A/N: There's a tempo change in this part, with hyper-compressed moments, flashbacks, flash-forwards and an unreliable narrator running (limping) amok. But, as House himself says, "Time is not a fixed construct."
Many thanks to treacle_a for the beta. She like, rules, and stuff.
3
He'd died for a minute. Maybe two.
That was the easy part.
After all, death was death. Was death. Is death.
(heart staggering, stopping; brain sinking into a slush pile of failing neural receptors; ears clinging to vestigial fragments of sound)
It's when he wakes that everything is wrong.
"Hey."
For a brief, sluggish moment, he wonders if he's made an egregious error. There is an afterlife, after all, and he's now doomed to relive his days of the infarction for all of eternity with the Dean of Medicine on permanent rotation.
"Hell of a way to get out of clinic duty, House." Cuddy, attempts a smile, her jaw pulling into an uneasy rictus. It's tired and worn, beaten on the edges.
Something in his throat catches. He blames the endotracheal tube. Eyes slip shut again as he sinks back into the pillow.
Rising, waking, pain and screaming and screaming and more morphine, please more morphine, because it burns; it burns, and what the fuck happened-where's the rest of it-where did it go-and staples and stitches staring back, sunken, weeping and raw, and he remembers 'I'm sorry' and only thinks, 'she lied.'
She lied, she lied, she lied...
Cuddy's always the first to arrive, just as the light breaks. She tries to be quiet, checking his chart, his vitals, reading every single printout with painstaking care, but he always wakes anyway.
Chase comes in. Sits. Leaves.
Foreman comes in. Sits. Monologues. Leaves.
Wilson checks in twice a day. Lays out all the latest gossip. Ball scores. Anything and everything that's of even peripheral interest.
Cameron doesn't come by.
He's becoming acutely aware of the shifting, sore muscles in his face, of the two loose premolars in his jaw and the splint traversing his nose. He counts the requisite number of tubes stuck in his body, plus one sticking out near his left armpit. That one's new. Needles in his side and wrists inform him that there are more parts hurting now than before.
All of which means: more morphine. Click-click, clickety-click.
Aaah.
"Greg. Please. Say something."
The occasional guest appearance by Stacy involves rueful head-shaking, brushing his hair back, and fondly calling him an idiot.
He ignores her and pretends to be sleeping.
The E.T. and chest tubes finally come out, but it's another day before he can actually speak. Even then, the words blunder out sticky and slow.
"You look like crap." Cuddy's still doing that. The fake smile. It's weird. And annoying.
"Nice to know your bedside manner's gone the way of your blouses." Not up to usual par; he attributes it to the opiates. "At least make yourself useful and go find a cute nurse to come hold my hand."
"I would. Unfortunately, Dr. Cameron's in the clinic right now."
She leaves before he can find something to throw.
"So," Foreman asks, one afternoon. "What's the other guy look like?"
"Wasn't looking all that closely." He doesn't care for the way his voice sounds, obnoxiously nasal and muddled; his face itches from the splint. "I could probably describe his fist really well, though."
The neurologist can't help himself from smirking. And really, House doesn't blame him.
"Man, you sound like one of the Balboa brothers," Foreman notes. He also adds, unnecessarily, "The wimpy one."
There's not much room in his little corner of the hospital for more than his vital monitors, and he's more than okay with that.
On the nightstand sits a bouquet of flowers with a card he doesn't bother to read.
He's too old for this, he thinks. Too used to being by himself. Long stretches of company make him uncomfortable. Tired. Grumpy. Naked.
The sight of Chase standing, stammering, and fidgeting about doesn't help either.
"You're adorable," he coos. "Like a baby mouse with a lobotomy."
"Greg?" (liar) "Greg, honey. I had to." (liar) "This was the only way, don't you see?" (liar)
Liars go to the eighth circle of hell; traitors to the ninth. On the upside, it'll be a short commute.
"Why?"
Everybody asks. He entertains himself by coming up with a new one each time.
Today is Stacy's turn.
"I was originally planning to throw myself under a train." His face betrays frustration at his addled brain, mouth staggering around random mental potholes. "But it wasn't due for another three hours. Plus, it was getting kind of cold."
There it is. That smile. She doesn't have a whole lot of those laying around. At least not for him.
"It's probably better that way. Death by Dinky doesn't sound flattering no matter how you spin it."
He'd smile back if his face didn't feel like it would collapse in on itself. Their familiar dance is comforting, even if everything hurts like nothing else. He takes a mental snapshot of her face, this moment, stores it away in a box and hides it where no one else can see.
"Do you actually work here or do you just wander from room to room?"
As per usual, Cuddy ignores him.
"Just stopped by to see how you were doing. Judging by your sunny mood, you're recovering nicely."
"And I thought you were only here to check out just how short my gown was. Come on. Admit it. You took a peek when I was out, didn't you?"
