week 19
House burst into Wilson's office. "You can't tell them," he ordered.
"Tell who what?" Wilson rose. He had an idea of the 'what': Richard was moving in him now, in reaction to Wilson getting up. But the 'who' could have been anyone. "About the pregnancy, you mean? That might be hard, considering that this lump here will only grow. And you see how easy it'll be to keep mum once I pop a baby out."
Paying Wilson's remarks no attention, House paced in short, erratic lines. "It'd be best if they didn't see-- they'd ask questions-- pity I can't lock you up-- what am I saying? Forget that last part."
Wilson was surprised that House would retract that statement. Suggesting locking someone up wasn't the worst thing he'd said this week alone. Why would he get worked up over that?
Wilson tried to calm House down by pulling him into an embrace, but House shook him off. "Just stay out of sight."
Irritated by the rejection, Wilson bit out, "Sure, I'll just hit myself with my invisibility-ray and we'll be all set." House threw him an exasperated look. "Maybe I'd be more helpful if you clued me in."
"The less you know, the better," House said darkly.
But Wilson found out before long.
Because becoming invisible was neither viable nor reasonable, Wilson went through his schedule like it was any other day, making the effort to be more discreet than usual. He was in the clinic and had just said goodbye to the fifth influenza victim of the afternoon when he heard a knock at the door. "Come in," he said, expecting the next patient.
Instead, Blythe House came in.
Wilson blanched.
No more questions on the 'who,' then.
He tugged down on his blouse in a futile attempt to lessen his stomach's bulge. His pregnancy wasn't obvious yet and maybe she'd assume that, even with a sex change, Wilson was incapable of bearing children.
"Hello, is James--" Blythe looked at Wilson and then around the room. "I'm sorry, I thought--" she turned around, and Wilson saw John House behind her. "I think we're in the wrong place."
Either Wilson could let them leave and have them find out elsewhere that they'd been the right place after all, or he could tell them who he was. Either way, they'd find out and House would kill him.
But what was Wilson trying to hide? So he was a woman right now. He'd long since decided he wasn't going to be ashamed over that fact. Nor could House's parents forever remain ignorant to their grandchild's existence.
He should, at the very least, let them know who he was. "If you were looking for me--"
Blythe eyed him. "Is that you, James?"
He tried to be charismatic despite his embarrassment. "I like to think so."
"Well-- Greg didn't mention--" she said, gracious enough, but still not knowing how to end that phrase.
John stayed in the doorway. "Hey, how's it going," he said, eyes darting away and back again at Wilson.
"That's House for you, keeping all the juicy news to himself." Wilson held out his hand, hoping that normal social interaction would lessen the awkwardness. He couldn't blame them for being so shocked. They were from a different generation, after all, when gender expectations were more rigid. "It's good to see you again, Blythe, John."
That did seem to put John a little more at ease. Maintaining a jovial tone, Wilson asked, "So, what brings you to town?"
"We decided to spring a surprise visit on Greg," Blythe explained. "He never comes to see us, you know, and we wanted to see how he's doing."
"Have you seen him already? I could help you find him--"
His attempts to drive them away were not, however, successful. "We just saw him, actually. We came down here to invite you to go to dinner with the three of us."
Forget murder; House would keep him alive for the next twenty years just to torture him, if Wilson accepted the invitation. "Oh, I couldn't possibly barge in on your time with him--"
"It'd be our pleasure," Blythe insisted.
"I actually have a lot of paperwork to get through tonight," Wilson excused himself. "So--"
Blythe did, Wilson noted, seem disappointed. "If you change your mind, you're still welcome to come." Wilson thanked her and, with a stiff nod from John, they parted.
House found him afterwards, as Wilson left the clinic. "What did you tell them?"
"They're out buying 'congratulations!' balloons for you right now." It could be fun yanking House's chain, and, oh yes, was House's chain yanked. House went through several states in a couple of seconds, from shock to denial to pissed off. "I told them nothing, what did you expect?"
"Maybe you've decided to tell any and everyone about your unnatural spawning."
Wilson sighed. "No, I did not tell them that their son is going to have a son. That's your duty."
House's eyes shifted away, to look downwards. "Yeah, well--"
"Maybe this is a good thing," Wilson suggested. "You can spend time with them and--"
"And what?" House cut him short. "Remember the past? Face my ghosts and see that they didn't do such a bad job after all, and that I'm going to be a super great dad?"
