t give a shit if the world came to an end and everybody on it got blown all the way across to the next galaxy. He would welcome a change of scenery! If he was lucky, maybe there would be no people out there to bother the hell out of him. None at all! Humanity was overrated anyhow. He felt as though his brain were melting. But so what!? No brain, no pain! Ha ha.
Groggily he pushed himself to an upright position, then propped his body erect with both arms until the room stopped swimming. Inside his head a picture kept forming of a dog with a dozen itches, not knowing which one to scratch first and therefore scratching none. Not a very good mind picture, but then again, not a very good mind. The meltdown was proceeding at an alarming rate. He noticed his legs were tangled around one another near the edge of the mattress, so he risked going on his ass on the floor to grab the left one with his left hand and shove it over the edge. He almost followed the action with his face, but managed to yank his shoulders backward at the last possible second before disaster hit, or before he hit disaster. Whatever! The wounded leg now lay at an odd angle, jutting away from his hip and bending backward at the knee. That would not do, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so he stared at it instead. When his pain mounted to the point that he couldn’t withstand it any longer, he swooped across with his right hand and shoved it off the edge of the bed on the same trajectory as the left one. His hip joint grated around in its socket. The right anklebone hit the left anklebone and pain went through the roof. It took his breath away for a few seconds, and his reaction was delayed. When he recovered the strength to yell, he did so.
“Oh God!! Ow-ow-ow!!!”
From somewhere beyond his ken came the sudden clank of metal on metal, the splash of water and a muffled curse. Footfalls pounded across the hardwood floor and James Wilson appeared altogether and all at once in the open doorway of the bedroom.
“Gregg? OhmiGod, are you all right? What happened?”
The words were coming much too quickly for his senses to process all at once, and for awhile all he knew was the blinding flare of pain that exploded behind his vision. “…. Mmfflmmmmmmm … fuckin’ … hurtsss … !!!”
Wilson was beside him within a heartbeat, one hand on his back, the other pressing the tip of his shoulder to keep him from nose-diving off the edge of the bed, wiping up the floor with a broken nose and bloody forehead.
“Oh House … you’re not supposed to be awake yet. Not for a couple more hours. I’m in the kitchen and you’re in here trying to kill yourself by swan diving off the bed. Christ! I can’t trust you to take a pill, take a piss or take a nap. What am I going to do with you?”
House drew back and aimed a look in the direction of his friend’s left ear with squinty eyes and a glassy stare. “Wha … time is it … ?”
“You wouldn’t know if I told you.” Wilson continued to prop Gregg upright. His skin was dry and cool, no sign of the infection left, thank God. The stuff they’d been pumping into him for the past forty-eight hours was enough to grow an alien civilization in a Petri dish. But Gregg wouldn’t have known about that either. He’d been pretty much out of it for over two weeks. They’d had to reopen the surgical wound in his leg after they found the infection. A fresh patch of necrotic tissue had been the source of his inflammation; the culprit which had caused the flareup of his leg pain and the swelling in his foot. Again they’d had to debride the necrosis and redress the wound. Would he be able to rebound from this one? That question was still up in the air, but at least the infection had cleared and his fever was gone.
Wilson lifted his friend’s legs carefully and repositioned them on the bed. He reached for an extra pillow and piled it atop the one already there, then slid them both under Gregg’s right knee. He readjusted the covers and watched House go back to sleep. Wilson knew that was the best thing that could possibly happen. James sat for a few more minutes and listened to Gregg’s breathing fall into the regular rhythms of sleep. He cupped the side of Gregg’s face in his doctor’s caring hand for a moment, then gently released it. He rose from the mattress’ edge gingerly and went to rap on the bedroom door next to this one to wake Francie so she could keep an eye on her drunken kid until he could finish up in the kitchen. It was almost 7:00 a.m.
