Dear God, I Don't Believe In You: Ch 5

[verbal_kint]

Chapter 5: That Guy

 

The highlight of House’s day was finding a Sharpie in his left pocket.

Meanwhile, Chase was ardently wrapping his tie around Wilson’s hand.

Wilson was using his more fortunate fingers to seek out any trace of signal on his cell phone.

Cuddy was pacing around the car, mentally listing the people who might notice their absence from the seminar, and hoping that they would.

House eyed the Sharpie for about a minute before putting it to use.

He grabbed his cane from the dashboard of the car, surprised not only by the fact it survived, but that it seemed no worse for wear. He hobbled over to the front of the car, where Wilson and Chase were nestled in the snow, putting his cane to use with his left hand while it awkwardly tried to keep up with the rest of his stride.

He reached the front of the Land Rover, and leaned his cane against what was formerly the wheel well. He pulled his left sleeve over his fingers and began to wipe the snow off the windshield, smiling when he found a bit of it that wasn’t cracked or absent entirely.

“Okay,” he said, bellowing like a mountebank. “Differential diagnosis for a car crash in the Pocono’s.”

Chase looked up from Wilson’s fingers. “You’re…diagnosing our situation?”

House began writing. “Actually I’m ordering pizza. Dominoes delivers via rescue helicopter now.”

His left fingers were curved gracelessly around the Sharpie as it smudged its way along the windshield. His letters were big and uneven, as if he’d written them on a bumpy chair.

Wilson read the words aloud while House wrote them. He wasn’t sure why, because it always peeved him when other people did it. “Torn ACL, broken fingers, lacerations to the face and hand, broken wrist—“

“My wrist is not broken, House!”

House stopped, turning to Cuddy, who’d recently rejoined the group after her pacing spree. “Okay, then you have a brain tumor,” he said, and proceeded to write the word ‘brain’ on the windshield with his left hand’s cockeyed penmanship.

“What—“

House nodded impatiently, “You not noticing that your wrist is obviously broken means that you’re not feeling pain like regular people feel pain.” He paused, noticing her look, “And don’t give me that ‘high pain threshold’ crap because I remember when you stubbed your toe on your desk. You cried for half an hour!” He cleared his throat for his next deduction. “So, the only other possibility is that you have a tumor pressing on your hypothalamus. You’ve got maybe…a month to live. Congrats.”

Cuddy folded her arms. “Why yes, House. That’s exactly it; how is it you know me so well?”

House smiled juvenilely. “It’s a gift,” he said.

“Why don’t you have dislocated shoulder up there?” asked Wilson almost accusingly.

“Because,” said House, glaring at Cuddy, “I seemed to recall it being relocated.”

Chase snorted, “You know it’s going to take weeks for that to heal.”

“I’m fine,” growled House. “Now can we get back to this?” He indicated the windshield with his head, shifting his feet slightly as his leg began to get angry.

His eyes wandered to where the two cliffs met, about 900 yards from their pathetic little Land Rover. The sun began to graze the edges of the canyon there, as if presenting their way out. And indeed, it was a way out.

If you wanted to be flown out of there in a body bag.

He suspected the clearing in the middle was sheer ice and that, despite the dozens of trees that bordered this pathway, one misstep could suck you down into some unseen ice cavern or a bottomless pit.

But there were trees, and trees meant wood, and wood meant fire, and fire meant staying alive, if just for one night.

House looked in the other direction, towards another cluster of trees, if you could call them that.

They were dry little twigs on sticks, too brittle even to touch. They may have been able to light a cigarette or a candle, but other than that, they were about as useless as a spare tire to a fishing boat captain.

But it was either this, or the road not taken.

He shook his head, as if to demonstrate to the others that he’d been daydreaming. Such a thing was obvious without clarification.

He looked at his new white board, at the faded words in his muddled, left-handed penmanship. Those words, however, were no longer symptoms. They were simply limitations, and a hindrance to survival.

He crossed them out.

“Okay.”

Everyone’s eyes found their way back to House. It was easy to get used to his long pauses and distant thoughts, but becoming accustomed to the abrupt way these thoughts came back to him was a different matter entirely.

He continued, now possessing their strict attention.

“Two groups,” he said. “One to get firewood and one to get everything out of the car—that’s food, anything warm, tools, some porn, and water.”

