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Tags: housefic house_wilson house fanfic house md house fanfiction sick_house
Published : 1 year, 2 months ago (Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:32:03 PDT)
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Title: A Gentle Knock at the Door, Chapter 33
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: House, Wilson, Cuddy, Chase and Foreman, and new folks.
Warnings and So On: NC-17 for concepts. H/W friendship (perhaps slash if you wear those kind of goggles)
Summary: Short version: 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: Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 , 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32,
Comments: Be gentle. Flamers begone. Thanks AW, GM and medical guru TD, who says the medicine is okay, but the procedure is messed up. Drama trumps procedure.
Oh, Yeah, the Disclaimer: I certainly don't own House or any of the characters therein, although it would be nice if I did. They belong to David Shore & company. It's just that they waltzed into my head and wouldn't leave until I told their story.
SUMMARY: As House's life hangs in the balance, Wilson waits, and a crisis is brewing in the lobby of the hospital.
TEASER: Waiting...
___________________________________________
A Gentle Knock at the Door
Chapter 33
Wilson waited. Again. Over the past six years, Wilson had spent far too much time waiting. It was beginning to wear on him, this constant shifting of the ground. Just as he’d start getting his bearings again, the landscape would change.
Here he was once more, waiting. Waiting to find out if House would make it through the surgery. Waiting. Endlessly waiting. Wishing he could do something—anything—to make it better. But there was nothing he could do. There had never been anything he could do. He couldn’t make it go away. He couldn’t undo it. He couldn’t stop the freight train of pain and terror that had trammeled his friend, infesting his mind and shredding his emotions. He couldn’t heal that shattered body, and he couldn’t stop the next moment from crashing down upon them both.
So he waited.
It was all he could do.
* * * *
Decrying the solemn mood elsewhere in the hospital, the lobby was bustling. A young mother was ecstatically headed out, cradling her newborn daughter as her bleary-eyed husband pushed their wheelchair toward the door. A few steps away, leaving her parents far behind, a dark-haired, brown-eyed six-year-old skipped along the shiny marble floor, eager to get home to her new puppy and a lime popsicle to soothe her tonsil-free throat. Across from the main desk, a very old man smiled, thankful that the news had been good.
When the front doors opened, an older couple walked briskly into the lobby. He was ramrod straight, with a serious expression; she was slim and attractive, following half a step behind and walking with a slight limp. They aimed straight for the desk.
“We’re here to see someone,” said the man to no one in particular.
The soft young man in front of him at reception, who had just started his first day of work ten minutes earlier, glanced up from his computer screen.
“Yes?” he asked, not really making eye contact as he tried to juggle the demands of his new job.
“We’re here to see someone,” the man repeated, a little impatiently.
“Yes, um… who?”
His professional skills need improvement, noted the long-time receptionist on the left who was giving directions to a confused man with a head cold.
“Gregory House,” said the man.
The young man didn’t notice it, but the other receptionists fell silent when they heard the name.
“Um… let me check on that. Do you know what room he’s in?”
The couple seemed puzzled by this.
The woman to the left had stood up and slipped out of the confines of the circular desk, walking briskly toward one of the security guards at the door.
“Come on. We’ve got another one,” she said. The guard rolled his eyes.
When she got back, the young man was still struggling to find a Gregory House in the computer. He didn’t know it, but he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for. At the FBI’s recommendation, House’s name and room number had been removed from the database, as had Maureen Adler’s.
The older man was getting more impatient.
“How hard is this?” he asked brusquely, just as the security guard approached. “Just look him up!”
Now flustered, the young man looked around for help.
“Sir, I’ll need to see your identification,” demanded the security guard of the older man.
“What?!” spluttered the man. “You want to see my identification?”
The woman, who had remained silent throughout, now spoke up. “Show it to him, dear.” Her words came out slightly slurred, as if she was having trouble enunciating clearly.
“I’ll be damned if I will,” he said, his voice began to get louder. “I come in here and made a simple request, and this idiot calls security. What is wrong with this place?!”
A few faces turned quickly toward the noise and then, as is often the way, just as quickly turned away, discomfited.
“You’ll have to come with me, sir,” said the security guard, putting his hand firmly on the man’s elbow.
“I most certainly will not,” said the man, getting flushed as he shrugging off the hand. “I came here to see Gregory House, and I’m not leaving until I see him.”
“Please, dear. Stop it,” said the woman through tight lips. “You’re making a scene… and you’re embarrassing me.”
Right behind them, a slim man with silver flecks speckled through his dark brown hair paused. Over his soft, faded t-shirt, he wore a pinstriped suit jacket over an equally faded pair of jeans, and he carried a satchel over his left shoulder. His eyes, heavy with anxiety, took in the scene.
“I don’t care if I’m embarrassing you. We didn’t come all this way to go back now. I’m here to see him, and by god, I’m going to see him!”
The security guard tightened his grip on the man’s elbow. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not. You’ll have to come with me now.” Despite the older man’s advantage in height, the security guard successfully guided him back toward the main door. As they got close to the entrance, the guard spoke into his headset walkie-talkie.
“We’ve got a situation down here on one,” he said. “Right. Yes. Front door.”
He hustled the couple even closer to the door. The woman, clearly mortified, followed along meekly. The man seemed ready for battle.
The slim man still stood for a moment where he’d stopped, mesmerized by the confrontation. Then he eased forward to the desk, avoiding the soft young man and heading toward the thin, middle-aged woman on the left, the one who knew her job better.
By now, others in the lobby had stopped to watch the scene unfold. The older woman seemed to shrink as her husband got louder and louder in his insistence.
“You can’t do this!” he spluttered.
From behind him, the slim man heard the elevator ding, and out of the corner of his eye saw three more security people—two men and a woman—head swiftly toward the first guard. As they passed, he noticed a nametag that read “FBI: Shelby Martin.”
“What’s the trouble here?” asked Shelby Martin, who seemed to be in charge.
“This man insists on seeing Gregory House. Fifth one today.”
The slim man’s ears perked up at that.
“Now, look, sir,” said Martin. “We can’t allow anyone to see Dr. House. You’re going to have to leave the premises now.”
“How dare you?!” yelled the older man, turning really red.
Next to him, the slim man heard two of the receptionists whispering. “…and then it gets on the news and all the nutcases show up,” said one of them. “Cuddy would kill us if anyone else got to him,” agreed the other, sotto voce.
“I’m very sorry, sir, but no one is allowed to visit Dr. House. We are under strict orders. You’ll have to leave.”
The wife was tugging on her husband’s sleeve, trying to get him out the door. The man resisted for a moment, and then in an apoplectic explosion cursed at the assembled crowd and stormed out the door, dragging his wife behind him.
It took a few minutes for the room to settle down.
Once it was quiet, the slim man turned back to the receptionist. “I have an appointment with Dr. Ajunta,” he said.
NEXT: Pacing. Sitting. Pacing. Reading. Pacing…
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