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Francie left the bathroom in robe and slippers and padded into her son’s room. She’d fallen asleep in utter exhaustion last night, even while Gregory was still raving deliriously under the influence of more drugs than she could possibly keep track of even as Jimmy read the medical names off the bottles and spread sheets. Now her son was stabilizing and Jimmy had told her just a little while ago that the infection was gone. Now he had to recuperate one more time and try to regain strength. She hoped the surgery and the ordeal before and afterward would not result in further damage to the crippled leg. Francie knew it was a lot to hope for. He could not afford to lose any further control if he were to continue with his profession, and Gregory’s profession, she knew, was his life, his love, his all-consuming passion.
That is …
Unless you included Jimmy Wilson into the equation. She had been so sure they loved each other. She had hoped so. They needed each other, and were so good for one another. Their actions said so, their gestures said so, and their eyes said so. Their mouths were the only things, which said “… no no no …”
She wanted to tell them they were … pardon the expression … “full of shit!”
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By the middle of June the essence of Gregory House was back. Full force! He had no strength in his leg. None. He used the crutches but little, and the fancy cane hung in his closet. But the intimidating command of his formidable brain and the powerful force of his very presence had not diminished in the least. His staff became energized with his return and they doubled their efforts to please him and increase their skills even more under his stern authority. For a few weeks they bustled around with smiles on their faces, and the general consensus among those who watched the transformation, became one of: “Daddy’s back!” Only thing was, those words had better not be spoken within a hundred yards of his hearing!
Gradually he came to terms with the fact that he had to conduct his reign from the seat of a fancy sports wheelchair, and continue to pop Vicodin when his pain escalated. He soon returned to his rumpled look; he of the tousled hair, scruffy shadow-beard and unironed shirts. One fancy sneaker he sported on his left foot, although the other still remained sock encased. The foot still tended to swell at night and ache in the morning. Wilson appropriated every right shoe in the apartment and locked them in the truck of the Avalon. “If you order more Goddamned shoes online, I’ll put them in the toxic waste burner in the basement!” No more shoes arrived at the hospital under Gregg’s name.
After consultations and clandestine discussions, Wilson, Cuddy and the Ducklings studied House’s X-rays, MRIs, CT images and other diagnostic reports accumulated during his lengthy bout with infection, and came to the conclusion that there still remained a few circulation problems in his lower leg. Rather than submit him to further trauma, they decided to watch him like hawks to see if the problem might clear on its own. He was already on blood thinners. It was a matter of waiting and seeing. They knew Gregg was well aware of the possibilities of never being able to walk again, and all its implications. For once he was entrusting them with his care, miraculously keeping his big mouth shut and allowing them to do their jobs. Or something like that. Of course he knew what they were up to! He wouldn’t be Gregory House if he didn’t!
After a few weeks, the “snark” came back as well, and the smiles on the Ducklings’ faces tended to freeze that way, especially after their boss discovered he had been nicknamed “Daddy” by his staff in particular and hospital personnel in general. He soon gave them all cause to regret it. Conversations withered and died when he rolled past, and people tended to turn their backs, disappear around corners and endeavor to look extremely busy when they saw him coming. As time went on, he did nothing to allow them to feel otherwise and sped past such small knots of people pumping the fancy quad-spoked wheels like crazy and careening around corners like some demented NASCAR driver bent on being first to “hit the wall!” When he chose to remove his jacket, which he did often for greater effect, those same people were amazed to find that his arms had begun to resemble iron pillars, and the person they had thought of as frail and fragile, was actually the possessor of an athlete’s body and a race horse’s endurance.
“Grace with ripples, Bro …”
At home, Gregg was tireless in his efforts to regain strength in his legs. The weak one was still next to useless, and he had to lift it everywhere with both hands. He did so in silent anger, but refused to give up the fight.
Wilson dogged his presence everywhere, and Gregg allowed it without even understanding why he allowed it. He just did. James had become more than just an extension of himself; he had somehow wiggled himself so deeply into his affections that it was difficult to imagine any aspect of his life in which Wilson was not there. He saved every fragment of a smile he could summon forth for those moments when Jim walked through the front door.
He was aware that his friend was going through a period of transition in his life. Julie had moved out and taken most of their possessions with her, and Jim was facing an extended drought of female company. He had moved into his own apartment and was gradually working on furnishing it with discards from friends and relatives. It couldn’t have been that important to him, however, since he continued to willingly spend almost all his free time with Gregg at Gregg’s place.
