Fun With Dick and Cane REDUX 7

[verbal_kint]

See Jane Curse…

 

“You have a master key, right?” Foreman’s voice was hurried, as were his steps as he led Cuddy to the lobby elevators.

Wilson had stayed on the track. Once it’d been established that House was physically okay, and that he was not lying in a pool of blood or a victim of spontaneous human combustion or in the process of being mauled by a tiger, Wilson really felt no need to go. And while his curiosity for what House had done was strong, his adoration of peace and quiet was a little bit stronger. And a lot less…complicated.

Cuddy was getting annoyed at all the mysteriousness, and the fact that Foreman wasn’t saying anything. All of it, it couldn’t possibly be that bad.

Stupid assumption. Of course it could be that bad, and of course, it probably was.

“Why are we going to the basement?” she asked.

Foreman sighed, looking upwards, “Because that’s where the morgue is.”

“Dr. Foreman, what the Hell is going on?”

Foreman scratched his temple as if preparing for a long story. “Our patient,” he began, “presented with nausea and disorientation, which developed into seizures, fever, and right leg paralysis. It’s obviously a neurological problem, and probably an infection.” His voice grew duller as the story grew longer, a subliminal ‘I told you so’ and mental punishment all at once. Cuddy found it perhaps annoying than the absence of talking.

Foreman continued, his contempt of the situation quite apparent. “The MRI was negative and the CT scan was inconclusive. We put the guy on broad-spectrum antibiotics, but he’s still getting worse. Therefore, the only logical thing left is to do a brain biopsy.”

Cuddy still didn’t see what this all had to do with the morgue…unless the patient was dead. And if that were the case, Forman should’ve been prettying up his story for the lawyers, not recounting it for the sake soon-to-be former boss. “What’d the biopsy reveal?”

“Nothing. We haven’t done it.”

“Why not?”

“House,” he said with raised eyebrows, “won’t let us.”

From across the small lift, Cuddy eyebrows did a stirring impression of Foreman’s.

He elaborated. “Said it’d be ‘too dangerous.’ He wants us to solve the case by sitting on our hands while he guesses. Meanwhile, there’s a dying cripple in the other room.”

Cuddy had never heard Foreman say “cripple” before. For some reason, it sounded wrong. Almost the equivalent of House saying “Cute handbag.”

She pushed the feeling back into its motherly abyss. “Well now you have my permission. Do the biopsy.”

“Can’t,” he said bitterly.

“Why not?”

“He’ll fire me.”

“Then I’ll fire him. Do it.”

“Still can’t.”

“Why?”

“He faked a page from you to every neurosurgeon in the hospital, telling them to help with an emergency in the morgue.”

As they stepped off the elevator, Cuddy heard strange banging sounds coming from inside the morgue’s doors, which were closed and locked. A chair leaned up against the left door for emphasis, which was in itself quite silly, seeing as the chair had wheels.

Foreman stopped in front of the door. “Then he locked them all in,“ he said.

It’s a truly scary thing, when a person can get creative about ways to torment others.

“Oh God,“ said Cuddy, not nearly as amused as she’d be twenty years later when reciting this story to a niece or nephew.

She got the master key out from her coat pocket and unlocked the door, simultaneously unleashing a raging tide of curse words and threats from the masses of people inside.

After approximately fifteen minutes of apologizing to each and every enraged brain surgeon, the mess seemed to be resolved.

Of course, none of them wanted to touch the patient of the bastard who put them in there, let alone operate on the guy.

Cuddy started up the stairs, not bothering with the elevator and the grumpy old men in it. Foreman was fast at her heels, trying to keep a little distance as Cuddy leered into the space in front of her like a hungry predator.

“I’ll kill him!” she fumed, “I’ll wring the son-of-a-bitch’s neck!” Her next few sentences were muffled threats and some garbled curse words as she repeated, “Every damn neurosurgeon!”

Foreman wanted to calm her down a little, at least so that her heart rate was no longer in the Incredible Hulk’s danger zone, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Out of fear.

She swung open House’s door as if helped along by gale force winds.

“HOUSE!”

House sat up, surprised, as if he had no clue what she could possibly be angry about.

“Can I help you?” he asked, his mock courtesy flooding the room.

Cuddy had to speak each word separately, for fear of busting open the dam and releasing her thunderous fury on her employee in the form of physical violence.

“What. Were. You. Thinking?!”

House pondered for a moment, before answering. “I’m sorry, okay? I was thinking that seeing Mamma Mia! seemed like a perfectly acceptable way to spend an afternoon. And I was right. Wilson and I were dancing in the aisles.”

Outside in the hallway, a woman’s scream could be heard all the way down at the nurse’s station.

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A minute later, Wilson stepped out of the elevator, sweaty running shoes still tied.

Cuddy was already in the room by the time Wilson got there. He stopped just out of House’s field of vision to watch the conversation.

Despite the fact that half of the walls in House’s office were made of glass, Wilson could only make out random syllables and words, mostly ones that began with ‘F’ and ended in ‘uck.’ Both were agitated, obviously. Cuddy moreso than House. He assumed Cuddy was yelling at her prized diagnostician about something immature, and unnecessary to anyone but House, and he was yelling back. Just…not as loudly. Wilson was probably right, considering this was the path most of their conversations took.

