This is a crack!AU inspired by DreamsofSpike's "Dark Redux". First two seasons already on my profile and at the CollarVerse community. Assuming I can keep it up, there's going to be one chapter per episode, based on the episode. Whee...

3.07 Son of Coma Guy

Kyle Wozniak liked visiting his father for lunch. It was quiet in the room, and dim, great when he had a hangover. He'd brought some wine, and a sandwich: he'd finished work for the day, and planned to spend the afternoon getting drunk.

In the ten years since Kyle had lost his parents, his father had moved steadily down through the hospital. His guardian used to bring him once a week, and leave him to sit by the bed for twenty minutes or half an hour. At first Kyle had been worried - supposing Dad woke up and was mad at him and no one else was there - and then he had been hopeful, and finally, he was just resigned. Now he could visit his dad whenever he wanted: and his dad couldn't stop him or try to avoid him.

The staff called this ward the Vegetable Ward. That didn't bother Kyle. They didn't come into the ward often - the nurses and aides and slaves to work on the patients, but not the doctors.

Not this time. A doctor he didn't know was standing over a slave he did know. "Doctor House" had been the last doctor to attend his father, to try and figure out why he was in a persistent vegetative state, and if there was any way of bringing him out of it. The doctor looked mad.

"Joining my father for lunch," Kyle said cheerfully. "I should have called ahead for a table."

The doctor he didn't know looked round and spoke sharply. "Doctor House was just - "

"Enjoying a Reuben." This time, the slave had a sandwich, a bottle of water, and an apple. The doctor still looked mad, and Kyle just wanted him to go away. "It's okay. After ten years, anything that'll get doctors in the same room is..."

The slave had stood up and was switching the room lights off and on. The flickering light annoyed Kyle, made him clumsy: he interrupted himself. "What're you doing?"

"Nothing," the slave said. "Apple a day - " The apple came out of nowhere he hit Kyle on the chest. Kyle stared, confused, dizzy - "Want to see something really cool?" the slave asked, and vanished. He reappeared, still talking, much taller, at Kyle's elbow. He wasn't wearing a collar. His voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. "I saw you leaving last Tuesday; practically tripped over two guys on your way out. But you had no problem opening doors. It's called Akinetopsia. You can't see things when they move. And since you haven't been hit by a bus, I assume it's intermittent. Probably accompanied by seizures..."

The room vanished into a black, crackling nothingness. Kyle never felt the floor when he hit it.

When Kyle woke up, he was in an unfamiliar ward, being examined by three doctors he didn't know. He was in Diagnostics, they explained: he had had a seizure and Doctor House had admitted him. He wanted a drink.

"I can see fine now. I've had seizures before."

Kyle had a rehearsed speech when he was asked about a medical history: it saved time. He knew from his drinking buddies and from high school how outright strange it seemed to most people not to have any close relatives.

"My father was an only child and my grandparents are dead. There's no one to contact in the event of an emergency."

Once he had put his guardian down as a contact, but since he'd turned 18 and could live off the insurance money, that seemed a waste of time. They didn't talk any more.

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

The last thing Gabe clearly remembered was running down the hall to the bedroom, hearing the fire licking up through the house. Kyle was outside. Kyle was safe. Linda was asleep, tonight was one of the nights she'd taken a pill, the air was so hot, he had to get to their bedroom...

He couldn't remember if he'd even opened the door.

Waking up, he knew Linda was dead. He didn't remember who'd told him.

"I want your ass in my office - " The voice, a woman's voice, broke off.

Not addressing him. No one would talk to him like that. The room was in a hospital, the sheets had that indefinable hospital-laundry smell. He blinked his eyes open - they felt gummy, as if he'd been asleep for a while.

His stomach felt empty. Literally empty, like he hadn't been fed in two days. "God, I'm starving."

He sat up. Besides the other patients - everyone was asleep - there were five people in the ward. Three of them were doctors. All of them were looking at him, looking startled, as if they hadn't expected him to wake up, even with all the yelling.

The other patients hadn't woken. It could be any time of the day in this bright, windowless room. The overhead TV was gabbling away about some hospital business. If it was the middle of the night, Gabe didn't think he could stand to wait til morning for some cold cereal.

"I could really go for a steak."

One of the non-doctors gave a sudden delighted grin that changed the whole expression of his face. Gabe looked back at him, confused. A hospital janitor - a freedman, by the mark on his neck.

The other non-doctor said "Do you know your name? Know where you are?"

"Gabriel Wasniak. I don't know the name of this hospital."

"How much are three and five?"