In the evenings, they shot the shit, drank beer or fine old Scotch, and munched on junk food. Sometimes Gregg would play the piano and the two of them would puff on cigars while Wilson sprawled on the couch like a sack of potatoes. Once in awhile they would play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit or listen to jazz on NPR, or watch some dumb-asshole movie on TV. Sometimes they would talk about work. Or T and A. Sometimes they would discuss, quite candidly, House’s leg. Such discussions were often cathartic and emotional and ended badly.
When Francie did not stay over with him in the spare bedroom, Jim did. Clothing belonging to each of them hung in the closet, and their individual toiletries sat in a scattered blend on the dresser. Francie called the two of them: “The Oddest Couple”, and nobody laughed because it fit so well.
They couldn’t possibly have known what she really thought. Or maybe they could. Maybe they just didn’t want to.
At least, not yet!
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Chapter 22
“Yeah? And What the Hell is ‘Normal’?”
2000 - 2001 and Forward
At first his caseload was very light. He struggled through what seemed like tons of paperwork, keeping his mouth shut against the anger and resentment, knowing all their eyes were on him, some solicitous and some not, but all of them testing him in one way or another. He struggled to prove himself and do as he was asked, knowing he might be on guard also if he were responsible for someone in his unique situation. So he sat at his computer and did the necessary scut work until his shoulders began to feel like growth from the Petrified Forest and his back screamed bloody murder. To say nothing of the leg. On those occasions when he had no choice but to leave his office for short periods of time, his difficult gait along the hallways elicited looks of pity, a few expressions of contempt and always one or two inquires about how he was feeling, how his leg was, and how come he was using his cane on the wrong side. At first he answered the questions politely with as little fanfare as possible, but after a few weeks they got harder and harder to take.
Gregg knew his movements were way south of clumsy and the pain in his leg made his limp more and more pronounced as each day progressed and he began to experience a whole new meaning to the word “tired”. Still, he held his tongue until he could escape back to his office and hold his thigh instead. Cuddy came by at least twice a day, sometimes more, with a myriad of unsubtle suggestions about building up strength in his leg, but always with an eye toward his condition and constantly gauging his ability to justify his insistence on returning to work. At least, he thought to himself, she was honest about her motives and didn’t hide behind vague excuses or cute little platitudes. When she thought he looked like death warmed over, she told him to go home. When she thought he could use a cup of coffee, she brought him one. And on the day he began to slack off on the mounds of paperwork she brought him to do, she demanded to know why. He told her in no uncertain terms that he had “… pulled his last shit detail, and since he still had that li’l ol’ M. D. after his name, it was about goddamned time he resumed the duties of a working physician! Amen!”
Cuddy had grinned, told him she thought he’d never ask, and scheduled him to clinic duty for the next four weeks. “Well good! It’s about time you take up your share of the slack! Do you have even the faintest idea how much clinic time you owe this hospital? But I want you to take it slow! Don’t push it to the point that we have to admit you for observation! I’ve seen to it that there is a wheeled stool in every examining room for you to use so you don’t have to exert undue pressure on your leg. But now that you’re back on my payroll, I want you to give me a damned good reason for continuing to pay you! Even then it’s probably a lot more than you’re worth!” She blew a kiss across her palm in the general direction of his astonished face, gave him a short deep-throated laugh, turned on her well-shod heel and disappeared out the door.
Gregg stared after her for a few seconds with his mouth wide open, then jabbed both fists into the air and yelled “YESSS!!” toward the ceiling at the tops of his lungs. After a moment he frowned slightly and looked around. “Niiice! I think I just sat here and cheered for clinic duty! Shit!”
He was given authorization to hire three young doctors fresh from their residencies to assist him with the leg work necessary to the duties of all diagnosticians. He pondered for weeks over the choices. These kids were all good! Finally, he chose the three he wanted: two guys and a really good-looking brunette girl. Things were looking up. He was finding other things at last to take his focus off the pain in his leg. Life didn’t get much better than this!