"When you put it that way--"
"It sounds ridiculous, right? Because it is." House must have noticed that Wilson thought he was acting immature, as he went on to say, "You think I'm freaking out over nothing? Come to dinner tonight and see for yourself."
They went to the restaurant together after work, in House's car. Wilson rambled off light conversation, but House was non-responsive, barely making any sounds of acknowledgement.
Wilson found himself covering his stomach with his arms, seeking either to protect or take comfort from Richard.
Upon arriving at their destination, Wilson reached out again to House, touching his hand. "House, I--"
And already House's hand was out of his grasp. "Let's get this over with."
With a sigh, Wilson followed him into the restaurant.
Blythe beamed at her son and greeted Wilson. John shook Wilson's hand with a firmer clasp than earlier that day and patted House on the back. House nodded in response with a flat "Hey."
They sat at a table and started up a vibrant enough conversation. But Wilson was still worried about House, who he couldn't even try to sooth with physical gestures, not in front of his parents. So Wilson watched, anxious, as House grew more reticent.
In all honesty, Wilson didn't understand the extremity of House's attitude. Now that John's shock over Wilson's transformation had worn off, he made for good-humored company, his speech pattern speeding up as the night wore on and his drinks piled up. Wilson suspected that he might not be entirely sober when he started to recount "Greg's" exploits in collecting beetles and exploring natural terrains. Blythe listened with a smirk, as if she'd heard already heard these anecdotes hundreds of times.
The conversation drifted towards life in the hospital and Wilson ended up describing some of House's more notable cases: "It turned out that she was a hermaphrodite-- with testicular cancer."
John laughed, his already flushed face becoming redder still, and Blythe smiled. "Our boy always was so smart, seeing things no one else could," she said. House gave her a small, but genuine, smile. For some reason, it made Wilson's heart ache.
"It's true," John mused, "Just wish he'd let us in on these things."
House's smile vanished. "Didn't seem like a big deal. And most of what I do is boring, anyway."
"You should take more pride in your work," John chided.
House's expression became stonier.
"He's just being modest," Wilson swept in.
Perhaps noticing how tense the atmosphere had become, Blythe changed the subject. "Tell me, Wilson, where did you get that necklace? It looks like an antique."
"What?" Wilson still wasn't used to being asked where he got what; as a man, no one had cared where he'd gotten his pocket-protector or his tie. "Oh, this, um, there's this second-hand shop in the older part of town--" He was about to explain when John interrupted him.
"You know, James," John mused, "I never thought you were like that."
"Like what?" House asked, a little too loud.
And of course this would be when House decided to join in. Then again, he had been itching for a fight all day long. Wilson nudged House's leg beneath the table as an unspoken suggestion to back off. House paid him no heed, anticipating John's answer.
John shrugged. "You know. Unmanly."
Wilson winced. Like father, like son: both were too willing to speak their minds.
"That's a little vague," House said, almost calm. "Are you calling him a fag? A drag-queen? A tranny?"
Wilson and Blythe shared a nervous look.
John frowned. "There's no need to speak that way, Greg."
"I was just following your example. What are--"
Blythe reached over and patted her son's hand. "Greg, please."
House scowled but rescinded, biting his lower lip and leaning back into his chair.
Wilson coughed. "Anyone up for desert? I hear you haven't lived until you've tried their mango mousse."
Out in the parking lot, while Blythe and House exchanged a few last words, John took Wilson aside. "Sorry about-- you know," John said, awkward. "I wasn't trying to be--"
"I know," Wilson assured him.
John looked over to where his son stood, and his gaze stayed there. Wilson could see the sadness in his expression. "He's so unpredictable, sometimes. I try my best, but-- I never did figure out how to treat him."
"He's a handful," Wilson agreed.
"Well." John huffed out a breath of air. "Keep on looking after him, yeah?"
Once John and Blythe left, Wilson started to strategize on how to calm House down after this strained evening, but House spoke first. His voice was gruff. "I'll give you a ride."
Wilson's stomach sank. "Back home, you mean?"
