verbal_kint | Fun With Dick and Cane REDUX 3

Chapter 3: See Spot St-stutter

There’s a common misconception about pain. It’s probably the lovechild of bad Youtube videos and Kung Fu demonstrations, but who knows—all that matters is it exists.

Because a normal person would tell you that pain is just a one-time deal. Stationary, not outside the level of pain you experience at that exact moment. A guy who broke his arm a year ago can tell you that it hurts, tell you it’s the worst pain he’s ever felt, but he can’t go there in his mind, because it’s simply impossible to recreate a pain you’ve only felt once. You have to be feeling it to know that it’s there, and that this sort of hurt exists.

Because the truth of the matter is that pain is not a fixed noun lumped into analogies of paper cuts and broken bones. It’s a manic jazz musician with a knack for ill-timed improvisation. It’s a murderous gourmet chef drizzling arsenic on your plate. It’s an envious maid who strips your house of valuables and memories. It’s the dance partner from Hell, and it takes the lead whenever it can. It is everything wrong with the world and every reason you want to rid the world of it.

It kills you.

While you watch.

Of course, this may not be common knowledge. It was for a man named Thomas Mix, but as he stared up at the ceiling in his hospital gown counting tiles and fluorescent light fixtures, he wasn’t thinking about this.

This was also common knowledge for Gregory House, but he wasn’t thinking about it either.

Because it’s hard to think about pain when it’s sucking the life out of you.

He regretted calling in his team. They would be there any minute though, and they would find him like this, breathing like a fat kid playing tag and white as a piece of paper. He felt his heart rate increase steadily from maybe 150 to 160, then 160 to 170. He swore he could hear it thumping.

He shook out two Vicodin, put them in his mouth, and started chewing. It was the express delivery system, old fashioned, but effective. He grabbed a water bottle to the left of him and took a sip to wash the taste out of his mouth.

After 5 more minutes he was getting better. After 7 minutes he could stand, and thirty seconds later he was at the whiteboard. This was a temporary solution, he knew, but to be fair, every time a pill hit his throat, it was just temporary.

His ear itched, which was a good sign. It meant he could think again.

He wrote “Dead Man Limping” on the whiteboard, proving not only that irony liked to screw with House, but that House liked to screw with irony.

At that exact second, Kutner, Taub, and Thirteen walked through the door. Life’s funny that way.

“Alright,” said House, placing a heavily-weighted hand on the whiteboard, “first person to come up with a diagnosis for nausea and disorientation gets fifty bucks.”

Kutner didn’t wait for House to finish his sentence before chiming in with “Acute intermittent porphyria.”

“That’s fifty bucks…reduced from your salary. Anyone else?”

“Wait,” said Kutner, never one to go down without a fight, “if he ate something weird and threw up, that explains the nausea. Then if he didn’t eat anything else, he’d probably get dizzy. Anyone would.”

House was deliberating whether he would humor Kutner with a reason why his idea was stupid, or just tell him his idea was stupid. He went with the former, but it was a tough call. “Anyone would. And then that ‘Anyone’ would be severely anemic. Our ‘Anyone,’ on the other hand is not, and just for that, I’m taking fifty more dollars.”

He turned and looked at the other three doctors in the room. “So, any other ideas on what’s killing Verbal Kint?”

Kutner raised his hand before answering. He did that frequently, and nobody really knew why. “I thought our patient had RSD.”

House wiped his face with his hand. “See, the thing is, that’s already been diagnosed.”

Kutner frowned. “No, I mean Verbal Kint had cerebral palsy.”

A loud groan rolled through the room. Nobody knew whose it was…because everyone had been loudly groaning.

Taub was the first to forget Kutner’s…observation. “What about ACTH deficiency? If the disorientation is accompanied by muscle weakness, then the nausea and vomiting—“

“Are all connected,” House finished. He squinted at the whiteboard and looked back at Taub. “I like it,” he said, and proceeded to write it down. Then he pointed at Taub. “Fifty bucks to Agent Kujan.”

“What about MS?” said a voice from the back of the room.