As time went on he settled into a routine almost as strenuous as the one he’d maintained before the accident. His attention focused on medicine more than pain, and as he got to know his three assistants a little better and began to work with them on a regular basis, it became obvious that Dr. Gregory House and his team was becoming a force to be reckoned with. Later, he drew his friend James Wilson into the fold and the five of them found that they were taking the hospital by storm
Mysterious cases began to filter toward Gregg’s department from all over the state, then from all over the country. His department took them all on. He and his staff looked up obscure medical cases and compared them with modern procedures the same way lawyers used old case files to set precedents in today’s courtrooms. Their methods were unorthodox, just like Gregory House himself, but devastatingly effective! Lives were saved, word spread like wildfire, and House’s reputation grew. So did his arrogance, sarcasm, pain and drug use.
Weekends, after such demanding work weeks, brought Gregory House more than his share of bleak and convoluted feelings of meltdown; empty periods in which his keyed up physical and mental activities literally closed down, leaving him breathless and in a vacuum. His world narrowed suddenly to the empty apartment and two long days of little or no emotional outlet. These were times when his pain seemed to intensify to the limits of his endurance, and he was at a loss as to how to combat it. Cuddy had forbidden him to come anywhere near the hospital on weekends, reminding him that of all people, he should be aware that in his own best interests, he needed the downtime desperately.
Those were the times he would just get into the DeSoto and drive. Anywhere. The car’s ease of operation and its cushioned ride mellowed him, lulled away the misery in his leg, and with the hand controls he did not have to move it off the warmth of the transmission hump. An equitable arrangement all around.
After awhile his excursions lent him a renewed sense of freedom which had been denied him for too long, and he looked forward to the peace he found as the miles sped by beneath his car’s big tires. He met a woman one weekend at an antique car show in Pennsylvania, but the encounter turned out badly when she drove her knee exuberantly into his thigh that Saturday night in their hotel room. His scream of agony drove her off in the middle of the night while he lay curled upon himself in a ball of misery on the edge of the bed. The next morning he could not walk and found himself stuck in Harrisburg with nothing but his fancy cane for support. He made a long distance call and reported off sick from work and spent the day holed up in the small rented room with nothing to eat or drink and only his miserable self for company.
That Monday night he finally made it home, pulled the DeSoto into the underground garage and hobbled painfully to the apartment. Tuesday at work found him listless, incommunicative and profoundly lame. Cuddy found out and sent him immediately to Wilson who had been clued in to look him over. He was running a low-grade temperature and his upper leg was hot to the touch.
“What the hell happened?” Wilson demanded.
“Kid ran into me with a goddamn bicycle!” House lied. “I couldn’t get out of his way in time. So give me a pill, pat me on the head and send me on my merry way!”
“Oh sure, dumbass … and in the meantime you end up in intensive care with the mother of all infections. I’m going to treat this here and now … and guess what, pal … you’re back on crutches for at least a week.”
House glared. “No freakin’ way! I’m finished with those things for the rest of my life! Don’t even suggest that to me!”
“Gregg! Listen to reason. If you don’t take care of this now, it’s going to take care of you later.” Wilson paused and reached up to touch the slumped shoulder. “Please, Gregg. I’m your friend, and when you hurt … I hurt.”
The tousled head came up, blue eyes large and questioning. He was seeing the “logic” of the situation. “Son of a bitch!” He finally said. “There for awhile I was beginning to feel almost normal!”
“Yeah … well …” Wilson had been across the room at the storage closet. He walked back to the examination table with a new pair of underarm crutches in his hands. “And what the hell is normal? What’s normal for you, you see, is waaay beyond normal for most of the rest of us. When the hell are you ever going to learn that?”
House reached out for the crutches tight lipped. Grasped the tops and bounced the bottom tips hard on the floor. “Oh God, how I used to love these things! I’m getting quite a collection. I think I’ll take ‘em home and hang ‘em on the wall!”
“Gregg!”
“What!?”
“This isn’t helping you.”
“The last thing in the world I need right now is to be ‘helped’!”