"Already saw it." She yawns. "Eight years ago. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt and assume the room was a bit cold at the time."
"Oh, zing."
"Guess what I managed to get my hands on?" Wilson bounds in, car keys twirling from the ring on his index finger.
He shoots back a scowl that's mostly feigned. "You better not have put any scratches on her."
"Ha! You're lucky it wasn't stripped and on blocks by the time we got around to it."
"Who is this we, Kemosabe?"
"It's not like I could drive both cars by myself, and since Stacy had a bit of free—"
"Wait. Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait." He is shocked. Mortified. Appalled. And a bunch of other words used to convey extreme dismay. "You let her drive my car?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't see the sign on it that said, 'No girls allowed.' Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a Corvette? Chick magnet?"
"Duh. However, the female does not get behind the wheel. There's a principle involved. She probably used the rearview mirror to put her lipstick on."
Percocet and scotch and Darvon and scotch and OxyContin and Dilaudid and Vicodin and scotch.
They keep the pain at bay. (He tells her)
They keep him quiet. (He tells himself)
Sometimes, he'll float to half-awareness at an unreasonable hour, when the lights are low, and halls are dark and empty. He'll feel a hand gripping his, so tightly his fingers start to tingle. And as he scrabbles and flails and strokes through the opiate-induced fog, the grip will lessen, fade and disappear.
He'll forget by morning.
"What was it like?" Chase looks away, gesturing vaguely into the air.
"What's what like? An aneurism? A bar fight? Sex with a woman? Clarify."
The reply is so low, he can barely make out the consonants.
"I thought they taught you about that at the seminary. Extreme unction. All that anointment, wailing and teeth gnashing."
"They say there's...supposed to be a light. The divine."
"...strippers. Beer volcanoes. Sorry. Got distracted. So you're looking for, what...a second opinion?"
"Right."
"Okay."
There's a momentary pause. Chase clears his throat. "So, being dead..."
"Is like being dead."
The card is from Senator Wright's secretary.
Cameron still hasn't stopped by.
Ah, well. There's always TV.
"Someone has to cover for your slacker ass in the clinic."
"My ass managed to slack for six years without needing someone to cover for me," he sneers back. "And I didn't ask."
"You didn't have to."
In Newtonian mechanics, the universe is a spiral, cycling endlessly between anesthetic bliss, consciousness, and relentless, cold tedium.
He spins, hurtles, unstuck, Billy Pilgrim, slipping, sliding, upside down, inside out, tumbling through time, through space, in search of the great...whatever...circling, swirling down the drain like intergalactic refuse.
The guard rail was down.
(the universe is a spiral)
He didn't mean to, but the guard rail was down. Something tears, stitches, tubing, rippling out of his body. He hears something clatter as he falls and falls and—
"Christ," he slurs, wincing at the gorilla-like grip on his arm, as four hands take hold of his extremities. Cameron turns and presses her right shoulder up against his, shoving him up, as a nurse rolls him back into bed. "...crush boulders in your spare time?"
"Hold still," she orders, hands moving briskly over him, checking his arterial, CVP and IV lines.
To his surprise, he does.
"You lied to me."
"Yes, dammit. Yes, I did. I lied! I lied to save your life."
A cough develops. Air seems to be in shorter supply. Head hurts, more than usual. He orders a blood test for WBC and predicts double pneumonia.
He wakes early, for once.
"Sit down, Cameron," he says drowsily, before she has a chance to completely slip away. "Just don't...crush my hand like you always do."
That freakish, glassy smile is gone. Looking down at the clipboard, Cuddy takes a breath, as if she's about to breach some unspoken Maginot Line.
Don't, every one of his hair follicles pleads. Really. All of them.
"Why?"
He's getting so very sick of that question. (She's not supposed to care. He's not supposed to be here again. But, he supposes, he's the one who failed first.)
"Maybe people don't like me in general. Surprising, I know."
"I asked you," she pleads, fumbling with his chart." I asked you if it was all right with you that I hired her back. You could have just said 'No.'"
"Don't you have something to administrate?" he interrupts rudely. "More Angola monsters to slay? Remember, it takes a hundred to make a coat."
Thus endeth the conversation.
When Chase drops in, he almost tells him about his dad, but he doesn't feel like quite that much of a bastard yet.
He'll give it one more day.
"I'm disappointed in you, Jim. You're messing up the rhythm. When I'm in here, you're supposed to be out shopping for wife number...what are you up to now? Four?"
"As opposed to you, who just assumes it's doomed from the start, so why even bother? You'll be an ass. She'll betray you. It'll all end badly. Woe. Time to take a pill. At least I try."
"Yes, you do. Dr. Wilson ever-dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of marital, or otherwise, bliss. You're right. Lack of effort is the one thing no one can ever accuse you of."