“Ah, Keyser Soze. How nice of you to join our little discussion.” House smirked, “Just curious, Foreman—have you ever not thought it was MS?”

“When it doesn’t fit. And in this case, it does,” said Foreman, unflinching. “He’s not running a fever, and the throwing up probably comes from his disorientation.”

House narrowed his eyes back at the whiteboard. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

He grinned with misplaced pride and pointed to Kutner. “I have to admit, it’s better than Hockney’s idea over there.” He wrote ‘MS’ on the board.

Kutner interjected immediately. “Wait a minute, why do I have to be Hockney? I want to be Mcmanus or at least Fenster.”

“Could we get back to the case instead of making references to movies that maybe three people have seen?” said another voice.

In the last thirty seconds Kutner’s demeanor had gone from eager to ashamed to shocked. Needless to say, those thirty seconds were dangerously close to humorous.

And so he turned to Thirteen, the source of that voice, with his mouth agape. “You’ve never seen ‘The Usual Suspects’?”

It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

“I—“ she started, not quite able to find words that were biting enough to properly articulate her current exasperation.

House had more experience in such things. “She stands up for disabled people, unlike you sickos who make them into entertainment.”

Thirteen continued to look mildly agitated, Kutner looked mildly guilty, and Taub look mildly thoughtful. Foreman looked like he didn’t give a damn, and he didn’t.

“Thirteen,” said House, “seeing as you’re so keen on reaching a diagnosis, let’s hear your opinion…lacking in pop culture reference as it is.”

She tugged on her ear as if waiting for the answer from some guy with a walkie-talkie down the hall. “Acetaminophen toxicity.”

House made a noise similar to obnoxious microphone feedback. It took the team a second to realize it was a laugh. “Cripple on Vicodin. I like it.”

He rested his hand on the whiteboard, trusting it with the weight of his right leg, and wrote ‘Acetaminophen OD.’

“Alrighty,” he mumbled, “Foreman, do an LP for infection and your beloved MS. Thirteen, run a tox screen for large doses of acetaminophen. Kutner and Taub, pump him full of B12 in case it’s an ACTH deficiency.”

Foreman, Thirteen, and Taub were already out the door, but Kutner remained in the room, standing awkwardly next to his chair with a dopey, Charlie Brown posture.

House glanced at him bemusedly. “See, that was when you were supposed to leave.”

“Dr. House, I want—“

“To save the pilot whales. It’s okay, you can do that from outside of this room.”

Kutner opened his mouth to say something, but turned around and walked out instead.

House wanted to sit down, to steal that nap, Hell, to find Ingrid and beg for a massage and some nookie, but House didn’t do those things.

Instead, he put his legs up on the table and kept an eye on the clock. Half hour—that’s how long it would all take.

In a half hour, Gregory House would get up, walk out of his office, walk down the hallway, and visit a patient.

-------------------------------------------------------

Wilson counted the tiles from his office to radiology. It was a habit, one he neither mentioned nor remembered having five minutes after the fact. Odd, because it’d come in handy while giving directions to the bathroom.

There were 342 tiles, and the little half tile that he placed his toes on before he opened the door to the tiny observation room that stood about a foot above the main room.

There were three Hershey’s Kisses in his pocket when he got there. By the time the rhythmic droning of the MRI had finally given way to silence, the Kisses were gone and in their place was a miniature chain of aluminum foil.

He put a finger on the push-to-talk button, glancing down at the file so he could use the patient’s name. “Hang tight, Thomas. I’m gonna come get you out of there.”

He walked back out into the hallway and found a wheelchair. Tom was sitting up outside the MRI when Wilson stepped in. The patient looked at the wheelchair and said, “I’m not taking that from someone else, am I?”

“Uh, no,” said Wilson, unable to hide the surprise in his voice, but his tour guide charm was soon present. “Hi, I’m Dr. Wilson, “ he said with a practiced grin.

Meanwhile, Tom’s eyes fixed on Wilson’s small, rectangular nametag, which read ‘Dr. James Wilson, M.D. Head of Oncology.’ His voice shook very slightly as he asked, “Do I have cancer?”

