Community beta time
Dec. 23rd, 2006 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
namasteHey all.
I've got something new I'm working on -- looking at the lies House has been told, what he has come to believe and disbelieve, what he has learned not to trust -- and yet still believe in himself.
I could use some feedback though. I'm struggling with formatting, as well as issues related to other points I may want to hit (and some of these already written I may cut, since they don't seem to flow as well.)
I thought I'd pop this early version up on my LJ for a few days, while I'm out of town and letting the fic work itself out in my mind, hopefully, and also take ideas and feedback from anyone out there of a mind to give it. Any and all is welcome. (Oh, and if anyone can tell, I shameless steal part of a scene from "Tracking Time," recasting it in a different POV.)
I'm not certain if I'll keep the quotes as section breaks or not (Hmmm. Now that I'm thinking of it, perhaps I should use some of House's own quotes???). For the time being, I'm calling it Belief, Faith, Trust
ETA: Yeah, gonna swap these quote things around. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of using House's own cynicism against him -- or illuminating that cynicism, if you will. I've included a couple of examples. Feel free to suggest more. There's also some of the old quotes in there, if you want to compare what there was to the changes I made.
"I just want to know who tried to kill the kid."
“Jump!”
Greg stood at the edge of the pool. The concrete was hot and scratchy under his bare feet.
“C’mon, Greg, you can do it!”
Dad stood in the pool a few feet away from the edge, arms stretched toward Greg, the water up to his chest.
“I’ll catch you,” Dad said. “Jump!”
“It’s too deep, John.” Greg turned toward his mother, sitting under an umbrella. “He’s only four,” she said.
“Don’t baby him, he can do this.” Dad turned to Greg. “Right?”
Greg nodded.
“Now jump,” Dad said. “I’ll catch you, I promise.”
Greg jumped up into the air, away from the solid surface of concrete and tile. He kept his eyes on Dad, saw him smile, then saw Dad’s hands move back, away from Greg. Greg hit the water, closed his eyes, dropped below the surface and kept falling. He kicked, paddled wildly with his hands. He felt himself moving.
He broke through the surface, eyes still shut, nose filled with water. He coughed and took in a breath of air.
“That’a boy!”
Greg felt his father’s hands under his arms, felt himself being lifted. He opened his eyes, saw Dad smiling.
“Greg!” Mom was on her feet, at the edge of the pool. Greg looked at her. “Honey, are you OK?”
“Of course he’s OK, aren’t you son?”
Greg turned toward his father, saw the grin on his face, and smiled back at him. He turned toward Mom and nodded.
Mom straightened up, hands on her hips. “John, you shouldn’t do that. He’s just a little boy.”
“He’s a Marine, aren’t you son?”
Greg nodded.
“He’s too young for the Marines, and this water’s too deep for him.”
“Stop worrying, Blythe,” Dad said. “It’s the best way to learn how to swim -- just jump right in. It’s the way my Dad taught me, and the way his father taught him.”
“You told him you’d catch him.”
“Stop worrying. He’s fine, aren’t you?”
Greg nodded. He felt the water dripping down from his hair into his eyes and he wiped away the moisture with the palm of his hand.
“Ready to go again?”
Greg looked at Mom. She’d stepped back from the edge of the pool and was shaking her head. Dad smiled and let Greg float along the surface. Greg nodded. Dad sat him on the edge and took a few more steps back.
“Let’s see you go farther this time, OK?” He held out his arms. “C’mon Greg, jump!”
--------------
"Are these people completely incapable of telling the truth to each other?"
“You said I’d be able to keep it.” Greg stood next to the bicycle his father was loading into the car to take to the Salvation Army.
“No I didn’t.” Dad tied the trunk shut.
“Yes you did,” Greg said. “When you brought it home you said if I didn’t get in trouble at school that we could take it with us.”
“That was before I got the posting in Egypt,” Dad said. “There’s no room.”
“You promised.”