House looked away and, just like that, Wilson knew: they were back at square one. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
House started to hobble towards the car, avoiding eye contact. "I sure was kidding. What a joke, thinking that I could--"
"We've been through this!" Wilson blurted. "Not a month ago you were insisting on how much fun it'd be, having a kid, and, what, you change your mind in less than a day?!"
House tried to open the door to his car, but Wilson stepped between them. House narrowed his eyes, and Wilson could see that he'd grown angry. "You're into psychoanalysis, so you probably know this already, but statistics show that we repeat our parents' mistakes. Sometimes we even magnify them; their pathos becomes ours and we pass it on."
"So your dad is conservative and blunt. It's okay, House, I wasn't offended. He's from a different generation, and a Marine at that. It's understandable--"
House snorted. "You can come up with all the excuses you like, but that doesn't change how he treats people. Now get out of my way, or do I have to push you?" Wilson could tell that he meant it, so he stepped aside. House sat at the wheel and started the car up. "You coming or not?"
Wilson, with a flash of rage, was tempted to refuse and get to a hotel by taxi. But he wasn't done with this fight, not yet. He clambered into the passenger's seat. "You don't want to be like him. I get that. But how about Blythe? She's pretty decent."
"More than decent, but she's not so great at standing up for her son."
Wilson remained silent for most of the drive, as he thought that they could take the time-out. But as they approached the Marriott, he broached the subject again, using a gentler approach: "What mistakes are you scared of repeating?"
House didn't answer at first. "You've seen what my family is like," House finally said, looking straight ahead. "I'm not passing that on."
"House." Wilson wanted to reach out and pull House back in. He didn't know how. "Whatever it is, you could-- you could rise above it."
House parked on the side of the curb. "Here."
Wilson glanced at the hotel and back at House. "So this is it? You're going to give up?"
"I can't--" House stopped, as if he were blocked. He started up again, more carefully. "I shouldn't have pretended I could be a part of--" He looked down at Wilson's abdomen. "You're better off without me."
When Wilson didn't move, House warned, "Go."
This argument was over. Wilson stepped out and watched House drive off into the distance and waited until it was obvious that House wouldn't return.
What déjà vu.
The worst part was that Wilson had known that anything with House could only lead him back to this place. He'd known this full and well and he'd still let himself trust House again.
What a fool.
"It looks like it's just the two of us again," Wilson said to Richard.
In his new hotel room, Wilson ripped off and threw away his necklace. While he knew John's comment wasn't meant to offend, it had still struck a nerve. And, as irrational as it was, Wilson half-blamed the necklace for making House so scared again. Maybe if he hadn't crossed-dressed-- hell, if he hadn't decided to remain a woman-- House wouldn't have left him. A sharp prickling anger made him strip off the rest of his clothing, all of them reminders of that night's disaster.
Shivering, he turned up the heat and burrowed under the covers.
The issue House raised burrowed through Wilson's mind, keeping him awake. "Is he right, Richard? Am I fated to screw you up?" he asked, lying on his side, a pillow supporting the weight of his extended waist.
He got a kick in reply, whatever that meant. "You'll be a great philosopher, I can tell."
House did have a point. Parents exercised tremendous influence over their children.
"I'm not going to be the worst parent of all times, am I?"
And in his head Wilson could hear House saying that just because he wasn't the worst, that didn't mean he was good enough to even rate even an 'okay.' To think so would constitute a logical fallacy.
Wilson didn't want to include Richard in this conversation any longer, since there were some things you couldn't talk about to your child, unborn or not, and your worries about their future were among them.
week 20
When Wilson saw House next, in the hospital entrance, they stopped in their tracks, several yards apart, and regarded each other for a long time.
And then House turned around and went right into the clinic.
It was better this way. Wilson wouldn't have even known what to say; his anger overruled his sympathy.
"Jesus, Wilson, not again?" Cuddy's voice, pained, called from behind him.
"I thought you'd be proud of my efficiency," Wilson turned to sarcasm; he was in no mood to deal with criticism on his relationship with House at the moment. "Not only did I get dumped, but I pissed you off in the same stroke."
"If you wanted to be efficient, couldn't you have done your department budgeting at home instead?" She complained, her arms crossed so that she was hugging herself. But her tone was tired, and she sounded as if she were saying it just because it needed to be said, and not because she meant it.
Wilson noticed then how red her eyes were. "Cuddy-- what happened?"