"And it's easier for you to just lay down and die. When was the last time you tried? When was the last time you were happy? When you even liked —no, tolerated— life?"
("I'll race you to the car!")
"Don't remember. Don't care."
"You lied to me."
"Everybody lies."
A teddy bear. From the Warners. Incredulous, he turns the fuzzy thing over in his hands. Then, laughs and laughs and laughs.
Right before he chucks it across the room.
In the evening, when everything's quiet again, he decides to show her.
"Isn't this what you've always been curious about? What you wanted to see?"
Eyes fix on his leg in morbid fascination, the raised line running from groin to knee. Cameron can envision what they've removed - chunks of vastus lateralus and medialis, his adductor longus, severely compromised. Most noticeable though, is the indentation where the rectus femoris should be.
There's a laugh, and it's dark and nasty. "Do you fantasize about how if you'd been there, if you'd been one of my doctors, you think you might have saved my leg? When you treated the volleyball player...did you start imagining it was me?"
She doesn't answer, and he knows the stab is deep and precise. He catches her profile, eyelashes and hair and shadows against her stark white lab coat, death-gripping the edges of the sliding door.
"Don't fool yourself," he says. "Don't think I—you'll ever—" And his voice splinters, breaking off into silence.
Words, insinuations, speculation, he's always been so good at that; taking her apart piece by piece, except, unlike all his other toys, he can't quite remember how she fits back together.
"Not everybody," Cameron finally breathes, "Not everybody lies as much as you do."
"Everybody lies, Greg. Even you. Especially you."
He hates her. For leaving. For coming back. For telling him.
But mostly, he hates that his memories of Stacy —the good, the bad, the awful, the sublime— are all tainted by the fact that she's now fucking another man.
She's angry.
He's said something to piss her off.
Actually, just about everything he says pisses her off nowadays and really, that's fine with him. He prefers it this way.
"I'm sure the one thing you've already read about DVTs are their likeliness of recurrence. Want to bet on what it'll be? My other leg, perhaps; make everything nice and symmetrical. One the other hand, a subclavian will keep everyone guessing for a while. Me, I say go for the big one: pulmonary embolism." And this is when he strikes. "So tell me, Dr. Cameron, does the one-in-three chance of me suddenly dropping dead in the near future bake your cake?"
"Of course it does," she sneers. His bones can feel the effort it takes to keep the tremors out of her voice. "In fact, I'm so turned on right now, I might just draw the blinds and hop right up there with you. Think you're up for one last quickie before you kick off? Maybe I'll even troll Oncology afterwards; I hear it's better than a personals ad."
Oh, but her anger is beautiful; all unbridled fury and incandescent pain. This, this is what he wants. He doesn't need her pity, her compassion, the weepy, useless hand-wringing or whatever she's offering with her soft voice and gentle touches.
This is what he wants. What he needs.
He's angry.
Pacing the room, tie loose and askew, shuffling his hands here. There. Gesticulating awkwardly about.
"What the hell did you say to her?"
"Which her? Stacy? Cuddy? Cameron? It's so hard to keep all the abuse straight."
"Does it matter which one? Any of them. All of them." He pauses in his tirade to glower, hands pressed to his hips. "At least Stacy can throw everything you dish out back at you. Cuddy just does the smart thing and ignores you completely."
"And now we come to the crux of the issue. Wonder-boy Wilson riding to the rescue of the poor, defenseless Dr. Cameron. Was it the wobbling lower lip that got you?"
"Every time she comes out of your room—" He begins pacing again. "What did you say?"
"What she needed to hear. What she always needed to hear. Patients don't need friends. They need doctors."
"Do you need a doctor?"
(Wilson. Hombre. Go the fuck away.)
"I sure as hell don't need friends."
I love you.
I loved you.
I can't do this anymore.
He wonders if the only reason they stayed together so long after was because they knew how to hurt each other too well.
Chase doesn't stop by.
Neither does Foreman.
She does.
She really ought to know better.
"He didn't die from the cancer did he? Your husband." Every word that tumbles out now, is a barb; each one flung unerringly. "At that stage his immune system would have been severely compromised. I'm guessing he caught a cold. From a family member. From you."
And then...and then...he can't look at her anymore, not with the way she's watching him. She's always watching him, prying, digging, always looking for something, something that isn't there. Stop looking. Stop trying. There's nothing left.
He turns his head and talks to the wall.
"He got sick and then he died. And somewhere in the back of your head you think, maybe it's your fault. Maybe you killed him, and if it weren't for that little cough, he might've stuck around a little longer. Another week. Another month. He might have even hung on for another year."
Silence. Then, softly. Insidiously. "Poor Dr. Cameron." His voice is a field of hypodermic needles. "Watched her husband die and now does penance by being attracted to hopeless strays."
She lets him have the last word. She always does.
TBC