“Greg, don’t be a baby, you’re almost ten years old.” Dad opened the car door. “We’ll get you another bike,” he said. “I promise.”
“You promised before.”
Dad closed the door and started the car. He leaned out of the window. “Well then you’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?”
Greg watched Dad back the car out of the driveway and onto the road.
------------
“It is convenient that there are gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.”
Ovid
Dad was on maneuvers when Grandpa died and Greg and Mom went to the funeral alone, flying out from California to Florida.
Greg looked at the body in the coffin. Grandpa’s hands were folded over his stomach and Greg couldn’t remember ever seeing them so still. He remembered the tombs in Egypt, the way the mummies would be sealed up with food, with jewels, with servants -- everything they would need for the afterlife.
He thought about dropping a screwdriver into the coffin, so Grandpa would have it later -- when he needed it -- but then remembered that all those things they’d put into the tombs rotted away unused. There was no afterlife. Nothing but archeologists and spiders and dust waiting in the years and centuries that followed.
He felt Mom step next to him, reach one arm around his shoulders and squeeze him tight.
“Are you OK, honey?”
Greg nodded.
“We’ll see him again, someday,” Mom said. “In the next life.”
Greg turned to her. “How do you know?”
“Because God promised,” she said.
Greg shook his head. “But you can’t know that, can you?”
“Faith isn’t about believing in what you can prove is true, honey,” Mom said. “It’s about believing in things you can’t prove, and I believe we’ll see Grandpa again someday.”
She squeezed his shoulder again. He leaned his head on her arm for a moment, taking in the scent of her perfume as it fought against the odor of the funeral parlor's lilies and dust. Aunt Sarah called her name and she kissed the top of his head before stepping away.
----------
“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”
HL Mencken
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you out.” Mr. Jamerson didn’t look at Greg when he spoke, just kept his attention focused on his papers as he graded the ninth graders’ science tests.
“You said you’d write the recommendation,” Greg said. “You said I belonged in the honors program.”
The red pen stopped for a moment above a paper. Greg looked down, noticed that the student had misspelled kinetic. He recognized the name at the top of the page -- a colonel’s daughter. The pen moved down the page without making a mark.
“The principal doesn’t think you do,” Mr. Jamerson said. “He thinks you’re undisciplined, that you don’t put in any effort unless you’re interested in the class.” He looked up at Greg. “Can’t say that I disagree with him there.”
“It’s not fair,” Greg said. “You know I’m smarter than any of the other idiots in those classes.”
“You certainly have a bigger ego than they do.”
Greg ignored him. “And you promised last week that you’d get me in there. You promised my Mom you’d do it.”
“That was before the cherry bomb incident in the second floor bathroom.”
“That wasn’t me,” Greg said. Mr. Jamerson looked at him over the top of his glasses. “You can’t prove it.”
“The principal doesn’t agree.”
“You’re not even going to try?”
“I did,” he said. “I talked to him ...”
“I don’t believe you,” Greg said.
“Greg, you’re a bright young man, but you’re walking around with a huge sense of entitlement. Nobody owes it to you to put you in that program. Believe what you want to.” He picked up his pen again. “You’re not getting in.”
-----------
“It was, of course, a grand and impressive thing to do, to mistrust the obvious, and to pin one’s faith in things which could not be seen.”
Galen
The woman was 73 and in the early stages of renal failure when she was transferred over to nephrology.
House wasn’t assigned to her case. He hadn’t been assigned to anything except scut work since starting his residency two months earlier: doing his attending’s charts, collecting lab work, checking in with the patients in dialysis.
Matthews had tossed the chart on top of House’s stack. Renal artery stenosis, he’d said. A simple clear-cut case. House looked at the tests, the results of the arteriography.
“No it’s not,” House said. “There’s no narrowing of the arteries.”
“Did I ask for your opinion?” Matthews took the file. “Hypertension, edema, renal failure. And there is narrowing.”
“Not enough,” House said. “And seizures don’t fit.”