Tears sprang to her eyes. The hospital entrance not being the best place for an administrator to cry, they shuffled into her office. As she closed her blinds, Wilson asked again what had happened.
"The artificial insemination didn't take." She wasn't facing him, but she sounded choked up. "Again." Wilson didn't say anything, deciding to just listen for now. With her back still to him, Cuddy wiped at her face and took a deep breath. "Jeez, look at me, getting so worked up over nothing"
Wilson couldn't even begin to imagine what it'd be like to lose Richard. It was not 'nothing.' "Cuddy. You don't have to pretend, with me."
Hugging herself again, she sat along the top edge of one of her couches. While the redness had spread from her eyes to the rest of face, there was no trace left of her tears. "How about you? Fighting with House again? You two need to stop doing that, it doesn't do anyone a whit of good."
He shook his head. "It's not because I want to--" But he couldn't even try to explain. It was too complicated.
They both fell silent, turning to their thoughts.
"None of this makes any sense," Wilson mused. "You can't get pregnant and I'm having a baby I never meant to and that the father doesn't want."
"Sure it makes sense," Cuddy said, bitter. "It's called 'life isn't fair.'"
"See," Wilson smiled without mirth, "If we got married, it'd solve everything."
Cuddy stared at him like he was bursting into flames or something, and then, when Wilson smirked to let her know that it was a joke, she burst out laughing. "Oh, that's hilarious-- I get it, I get it. Yeah, that'd sure straighten things out."
"It sure would."
Wilson could imagine it, actually: waking up next to Cuddy every morning and arguing over whose turn it was to check on the baby, going to PTA meetings together and fighting over how to get Richard to raise his grades, and the three of them spending their Sundays lazing around the home.
The vision lulled him, but then again, thinking about new commitments to fill in the gaps in his life always had that effect on him. Come to think of it, if he was starting to fantasize about marrying his boss, that was a fair indication of how unhappy he'd become. Wasn't having Richard supposed to make the loneliness go away?
She got off from the couch. "But it'll work out, Wilson," she said, walking back to her desk.
He couldn't believe that she could be so positive when everything seemed to be going so wrong. "What're you going to do?"
"I'll try for a third insemination, and if that doesn't work," she spread her arms, indicating the size of her office. "I'm the head of a hospital; it's not as if I'm lacking for contacts. With one phone call, I'll be at the top of adoption waiting lists." She narrowed her eyes, determination writ all over her face. "I'm not giving up."
week 23
Wilson received, once again, a set of packages in his hotel room, though this time he didn't bother to open them. He knew that they were the things he'd left over at House's over the past few weeks, like clothes, books on raising children, kitchenware, and, he suspected, the chemistry set and microscope House had given Richard.
"I guess he means it," he said to Richard, who, as he usually did, kicked.
He bought an apartment in downtown Princeton-Plainsboro. It was a cramped piece of space, really, but Wilson didn't care. If it was going to be just the two of them, it wasn't as if they needed much room.
"Say hi to home," Wilson said to Richard, his voice echoing through the empty apartment.
week 25
That Sunday, Wilson woke up with a low, dull backache.
Being a typical second-trimester pregnancy symptom, he didn't think anything of it.
He should have been readying his new apartment. At the moment it was furnished with a skeletal outline: a couple of bookshelves, a sofa, and a bed. He had a lot to do, and somehow, Wilson wasn't feeling all that motivated.
Leaning against the kitchen counter, Wilson was drinking a second cup of instant coffee, trying to summon up the motivation to at least eye the instructions to build the IKEA kitchen table, when his uterus his uterus started to squeeze itself, harsh and unmerciful, as if to expel anything inside it. Wilson doubled over from the pain.
Shit.
He sat down at once, leaning against the cabinet beneath the sink, rubbing his stomach. "That was a good one, scaring me like that. Pulling an old Braxton Hicks, right?"
Wilson refused to panic. It probably had been nothing, just a cramp, and the stress wouldn't do anything to help. He took several stabilizing breaths, drank a glass of water, and stared at the same page of a book for a good twenty minutes, unable to read.
When he felt a second inner clutch, this one longer and more painful than the previous one, he called Cuddy.
"No work today, Wilson," she reminded him, all cheer.
"I think I'm going into labor."
