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namasteTitle: Family, Friends and Other Complications
Chapter Twelve: When They Weren’t Together
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, strong House and Wilson friendship, PG
Summary: Blythe begins to know a little more about her son, even though he’s far away.
Sample:
One day Blythe opened a package from Greg. The padded envelope held a CD and a short note.
“This is what I do,” he had written.
Blythe recognized the musician’s name, and put it on the stereo, wondering if she could figure out what Greg was trying to say from the music. It was jazz, featuring a trumpet player whose music came out in a rich tone that filled the room.
She closed her eyes and let the music paint pictures in her mind of smoke-filled clubs and late Saturday nights that crept into early Sunday mornings. She wondered if Greg saw the same things in his mind, but couldn't tell what he was trying to tell her.
It was James who finally gave her the rest of the story, the reason behind the music and the note. James told her about the man everyone else was ready to give up for dead, whose fate had seemed hopeless, how Greg had refused to let him die, and about how Greg had cured him.
And Blythe finally understood her son just a little more.
Find links to previous chapters inside.
Previous chapters are here:
When Blythe Met Wilson
When Greg Got Sick
When Greg Went Home
When Stacy Left
When John and Blythe Moved
When Blythe Didn’t Meet Julie
When Days Were Bad
When Greg Got His Department
When Days Were Good
When John Retired
When Greg Went For A Visit
When They Weren’t Together
On Tuesdays, Blythe volunteered at the library. On Wednesdays, she’d have lunch with her sister. Thursdays she played bridge. Fridays she was part of a regular foursome, taking in nine holes of golf, followed by drinks at the clubhouse as their husbands finished up on the back nine.
And each day, there would be a moment when the conversation eased, and Blythe knew what would come next.
“Did I show you the pictures my daughter sent me?” someone would ask, then dig into her purse for the latest snapshots of her grandchildren. Someone else would follow a moment later, then someone else. Even Sarah couldn’t resist the urge, bragging about how Tommy was doing in Little League.
“You should come to one of his games,” she’d say, and Blythe would just nod and promise that she would.
They’d pass the photos around the table, each woman taking the time to comment on how handsome the boys looked, how cute the toddlers were, how precious the babies seemed to be.
Blythe knew the routine. She didn’t mind it. She told herself that she wasn’t jealous. She’d even told John they should go to one of her grandnephew’s games.
“It’ll be fun,” she’d said. He just grunted in response.
But with each new group, Blythe knew the question would come up.
“And what about you? Do your children live near here?”
“We have one son,” she’d say. “He’s in New Jersey.” Then she’d wait for the second half of the question. “No. No grandchildren.”
“Not yet,” she used to say once when they asked, and she’d smile. But she hadn’t said that for years. Not since before Stacy left. She had never asked Greg about whether they would get married, or whether they planned on having children.
They had seemed happy with the way things were back then -- Greg had seemed happy at least -- so she told herself that she was happy with that. And she remembered how many times her own mother-in-law had asked when they would have another baby, how she hated the question, and dreaded seeing her knowing what was coming -- and how she kept it up until the day John finally pulled her aside, and explained that they couldn’t have any more children.
Despite that, she once nearly found herself asking James if he ever planned to have children, but managed to cut herself off in time, instead turning the question in mid-sentence toward Greg.
“Do you ... do you know where Greg is this afternoon?”
“He’s got his interviews today.” James said. “For the new position. I’m sure he’s mentioned it.”
Blythe was quiet for a moment. “James, how long have you known my son?”
He chuckled. “Right,” he said. “Greg’s hiring another fellow. He received more donations for the department, so he’s expanding it.”
Blythe wondered why Greg hadn’t mentioned that, but decided the reason probably wasn’t important. He probably would just say that he didn’t think she was interested.
But she was. She wanted to know more about what he did, about the lives he saved. Maybe, she thought, she’d understand him more. Maybe it would help her to help John understand his son. She couldn’t quite silence the voice in the back of her head that told her she’d have finally something to brag about at those lunches.
Greg didn’t seem to understand why she was curious. He’d sounded frustrated every time she pushed him for more details, but then couldn’t understand the medical jargon. “People come in sick and I cure them,” he finally said one day with a sigh.
That wasn’t the way James put it whenever he brought up one of Greg’s cases. He had sounded amazed when he’d mentioned it in an email, a woman with a cat allergy that everyone else thought was dying.
“He diagnosed her over the phone,” James had written. “I still don’t believe it.”
“It wasn’t complicated,” Greg insisted when she brought it up. “I don’t know why you’d be interested.”
