Fun With Dick and Cane REDUX 2
Dec. 16th, 2008 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verbal_kintChapter Two: See Dick Chat
“Hello, my name is Dr. House. What seems to be the—Holy Hell!”
House hadn’t meant to react quite so strongly, but such a thing was easier said than done as he was greeted by the splayed man ass on the table.
“I’m having some tingling on my rear,” said the ass’s mouth, who was the patient.
House surveyed the man up and…down. Mental projections of beached whales plagued his thought process, though he couldn’t quite put a stubby, bloated finger on why that was.
The mouth continued, “It’s going down into my leg too, and it hurts. I was on a plane recently, do you think maybe I have one of those blood clot thingies?”
“An infarction thingy? Oh no, you’re in way much pain for it to be an infarction.”
“Oh good. That’s what I thought.”
House popped the lid off his pills, put two in his mouth, and swallowed.
The larger mouth spoke again. “What’s that?”
“Vicodin. But it’s probably too weak for a man in your amount of discomfort. When did this pain start?”
“About two days ago, on the plane.”
“The plane ticket, did you pay for it with a credit card?”
“Yeah.”
“Been having money woes lately?”
“Why would I—“
“I don’t know, maybe you think paying bills is for squares. I’m guessing you have quite the credit card collection then?”
House nodded his head toward the door in order to obscurely non-verbalize that the ass should get up. Fifteen seconds later, the ass complied with a nervous laugh and a confused wince. House shuffled over to the table and flopped down, resting his head on his hands.
“Well, yeah I have a lot of cards, but—“
“It’s called Creditcarditis, and no, I didn’t make it up. Your wallet’s too thick from lack of cash and too many credit cards. Ironic, isn’t it?”
House swung his cane over to the nearby countertop, sliding the glass container of lollypops (which typically was filled with cotton balls, or tongue depressors, or other remotely useful things) dangerously close to the edge before gambling a reach into it. He pulled out a red lollypop and began the arduous task of unwrapping it.
“Anyway, it’s cutting off blood flow to your leg. Take your wallet out of your back pocket—get a purse, you’ll be fine. I’d also recommend selling your children on the black market, save a buttload of trouble before they start getting STDs, plus you get back some of your money. Have a good day.”
He was out of the room before he said that last sentence, not that he intended to say it anyway. He smirked at the unintentional genius of his word choice. After all, he had just used “buttload” in a case about butts.
He proceeded to exam room two to exercise his curiosity.
“Hello, my name is Dr. House, wha—“
“He’s just got the flu, House. Why’d you ask me to bring him back here?” said Foreman’s voice in a semi-accusatory manner. Foreman’s body was sitting next to the patient, who seemed as disinterested in being treated as Foreman seemed about treating him.
“Because I care, Foreman. It’s what I do. Now, Mr. Quicks—“
“It’s Mix,” the patient corrected.
House gestured towards the forearm crutch in the guy’s left hand, “Can’t say I’m surprised—Quicks is a pretty silly name for a cripple, isn’t it?”
An easy smile tugged at the guy’s mouth. “Call me Tom.”
“Okay. Now, Mr. Quicks, what brings you in here today?”
Tom cleared his throat, looking a little embarrassed. “I threw up at work. Boss made me come in.”
House took a step toward Tom, looking him up and down like a critic of fine art. “Are you having a bad day?”
Foreman, who had restrained himself to a scowl thus far in the conversation, spoke up. “There’s a waiting room full of patients, and for once in your career you’re asking a patient how his day’s going? What does that have to do with—“
House interrupted the interruption. “Pain-wise. Are you having a bad day?”
Tom responded with a quick “no.”
“What? What do you mean, House?” For a board-certified specialist, Foreman wasn’t always the best at keeping up.
“Mr. Quicks has RSD. Right?” he said, looking to Tom.
Tom nodded, not quite sure as to how the doctor had guessed.
“Nice history, Foreman. What, were you two in here debating the validity of Angelina Jolie’s boobs?
Tom smiled sheepishly. “I think they’re real.”
“Wow,” said House, “a naïve cripple. That’s rare.” House shuffled by Foreman slowly, stretching his legs, one of which was rapidly losing patience with the situation. “So Quicks, you’re sure you’re not having a bad day today?”
“I’d ask you the same thing.”
House stopped. An awed smile crawled onto his face as he stared back at Tom, who looked quite confident in his remark. House squinted. Tom’s assertion, while halting, was at its core nothing more than the simple math of cane plus frown. It was not an amazing feat of observational skill, merely an instinct of those in chronic pain.
Foreman, ever the outsider, intervened in this stare-down. “House, what does RSD have to do with his—“
“Symptoms?” House was relieved by the change of subject. “Because, Mr. ‘neurologist’ if you’d have gone to medical school you’d know that RSD stands for Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. It’s a chronic pain condition, the worst there is, actually,” he said, glancing back at Tom. “We’re talking pain that rates above a forty on the McGill Pain Index. That’s worse than cancer pain, amputation, and childbirth, which is pretty painful; I would know.”