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. He'd known the risks of being pregnant at his age. Hell, House and Dr. Miyamoto had both warned him of all the things that could go wrong. And he'd ignored them and the statistics because he was a bloody selfish freak who didn't want to be alone.
Richard wouldn't even be able to breath, if he came out now.
"What?! You're halfway through--"
"I'm on my second contraction in the past twenty minutes."
"Oh, god-- sit tight, Wilson, I'll get you help."
"Okay," he said, and hung up.
He lay onto the mattress he'd set up on his bedroom floor. Cuddy would be here soon, bearing medicine to delay the labor. Maybe she'd even bring some betamethasone to speed up Richard's lung development, in case it looked as if they wouldn't be able to keep the birth off for long.
"Hey," Wilson cuddled his stomach, speaking in the voice he used on patients that needed to be talked out of ridiculous decisions, "Out here? Sucks. I could sit here for the next fifteen weeks telling you all the things that suck, like taxes and going bald, and then you'd begging to stay--"
Wilson felt a third contraction.
Shitshitshitshitshit--
Scenarios rushed through Wilson's mind: Richard asphyxiated, Richard developing RDS, Richard becoming brain damaged, Richard--
But Wilson balked from thinking of the worst.
"Did you have to be as stubborn as House?" he muttered. "Couldn't you take after some of his less annoying qualities?"
Cuddy was at his door within fifteen minutes, unlocking her way in.
Not that Wilson remembered having given her a key.
Getting up from his bed, refusing to run and further upset Richard into evacuating the womb, Wilson walked towards the door. "Cuddy, what did you--"
But it was House who had come in; House, face pale and hunched over.
Wilson himself paled, in surprise, and then flushed with emotion. "House, what are--"
"Have you had anymore contractions?" House interrupted, grasping Wilson by the arms.
"Had a third one just now. How did you--"
"Cuddy told me. When did it start?"
"My back's been hurting since I woke up and the contractions started forty minutes ago. Do you two always talk about me behind my back?"
"Probably about as often as the two of you talk behind mine. Do you have a bed in this bare-ass place? You shouldn't be standing up--"
"I should be getting to the hospital, that's what--"
"I've got some presents to give you first." House rattled his backpack.
"O, okay. Um." Wilson went towards the bedroom, still reeling from the contractions and House's sudden appearance. "How did you even get in?"
"I have a key," House said, impatient.
"How--" Wilson sat on his bed. "You know what, I don't even what to know."
House was rummaging through his backpack. "I brought a variety of tocolytics and I don't want to hear a single peep out of you about how we have to take all the tests and make sure you're not in false labor--"
Wilson cut him off mind-rant. "Stop yammering and gimme Nifedipine."
"Good boy!" House handed him the pills and Wilson dry-swallowed. "Okay, those ought to keep him in there a bit longer. Now, do I have to convince you to take the betamethasone before running through the exams first?"
"What are you waiting for?" Wilson asked, already rolling up his sweatshirt sleeve.
It struck Wilson as absurd that they hadn't talked for weeks and here was House, injecting him, looking every bit as terrified as Wilson felt. "I thought you weren't supposed to care."
"Someone has to save you from your colossal mistakes," House snapped, pushing the liquid into Wilson.
Wilson looked away. "I screwed up, I know." It was the closest he could get to apologizing. He'd insisted on the pregnancy and because of it, their child was in danger of being sick or deformed or--
But Wilson still couldn't let his thoughts go there.
Wilson's near-apology deflated House. "Don't make me call you stupid," House said, his voice raw. He pulled out the needle, his movements gentler than they'd been a minute ago.
Rubbing his arm, Wilson asked, "What-- what do you think will happen to Richard?"
House closed his eyes. "You know as well as I do."
Wilson's heart rate sped up three times. Yes, he did know.
At 25 weeks, a baby had, at best, a 63 chance of survival.
Again Wilson made himself take deep breaths, in an attempt to maintain his calm. Stress would speed up the labor. "Well, let's get me to the hospital, then. I won't feel safe and sound until I'm surrounded by as many screaming doctors and nurses as possible."
All of Wilson was numb.
Through his unconsciousness streamed the familiar sound of beeps and machine murmurs, though he was not used to hearing them while asleep.
