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Tags: housefic house_wilson house fanfic housefanfiction house md sick_house
Published : 4 months ago (Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:12:26 PDT)
Searched: house fanfic
http://zeppomarx.livejournal.com/21598.html 4 links
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Title: A Gentle Knock at the Door, Chapter 79
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: House, Wilson, Cuddy, Foreman, Chase, and others.
Warnings and So On: Safe and snuggly. H/W friendship.
Summary: House is a physical and emotional mess, having been wrongly imprisoned and tortured and all sorts of nasty stuff. It's about what happens next, and how House deals with it. A sequel to Priority's Exigencies, which is a sequel to DIY Sheep's The Contract, which has spawned an incredible number of offshoots.
Timeline: Set nearly a year after the beginning of Exigencies.
Earlier chapters: Chapters 1-16 here. Chapters 18-43 here. Chapters 44-61 here. Chapters 62-67 here. Chapters 68-? here.
COMMENTS: If you'll keep commenting, I'll keep responding. I promise. Really.
Oh, Yeah, the Disclaimer: Still don't own the characters (except the ones I created). I appreciate them, though, except when they wander around in my brain and won't let me sleep.
SUMMARY: House woke up someplace he shouldn't be. How had he gotten there?
TEASER: Must Have Been a Nightmare...
___________________________________________
A Gentle Knock at the Door
Chapter 79
He was in the hospital, in the big hospital bed, with Rainie tucked under his arm. He could feel her warmth up against his left side. Must have been a nightmare before, when he thought she wasn’t there. Funny how the mind works.
Opening his eyes, he was surprised to see a butter yellow ceiling instead of the hospital’s sterile ceiling tiles. And the bed seemed a lot more comfortable than he remembered. But he still felt that warmth along his left side. Turning his head, testing, he found soft, curly hair tickling his left cheek. His arm was around her, which seemed right.
But where was he?
Looking around, he realized he was in Rainie’s room. In Rainie’s bed. But he couldn’t remember how he got here. His body was lethargic, and, although he knew the fact that he was in her bed with her ought to matter for some reason, he couldn’t remember why, and decided he didn’t really care, as long as he didn’t have to move anytime soon.
Something about snow.
The morning light beat against the window blinds, making the room bright. He felt Rainie nestling against him, making a throaty, comforting sound.
She began to stir, her eyelids fluttering as she stretched her arms. When her eyes opened, she initially showed no particular surprise at seeing him next to her. Then her eyes opened wide.
“I have no idea,” he said, before she could speak. “All I remember is snow.”
Snow?
Just then, they heard footsteps, and Wilson came through the door carrying a breakfast tray, which he set down on the dresser. Something smelled extraordinarily delicious.
For a man who hadn’t slept most of the night, Wilson looked pretty good. After cleaning up the water and the rest of the mess on the bedroom floor, he’d gotten a warm, damp cloth and gently washed Rainie’s face and hands, then doing the same for House, adding antiseptic for his injured hands. They slept through it, which was a blessing. He stayed in Rainie’s room for nearly an hour, just to make sure they were both okay. Then he slipped out, cleaned up the living room floor and tried to sleep on the couch for a while.
He checked on them again when he woke up three hours later at 6:30. At eight, Linda arrived and he told her what he knew of the evening’s adventures. At eight-fifteen, Wilson ran next door to shower, change clothes and pick up some coffee. At nine, Evan walked in the front door; he was making himself useful, touching up the varnish on the discolored spot that stained the wood floor in the living room. About nine-thirty, Wilson decided to fix breakfast. He might not have been there for them quickly enough last night, but he was damned sure he was going to make up for it today.
“How’s the morning treating you?” he asked the dozing pair, which was so much better than asking how they were feeling.
“Sleepy,” said Rainie groggily, closing her eyes again.
“How’s the pain this morning?”
His patients took a mental inventory, and reported back that it was starting out to be a typical day, which meant a lot of pain, but so far nothing unmanageable. During this interchange, House decided that whatever had brought him into Rainie’s bed must not be too worrisome, or Wilson would be making tut-tut noises instead of breakfast.
“Anything else to report?” asked Wilson.
“Not sure,” said House, uncertainly, still trying to figure out what was going on. “I do… uh… have a question, though.”
“It’ll have to wait a minute,” said Wilson, coming around to the far side of the bed. “Open.” He stuck a thermometer in House’s mouth.
“Wha’s dis aw abou?”
“Shut up,” said Wilson, affectionately.
Temperature was still way up. Not good. House sneezed.
“Okay, now. What was your question?”
“What’s going on? Why are you here? Why am I… here?” His throat hurt. A lot. And, now that he thought about it, so did his hands and his chest. Looking down, he was surprised to see nasty-looking cuts and scrapes on both hands.