The two other men stared at him for at least 15 seconds.
“No, I wouldn’t. But Wilson would know. Anyway, you’re in that amount of pain on a daily basis, and a little nausea is the least of your worries.”
Foreman wasn’t really convinced. “But he’s sweating. That’s flu-like.”
“I’m sweating. Symptomatic of waking up on the wrong side of the bed—the ‘help I’ve fallen and can’t get up’ side.”
“Excuse me?” This amount of arguing over a little puke kind of weirded Tom out. It was like arguing over urine color or the consistency of shit, in that it only made him more nauseous.
Both doctors ignored him. Foreman pressed on, “House, it’s either pain or the flu. Both ordinary, both non life-threatening. The only difference is that if it’s the flu, he gets to go home and miss work, but if it’s because he’s having a bad pain day, you’re going to admit him, run a lot of dangerous, invasive, and expensive tests because you have a morbid curiosity with how well-adjusted people handle pain!”
Tom tried again. “Guys, I said I wasn’t having a bad day. I’m just a little queasy.”
House rubbed the back of his thumb against his forehead, picking up a few stray beats of sweat in the process. He looked to Foreman, then back to Tom.
“Fine Quicks, take some Pepto-Bismol and Sudafed; you’ll be fine in a few days.”
Tom grabbed his crutch and slowly stood up. “Thanks,” he said, reaching to shake Foreman’s hand.
He missed.
A stupid handshake, something he did on a daily basis, and he missed. Yet, it is in the nature of embarrassment that we try again, which is exactly what Tom Mix did.
And he missed again.
House’s brow furrowed, as the twinkle in his eyes made its first appearance of the day. “Foreman, admit Mr. Quicks. We’re gonna run some dangerous, invasive, and expensive tests.”
---------------------------------------------------------
House had his head down on the conference table when Thirteen entered the room. His white knuckles clung to the side of his chair to indicate that he was very much awake. She closed the door with a klunk so he’d have a chance to react to her intrusion.
He sat up suddenly in a well-rehearsed ruse of “waking.” He proceeded to sell it like a famed stage actor, taking his time with yawns and woozy blinks. He looked back at Thirteen dully.
“What?” he said, with all the patience he could muster.
“Uh,” she started, flustered by the surplus of harshness in his voice after momentarily forgetting who she was dealing with, “Patient’s in MRI with Taub and Kutner.”
House put his head back down on the table. “I hope they aren’t claustrophobic. That MRI machine is a pretty tight squeeze.”
He heard the ring of bells from Cuddy’s new, incredibly unwise earrings before he heard the clap of her prized dagger heels. Then sound grew louder, more authoritative, somehow, but House didn’t bother trying to hide. She was seconds away by now and he wasn’t exactly in a quick getaway mood. He closed his eyes and waited.
“House!”
He raised his head off the table with the weakness of an eighty year-old. The act didn’t go unnoticed by Thirteen or Cuddy. “Yes, Satan?”
“House, you cannot, and let me make this very clear, CANNOT put ‘Out Of Order’ signs on exam rooms. If a patient were to—“
“Were to what? Have a headache? Oh, poor them!”
Any humor that should’ve been there gave way to bitterness, and Cuddy didn’t bother responding. She wasn’t quite sure which annoyed her more: when House told nobody his leg was out for blood, or when he told people like this.
But what annoyed her most of all was how guilty she felt about all of it. Not just about not noticing this sooner, but about every bad thing that’s happened in the past ten years. The feeling alone was infuriating, a paper cut on her tongue every time she thought about it. Because deep down, this was just as much her fault as it was Stacy’s. She wanted to play Frankenstein, and now she got to deal with the monster. And because of this, he got stalled halfway towards normal and she hit pause until she forgave herself. Somewhere along the way, neither one thought to hit restart, end of story.
And she never let herself forget it.
She sighed. “Never mind. I’ll blame it on the janitor I was planning on firing.”
She turned to leave, when House blurted out, “You liar.”
“What?” Cuddy stopped short, afraid that her caring had been mistaken for pity, and maybe pity was what it was.
“Fat dude, no way in Hell that guy is a donor.”
Cuddy let a relieved smile pass her lips as she said, “Got you to take the case, didn’t it?” She let her shoes pick up some speed on the way to the door. “And it got you to stop pulling childish pranks!”
And then she was gone, and all that was left to distract House from the pain was thinking, and all he was thinking about was the pain.
House handled pain the way some people handle sexually transmitted diseases. It was a secret, a dirty, dirty secret. It was embarrassing. It showed weakness, lack of control, and ability to be controlled. And sooner or later, pain, like sexually transmitted diseases, just has to be shared with others.
Luckily, House was a firm believer in the emotional condom. In fact, he used one every day. This particular condom however, wasn’t protecting the world from some awkward commercials and burning trousers. It protected House from the world, and the world from the House he didn’t want people to see.