“They do if she’s losing too much salt due to urine output.” Matthews handed him the chart. “Now, are you capable of doing your job and getting the surgery scheduled, or do I have to find someone else? There are plenty of other doctors out there anxious for a residency here.”
House opened the file, flipped past the lab reports to the patient history. It was there, in the notes, the fact that she chewed tobacco -- and from somewhere he remembered reading that some tobaccos had a high licorice content, that high levels of licorice depleted potassium. He saw the dots, sensed the picture developing in his mind. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“We’ve got a waiting list, and Jeffords never wanted you here in the first place. I’m the one who talked him into bringing you in,” Matthews said. “One word from me, and -- well, he may not be able to get rid of you, but he can make your life miserable until you ask him to release you.”
“I’m sure he could,” House said. “But I meant that you’re wrong about the patient. She doesn’t need surgery, just potassium.”
Matthews shook his head. “You’re grasping, House.”
“Muscle weakness, seizures, renal failure ... it’s hypokalemia.”
“It’s not ...”
“Hypokalemia can cause renal arterystenosis. Operate and all you’ll do is make some surgeon more money that they don’t need.”
Matthews snatched the file from House’s hand. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll schedule the surgery. I’ll do your job, then I’ll tell Jeffords.”
House finally stood, taking advantage of his height to look down on Matthews, trying to give himself an advantage he wasn’t sure he had. “Don’t bother. I’ll tell Jeffords myself.”
He brushed past Matthews, headed for the door.
“You’re a resident,” Matthews said. “First year. Why do you think Jeffords will believe you?”
House stopped, thought about the question. “Because I’m right.”
---------------
“When my love swears she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies”
William Shakespeare
“I love you.”
House felt the vibration of Stacy’s voice as she lay on his chest. He could feel the beating of her heart, could almost count her heart rate as it slowed, could see her flushed skin turn from red to pink.
“Prove it,” he said.
“I think I just did.”
“That was sex, not love. I could get the same assurance for two hundred bucks.”
He could feel the slight hitch of her breath as she chuckled. “You’ve discovered my secret,” she said. “I’m only here for the money. A girl has to find a way to pay off law school.”
He let his fingers slide along the length of her hair, feeling its soft texture. She turned to face him.
“It’s all right if you don’t say it too,” she said. “It’s the ‘L’ word. It’s a big step for you.”
“I can say it, but it’s just a word,” House said. “Or three words. I love you. See? Doesn’t change anything. I could also say that I love Angelina Jolie and dim sum from that place over on Fourth. Words don’t mean anything.”
“Words do have meanings.” Stacy rolled onto her side, but kept her arm across his chest, maintaining contact. “Those three words mean something -- even if you’ve never s them before.”
“You want to believe that because laws are made of words, and juries are swayed by words and judges are convinced by words,” House said. “But without cops and fines and jails to back them up, they don’t mean anything. They’re just social conventions.” He turned on his side toward her, raising himself up on one elbow. He took her by her hand, their fingers intertwining. “Actions are what matter.”
“So do you think I’m lying when I say that I love you?”
He shook his head. “I have no reason to say that you are.”
“But you haven’t discounted that possibility.”
“I think,” he said, “that the fact you haven’t moved out says more than any three words. I think the fact you invited my parents here for Christmas even after you met my father says something.”
“So what lesson should I take from the fact that you never put the toilet seat down?”
“That I’m a heartless bastard.” House smiled. “And that you have made a very, very foolish choice.”
“And what about the fact that you bring me flowers every Friday?”
“That I know how to steal them from patients’ rooms before the nurses notice.”
Stacy smiled. “And what about the fact that you didn’t complain when I made you cancel those tickets to Paris because I had to work?”
“That I’m so wealthy that I didn’t even notice the two thousand dollars in nonrefundable tickets, and that you’ll be able to take me for all that I’m worth, and pay off your bills from law school.”
Stacy slid up against him, pushed him back onto the mattress. “Then maybe I better start earning my keep -- two hundred dollars at a time.”