By the look of it, Cuddy hadn’t mentioned her earlier conversation with Wilson on the track. And she probably wouldn’t, as such tasks were typically reserved for best friends. But again, it was simply too hard to tell.

So he opened the door. He slowly slunk into the office in an effort to not draw attention to himself. The idea in itself was rather ludicrous. House shot him a glance in acknowledgement of his entrance, but kept his attention on Cuddy.

Cuddy either didn’t notice or didn’t care—probably the latter, as extra bodies in a rather small office were pretty hard to miss.

She drove on, reciting her argument like a well-rehearsed speech spoken to a mirror. “Your patient is getting sicker. You tossing a damn tennis ball at the wall is not making you smarter. Do the biopsy, House. And after that, write a personalized letter of apology to every person you locked in that room.” The second part was rather pointless, as House would never do it, but it did give the inner-Cuddy a smallish pat on the back, some reassurance that she at least attempted to keep House leashed.

House, who was holding on to that damn tennis ball as a way to anchor his pain rather than get an idea, spoke softly to her. His defeated tone was canceled out by the words he spoke. “A brain biopsy is extreme, and this case is not at a point where we can compromise this guy’s future just because his idiot doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. I need more time.”

“But that’s the point, House. You do this biopsy, and you will know what’s wrong with him. Yes, you will be taking a risk, but it’s a risk you’d take with every single other patient who comes in here if it meant saving their life.”

“His brain is all he’s got!”

“He’s not you, House!”

House opened his mouth to speak, but found the words would not come, that some bizarre entanglement thoughts up top had stripped him of his trademark articulation.

So Wilson spoke for him.

“You like him.”

The words caught House with his hands in the cookie jar. Any other time, any other place, any other patient, and paragraphs denying this accusation would have burned up the air with incendiary wit. And yet there was no use in lying.

And yet, for one reason or another, up until the very moment this…accusation, was spoken aloud, House didn’t know why it was true, merely that it was. It was a puzzle piece from a different puzzle, one House had yet to solve, until now.

“He…never lies.” House sighed, then he chuckled slightly, throwing as much weight off what he was about to say as humanly possible. “He knows what’s real, knows limitations, but he doesn’t just stumble through the day. He’s…” House frowned, looking for words far more expensive than fifty cents. When one couldn’t be found, he simply said, “happy.”

Wilson and Cuddy exchanged looks, but said nothing.

“And I respect that,” said House.

It was now time to start arguing once more. “And I’m not gonna go playing Capture the Flag in his brain, not when there’s still time to find out what’s killing him!”

“House,” Cuddy began softly, “there is no time. Soon he’s gonna be in pain. You know what that’s like more than anyone.”

She did it. She played the cripple card, because that’s what it took to get House to listen.

“Do the biopsy, or you’re off the case, House.”

“Get out of my office.”

“You broke your own rule House; you’re not being objective!” Cuddy was pleading now.

Wilson stood in the corner and looked at his feet. He had no more leverage to use. He might as well have been invisible.

“GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!” he slammed his fist down and stood up, a wince firmly planted on his pale face.

Cuddy stuttered the beginnings of something before turning around, hiding the look of pity on her face. Wilson sighed, finally speaking. “Everybody lies,” he said.

It hadn’t been a dig at House’s patient, nor House. It was just a statement—an expression really, that had spread throughout the hospital as a peephole into the mind of Greg House. Hell, it wasn’t even preachy, not the way Wilson said it. Truly, despite all the meaning you could fling in or out of it, they were just words.

But to House it was none of these things. It was a clue.

The lower part of his eyelids scrunched up in a purposeful tick and he squinted at something unseen on the floor. His brow furrowed; his eyes zipped back and forth as if reading the pages of his own mind.

And then he looked up. His faced relaxed.

“I borrowed this. We’re even,” he said, placing a pager in Cuddy’s hand.

Without another word from anybody, he grabbed his cane and stumbled out of the room. Neither Cuddy nor Wilson followed him.

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House walked into the lab with more zest than he’d had all day. His team eyed him curiously. He rarely stayed until 5pm. It was now 7:30.

“Who did Tom’s surgery? After he broke his leg.”

“Uh,“ said Thirteen, nose deep in Tom’s file, “Dr. Kevin Brenton.”

House’s eyes narrowed calculatingly. He began to walk closer, playing out the scenario in his head before telling his team what to do. “Go MRI his head.”

Kutner sat up. “We already did. It was negative.”

“Do it anyway.”

The three stood up slowly and began walking towards Tom’s room.

House flicked a pill in his mouth, sat down at the lab table, and waited.

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By 8pm they were back, films in hand. He took the scan from Taub’s hands and put it up to the light.

“That’s…impossible,” said Kutner. “We just scanned him this morning.”

They all stared at the scan for a least a minute, until House’s arm was sore from holding it, and his eyes were dry from staring at it.

Taub spoke first, switching the focus in his eyes as he tried to count the many lesions that now dotted the MRI. “How long?”

“Three months,” said Thirteen, “maybe four.”

House lowered the scan and stared ahead.

“Shit,” he said.

 

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