“Yeah, I know. But do it because I said so. Because I’m your friend. Because I’m your doctor! Go home and take two of these tablets every four hours.” Wilson removed a small bottle of pills from his lab coat pocket, reached across and tucked it into House’s jacket pocket. “Go home, lie down, elevate your leg and listen to what I’m telling you. We can knock this out in a week. If you don’t …” His voice trailed off, but the implication was obvious. “’Normal’ for you should return within a few days. Normal for me is when ‘normal for you’ comes back. Think about it! Go on now. I’ll bring you something from take-out tonight.”
Greg was on the couch in the apartment when Wilson’s statement came back to him. “What the hell was that supposed to mean? ‘Normal for me is when …’?”
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Chapter 23
“Grace With Ripples? Oh Really!?”
Summer and Fall 2005
During the summer, House and his staff handled a minimum of a dozen cases and their success rate came in at a dazzling ninety three per cent. The team was working together finally, like an efficient machine, which ran smoothly on all cylinders. Their arguments now were professional rather than personal, and their noses for research sniffed out methods of treatment which two years before had been only distant possibilities. The Ducklings, however, made the transitions, adaptations and diagnoses fit the problems rather than the other way around, and the unorthodox methods brought in a measure of success that PPTH had never known before. It all bade well for Cuddy’s all-important “bottom line” and she gave them free reign to continue with their innovative processes without interference.
Cuddy did, however, continue to monitor the progress of Gregg House, often making use of James Wilson’s advice from back in March: “Watch how he moves … or doesn’t move. Don’t let him see you’re watching. When he lays his head back, he’s in serious pain. Give him a break …” She had done that, discovering that everything Wilson told her was indeed true. House’s movements, or lack thereof, spoke volumes about his tolerance in handling even everyday situations, and when she saw the tousled head go back between his shoulder blades, she found a discreet way to send him home. At times he looked at her with suspicion as though wondering who was responsible for running to his boss tattling on him. At other times he would simply sigh and nod, and pack his papers into his briefcase and leave.
Once in awhile he would park the wheelchair when he was alone in his office and pace about on the arm canes. She knew he could place his foot flat on the floor now, but there was no way to tell how much weight he was actually placing on it. Sometimes she would observe him just for the sheer fun of it. He was in superb condition. His chest and shoulders were wide and well developed beneath his idiotic t-shirts, and his waist and hips narrow and trim. There was not an ounce of fat on him, and Cuddy appreciated that. Only the affected leg spoiled the illusion, but only on those occasions when he chose to wear blue jeans. In the grey sweat pants, it made no difference. And the personality he presented to the world was pure “Gregory House”, only more so.
After work in the evenings Cuddy had seen House’s big black Cadillac, or whatever it was, pick up Wilson and they would leave together. At other times Wilson would pick up House in a handsome old pickup truck, assist him into the cab and toss the sport chair in the bed, or if he drove his beautiful baby blue Toyota Avalon, Gregg would get in the passenger side and Wilson would fold the chair and place it in the trunk. And they would leave together. Either way, the operative words were: “leave together”. Cuddy was a woman who prided herself in tending to her own affairs, but the “Gregg House” project had grabbed her and intrigued her. She found she could not let it alone. She wondered if there might be more to their relationship than met the eye. When she thought about it further, an old scene came to mind: the night in the emergency room when Gregg House had first been admitted with what had turned out to be the muscle infarction which crippled him. James Wilson’s gentle touch to House’s cheek that night suggested that whatever it was between them had been going on for a long time. Cuddy had no idea, and vowed to not speculate further. Whatever it was, it was also not her affair!
*Knock it off, Lisa! Mind your own damn business! If they’re together on their own time, so be it. It might be the best thing in the world for Gregg House!*
////////////////////////
It was late in the afternoon. Clinic hours were over for the day, most of PPTH’s in-house procedures long concluded, patients were fed and bedded and waiting for evening visiting hours, and most of the administrative offices were empty. In Oncology on the fifth floor, James Wilson was hung up with a patient in crisis whose side he refused to leave. The elderly man would not make it through the night, and his small family had gathered at his side. James was with them, determined to offer what support he could. Dr. House was in Oncology also, since his transportation home depended on the availability of his friend. He parked his wheelchair in James’ office and sat looking at JAMA and some of the other nameless magazines lying around.