It took Wilson a second to realize what Tom was talking about, but as he saw the kid’s hollowed stare at the badge on his chest, he jumped on the question like a dog on Christmas ham. “Oh no, no. I mean, well, no. That’s not why I’m here. I’m—uh I, we have no reason to—“

Wilson had supposedly gotten over his stuttering problem in the fifth grade. But stuttering, like genital herpes, always seemed to pop up where he didn’t want it. Not that Wilson had genital herpes, mind you, just that both situations are pretty inconvenient.

He took a deep breath and started over. “Dr. Taub and Dr. Kutner went to review your case with Dr. House. I’m just here to take you back to your room.”

The piquancy returned to Tom’s eyes upon hearing this. “Well, as long as I get to keep my hair.”

Wilson smiled too. He was an oncologist—pitiful smiles came easily.

House was gonna hate this guy.

Wilson held the wheelchair on the side of the machine while Tom scooted into it.

“Dr. House, he’s really amazing, isn’t he?” said Tom.

The words were enough to make Wilson freeze up in shock.

There was a low, guttural vowel sound as Wilson decided what to say next. “Well…I’ve never heard it put like that before he solves a case, but…” Wilson gave a little shrug showing his concurrence “yeah I guess he is.”

“You don’t like him?”

Wilson shook his head and laughed. “No, no. Actually, he’s my friend.”

Tom spoke in one word sentences while meandering his way across the table and into the chair. “His. Best. Friend?”

Wilson folded his arms. “Yeah, I think so.”

Tom was about three inches away from the chair when his gown got caught on the bar of the chair, raising it a bit higher and revealing several long and thick scars that stretched from his upper ankle to the lower part of his knee on both sides of his right leg.

Wilson’s eyes zeroed in on the scars instinctively. After all, he had doctor’s eyes. Tom grabbed his gown and covered his leg up quickly, like a preteen girl in a locker room.

Wilson’s eyes fell apologetically. He thought about saying something, wanted to, but what was there to say? Estranged family members, morbidly obese McDonald’s employees, ragged, ugly scars—these were the things you didn’t talk about.

Only, Wilson did say something. He saw those scars and told Tom, “You should see Dr. House’s scar.”

What an incredibly stupid thing to say.

He wanted to explain why he’d said that if he could, but didn’t want to open his mouth for fear of another stuttering fit. Even if he could talk, what the Hell was one supposed to say after throwing a gem like that into supposedly meaningless small talk?

Sure, it wasn’t a secret secret—not like the ones you take to your grave. It wasn’t a secret like House’s fear of horses, suicide attempts, or stints with illicit drugs. It wasn’t a secret like finding House with a track of tears on his cheek two days after Stacey left. People knew why House never wore shorts. It was common knowledge. It was just a scar.

That’s what Wilson kept telling himself. Tom nodded in acknowledgment of the information he had just received, and he couldn’t help feeling like he’d let a little bit of House go away with a stranger.

Wilson began pushing Tom through the door as pains of regret began to nudge at his neck and shoulders. Tom turned to look up at him.

“How’d he get the scar?” he asked, tentatively.

Wilson looked the patient in the eyes like he was sizing him up for a fight.

Wilson wanted so badly to keep his mouth shut.

But this guy wasn’t some dumb nurse who was going to tell everyone with a name and a nose House’s story. Hell, it’d probably never come up again. This guy just wanted to know that he wasn’t alone, that there was somebody like him…even if that somebody was not like him at all.

He’d keep it short, for his own sake. Wilson didn’t want to tell Tom about the cardiac arrest, Stacey’s cunning plan, or Cuddy’s follow through with that cunning plan, because those were the parts of House that belonged to him now. He had seen him through it, and as far as he was concerned, those moments were a part of James Wilson’s life just as much as they were part of Gregory House’s.

“He, uh, had an infarction in his leg, and it didn’t get diagnosed until it’d done a lot of damage.”

Tom knew that wasn’t the whole story, and he was fine with that. It was still something. He looked down and didn’t ask any more questions.

Wilson didn’t count tiles on the way back.

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