Wilson forced open his heavy eyelids and blinked his eyes into seeing again. A glass wall, the standard in the Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital's rooms, separated the room from the corridor. Doctors, nurses, patients, they all walked outside. What was Wilson doing inside, lying down?
He looked at himself. An IV drip was connected to his arm and a patch led from his heart to a cardiorespiratory monitor. Wilson squinted at the figures on the screen: his vitals were a bit low, but he'd been sleeping; that would account for that.
He rolled to his other side, barely sensing the movement-- how jacked up was he on pain-killers, if he couldn't feel this much?-- and was surprised to find company. Sleeping company.
House sat on a flimsy plastic chair, chin resting against chest and legs propped up on a twin chair. Wilson was worried. Sleeping like that, House would wake up with the worst cramps, and it wasn't as if he didn't live with enough pain as it were. There was more growth than usual on House's face. When was the last time he'd shaved?
Why would House be so worried about Wilson as to stay by his bedside?
And then Wilson remembered.
Wilson scrambled to peel away the layers of covers. Beneath his thin hospital gown, his penis's outline was visible. Not believing his eyes, he ran his hands over his chest, confirming that his breasts were smaller than they'd been in months. His stomach also was smaller than it should've been post-birth.
Bewildered, Wilson slumped onto his back again. Had he imagined it all?
"Wilson?" House asked; the noise must have woken him up.
"W," Wilson started, finding it hard to speak. "What happened?"
"You fell unconscious and, from what I hear, went back to being a manly man as soon as you popped Richard out. Don't ask me what it was like, I had to miss out on this century's greatest spectacle because someone had to keep Richard from suffocating. She's stabilized, by the way--"
It was a lot of information to receive at once. Wilson grabbed onto the most innocuous fact: "She?"
House shrugged. "Yeah, our baby boy is a girl. Took after you, I guess."
"Oh, geez," Wilson curled into himself, pulling his knees up. "I got everything wrong."
"What, were you betting--"
"This isn't a joke, House," and Wilson turned away from him, facing the opposite wall. "I was wrong about everything. You were right-- you warned me that the minute I turned back, I'd wonder what the hell I was thinking. House, you were right."
House paused, perhaps to absorb the full implications of what Wilson had just said. Then, slowly, as if he'd aged several years within seconds, he said, "I wouldn't mind being wrong, this time."
The numbness wore off, but not the daze.
Wilson spent another few hours being run through tests to assure that there were no hidden problems, the final verdict being that his stats were virtually identical to those from just before his transformation. It was as if he'd never been a woman. Well, aside from unshaved legs and armpits.
House had wanted to run the exams himself, but Wilson refused to let him; he didn't want to witness House's reaction to his non-female body.
Once he received a clean bill of health, Wilson was free to do as he liked. He knew that there was someone he had to see right away, yet the first thing he did was go to his apartment, falling onto his bed and straight asleep.
When he woke up, all he could see were the reminders of his months as a woman: eye shadow in his bathroom cabinet, high heels on the shoe rack, a closet half-filled with maternity clothes.
It felt inappropriate to keep those items lying around. Wilson packed into black trash bags all the clothes and makeup he'd accumulated during his time as a woman. Had he really bought this much? It was as if he'd thought that the changes he'd gone through would be permanent.
Is that all that being female had amounted to? A pile of objects?
Wilson meant to drop the items off at a local charity, but he kept putting it off. He'd go tomorrow, he'd go after a cup of coffee, he'd go after this documentary on World War II. It was always 'later.' In the meantime, the black bags crowded the entrance, a more conspicuous presence than the individual items within them had been when scattered throughout the apartment.
In the end, he opened the bags, rooting for something he could keep. It couldn't be any of the shoes, since he wouldn't fit in any of them, nor the clothes. He settled on some bottles of skin-colored nail polish. He had no idea when or how he could ever use them again, but he didn't want to let them go, either. He lined them onto the glass shelf in front of this bathroom mirror, like a pathetic minor tribute to the past few months.
His cell phone rang again for the umpteenth time in the past couple of days since he'd left the hospital. The screen declared it to be Cuddy. Actually, most times it was Cuddy. Only the first time, right after he'd left, had it been from House.
Wilson didn't answer their calls. He couldn't face anyone right now. What if, like with his body and with the pile of things waiting by the door to get thrown out, Wilson found that nothing had changed? Did he even want anything to be different?