"Eight," Gabe said. An obvious test of his mental capacity. "Also known as half of sixteen, quarter of thirty-two, two to the third power." The woman looked like an executive, not a doctor, and she was the one who'd been shouting when he woke up, but the other doctors were still silent.

The janitor said, still smiling, "Coolest thing ever. Any history of seizure in your family?"

Gabe was startled. "No."

"Liver disease?"

Gabe looked at the doctors, wondering why the janitor was asking all the questions. What did liver disease have to do with a house fire? "No." He looked at the executive. "How long have I been here?" As he asked, he thought he didn't want to know the answer. "Got the feeling it's..." he hesitated. "...been a long time."

"Interesting. Your internal clock kept ticking. How deep does that awareness go? Pick up scraps of conversations, do you have a vague sense that - "

The janitor stopped talking. The executive had turned abruptly to glare at him.

"I know my wife is dead," Gabe said. "I don't know how long it's been." He looked at the doctors, at the executive. He knew it had been a long time.

"Ten years," the executive said, turning back to him. She had an awful, pitying tenderness in her voice. She paused. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"The fire." It felt like talking about something that happened a long time ago. "My wife was in the bedroom. She had taken a sleeping pill. I got Kyle out, went back in for her." Kyle was safe. "I knew I didn't make it."

"Sorry," the executive said. She still hadn't introduced herself.

"How about your wife's side of the family?" the janitor asked. Gabe glanced at him. A freedman. He wasn't acting particularly subdued. None of the three doctors had said anything, yet. Was he actually awake? He felt awake.

"Any history of seizures there?" the janitor prodded.

"Your son, Kyle, is a patient here," the executive said. "I'm afraid his condition is serious. He may be dying."

For the first time, it occurred to Gabe that Kyle wasn't twelve anymore. The boy he remembered. The man - ten years? - Twenty-two? - would have finished college, would - dying? - This could still be a dream. If he got the steak, if he could feel it in his mouth, taste it, chew it, it wasn't dream. His son was gone from him into adulthood and he had never met him.

"No seizure issues on my wife's side either. What about that steak? Nobody ever answered me."

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

Wilson was eating lunch in the cafeteria when Greg limped in. Doctor Kubisak from Ob-Gyn was going out and they all but bumped into each other: Wilson watched as Greg sidestepped, lurched, and his cane slid - Greg kept his balance, just, but Kubisak stumbled over the cane and nearly fell.

Kubisak snarled something at Greg that wasn't very understandable, but Greg's response was clear across the room. "Technically not true... yeah, but not with you."

Wilson glanced down at his lunch, hiding an involuntary smile. When he glanced up again, Greg was limping across the room, moving quite briskly, heading for his table.

Greg sat down at the table with Wilson. "What would it take for you to buy me a steak?"

"You want me to buy you lunch?" Wilson was interested. "What was that with Kubisak?"

Greg gave him a grimace. "Guess. He wouldn't buy me a steak. Too cheap. You?"

"Is it true you woke up the coma patient?"

"Vegetative state guy," Greg corrected. "My patient lost consciousness. I needed a better patient history."

Wilson's mouth fell open. "You'll get whipped," he said automatically, feeling the old stirring of excitement.

Greg bared his teeth. It wasn't a smile.

"Keep track, Doctor Wilson. Freed doctors can't get strung up and whipped. You have to have some other way of getting your jollies. So, what do you want for a steak dinner?"

"You want me to buy you lunch, in exchange for...?"

"Blow job?" Greg offered. He was staring at Wilson warily. "I figure the steak in the hospital canteen isn't worth more."

Wilson went back to eating his lunch, trying to act calm. "So, what happened?"

"I figured his brain's all there, he moves around, muscles have barely atrophied, he was just waiting for a fairy-tale kiss. After I did that, I stuck a needle in him and gave him a bunch of amphetamines and other stuff and he woke up. Now he wants a steak, before I can ask him any more questions."

"He doesn't want to talk about his son?" Wilson was surprised.

"Didn't seem to emotionally register that his son is sick."

"Brain issue? He was asphyxiated. Spent ten years as asparagus. Who knows what damage is in there?"

Greg nodded. "It's possible. Of course always the simple explanation. Maybe he just doesn't like his son."

The diagnostic patient was in his early twenties, so for his father, unconscious for ten years, he was about twelve. Wilson was amused by what Greg thought of as a "simple" explanation, and said so, finishing a bite of his lunch.

Greg bared his teeth again. "The delusion that fathering a child installs a permanent geyser of unconditional love - "

"Maybe your father's feelings were conditional, not everyone's - "

"Yes," Greg cut him off. "Well, that's a romantic view of human nature - "

"Terms you would understand. We have an evolutionary incentive to sacrifice for our offspring, our tribe, our friends. Keep them safe."