They really couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“We meet back here in a half hour.”

And then House shut up, as if he were waiting for them to decide who would do what and walk out of his office as he flipped on the television and took a nap.

He put a bloody hand up over his face, pretending to think, as he winced and slid down the side of the car. In truth, he was beginning to miss having his arm dangle uselessly off his torso, as now he had nothing to distract him from the painful way his leg jolted with every heartbeat. He swallowed, and put his hand down, looking quite sick.

There were politics to this sort of thing, and Cuddy knew it. She and Wilson were the best off in the group, so they should be ones who trekked over to the smaller cluster of trees and brought back the wood. It was the rule.

And so she raised her hand, volunteering for group number one to demonstrate her knowledge of this particular rule.

She was surprised when Wilson didn’t do the same.

Because Wilson knew this rule, too, and everyone knew that Wilson knew this rule, but Wilson sat there in the snow. His hand did not move.

He knew it had to be him. Chase probably couldn’t walk, and there was no logical excuse for him to let House hobble there and back, several pounds of wood in tote with a dislocated shoulder and probably a concussion.

Wilson was supposed to be the healthy one. He was supposed to be the one who told everyone else that it was okay, that tomorrow would be better. He was supposed to be the guy who lent House an extra pair of legs, and Cuddy a crying shoulder, and everyone else the voice of reason and sensitivity.

Now he couldn’t be that guy, and he felt nothing but guilt.

So now, Wilson raised his hand, pretending to be that guy.

Cuddy didn’t respond to his volunteerism at first. She looked over the faces of House and Wilson. House had the countenance of small child trying wasabi for the first time, staring at the ground, oblivious to Cuddy’s eyes on him. His eyes were at half-mass in a painful squint. His mouth was closed tight and curved upward around his nose, like a smile, except it wasn’t a smile. His hands were so tight around his knee and thigh that she wondered how long he could make a pair of jeans last before fraying them in that spot.

Looking eerily similar was Wilson’s face. He was pale and sweaty, his eyes large with fear or pain or something in between. His suffering wasn’t quite as apparent as House’s, but there was still some there. She couldn’t place what was wrong with him, it was like a man getting his mustache trimmed in that, you know there’s something missing, you just can’t really place it or know where the feeling comes from.

But Wilson didn’t have a moustache. And after a good thirty seconds of being ignored, he lowered his hand, which was losing its somewhat limited blood supply and now felt a little foreign on his body, and quietly said, “I’ll go with you, Cuddy.”

Cuddy didn’t smile. In fact, she looked downright alarmed. “Oh no, I’ll take—“ She looked over to House, half-expecting him to be on his feet and eager for the adventure.

House however, was still slumped over the side of the car, unaware of this strange battle wreaking havoc within Cuddy’s mind. The snow by his left foot had been cleared out from him kicking at it, leading Cuddy to wonder what exactly it is about pain that causes people to assume scuffing the ground is a way to assuage it.

She couldn’t take House. Not like this. And Wilson did just volunteer.

“Okay, Wilson,” she said.

Wilson thought he was okay.

And ‘thought’ of course, means ‘hoped.’

He didn’t feel dizzy anymore, and the persistent burning that pillaged his insides earlier had dulled to the occasional twinge in the 15 minutes he’d been sitting down.

He looked at Cuddy, terrified when he realized her gazed was laced with something he typically saw for House: pity.

She couldn’t know, though. How could she know?

“It’s settled then.”

House’s voice made him jump a little as Wilson remembered that other people existed, and that this whole time they’d been “settling something.” His eyes broke from Cuddy’s to meet House’s, whose expression was more so lined with…understanding.

Wilson realized he must have been imagining this as House looked down at nothing in particular and spoke.

“You guys go for firewood, and I’ll stay here with Sir Hop-Along,” he said, tilting his head in Chase’s direction and swallowing the first of the five Vicodin he had left.

Cuddy stood up and started to re-lace the boots she’d narrowly chosen over heels, immensely thankful.

“Here, said Chase, noting that shoe-tying was one of those simple tasks that got complicated with one usable hand, “let me help you with that.”

She gave a smile of thanks and presented her foot in his direction.