It might be for the best if he and House went to the original mechanics of their relationship. It might not. Wilson had no idea what he wanted or what he could expect.
More confusing than that, though, was the one definitive change from the past few months, the one currently hanging out in the NICU.
God, what had he been thinking?
week 26
It took Wilson three days to work up the courage to face the NICU.
It was hardly his first time there, but he'd never been in before to see someone to whom he was related-- and he better not start thinking in those terms, because every time he did, he froze up.
Some of the nurses congratulated him and offered their best wishes, but they were cautious, Wilson could tell. Word of his neglect must have gotten around. Either that or the fact that the new mother was a man again was weirding them out.
She was in a room with another six or so infant care beds. Wilson made sure to not make a sound as he opened the door; the last thing he needed was to wake up a room full of babies.
It seemed, however, that another adult was already there.
With his back to the door, House sat next to one of the incubators, supporting his chin against the curve of his cane. Wilson held his breath, hoping that he might have gotten in unnoticed. And he must have, because House didn't react to his entrance.
Was House speaking? Wilson tip-toed close enough to overhear the 'conversation.'
"It's not that your mommy doesn't love you, Dick, he's just feeling guilty and stupid and the sudden lack of estrogen has made his already-pathetically-low common sense go whacko. It's called 'postnatal depression,' but don't try to say it yet, it's a mouthful. First you've got to get through the basics, like, 'goo goo' and 'bow-wow' and 'daddy, I'm pregnant.' But your time will come, don't you worry, this kind of thing is genetic. You'll have your turn."
Wilson smiled in spite of himself. House was such a bastard. A good-hearted bastard, but a bastard nonetheless. "I think it's a bit early to diagnose me with post-partum depression."
House jumped at the sound of his voice but tried to hide his surprise. "When have I ever been wrong?"
"You might want to try it sometime. It's not as bad as you'd think." He sat next to House, not yet looking at the contents of the incubator. He had to take this one step at a time. "I never thought you'd be a better dad than I."
"It's a sad state of affairs," House agreed. "I'm not even doing that much-- I come here, make sure she's not kicking the bucket, and I ramble at her. I ain't gonna be winning no Daddy of the Year awards no time soon."
"That's more than I've been doing," Wilson said, locking his gaze onto the cardiorespiratory monitor. They were just numbers. He could deal with numbers. "Aren't you still scared of passing on, how did you put it, your pathos?"
House glared. "I'm not scared of it; it's inescapable fact. But between my issues and your absolute neglect, even the former is preferable."
Wilson couldn't believe that he had fucked up so much that House, of all people, felt the need to step in and cover up for him. If anyone had been filling the role of the absentee father, it was Wilson. What a time to choose to stick to gender stereotypes.
Wilson hid his face with his hands. "If this keeps up, I'm going to need therapy, aren't I."
"That's elementary, my dear Wilson. You've always needed therapy."
It was so comforting knowing that he'd always been screwed up that Wilson was finally able to look at his daughter.
She was microscopic. While her face was blotchy-red, the rest of her was near-transparent, showing off the veins on her arms and legs for all to see. She was hooked up to every imaginable device: an umbilical catheter, peripheral arterial line, a nasogastric tube, and leads on her chest.
A cockroach could crush her. "What have we done, House?"
"We did what every other loony person has done: perpetuated the inhumanity."
"Thanks for that bit of positive thinking," Wilson said, dryly.
"Eh, if things go as they're supposed to, she'll be just as loony as the rest of us. She'll think we did her a favor, bringing her into this world. It's how it is."
Given the complications she was likely to develop due to her premature birth-- everything from brain malfunctions to respiratory problems-- Wilson didn't know how grateful she could be.
Though House might be right and, given his track record, why not trust him on this one? It gave Wilson a crazy bit of hope.
And, no matter what their perspective was, she was here. There was no going back.
"What are we going to name her?" Wilson touched the glass wall of her incubator.
House looked confused. "She has a name."
"We can't name her Richard--"
"So she'll have some gender confusion in her life. What of it?"
Wilson didn't sigh. This was, after all, what he'd been wishing for, all along: House being active in their child's life. And if this was the kind of participation he was going to offer, Wilson wasn't going to object. "Richard it is, then."