"Except for all the people who don't," Greg said, flatly. "Everything is conditional. You just can't always anticipate the conditions. Which brings us back to - what condition will you set for buying vegetative state dad a steak?"

Wilson smiled. He had made up his mind. "Well, you certainly deserve to be disciplined, don't you?"

Greg seemed to hesitate. "Two," he said, flatly.

"Four," Wilson said. He let that sink in a moment. "Obviously, it can wait till you're done with this case."

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

Cameron had realised House was using painkillers a while ago. She hadn't discussed it with Chase or Foreman.

She hadn't expecting to be questioned about it by a plainclothes policeman. House had reappeared on Monday lunchtime as if just from the clinic, walking stiffly, expressionless, and explosively sarcastic: hospital rumour (via Foreman) said he'd spent the weekend in jail.

"How many pills would you say Greg takes a day?" The policeman had introduced himself as Michael Tritter and shown his badge. He had already spoken to Doctor Cuddy. His investigations shouldn't be discussed with anyone else.

"Doctor House," Cameron corrected him. "I'm uncomfortable saying a number."

"Try," the policeman said. He had the coldest eyes Cameron had ever seen.

"Six," Cameron said. She thought it was probably six: Greg had been on a morning and evening schedule, and now that his painkiller regimen was more under his control, she guessed he would take a couple in the middle of the day.

"Six a day?" Tritter said.

Cameron nodded.

"Have you ever written prescriptions for him?"

"No," Cameron said. "Doctor Wilson is his prescribing physician."

Tritter nodded. "Are you sure it's just six pills?"

"What is it you want me to say? That he takes too many pills and is a danger to the hospital?"

"If he was, would you tell me?" Tritter asked.

"If I had concerns, I would discuss them with Doctor Wilson or Doctor Cuddy," Cameron said. "I don't."

"Do you know why Greg was enslaved?" Tritter asked.

"Selling pills on the side?" Cameron asked sarcastically.

"Doctor House was a drunk, a drug addict, and an addictive gambler," Tritter said. "He lost control of his life completely. He belonged in a collar, under control. Now he's been freed, but can you really say he's any different from before? You had a slave as your boss. Now you have a freed slave. What has he done to deserve your loyalty?"

Cameron's beeper went off. Chase had paged her. "I've got to go."

"Tell Doctor Chase I'll be talking to him next," Tritter said, as if he had seen the number on her pager. Unsettled, Cameron escaped.

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

The ward was for people who weren't expected to wake up, and both the executive and the janitor were doctors, though Doctor Cuddy didn't explain why a doctor was marked with a slave collar and the janitor doctor House had disappeared as soon as Gabe made clear he wouldn't be answering any questions til he had eaten.

Doctor Cuddy told him, as gently as anyone could tell you something like that - he'd be going back to sleep again in twenty-four hours or so. The cocktail of drugs that the janitor doctor had injected him with was experimental and known to be temporary.

A nurse had found him a small mirror, and brought his old clothes from somewhere. They'd been laundered and smelled of hospital soap and didn't fit, bagging and flopping everywhere.

A ward orderly had brought him a meal - basic, bland food, but the flavors seemed astonishing, and it didn't take much to fill him up.

Gabe looked morosely at a man who seemed to be more than ten years older than himself as he remembered: his hair had greyed and thinned, the flesh on his neck had drooped and slackened, giving him a double-chin effect. Whoever had shaved him when he was unconscious had left stubble.

Doctor House came in. He still looked like a janitor. But he was carrying a tray with a steak dinner, so provisionally, Gabe decided not to be mad at him.

"Your barber sucks," Gabe said. He had been fingering the unaccustomed flesh of his double chin, but it was less embarrassing to complain about the stubble than about growing suddenly old. Somewhere in this hospital was his dying grown-up son.

"I know," Doctor House said, putting the tray of food down on the empty bed and folding the table out.

"'Coma diet'," Gabe said. He was thin as well as old. "I could make a fortune."

"'Vegetative State Diet'," Doctor House corrected him. "Who gave you your clothes?"

"Doctor Cuddy." She'd ordered them found when Gabe had asked for them. He didn't want to spend his last 24 hours sitting around in hospital pyjamas. He asked a test question. "I guess I'll need all new ones anyway. Everything went in the fire."

"Don't worry about it," the janitor doctor said smoothly. "We use recyclable clothes now. Wear them once, then eat them. Your son's measles vaccination, d'you remember if he had it and what type it was?"

"You're a piece of work, you know that?" Gabe concluded. Doctor Cuddy had told him - and Gabe hadn't really believed - that Doctor House had woken him up (without notifying anyone else, she was very clear it wasn't the hospital's fault) purely and simply because he wanted an accurate medical history for Kyle, and Gabe was the only living person who would know it.