---------
“Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness of heart than at present. Genuine belief seems to have left us.”
Walt Whitman
House stared down at the thing that used to be his leg. Wilson was still in the room, but stood on the far side near the windows. It doesn’t matter if he’s there or not. House didn’t feel anything. He’d gone numb inside.
He’d thought maybe he’d feel something different when he finally saw it, what they’d done, what she’d allowed them to do, what he’d trusted her not to do.
He didn’t.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. He’d seen it soon after he’d woken up, when Cuddy and some of her minions had chased everyone out of the room so they could check the incision and change the bandages.
They’d lowered the head of the bed, so he had to hold his head up to see anything at all, and he’d tired after only a few minutes. He raised his head for a few seconds at a time, seeing the damage only in short bursts, glimpses caught as the nurses’ arms and hands moved across his body.
There was the upper thigh -- mostly intact-- his knee -- pale and thin -- the inner leg -- which still seemed normal -- then the outer part of his thigh, which seemed to drop away into nothing.
He’d dropped his head back onto the thin pillow and Cuddy had stepped up, asked quietly if he was ready for more morphine.
“We’ve got you switched over to a PCA,” she’d said, and slid the control under his hand.
He’d barely noticed the pain then, but it was still there, the button still tied onto the rail where he could reach it.
House touched the scar. The skin was rough and warm beneath his fingers. There was an ache beneath the pale flesh. He drew back from the surge in pain from the slight pressure of his hand and instead moved off to the side. He held his left hand over his leg, spread it wide. The hole where there used to be muscle stretched out wider than his palm, longer than the stretch from wrist to fingertip. He spread his fingers, idly measured at a little more than an octave.
He placed his index finger at the point where the healthy tissue dropped away, measuring how much muscle was missing, seeing it fall away past the first knuckle, nearly to the second.
House pulled both hands back. He sensed, rather than heard, Wilson at the far end of the room. He wondered if Wilson expected him to yell. Expected him to cry. He wondered why he didn’t.
He wanted to be angry. He knew he should be. He knew he would be. But all he felt now was numb, as if Stacy had told the surgeons to cut away his heart along with the muscle.
House lay back against the bed. He stared up at the ceiling and heard Wilson step up to the bed.
“Done?”
House nodded.
Wilson picked up fresh bandages, began putting them on again, covering House’s leg, a thick white blanket of fresh gauze covering over everything that was missing. Disguising it as something whole, something undamaged. House grunted as a fresh hit of pain broke past the morphine and Wilson apologized.
House reached over and hit the button on the PCA control and waited for the drug to hit, to make his body as numb as his emotions. He nodded, motioned to Wilson to continue.
“It’s OK,” House said.
----------
I've got something new I'm working on -- looking at the lies House has been told, what he has come to believe and disbelieve, what he has learned not to trust -- and yet still believe in himself.
I could use some feedback though. I'm struggling with formatting, as well as issues related to other points I may want to hit (and some of these already written I may cut, since they don't seem to flow as well.)
I thought I'd pop this early version up on my LJ for a few days, while I'm out of town and letting the fic work itself out in my mind, hopefully, and also take ideas and feedback from anyone out there of a mind to give it. Any and all is welcome. (Oh, and if anyone can tell, I shameless steal part of a scene from "Tracking Time," recasting it in a different POV.)
I'm not certain if I'll keep the quotes as section breaks or not (Hmmm. Now that I'm thinking of it, perhaps I should use some of House's own quotes???). For the time being, I'm calling it Belief, Faith, Trust
ETA: Yeah, gonna swap these quote things around. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of using House's own cynicism against him -- or illuminating that cynicism, if you will. I've included a couple of examples. Feel free to suggest more. There's also some of the old quotes in there, if you want to compare what there was to the changes I made.
"I just want to know who tried to kill the kid."
“Jump!”
Greg stood at the edge of the pool. The concrete was hot and scratchy under his bare feet.