“I’m always interested,” Blythe said.
Every time someone asked, she always said the same thing. “My son’s a doctor. He specializes in infectious diseases and nephrology -- and diagnostics.”
She wanted to be able to say more.
She could tell them that he was very well respected, though she wasn’t certain why.
“Because he has a way of solving cases that no one else can,” James explained one day.
“I understand that,” Blythe said, “but I don’t understand why that is.”
James sighed. “Neither do I,” he said. “He sees things differently. His brain works differently.” He paused for just a moment. He was quieter when he spoke again. “I just know that it’s something I can’t do, or anyone else around here.”
When Blythe asked Greg to explain it again, he was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to know what I do?” he finally asked. “Or do you want to be able to explain to others what I do?”
Blythe wasn’t sure she could explain what she meant, so she just told him to forget about her question.
He didn’t.
One day she opened a package from Greg. The padded envelope held a CD and a short note.
“This is what I do,” he had written.
Blythe recognized the musician’s name, and put it on the stereo, wondering if she could figure out what Greg was trying to say from the music. It was jazz, featuring a trumpet player whose music came out in a rich tone that filled the room.
She closed her eyes and let the music paint pictures in her mind of smoke-filled clubs and late Saturday nights that crept into early Sunday mornings. She wondered if Greg saw the same things in his mind, but couldn't tell what he was trying to tell her.
It was James who finally gave her the rest of the story, the reason behind the music and the note. James told her about the man everyone else was ready to give up for dead, whose fate had seemed hopeless, how Greg had refused to let him die, and about how Greg had cured him.
And Blythe understood her son just a little more.
She searched the magazines at the library and found a few articles about John Henry Giles’ miracle cure. She even found Greg’s name, followed by a statement that he had declined to comment for the story.
A month later, the mail brought a baseball card. Blythe didn’t recognize the pitcher’s name, but John did.
“He got in trouble for drugs,” he said, and handed it back.
Blythe checked the sports pages for his name, finding a short item that he was expected to recover in time for spring training.
When the ticket stub for a political fundraiser showed up in the mail, she didn’t have to search far. She’d already heard about how the man was being treated for “flu-like symptoms” at a New Jersey hospital.
When someone mentioned the politician at a library meeting, Blythe nearly spoke up, but didn’t. “Pride goes before a fall,” her mother had told her time after time when she was a girl. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”
When Greg was little, she ignored her mother’s advice and instead she told him to take pride in what he did --even if she couldn’t bring herself to brag on his behalf.
But Greg didn’t seem happy when he answered the phone that weekend. He was quiet.
“You should be proud, honey,” she said.
“I am,” he mumbled, then said he had to get off the phone. He didn’t even bother making up an excuse.
“He’s had a tough week,” James said when Blythe called him on his cell phone. “We all have.”
“What happened? I thought Greg saved the senator.”
“He did,” James said. He was quiet for a moment. “It’s just ... office politics.” She could hear him pacing, then heard him take a deep breath and blow it out. “I’ll stop by and check in on him.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.” He paused. Blythe heard rustling in the background, and the sound of a door opening. “I want to see him myself anyway. Hell, who knows, maybe he can cheer me up.”
---------------
“What have you been telling my mother?”
House leaned down onto Wilson’s desk, the palm of his left hand placed over the papers that Wilson had been reading.
Wilson glanced up. “Nothing,” he said.
“Of course you have.”
“No, I haven’t.” Wilson yanked at the papers and they came loose as House lifted his hand. “I haven’t spoken to your mother for a couple of weeks.” He put them in a file, then swiveled his chair to the left to put them in a drawer. He paused with one hand on the handle, then turned to the right. He’d moved some of his files when he set up his office again after Vogler left. House had insisted that as long as he was making changes, he should rearrange his office.
“It’s boring in here,” House had said. “You need to spice up your life.”
“I’ve had enough spice lately,” Wilson had said, and put the fishing trophy back at its usual spot. He could still see the faint ring where it had sat for years, a darker spot surrounded by lighter wood where afternoon sun had lightened it.
“That’s stress, not spice,” House had said, and moved the trophy. “Never confuse the two.”
Now Wilson opened the bottom drawer on the right, and dropped the file into its place. “What’s wrong with your mother?”
House took a few steps away from the desk to look out the window. “She wants to come for a visit.”
“And that would be ... bad?”
“Sure,” House said. “If she comes, she’ll bring my father.”
Wilson leaned back in his chair. “You’ll have to see him sooner or later,” he said. “He’s your father.”
“I vote for later.”