Doctor House sighed.

"You weren't going to tell me, were you?" Gabe said. He hadn't told Doctor Cuddy he didn't intend to sue: if she was right that his body would adjust to the drugs (and all the other bodies in this ward indicated that there was no new magic cure): if she was right that meant he'd be a vegetable again by tomorrow - or if he was really lucky, the day after - then he wasn't going to waste his time on lawyers or janitor-doctors. He had one day to live.

He wasn't hungry for the steak dinner janitor-doctor had brought. He wanted to get out of this ward, to get out of this hospital, to spend his last day smelling the ocean, eating a hoagie, seeing open roads and open water instead of the walls of this basement room and his adult son dying somewhere out of sight.

The coat wasn't his: but it fitted him, more or less. Probably left behind by some dying patient. Gabe checked the pockets, hoping for loose change. He'd have to brace Doctor Cuddy again for some money, point out that the law firm who'd handled his business would still be around if he cared to make trouble -

"C'mon, where are you going to go?" Janitor-doctor was eyeing him, apparently having realized that he wasn't going to eat the steak. "House burned down, your wife's dead, business is sold off. The only thing you have left is down the hall, heading for a liver biopsy."

That was none of this guy's business. "I want a hoagie," Gabe said. "Used to be this little hole in the wall, run by a guy named Giancarlo. Made the best hoagies in the world. Real Italian rolls. Prosciutto, provolone. Mmm. How far is Atlantic City from here?"

"You have one day to live," janitor-doctor said flatly, "and you want a sandwich."

"People on death row get a last meal," Gabe said.

"State provides it. Who's providing for you? You got a car? Money?"

Now that made him more interesting. Gabe smiled. "You're negotiating with me."

"You're in Princeton," janitor-doctor said. "Atlantic City's about ninety miles away. I know a guy with a car could drive us both there. Buy you a hoagie. Get a medical history."

Why don't you have a car? Gabe nearly asked. And then he looked at the mark on the man's neck. He'd employed freed slaves, they were good value, worked hard, could be paid lower wages, were happy to live in dorms on site. They didn't own cars.

How did a doctor end up a slave? Gabe realised he was curious: road trip, ocean air, lights of Atlantic City, a good hoagie and what had to be a good story. How else could he spend the last day of his life?

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

Chase had no intention of arguing with an American cop. Not even when they came as polite as Michael Tritter.

Cameron had told them House was back on painkillers, this time self-administered: Chase didn't tell her he already knew. The trash from the offices got bagged early each morning by a slave, and after Chase had spotted certain physical indications, he'd arranged to work a night shift in ER and searched the Diagnostics and neighboring office trash cans on his three am coffee break.

The little yellow prescription bottles were authorized by Doctor James Wilson. Chase found an empty container in a trash can between Diagnostics and the elevator, hidden under an empty coffee cup and a sandwich wrapper: a half-full one (assuming a standard prescription fill) tucked away between the desk and the wall, and a full, still sealed prescription container inside the textbook on lupus. Literally inside: Greg had cut away some of the pages.

Wilson was over-supplying Greg, or Greg had got hold of Wilson's prescription pad and was over-securing his supply. Cameron said she'd told the detective she knew House took six pills a day. Chase guessed it was more than that, and probably Cameron did too. But Greg understood far better than any of them the hazards of being addicted, and of being in thrall to Wilson as his supplier. Chase had no intention of arguing with American law enforcement, but he'd also decided that officially, he knew only what he had medically guessed: it wasn't technically a doctor's job to search the trash.

"How many pills does he take a day?" Tritter asked again, very gently. He was a big man and he spoke quietly, gently: but his eyes were hard and cold.

"It's hard to say," Chase told him. "Pain levels vary all the time. Could be six, eight... ten." Ten was the maximum dose Chase would have considered safe for House.

"Ever write any prescriptions for him?" Tritter asked.

"No," Chase said. He was on safe ground now.

"Why not?"

"I've never been asked to," Chase said.

"If you were told to write a prescription for Greg, would you do it?"

"If I was asked," Chase corrected him. "If in my medical judgment the prescription was required, yes, I would."

"And in your medical judgment, Greg needs painkillers?"

"Yes. I'm an intensivist," Chase added. From Tritter's slow nod, he already knew, and Chase felt like a fool. "Doctor House has a chronic pain problem. He needs painkillers to stay functional."