Wilson regretted standing up approximately one second after doing so. He felt sick. He was sick. The sun danced in his blurry vision liked a confused racquetball, swaying in time with the rest of the world, spinning at impossible speeds.

“I have to pee. I’ll b-be back.”

And he rushed clumsily to a bush conveniently positioned about 50 yards away. He ignored the confused frowns on his friends’ faces.

Thirty seconds later that bush was doused in the sad remains of his lunch. He saw Twizzlers, his chicken-salad sandwich, and unmistakably his strawberry cream soda, but at least he felt better. A lot better, actually, because nothing quite beats the feeling right after you vomit. Except for sex, and what did Wilson know about that?

He sat back on his knees, trying to stop his hands from shaking.

That was just because of the Vicodin, he lied.

He looked at Chase’s tie around his swollen fingers, remembering his own tie’s new residence.

He looked around to make sure nobody was watching, and took off his jacket.

The cold burned his ribs as he lifted his shirt up to his chest, carefully untying his tie while running possible scenarios through his head, like what he would do if he was still bleeding, or if he’d just imagined the whole thing.

He hadn’t imagined it. But then, he wasn’t bleeding, either.

The cut was deep, deeper than he thought. It ran directly under his ribcage on his right side, about 4 inches long. He saw his muscle, maybe even a bit of rib, or some other nameless white structure that inhabited him. He took a breath, noticing how blood oozed slightly from somewhere within the cut and under the muscle. He took another breath, and coughed, unable to catch it.

To cough was to set fire to his side, and he leaned over in the snow, determined to get some oxygen in as he winced more, starting to gag.

He threw up again.

Vicodin didn’t make you throw up twice.

He wiped his mouth hastily, again feeling better, but not sure how long the feeling would last. He needed to get up, to find Cuddy or House or even Chase. He needed to tell somebody about this.

He stood up, pausing for a minute after replacing the tie and his various layers of clothing. His legs didn’t shake or quiver, and neither did his vision. He was about to turn and go back to their screwed up form of civilization when he looked down.

There, in the new, more colorful array of lunch items and convenient stores afterthoughts, was just a little bit of blood.

Next Chapter

Comments

[bmax67.livejournal.com]

Yay! A new chapter!
Yes, I already left a message at ff.net but thought I'd come say "hi" over here.

I totally missed the "some porn" comment from House. Hee!

Can't wait to see how they get out of their situation.

[verbal-kint10.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! It was very sweet of you to post at two different places, haha.

[bmax67.livejournal.com]

Hey!
For some reason ff.net doesn't let emails show on the comments. My email address is:
bmax67 @ comcast . net

Hopefully that'll work!

[angelcat2865.livejournal.com]

Great update. I really hope Wilson is going to be ok, it does not sound good for him right now.

*Have you thought about posting this at Sick Wilson too.*

[verbal-kint10.livejournal.com]

I already posted it over there. Well, not this chapter yet, but "this" as in the story "this" yes, lol.

And thanks!

[dreamsofspike.livejournal.com]

oh, poor wilson :( i'm so scared for him...he really needs to tell them now :( i'm so worried that he's gonna wait too late and end up hurt so bad :( excellent chapter, hon, can't wait for the next :)

[srsly-yes.livejournal.com]

Poor Wilsie! Someone take care of him, Please!

I'm engrossed in your story. Can't wait for the next post. :)

[cardenrow.livejournal.com]

Ok, you've got me hooked, and I want to see what else happens! Please post soon!

[lhoma320.livejournal.com]

OMG, I printed this down a few days ago and decided today to take it with me to the pool! Lord have mercy, the first line sucked me in and from there it got better and better. What's better then a sick Wilson story? A sick everyone story! Now why hasn't anyone else thought of this. What a wonderful job you did with all the characters. So many great lines. The banter between Cuddy and House about her wrist was positively delightful. Love your writing. Your description of the whole accident was fabulous!

I immediately finished chapter 5 and told my husband we needed to go back to the house. He asks "have enough sun already"? Heck, no, I've got to go in and read Chapter 6!

Keep up the great job! I love this!

[jacks-boonie.livejournal.com]

*gasp* No!! Not Wilson!! DDDDDDDDD:
He needs to tell someone!! Now!! NowNowNow!!
*clicks "Next Chapter" button desperately*