House hadn’t even wanted to talk about his argument with John, what he’d said and what his father had said that night. After making a few veiled references to John’s choices in punishments, he’d refused to discuss anything about his father at all -- as if he could somehow wish the man out of his life by ignoring his existence.
It had nearly been a year since that night, and this was the first time House had mentioned him to Wilson.
“Have you spoken to him at all?”
House stepped back from the window and sat in the middle of Wilson’s couch. “Of course,” he said.
“And when I say talking, I’m referring to something more than asking him to put your mother on the line when he answers the phone.”
“Then I’d have to say ‘no,’” House said. He spun his cane between his thumb and index finger and watched as the handle rotated clockwise, then counter clockwise.
Wilson watched the motion for a moment, trying to figure out if he could find some way of assessing House’s mood by the speed of the cane’s movement -- if he could come up with some kind of turmoil-to-twirl ratio.
“When does she want to come up?” Wilson asked.
“She hasn’t set a date. I thought she’d been conspiring with you.”
“She hasn’t.”
“But she will.”
“But she hasn’t.”
“She will.”
Wilson sighed and shrugged. “Maybe.”
The cane stopped moving. House leaned back against the cushions and looked up at the ceiling. “And you’ll tell her everything. Like always.”
“Do you want me to not talk to your mother?”
House looked like he was going to say yes, then shook his head.
“Look, she calls and I talk to her, but usually all she asks about is you,” Wilson said. “And she’s your mother. If she wants to know something she’s going to figure it out.”
House looked over at him. “You tell your mother everything?”
Wilson sighed. “Of course not.”
“Like how you spent two nights on my couch last month?”
“That wasn’t important,” Wilson said. “I tell her the important things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as ...” Wilson wondered how the conversation had turned against him, and why House was avoiding his mother. “Have you told your mother that Stacy’s back?”
House stared up at the ceiling again.
“You haven’t, have you?”
“It’s not important.”
“Even you don’t believe that.”
“It’s coincidence, not fate or whatever else you may want to call it,” House said. “She’s only here because of her husband. Why would my mother care?”
Wilson didn’t say anything and House finally glanced at him. He leaned forward again, the cane beginning its motion once more.
“She’ll make a thing about it,” House said. “She’ll want to come up and see Stacy for herself, and make sure I’m not pining for her.”
“So you don’t want her to know,” Wilson said. “But if she finds out on her own, she’s going to be even more worried about why you didn’t tell her.”
“And she’ll come for a visit,” House said, “with him.”
Wilson sighed and leaned forward. He placed his elbows on his desk. “So the question is, how do you let your Mom know about Stacy without have her freak out to the point she decides to book a flight?”
House nodded. He tapped his cane on the floor, then looked up at Wilson. “I nominate you to tell her,” he said. “Got any ideas?”
Chapter Twelve: When They Weren’t Together
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, strong House and Wilson friendship, PG
Summary: Blythe begins to know a little more about her son, even though he’s far away.
Sample:
One day Blythe opened a package from Greg. The padded envelope held a CD and a short note.
“This is what I do,” he had written.
Blythe recognized the musician’s name, and put it on the stereo, wondering if she could figure out what Greg was trying to say from the music. It was jazz, featuring a trumpet player whose music came out in a rich tone that filled the room.
She closed her eyes and let the music paint pictures in her mind of smoke-filled clubs and late Saturday nights that crept into early Sunday mornings. She wondered if Greg saw the same things in his mind, but couldn't tell what he was trying to tell her.
It was James who finally gave her the rest of the story, the reason behind the music and the note. James told her about the man everyone else was ready to give up for dead, whose fate had seemed hopeless, how Greg had refused to let him die, and about how Greg had cured him.
And Blythe finally understood her son just a little more.
Find links to previous chapters inside.
Previous chapters are here:
When Blythe Met Wilson
When Greg Got Sick
When Greg Went Home
When Stacy Left
When John and Blythe Moved
When Blythe Didn’t Meet Julie
When Days Were Bad
When Greg Got His Department
When Days Were Good
When John Retired
When Greg Went For A Visit
When They Weren’t Together
On Tuesdays, Blythe volunteered at the library. On Wednesdays, she’d have lunch with her sister. Thursdays she played bridge. Fridays she was part of a regular foursome, taking in nine holes of golf, followed by drinks at the clubhouse as their husbands finished up on the back nine.
And each day, there would be a moment when the conversation eased, and Blythe knew what would come next.