"Medicine attracts people who are attracted to power," Tritter said. "Greg was a doctor before he was collared, and he functioned as a doctor here when he was a slave, correct?" He shook his head sympathetically. "I saw how Greg hates being defied by a patient. I doubt he handles defiance from his staff any better - especially not as you are all free, and he was a slave. Now you correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Greg now asks for anything. I think he takes it. And I think that you are stuck, lying to the police, to cover up something you didn't want to do."

Chase shook his head. He was bitterly annoyed and amused. "I have never written a prescription for Doctor House."

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

Janitor-doctor came back. He was wearing an old coat and a scarf. "Too high a price on the car," he said. "There's an Italian deli across the park. I hear they do hoagies. Let's go."

Outside the air was fresh, chilly for October. Except it was mid-November. There was a newsstand just outside the hospital and Gabe stopped there, ostensibly to check out the M&Ms. The night his son had tried to make popcorn and dropped the shovel, Halloween had been three days off. Now it was already November. "I missed the election," Gabe said. Linda would have cared. She always voted. Gabe didn't bother half the time.

"You missed six elections," janitor-doctor said. "If you count midterms."

"What was wrong with the old colors?" Gabe asked, pointing at a bag of M&Ms. "I trusted brown. Do the purple ones have chocolate inside?"

"Raspberry cocaine," janitor-doctor said. "This house that burned down. Where was it?"

"Morristown, New Jersey. Listen, I really need to know about the candy, because I'm allergic to berries." He took the bag and looked expectantly at janitor-doctor.

"You didn't mention that," janitor-doctor said, paying for the M&Ms with a new twenty-dollar note and an odd, slightly pleased smile.

"Is it significant?" Gabe asked. He pulled open the bag and picked out M&Ms, avoiding the puple ones.

"No." They crossed the road. "So, where else did you live? List everywhere, including vacations. Start with when your wife got pregnant."

"We lived in Jersey," Gabe said. He was enjoying the chocolate. "Then we moved to Jersey; from there, Jersey. What, are you waiting to hear about the little cottage in the Amazon, with the mosquitoes and the lead paint all over the walls?"

He glanced at janitor-doctor, caught him nodding, "Yes."

Beautiful day. Kyle dying in hospital behind them. There was nothing he could do. Gabe swallowed, tucking the rest of the M&Ms away in his coat pocket, and said sarcastically, "You know what? I didn't let you come along so you could suck all the fun out of my one day of life."

"Well, you're out of luck, 'cause that's totally why I'm here."

"Okay. Rule change," Gabe said.

The same odd, faint smile, as if something intensely private had pleased him, flitted across the janitor-doctor's face. "Person with the money makes the rules," he said.

"Well, you want answers more than I want money," Gabe said. The park was lovely, the sun was shining, the sky was an intense autumn blue, and Gabe felt like he could walk forever. He didn't even really care if he got an hoagie at the end of it. "Right, so, here's the game. Ask whatever you want. But for every question I answer, you have to answer one first."

Janitor-doctor looked genuinely confused. "Why would you care about anything I have to say?"

Because you're a puzzle, Gabe thought, but didn't say. You're the most interesting man I'm ever going to meet for the rest of my waking life.

"The day before I died, I was a successful man. I had a factory with over two hundred employees. People listened when I talked. I liked power. Now, the only power I have left is the power to annoy you."

He turned and walked off, and heard janitor-doctor limp after him.

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

Foreman answered the phone: he got Greg's voice, talking to someone else. "...explains the seizures. The liver's like a big soup-strainer. Soup drains through, chicken dumplings stay. For soup read blood, for chicken dumplings..."

Whoever Greg was talking to must have said something, but Greg went right on talking "...sits more or less idle until your kid pours tequila shooters into his liver. When the liver goes, takes out his kidneys - explains everything."

"You're saying this was my fault?" That came through clear and morose: Greg must be interviewing Kyle's dad, somewhere.

"Doctor House," Foreman said. He put Greg on the speakerphone, glancing up at Cameron and Chase.

"Yeah, it's me," Greg said. "Foreman, draw blood, test for mercury poisoning. Chase, start heavy-metal chelation while we're waiting for results."

They all looked up then: The detective Michael Tritter was leaning in the doorway, looking at Foreman. Cops had a thousand ways to make life miserable for you.

"Kyle's liver's just managing to hang in there. He's still sliding into coma," Chase said, sounding like he was trying too hard to sound normal. Greg would pick up on that.

"Yes," Greg said, "what part of start the treatment now did you find hard to understand?"

"Why mercury poisoning?" Cameron asked.

"Dad built boats. Took his kid to work. Mercury-based mildew-resistant paint on the hulls. What kid wears a mask?"