Wilson smiled to himself. Just like the man. He risks his own health to help Rainie, and then conveniently forgets it.
“That’s three questions, but if you insist, I’ll answer. You got me over here in the middle of the night to help Rainie. Don’t you remember? It was snowing.”
Snow. Oh, yes. He remembered snow.
“But… why am I…?”
“In Rainie’s bed? Because you collapsed on the floor, and I couldn’t get you any farther.”
House vaguely remembered water, in addition to snow. He closed his eyes again, trying to get his bearings.
“Nope. No more sleeping for now. Sit up, you two. Breakfast.”
Rainie blinked her eyes, but remained nestled against House, who was staring at the ceiling again, as if unsure about the reality of the situation.
“Come on. Time for breakfast. I didn’t do all this work to have it get cold.”
They struggled to sit up. Wilson brought the tray to the bed and laid it over Rainie’s legs.
“I’ll be right back with the other one,” he said. And he was.
There was more food than either of them could begin to eat, but because it was smelled so good, they tried. Wilson was no fool. He knew they had both lost their dinners the night before and needed sustenance.
In a whimsical state of mind, Wilson had made pancakes that looked like Mickey Mouse, merging three pancakes—one large one for the face and two smaller ones for the ears—using raisins for eyes, nose, mouth and to decorate the ears. The coffee was Wilson’s own, and it was magnificent. In addition, Wilson had scrambled some eggs with salmon, scallions and dill, adding slices of Clementine oranges on the side.
For a night that had gone so very badly, the morning was starting out very well.
Except that now Rainie had a fever, too, and House was definitely sick. It turned out Marina had a bad case of the flu, which was why she hadn’t been able to stay awake. And in the few days she’d insisted on coming to work while contagious, she’d managed to infect both House and Rainie.
For two weeks, they felt miserable—sneezing, coughing, aching, sniffling and rasping. Three days after the snow adventure, Wilson got concerned that, with their compromised respiratory systems, the flu might turn into pneumonia for one or the other of them, so he kept a close eye on them. But, to Wilson’s great relief, at the end of the two weeks, they were no worse than before.
Wilson, on the other hand, was exhausted.
* * * *
Her book was coming along—slowly, painfully, like everything else in her life. The publishers had given her three years to complete it, and at the moment, that didn’t seem like enough time. Throughout the day, Rainie read voraciously, everything from the great philosophers to eyewitness accounts at Auschwitz. House seldom saw her without a book or magazine or journal nearby.
She carved out four hours a day to do serious research and to write. In the old days, she’d have been working around the clock, but her body just wouldn’t allow it now. She split the four hours into two sections.
The first section was in the morning, before physical therapy. Mornings were for research. A little breakfast and then, as House left for work, she settled in.
During her two hours in the morning, she contacted research scientists studying the brain and social scientists studying the human race. But she needed more.
Doing research was much harder than writing, she found. Again, in the old days, she’d have hopped on the subway and headed over to the NYPL or one of the other many research institutions in the city. Now she had to do it all by phone and email. And sometimes she had to grit her teeth and explain just exactly why she couldn’t come there in person. She hated that part. She hated it a lot.
Every time it happened, her mind drifted back to her first real conversation with House, the one where he said, “The worst thing is the way they look at you, the way it forces you to realize how different you are from the way you were, and how conspicuous you are. When you’re home, by yourself, how you look doesn’t matter. You’re allowed to be invisible then. For me, dealing with other people’s reactions is one of the hardest things.”
He’d been absolutely right. Dealing with other people was really difficult, even over the phone. Sometimes—often—she dreaded it. But it had to be done.
Afternoons—after lunch and before the afternoon PT session—were for writing. As she’d gotten comfortable with how her hands functioned on the computer keyboard, the writing flowed as it always had. A little slower, perhaps, but there was still a direct conduit from her brain to the screen.
The only real problem came when she had to write about something that was a little too close, a little too personal. Such as the day she had to write about Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian politician who had been kidnapped and tortured for six years before finally being rescued. She’d interviewed Betancourt by email and phone as soon as she could after the news story about Betancourt’s release broke. Both of them found their conversation very difficult… and very rewarding. To be able to share her experiences with someone else, someone other than House, was therapeutic. And painful.
But when it came time to write it up, she found herself drowning in emotion. At about 2:30 that afternoon, Linda heard wrenching sobs coming from the living room, where Rainie had set herself up to work. Running in from the back of the house, she saw Rainie doubled up over her laptop, her shoulders shaking and her head bobbing as the sobs turned to wails. But when Linda tried to help, Rainie shooed her away brusquely, saying, “Nothing you can do about it… so leave me alone.”
Eventually, the cries died down, and she got back to work.
NEXT: Just Another Day...
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