Wilson was in and out, micro-managing some of the other accumulations, which had gathered during the day. Mostly it was something to do to keep busy while Geoffery Kingman stretched out his last hours on Earth across the corridor. His sharp brown eyes took note of Gregg’s silent presence across from him and he walked over, a sheet of paper in one hand, and stooped beside the chair. “How are you doing?”
House nodded briefly. “I’m okay. Take your time. Or I should say, let Mr. Kingman take his! I have nowhere to go and all night to go there.”
Wilson stood up and started to move away. “I’ll be right back. I need to go down the hall and put this up on the bulletin board.” He indicated the paper in his hand.
At that moment the buzz of an alarm from across the hallway drew his attention, and they both heard the word “Doctor!”
Gregg put down his magazine and pulled the paper from Wilson’s fingers. “Go! I’ll take this over for you. The one by the mezzanine steps, right?”
“Yeah. Thanks!” Wilson whirled and was gone.
House rolled away from the commotion and turned left into the hallway. The paper in his lap was a two-week duty roster for the Oncology LPNs and RN’s on Wilson’s rotation. It needed to be up by tonight.
The top of the board was much too high for Gregg to reach from a sitting position, and there were no thumbtacks in sight. *Ah … shit!* He reached back with his empty hand for the right-hand brake, but did not take into consideration the strength in his arms. As he pushed the brake down, it scraped over the top of the tire and skidded past to the other side. He placed the paper between his teeth and pulled his arm canes from the back of the chair. Slowly he eased himself to his feet. He could now reach the tacks and the middle of the board and he hastily tacked the roster into place.
Gregg turned back to his sports chair just in time to see it rolling away out of his reach, heading for the top of the mezzanine steps.
Without even thinking, he lunged. The lightweight chair clattered down ahead of him and he knew he’d been too late. He felt himself going head-first down the four steps to the mezzanine floor. Something flamed white hot in his leg and he knew no more.
He awoke briefly on the stretcher with the dark face of Billy Travis bending over him. “I think I fucked up again,” he said. His head was already swimming from the painkillers.
“We’re going to have to lock you in a padded cell, Boss!” Billy said with a grin. “I’m pretty sure you broke it … again.”
Gregg grimaced. “Ah fuck!”
“You can say that again!” Billy growled.
“Ah double fuck!”
////////////////////////////
Chapter 24
“Never Buy an Old DeSoto!”
2005
“It’s not broken, Gregg!”
“Hmmmm?”
“I said it’s not broken. Your leg isn’t broken. You did mess up your ankle and your knee. And your face looks as though some two-hundred-pound line backer used your head for a goal post. But nothing’s broken, and you’ll be all right.”
He took the chance and opened his eyes. James was there beside him, on a stool drawn up to his bed as close as he could get it. His hand lay alongside Gregg’s face on the side that wasn’t purple, two fingers tangled in his hair. He looked around himself and stared in a moment of disbelief. He was in his own bed, in his own apartment, and there were no IV lines weighing down either of his arms. And they were alone. No Cuddy, no Ducklings, no Billy or Vince, and no Mom standing there with misty eyes.
His leg, of course, throbbed. Nothing new. But now the chorus was being joined by the ones in his knee and ankle. And the whole right side of his face was one huge aching bruise. A man couldn’t take a nosedive down four stair steps and expect to swim. So be it. He had experienced worse.
“Why am I here and not at the hospital? Did they finally see the ‘logic of the situation’ and throw me the-hell out?”
Wilson laughed softly. “No, Spock. That was me. You’re here on my orders. And here you’re staying. So am I. Francie moved out and I moved in.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me. If you intend to regain what you lost, you’ll have to start over from scratch … right at the beginning and this time there’s going to be no bullshit! We’re going to do it together. I’m on a three-month leave of absence starting today, and here is where I’ll be until you’re so sick of me you’ll be ready to brain me with a crutch!”
“What makes you think I’ll get sick of you?”
“Oh, you will. I’ll see to that.”