"Okay," Foreman said, to Greg and to Tritter. The phone shut off at Greg's end before Foreman ended the call. Foreman stood up. "You heard the man, Cameron, draw blood, test for mercury poisoning." He looked at Tritter. "Should we go somewhere to talk?"

Doctor Cuddy had assigned a room to Tritter. Foreman had been figuring out what to say. Chase and Cameron might think the best of Greg: but he was a junkie. He had been enslaved because he lost control of his life. Now Cuddy and Wilson were letting him have narcotics on a demand schedule, and this was not a good plan for an addict, but Greg clearly needed the narcotics to function.

Foreman didn't sit down, though Tritter gestured to a chair. "Greg is an ass. But he obviously needs pain medication. How much pain one person feels is not a call the government should be making."

The cop looked interested. "So you think I'm a bureaucrat with a badge, following some arbitrary guideline?"

Foreman waited a moment to give the appearance of considering that suggestion. "Yeah. I do."

"So you're saying I should... just trust him." The cop almost smiled. "Do you?"

Of course not. Foreman wasn't going to tell the cops that. Greg's pain medication was a medical problem, to be handled by doctors. "You're not qualified to make..."

"I'm not sure you are either," the cop interrupted, pleasantly. "I've been a cop for twenty years. I worked at the slave processing center before that. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't try to sell me some self-serving story."

Foreman nodded. "Is that all? We're in the middle of a case."

"If you had my job, you'd know," the cop said. "Everybody lies."

That was Greg's mantra - the underlying principle of diagnostics. He'd written it in his first paper on the speciality, which Foreman had read in medical school, before he knew Doctor Gregory House was a slave. Hearing it come back at him from the tall white cold-eyed cop was... disconcerting.

Greg didn't appear. No one around the hospital had seen him in hours. He answered his phone when Foreman called to tell him, "It's not his liver. It's the heart. Patient's BP just dropped like a stone."

Even over the phone, Foreman could hear Greg's mind racing. "Do an echo. Mercury isn't likely to damage the..."

"It didn't." Cameron had the results back from the lab. "Mercury test was negative."

Greg sounded very grim. "Do an echo."

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

There was a little group of picnic tables not far from a playground. The deli's hoagies didn't taste as good as the ones Gabe remembered from Giancarlo's hole in the wall, but they were pretty good, and his coffee was excellent.

House had called the hospital twice on the cellphone, and the second time he looked more and more grim, spitting out finally "Do an echo" and hanging up.

"I was wrong," House said. "Your son's still dying. I need to go over every relative you ever had again. This time, forget their diseases, just tell me how they died. We don't have time to take turns." He opened the free newspaper he'd picked up to a page with a lot of white space, and pulled a pen out of his pocket: it looked like one of the souvenir pens the deli sold, though Gabe hadn't noticed House buying it. "Give me the answers, you get a big one at the end. Go for whatever you want."

Most of Linda's family had been accident-prone drunks. Gabe hadn't liked any of them. He hadn't wanted Kyle to hang out with his cousins. Mostly when they heard from Linda's aunts and uncles and cousins it was about funerals, stupid careless deaths.

Kyle was dying. Gabe lifted his head and looked at the hospital, far across the other side of the park. He could go back there, he could sit uselessly by his son's bed, until he himself drifted away again. He was losing feeling in his hands and feet: it was beginning already, drifting back into the somewhere sleep.

"How did your son dislodge the tinder?" House asked.

"He dropped the popcorn tray. He had been complaining it was too heavy. I should have listened."

"And the hit-and-run, walking the pissy dog. That happen at night?"

I think so, yeah. Why?"

"Car accident after the Phillies lost. Night game?"

Gabe nodded. House's eyes were very wide. His mouth dropped open. He looked like he had been hit with something. He pulled out his cellphone, fumbling it, and began jabbing numbers, talking all the time. "Ragged Red Fiber. It's an inherited condition. Dropping things, muscle weakness, poor night-vision. These people seem uncoordinated and accident-prone. Careless. It's transmitted in mitochondrial DNA, so it only passes through the mother. Your wife's family weren't drunks, they were sick."

"Foreman." The voice from the phone was so urgent, so loud, that Gabe hurt it.

"Test his DNA for Ragged Red Fiber," House said.

Whatever this guy Foreman said, House frowned sharply. "Here's a thought. Why don't we not assume that the test is negative 'til we actually do it."

"House." The voice came through loud and clear again. "The kid has severe cardiomyopathy. Alcoholic and no shot at a transplant. So yeah, maybe you figured out why. Good for you, but he's going to die anyway."

"I want to give Kyle my heart," Gabe said, abruptly.

House stared at him. "You're not dead yet."