“C’mon, Greg, you can do it!”
Dad stood in the pool a few feet away from the edge, arms stretched toward Greg, the water up to his chest.
“I’ll catch you,” Dad said. “Jump!”
“It’s too deep, John.” Greg turned toward his mother, sitting under an umbrella. “He’s only four,” she said.
“Don’t baby him, he can do this.” Dad turned to Greg. “Right?”
Greg nodded.
“Now jump,” Dad said. “I’ll catch you, I promise.”
Greg jumped up into the air, away from the solid surface of concrete and tile. He kept his eyes on Dad, saw him smile, then saw Dad’s hands move back, away from Greg. Greg hit the water, closed his eyes, dropped below the surface and kept falling. He kicked, paddled wildly with his hands. He felt himself moving.
He broke through the surface, eyes still shut, nose filled with water. He coughed and took in a breath of air.
“That’a boy!”
Greg felt his father’s hands under his arms, felt himself being lifted. He opened his eyes, saw Dad smiling.
“Greg!” Mom was on her feet, at the edge of the pool. Greg looked at her. “Honey, are you OK?”
“Of course he’s OK, aren’t you son?”
Greg turned toward his father, saw the grin on his face, and smiled back at him. He turned toward Mom and nodded.
Mom straightened up, hands on her hips. “John, you shouldn’t do that. He’s just a little boy.”
“He’s a Marine, aren’t you son?”
Greg nodded.
“He’s too young for the Marines, and this water’s too deep for him.”
“Stop worrying, Blythe,” Dad said. “It’s the best way to learn how to swim -- just jump right in. It’s the way my Dad taught me, and the way his father taught him.”
“You told him you’d catch him.”
“Stop worrying. He’s fine, aren’t you?”
Greg nodded. He felt the water dripping down from his hair into his eyes and he wiped away the moisture with the palm of his hand.
“Ready to go again?”
Greg looked at Mom. She’d stepped back from the edge of the pool and was shaking her head. Dad smiled and let Greg float along the surface. Greg nodded. Dad sat him on the edge and took a few more steps back.
“Let’s see you go farther this time, OK?” He held out his arms. “C’mon Greg, jump!”
--------------
"Are these people completely incapable of telling the truth to each other?"
“You said I’d be able to keep it.” Greg stood next to the bicycle his father was loading into the car to take to the Salvation Army.
“No I didn’t.” Dad tied the trunk shut.
“Yes you did,” Greg said. “When you brought it home you said if I didn’t get in trouble at school that we could take it with us.”
“That was before I got the posting in Egypt,” Dad said. “There’s no room.”
“You promised.”
“Greg, don’t be a baby, you’re almost ten years old.” Dad opened the car door. “We’ll get you another bike,” he said. “I promise.”
“You promised before.”
Dad closed the door and started the car. He leaned out of the window. “Well then you’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?”
Greg watched Dad back the car out of the driveway and onto the road.
------------
“It is convenient that there are gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.”
Ovid
Dad was on maneuvers when Grandpa died and Greg and Mom went to the funeral alone, flying out from California to Florida.
Greg looked at the body in the coffin. Grandpa’s hands were folded over his stomach and Greg couldn’t remember ever seeing them so still. He remembered the tombs in Egypt, the way the mummies would be sealed up with food, with jewels, with servants -- everything they would need for the afterlife.
He thought about dropping a screwdriver into the coffin, so Grandpa would have it later -- when he needed it -- but then remembered that all those things they’d put into the tombs rotted away unused. There was no afterlife. Nothing but archeologists and spiders and dust waiting in the years and centuries that followed.
He felt Mom step next to him, reach one arm around his shoulders and squeeze him tight.
“Are you OK, honey?”
Greg nodded.
“We’ll see him again, someday,” Mom said. “In the next life.”
Greg turned to her. “How do you know?”
“Because God promised,” she said.
Greg shook his head. “But you can’t know that, can you?”