“Oh yeah? Like Billy Travis said to me one time: ‘You and what army?’” The drugs were weighing heavily. Gregg was drifting. His senses closed down softly and then he went back to sleep.
When he awoke, James was still there beside him. Same position, same stool. He had to have left at some time or other though, Gregg observed. He was wearing a different shirt and there was no necktie and no lab coat.
And so it began.
It took three weeks before Gregg House was able to resume normal activities. The bruise on his face went through an entire rainbow of colors before it resumed its normal shade, and before it didn’t hurt like hell to chew. His ankle went through the same transition of exotic colors, but in time, it too cleared up. The knee was a different story. Since it was in such close proximity to the infarction site, the rehabilitation there was a little slower and a little trickier. Wilson insisted that he soak in the whirlpool bath twice a day and even more often if the pain escalated. He was a tough taskmaster, and for another six weeks, allowed absolutely no weight bearing.
Then the exercises began. Bend, straighten; bend, straighten. His knee was tight; more scar tissue to be loosened, and it was painful. Gregg pounded his fists on the edge of the mattress and moaned, a sound of distress that rumbled out from deep in his throat. Wilson turned a deaf ear and kept it up. Bend, straighten; bend, straighten. Three times a day. Every day. Then elevation. Ice packs. Sometimes Gregg felt like cooked spaghetti. James never left his side. Days passed, sometimes in a blur, and the exercises continued. His pain rose to dizzying heights and came back down to manageable levels. For the first time in years his Vicodin dependency began to come down. At first James kept him on one pill every four hours, then began to stretch it. He was now managing on four of them in a twenty-four hour period. He began to wonder if he could do even better, but James would not allow him to come down any faster than that.
In the evenings they sat around the conversation pit, the area that contained the bookcases, the piano, the huge leather couch and Gregg’s plush leather recliner. All of this was flanked by the big plasma TV, the Sony stereo and the little desk where Gregg kept his laptop. When Wilson first took up residence there, the end tables, the piano bench, and many places on the floor had been piled high with books of all descriptions. In his fear that Gregg might take a header among them, James cleaned them up and replaced them in the big bookcase. Gregg bitched, but it did him no good. His friend simply read the riot act in a calm and gentle way and ordered him to keep the mess cleaned up. After that there was no mess.
One night Wilson picked up a random volume of Shakespeare and began reading from it.
Gregg, propped on the couch, picked up the TV Guide and threw it at him. “Will ya cut that out, for chrissake?! God, I hate Shakespeare!” In a sing-song voice he quoted: “Oh what light from beyond yon window breaks …’ ?! Have you ever heard such drivel in your life? Gah! Spare me! I’ll take Tennessee Williams!”
Across from him, James Wilson looked over and met the snappish blue-eyed stare. He put the book down and walked over there. Sat down on the edge of the couch and took both of Gregory House’s hands gently into his own. Incredibly bold for the very first time in his life, he leaned over and kissed the slender fingers. His nose was two inches from Gregg’s face. “I love you,” he said simply.
The blue eyes blinked, stared incredulously, blinked again. James was certain he’d blown it. In his compulsive decision to kiss a new love “hello”, had he just kissed an old friendship “goodbye”?
But then Gregg’s expression softened. The corners of his mouth turned upward into an incredible smile of complete wonderment. Beautiful! James held his breath.
“And I love you,” Gregg House whispered. “My whole life, I think.” The smile grew wider. The pain in his leg was the furthest thing from his mind.
They embraced. Clung together with the newness-oldness of the sensation; blown away by the truth, finally, which each had known from deep somewhere in the recesses of their minds … for years and years.
That night they slept together in Gregg’s big bed. Not rushing anything. James was always mindful of Gregg’s pain and willing to do anything he possibly could to help alleviate it. They didn’t sleep much, just lay close in mutual bewilderment and celebrated the new openness of the reality which had for so long lain masked and dormant between them.
In the full force of morning light they made plans to be together forever. How to tell Francie; how to let it slowly become known at work; how to tell Vince and Billy.
… And admit the truth to Susan, who had known of their love from the day she’d first met them.
“NEVER BUY AN OLD DeSOTO”