Gabe tried to pick up his coffee cup. His hand was trembling, the fingers refusing to close. "I might as well be." He nodded. "We'll go back to the hospital and I'll tell them I want to give Kyle my heart. This ragged red thing is from his mother, my heart's fine."

"I can tell you what Doctor Cuddy will say if we ask her," House said, after a moment. His voice went up a little, a mocking sing-song. "He isn't near death. He's saying 'Kill me and cut out my heart'. Are you out of your mind?"

"What if I kill myself?" Gabe said. They both looked at the road.

House shook his head. "Too much risk of survival. They're bound to keep you alive, if they can." He swallowed. "But, there is a way. You can..." He swallowed again. "You can give Kyle your heart. But we don't have time to go back to the hospital. We'll need to get a cab. I'll make the calls from the cab. If you're willing."

Gabe stood up. His feet were numb. He looked back across the park, realizing that he wasn't even sure he could walk that far any more.

"Okay," he said. "Where are we going?"

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

The cab driver insisted on seeing the cash for the fare, once he heard their destination, and then he grunted "Okay," and didn't speak again. But Gabe saw his eyes on them in the mirror.

"My turn," Gabe said.

House looked at him. Shrugged.

"Why did you become a slave?"

"That's the big question? I give you complete license to humiliate me and that's the best you can do?" House was also watching the cab driver's face in the mirror; he would be coming back. "Well, okay. One day, I ran out of money. Then I got a letter from the nice people at the Slave Administration Centers. Then I went on a bender, and I woke up with fancy new jewellery on my neck."

"No," Gabe said. "Why? You were a doctor before you got enslaved - if you were able to work, you could have cut a deal. Slavery's the last resort for debt collection."

"Maybe I was at the last resort," House said.

"I doubt it," Gabe said. "You're a smart guy. You could have found a way out. Why didn't you?"

House stared out of the window. "I had a patient. She died. I was in a lot of debt," he said. "Medical school... I got kicked out of two medical schools, I lost - I can't remember how many scholarships. Plus, I liked betting. Horses, mostly. I liked watching a horse race, I liked it even better when I had some money on board. Poker. I figured out what was wrong with my patient, but I couldn't prove it, I wasn't supposed to treat her, but I did anyway. I was better at poker than horses. I'd been making my beer money in college on poker games. The debts kept getting bigger. When I won, I won big. I was on a losing streak, and because I'd treated the patient when I wasn't supposed to, I got hauled in for a telling off. I was drunk. I was right, but the patient died anyway. I insulted my boss, and the Dean, and the hospital, and I got fired. I couldn't get another job. There was a conference I was due to go to in New Orleans, I had to give a presentation there, I'd have got hired at the conference - but my debts came due first. I don't think I'd been sober since my patient died."

"Your parents... were they dead? They couldn't help you?"

House looked at him. His face looked ghastly in the street lights and the shadows of the cab. He bared his teeth. It wasn't a smile. "As far as I know," he said "both of my parents are still alive."

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The phone call came in from a cellphone, but the doctor's voice gave all the right details and the administrator was able to confirm them with the hospital.

New Jersey Slave Administration Center was a busy center, but this was not a commonplace event.

The two men arrived in a cab: the doctor identified himself.

"We will do our own medical tests," the administrator told the other man.

"You'll have to do them in a hurry if any of them involve making him run on a treadmill," the doctor said.

"Do you have any preference?"

"All I want," the other man said, slowly. He was leaning on the counter. "Make sure my son gets my heart."

"That is all on these forms. You need to sign them, then we print your fingers and your retinas."

The doctor had picked up the forms and was reading through them. "All clear," he said to the other man, and pointed to the paragraph which specified the heart recipient. "They're asking you how you want them to do it. They won't ask you after you sign. Pills are the simplest. Hanging has less chance of damaging the heart."

There was a pause. The other man looked down at the forms, at the pen. He looked as if he was thinking about it. "I'm okay with pain."

"Strangulation's better than breaking your neck," the doctor said. "Which means this'll be slow." He produced a bottle of aspirin from his pocket and opened it, handing it to the other man. "Take these: it'll reduce trauma to the heart in transit."

For a moment, the adminstrator thought the other man meant to kill himself in the foyer, which - while legal - would have been an administrative headache. But the other man took four aspirin, and handed the bottle back. His hands wouldn't close properly, and the counter was all that was keeping him upright, the administrator noted. This would be easy. It was legal for a terminal patient to sell themselves into slavery for medical research, then will organs from the cadaver to chosen recipients. Sometimes people cheated. This looked okay, though.

"Tell him..." The other man said, and paused. "I don't know what to tell him." He sighed. "I think it's my turn to ask a question, isn't it?"