He looked up to notice Thirteen had gone. She’d taken his intense stare at nothing in particular as her cue to leave.
House sat up, thinking about Foreman’s labeling of pain and the flu as non-life threatening. 36,000 people die every year from the flu. Last year, 3,230 people died of shock as a direct result of extreme pain.
Foreman was wrong.
---------------------------------------------------
“Hey Taub, knock knock.”
Taub gave an exasperated knuckle crack. “Who’s there?” he sighed.
“Interrupting cow.” Kutner smiled in anticipation.
“Interrupting cow wh—“
“ MOOOOOOOO!”
Taub nearly fell out of his seat, not that the fall would be a long one. “Can we please focus on the MRI here?”
Kutner snorted, “Hey man, you were the one who answered the door.”
A silence fell on the room. It was bordering on awkward for Kutner, but for Taub, it was a welcome visitor.
The visitor didn’t stay very long.
“Hey, “ started Kutner, “you think House is okay?”
“I’m sure he’s just peachy,” said Taub, squinting his eyes at the monitor. “Unless you’re talking about his mental status, which is perpetually set at ‘batshit.’ Why do you ask?”
“I dunno, he just seems sort of out of it today.”
Taub didn’t pretend to be a genius on the human condition, and he didn’t have to. One conversation warranted you’d know a bit more about yourself by the time he left the room. That, or you’d know enough to hate him. One thing he lacked any genius about, however, was the awe-inspiring rarity that was House. He still liked to think he knew more about House than the average employee, though. “It’s cold outside. His leg’s probably bugging him.”
“His leg?” Kutner seemed a little puzzled. He had a sort of innocence about him that Taub admired and found annoying at the same time. He was naïve when it suited him, but slightly brilliant when it suited everyone else. “He didn’t say anything about it.”
Taub began cracking his knuckles again. “Kutner, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Dr. House isn’t the sort of guy who says, ‘my leg hurts real bad, Dr. Kutner. Give me a hug.’”
Another silence rolled over them. This time, both doctors found it awkward.
Kutner though, was quick to dissolve it. “Knock knock,” he whispered.
This time it was Thirteen who answered the door. The door to the MRI room, that is, not the door into Kutner’s joke, which stored cows and God knows what else.
“House wants us all in his office for the differential.”
“But what about the MRI?” asked Taub.
“We’ll get the results back afterwards,” she assured him.
“No, I’m mean who’s gonna watch the patient?”
“Grab a nurse or something.”
Some people sigh to show exasperation. Others roll their eyes. Others simply say, “I’m exasperated.” Taub cracked his knuckles, and at this rate, he’d have swollen ape hands before lunchtime.
“House doesn’t trust nurses to hand him surgical tools. You really think he’d let one come in here and watch a patient?”
Thirteen clicked her tongue a few times before coming up with an answer. “Call Wilson. He’ll do anything for House.”
Taub obediently picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Wilson’s extension. Kutner pushed the talk button on the microphone that connected the observation room to the painfully larger room in which the MRI machine was held. “Hey Tom?” he said, waking the patient from a light sleep—the kind where you don’t care about the movie you’re watching, but if people were to start writing on you with Sharpies, you’d be awake enough to fight them off.
“Yeah?” he answered, startled by the intensity of the noise around him.
Kutner continued, “Dr. Taub and I are going to review your case with Dr. House, but another doctor will be in here in just a few minutes.”
“Okay, thanks,” replied Tom, as if saying something would make a difference.
Kutner pressed the talk button once more to turn it off. Turning the microphone off had proven problematic for Kutner in the past. The results of this could be pretty embarrassing.
Taub hung up the phone. “Wilson’s on his way.”
Taub and Kutner grabbed their respective belongings and joined Thirteen by the door. The stood by the door to wait for Wilson, savoring their House-free moments like the last velvety bites of a chocolate bar.
Next Chapter
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-17 03:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-17 11:57 pm (UTC)I really appreciate you taking the time to comment though. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-17 03:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-17 11:56 pm (UTC)So very impressed!!
Date: 2008-12-17 09:19 pm (UTC)Makes me wonder if you have RSD, Do you?
I would so LOVE to see all this on the show 'House', I feel it would be viewed by many and loved by all!!
Keep up the excellent work!!
God Bless,
Coach Marla
Re: So very impressed!!
Date: 2008-12-18 12:01 am (UTC)Anyways, thanks for reading; I really appreciate it. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-06 02:25 pm (UTC)Taub gave an exasperated knuckle crack. “Who’s there?” he sighed.
“Interrupting cow.” Kutner smiled in anticipation.
“Interrupting cow wh—“
“ MOOOOOOOO!”
OMG ROFL x'D Kutner-love <3 :) really good writing, looking forward to more.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-07 04:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 06:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-21 04:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 06:31 pm (UTC)*g*
Still enjoying this very much.