“Faith isn’t about believing in what you can prove is true, honey,” Mom said. “It’s about believing in things you can’t prove, and I believe we’ll see Grandpa again someday.”
She squeezed his shoulder again. He leaned his head on her arm for a moment, taking in the scent of her perfume as it fought against the odor of the funeral parlor's lilies and dust. Aunt Sarah called her name and she kissed the top of his head before stepping away.
----------
“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”
HL Mencken
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you out.” Mr. Jamerson didn’t look at Greg when he spoke, just kept his attention focused on his papers as he graded the ninth graders’ science tests.
“You said you’d write the recommendation,” Greg said. “You said I belonged in the honors program.”
The red pen stopped for a moment above a paper. Greg looked down, noticed that the student had misspelled kinetic. He recognized the name at the top of the page -- a colonel’s daughter. The pen moved down the page without making a mark.
“The principal doesn’t think you do,” Mr. Jamerson said. “He thinks you’re undisciplined, that you don’t put in any effort unless you’re interested in the class.” He looked up at Greg. “Can’t say that I disagree with him there.”
“It’s not fair,” Greg said. “You know I’m smarter than any of the other idiots in those classes.”
“You certainly have a bigger ego than they do.”
Greg ignored him. “And you promised last week that you’d get me in there. You promised my Mom you’d do it.”
“That was before the cherry bomb incident in the second floor bathroom.”
“That wasn’t me,” Greg said. Mr. Jamerson looked at him over the top of his glasses. “You can’t prove it.”
“The principal doesn’t agree.”
“You’re not even going to try?”
“I did,” he said. “I talked to him ...”
“I don’t believe you,” Greg said.
“Greg, you’re a bright young man, but you’re walking around with a huge sense of entitlement. Nobody owes it to you to put you in that program. Believe what you want to.” He picked up his pen again. “You’re not getting in.”
-----------
“It was, of course, a grand and impressive thing to do, to mistrust the obvious, and to pin one’s faith in things which could not be seen.”
Galen
The woman was 73 and in the early stages of renal failure when she was transferred over to nephrology.
House wasn’t assigned to her case. He hadn’t been assigned to anything except scut work since starting his residency two months earlier: doing his attending’s charts, collecting lab work, checking in with the patients in dialysis.
Matthews had tossed the chart on top of House’s stack. Renal artery stenosis, he’d said. A simple clear-cut case. House looked at the tests, the results of the arteriography.
“No it’s not,” House said. “There’s no narrowing of the arteries.”
“Did I ask for your opinion?” Matthews took the file. “Hypertension, edema, renal failure. And there is narrowing.”
“Not enough,” House said. “And seizures don’t fit.”
“They do if she’s losing too much salt due to urine output.” Matthews handed him the chart. “Now, are you capable of doing your job and getting the surgery scheduled, or do I have to find someone else? There are plenty of other doctors out there anxious for a residency here.”
House opened the file, flipped past the lab reports to the patient history. It was there, in the notes, the fact that she chewed tobacco -- and from somewhere he remembered reading that some tobaccos had a high licorice content, that high levels of licorice depleted potassium. He saw the dots, sensed the picture developing in his mind. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“We’ve got a waiting list, and Jeffords never wanted you here in the first place. I’m the one who talked him into bringing you in,” Matthews said. “One word from me, and -- well, he may not be able to get rid of you, but he can make your life miserable until you ask him to release you.”
“I’m sure he could,” House said. “But I meant that you’re wrong about the patient. She doesn’t need surgery, just potassium.”
Matthews shook his head. “You’re grasping, House.”
“Muscle weakness, seizures, renal failure ... it’s hypokalemia.”
“It’s not ...”
“Hypokalemia can cause renal arterystenosis. Operate and all you’ll do is make some surgeon more money that they don’t need.”
Matthews snatched the file from House’s hand. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll schedule the surgery. I’ll do your job, then I’ll tell Jeffords.”