"I don't think so. Because you asked me where we were going, back at the park."

The guards were waiting - a specially chosen pair, for a terminal slave. The processing wouldn't be the same. But it was often upsetting, even knowing the slave had chosen this when free, to have to put even a slave to death.

The two men were looking at each other as if there was no one else there. The doctor shrugged. "What do you want to know?"

"If you could hear one thing from your father, what would it be?"

"It wouldn't help you."

"Try me," the other man said.

The doctor said, "I'd want him to say, 'You were right. You did the right thing'."

The other man smiled. He picked up the pen. His handwriting was clumsy, but the prints and retina scans would make it legal. As he scrawled his name, he said to the doctor, "Yeah, it doesn't help."

The administrator finished the procedures. They cuffed the new slave, but didn't collar him. He didn't say anything more in the administrator's hearing as the guards took him away.

"The procedure will be carried out in twenty minutes to an hour, depending how long the medical tests take to perform," the administrator notified the doctor. "We've already spoken to the organ collection team. I assure you that all medical procedures will be promptly and effectively carried out."

The doctor nodded. He turned away from the desk, and pulled out his cellphone. "Wilson? Case is over. Deal's on. Need a ride."

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

Greg had stolen fifty dollars from Wilson's wallet, but that wasn't even what Wilson was furious about. The Diagnostics patient was getting a heart transplant from his father, who had sold himself into slavery for medical research: Greg had evidently instigated and prompted this, and he'd used Wilson's money to get both of them to the Slave Administration Center.

Cuddy was unqualifiedly furious - it looked very bad for the hospital, to have a coma patient wake up, walk out with a doctor, and end being carved up freshly dead. Wilson felt an appalled empathy for Greg: he knew that sometimes patients just decide to die, and in a strange way, the coma patient had been Greg's patient too. He had meant to say something sympathetic when he picked Greg up, save the fight til tomorrow, but Greg had looked at him without reaction.

Greg now sat huddled against the door on the passenger side, head down, ignoring Wilson.

"Did you know Detective Tritter was talking to your team while we were away?" Wilson asked.

"Yeah," Greg said, after a long moment.

"Which one of them told you?" Wilson asked, interested.

Greg lifted his cell phone. "All of them. Which means that none of them said anything that I have to worry about."

"You stole fifty dollars from me," Wilson said.

"Take it out on my ass," Greg said flatly. "We already agreed two. What's fifty bucks worth? Another four? Five?"

"That's actually the least of my worries," Wilson said. "There's a hold on my accounts." He paused. Greg didn't react. Wilson spelled it out. "My accounts have been frozen as part of a police investigation."

Greg shrugged. "They can't keep your money forever."

"It turns out," Wilson said, "that because of all the prescriptions you stole, Tritter has convinced the NJPD that I'm dealing. They can keep my accounts frozen until they prove otherwise."

"Right," Greg said. He turned to look at Wilson and bared his teeth. "Because you told the cops you did sign the prescriptions, you can't go back on that now or you'd go to jail for perjury and obstruction of justice. And the police don't have a case unless they can prove that either I got the drugs illegally or you sold them illegally. You lied about the first, and you haven't done the second." He paused. "Have you?"

"Of course not," Wilson exploded. His hands clenched on the wheel. "I lied. To the cops. They'd take your license to practice medicine and then they'd sell you again!"

"Yeah," Greg said. "You think my addiction is out of control? You just can't get enough of beating my sorry ass." He paused. "Important thing is you keep prescribing the same amount of drugs to me. Or it'll look suspicious."

"Here's another way to look at it." Wilson was so angry his voice sounded strange in his own ears. "Having forced me to lie to the police, your first concern is securing your drug-connection!"

Greg shrugged. He turned to look out of the window again.

*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*housemd*

They told Kyle Wozniak his father was dead when he woke up in the clean room afterwards. He had lost consciousness when his dad was still alive: it hardly seemed real that the breathing body in the bed had got up, walked, talked, decided to will Kyle his heart, and died.

It hardly seemed real that there was now no one to visit, at all. Doctor House told him about ragged-red fiber, treatable if not curable. About his prospects as a heart transplant patient.

"That can't be all," Kyle said.

"Well, you got a heart out of it. How many organs do you want from the guy?"

"I mean, my father must have said something. He couldn't just... he must have given you some kind of a message for me."

Doctor House stared at him for a moment. "He said you were right. You did the right thing."

"Right about what?" Kyle was confused. "What does that mean?"

"How should I know? He's your dad."

Alone, Kyle wept.

tba

I should stop apologising for how long each chapter takes! It doesn't help. To coin a phrase! But the story will continue. Promise! If you liked it, leave a comment!