House finally stood, taking advantage of his height to look down on Matthews, trying to give himself an advantage he wasn’t sure he had. “Don’t bother. I’ll tell Jeffords myself.”
He brushed past Matthews, headed for the door.
“You’re a resident,” Matthews said. “First year. Why do you think Jeffords will believe you?”
House stopped, thought about the question. “Because I’m right.”
---------------
“When my love swears she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies”
William Shakespeare
“I love you.”
House felt the vibration of Stacy’s voice as she lay on his chest. He could feel the beating of her heart, could almost count her heart rate as it slowed, could see her flushed skin turn from red to pink.
“Prove it,” he said.
“I think I just did.”
“That was sex, not love. I could get the same assurance for two hundred bucks.”
He could feel the slight hitch of her breath as she chuckled. “You’ve discovered my secret,” she said. “I’m only here for the money. A girl has to find a way to pay off law school.”
He let his fingers slide along the length of her hair, feeling its soft texture. She turned to face him.
“It’s all right if you don’t say it too,” she said. “It’s the ‘L’ word. It’s a big step for you.”
“I can say it, but it’s just a word,” House said. “Or three words. I love you. See? Doesn’t change anything. I could also say that I love Angelina Jolie and dim sum from that place over on Fourth. Words don’t mean anything.”
“Words do have meanings.” Stacy rolled onto her side, but kept her arm across his chest, maintaining contact. “Those three words mean something -- even if you’ve never s them before.”
“You want to believe that because laws are made of words, and juries are swayed by words and judges are convinced by words,” House said. “But without cops and fines and jails to back them up, they don’t mean anything. They’re just social conventions.” He turned on his side toward her, raising himself up on one elbow. He took her by her hand, their fingers intertwining. “Actions are what matter.”
“So do you think I’m lying when I say that I love you?”
He shook his head. “I have no reason to say that you are.”
“But you haven’t discounted that possibility.”
“I think,” he said, “that the fact you haven’t moved out says more than any three words. I think the fact you invited my parents here for Christmas even after you met my father says something.”
“So what lesson should I take from the fact that you never put the toilet seat down?”
“That I’m a heartless bastard.” House smiled. “And that you have made a very, very foolish choice.”
“And what about the fact that you bring me flowers every Friday?”
“That I know how to steal them from patients’ rooms before the nurses notice.”
Stacy smiled. “And what about the fact that you didn’t complain when I made you cancel those tickets to Paris because I had to work?”
“That I’m so wealthy that I didn’t even notice the two thousand dollars in nonrefundable tickets, and that you’ll be able to take me for all that I’m worth, and pay off your bills from law school.”
Stacy slid up against him, pushed him back onto the mattress. “Then maybe I better start earning my keep -- two hundred dollars at a time.”
---------
“Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness of heart than at present. Genuine belief seems to have left us.”
Walt Whitman
House stared down at the thing that used to be his leg. Wilson was still in the room, but stood on the far side near the windows. It doesn’t matter if he’s there or not. House didn’t feel anything. He’d gone numb inside.
He’d thought maybe he’d feel something different when he finally saw it, what they’d done, what she’d allowed them to do, what he’d trusted her not to do.
He didn’t.
He didn’t know what he’d expected. He’d seen it soon after he’d woken up, when Cuddy and some of her minions had chased everyone out of the room so they could check the incision and change the bandages.
They’d lowered the head of the bed, so he had to hold his head up to see anything at all, and he’d tired after only a few minutes. He raised his head for a few seconds at a time, seeing the damage only in short bursts, glimpses caught as the nurses’ arms and hands moved across his body.
There was the upper thigh -- mostly intact-- his knee -- pale and thin -- the inner leg -- which still seemed normal -- then the outer part of his thigh, which seemed to drop away into nothing.
He’d dropped his head back onto the thin pillow and Cuddy had stepped up, asked quietly if he was ready for more morphine.
“We’ve got you switched over to a PCA,” she’d said, and slid the control under his hand.
He’d barely noticed the pain then, but it was still there, the button still tied onto the rail where he could reach it.
House touched the scar. The skin was rough and warm beneath his fingers. There was an ache beneath the pale flesh. He drew back from the surge in pain from the slight pressure of his hand and instead moved off to the side. He held his left hand over his leg, spread it wide. The hole where there used to be muscle stretched out wider than his palm, longer than the stretch from wrist to fingertip. He spread his fingers, idly measured at a little more than an octave.
He placed his index finger at the point where the healthy tissue dropped away, measuring how much muscle was missing, seeing it fall away past the first knuckle, nearly to the second.
House pulled both hands back. He sensed, rather than heard, Wilson at the far end of the room. He wondered if Wilson expected him to yell. Expected him to cry. He wondered why he didn’t.
He wanted to be angry. He knew he should be. He knew he would be. But all he felt now was numb, as if Stacy had told the surgeons to cut away his heart along with the muscle.
House lay back against the bed. He stared up at the ceiling and heard Wilson step up to the bed.
“Done?”
House nodded.
Wilson picked up fresh bandages, began putting them on again, covering House’s leg, a thick white blanket of fresh gauze covering over everything that was missing. Disguising it as something whole, something undamaged. House grunted as a fresh hit of pain broke past the morphine and Wilson apologized.
House reached over and hit the button on the PCA control and waited for the drug to hit, to make his body as numb as his emotions. He nodded, motioned to Wilson to continue.
“It’s OK,” House said.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-24 05:22 pm (UTC)A few technical issues:
you’ve never s them before.
ED: You're missing the "said"
It doesn’t matter if he’s there or not.
ED: You have a tense problem. It should be "didn't matter" if "he was" there...actually, you have a few tense issues in this entry, so I'd look it over for overlapping past and present.
He drew back from the surge in pain from the slight pressure of his hand
ED: The repeated use of "from" is a trifle awkward. You might want to rephrase.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 12:00 am (UTC)I'm at a stage in it right now where things are starting to coalesce, but kind of wanted to make sure that the concept worked -- and especially I worry about hitting the same themes in different fics. I mean, I like backstory, but I don't want to tell the exact same one over and over again, you know? I figured the issue of what made House a cynic was a slightly different take.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-24 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 12:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-25 11:45 pm (UTC)The tying together of beginning and end with House's indication that he's OK is sad and beautiful, and I thought it was interesting that through all of this, the only person who apologizes for anything is Wilson, who actually has nothing to apologize for.
I thought at first this was going to go all the way up to "Merry Little Christmas" but I think I'm glad it didn't.
And I'll butt out now.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 12:08 am (UTC)Of course the quote thing is a whole different issue. I like the quotes I found, but yet have fallen in love with the idea of using House's own cynical comments to launch a vignette about the reasoning behind those comments -- using his own words against him. I haven't settled on either approach at this point.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 12:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 02:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 04:35 am (UTC)Oh, and actually -- I just started reviewing this going on my impressions from when I read it the other day, but just now I looked back and realized you made a couple changes! The quotes from House in the beginning work really well! They give it a slightly different tone, I think. More of a sense of irony on top of it, instead of more just reflective.
I wanted to say before that that I liked the first scene in particular, with House jumping/falling into the pool and nearly drowning, because not only does it say a lot about his relationship with his father and the beginnings of issues with trust and disallusionment, but it also just seems symbolic of House's entire experience of life, reluctantly jumping right into the world and feeling overwhelmed and out of place in it. (And that was the longest sentence in the world...) There seem to be some moments like that in real life, that somehow take on a greater significance as you grow up.
I also really liked the one with Stacy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 04:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-26 02:34 pm (UTC)I'm hoping to have things wrapped up by the weekend. I've got thoughts for other House quotes I can use -- and another four sections written, with probably two more yet to go.
Like you noted, I think using House's own words gives a nice irony twist on top of reflective. (for the item preceding Grandpa's funeral, I'm leading toward: People pray so that God won’t crush them like bugs.)