“Did I show you the pictures my daughter sent me?” someone would ask, then dig into her purse for the latest snapshots of her grandchildren. Someone else would follow a moment later, then someone else. Even Sarah couldn’t resist the urge, bragging about how Tommy was doing in Little League.
“You should come to one of his games,” she’d say, and Blythe would just nod and promise that she would.
They’d pass the photos around the table, each woman taking the time to comment on how handsome the boys looked, how cute the toddlers were, how precious the babies seemed to be.
Blythe knew the routine. She didn’t mind it. She told herself that she wasn’t jealous. She’d even told John they should go to one of her grandnephew’s games.
“It’ll be fun,” she’d said. He just grunted in response.
But with each new group, Blythe knew the question would come up.
“And what about you? Do your children live near here?”
“We have one son,” she’d say. “He’s in New Jersey.” Then she’d wait for the second half of the question. “No. No grandchildren.”
“Not yet,” she used to say once when they asked, and she’d smile. But she hadn’t said that for years. Not since before Stacy left. She had never asked Greg about whether they would get married, or whether they planned on having children.
They had seemed happy with the way things were back then -- Greg had seemed happy at least -- so she told herself that she was happy with that. And she remembered how many times her own mother-in-law had asked when they would have another baby, how she hated the question, and dreaded seeing her knowing what was coming -- and how she kept it up until the day John finally pulled her aside, and explained that they couldn’t have any more children.
Despite that, she once nearly found herself asking James if he ever planned to have children, but managed to cut herself off in time, instead turning the question in mid-sentence toward Greg.
“Do you ... do you know where Greg is this afternoon?”
“He’s got his interviews today.” James said. “For the new position. I’m sure he’s mentioned it.”
Blythe was quiet for a moment. “James, how long have you known my son?”
He chuckled. “Right,” he said. “Greg’s hiring another fellow. He received more donations for the department, so he’s expanding it.”
Blythe wondered why Greg hadn’t mentioned that, but decided the reason probably wasn’t important. He probably would just say that he didn’t think she was interested.
But she was. She wanted to know more about what he did, about the lives he saved. Maybe, she thought, she’d understand him more. Maybe it would help her to help John understand his son. She couldn’t quite silence the voice in the back of her head that told her she’d have finally something to brag about at those lunches.
Greg didn’t seem to understand why she was curious. He’d sounded frustrated every time she pushed him for more details, but then couldn’t understand the medical jargon. “People come in sick and I cure them,” he finally said one day with a sigh.
That wasn’t the way James put it whenever he brought up one of Greg’s cases. He had sounded amazed when he’d mentioned it in an email, a woman with a cat allergy that everyone else thought was dying.
“He diagnosed her over the phone,” James had written. “I still don’t believe it.”
“It wasn’t complicated,” Greg insisted when she brought it up. “I don’t know why you’d be interested.”
“I’m always interested,” Blythe said.
Every time someone asked, she always said the same thing. “My son’s a doctor. He specializes in infectious diseases and nephrology -- and diagnostics.”
She wanted to be able to say more.
She could tell them that he was very well respected, though she wasn’t certain why.
“Because he has a way of solving cases that no one else can,” James explained one day.
“I understand that,” Blythe said, “but I don’t understand why that is.”
James sighed. “Neither do I,” he said. “He sees things differently. His brain works differently.” He paused for just a moment. He was quieter when he spoke again. “I just know that it’s something I can’t do, or anyone else around here.”
When Blythe asked Greg to explain it again, he was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to know what I do?” he finally asked. “Or do you want to be able to explain to others what I do?”
Blythe wasn’t sure she could explain what she meant, so she just told him to forget about her question.
He didn’t.
One day she opened a package from Greg. The padded envelope held a CD and a short note.
“This is what I do,” he had written.
Blythe recognized the musician’s name, and put it on the stereo, wondering if she could figure out what Greg was trying to say from the music. It was jazz, featuring a trumpet player whose music came out in a rich tone that filled the room.
She closed her eyes and let the music paint pictures in her mind of smoke-filled clubs and late Saturday nights that crept into early Sunday mornings. She wondered if Greg saw the same things in his mind, but couldn't tell what he was trying to tell her.
It was James who finally gave her the rest of the story, the reason behind the music and the note. James told her about the man everyone else was ready to give up for dead, whose fate had seemed hopeless, how Greg had refused to let him die, and about how Greg had cured him.
And Blythe understood her son just a little more.
She searched the magazines at the library and found a few articles about John Henry Giles’ miracle cure. She even found Greg’s name, followed by a statement that he had declined to comment for the story.
A month later, the mail brought a baseball card. Blythe didn’t recognize the pitcher’s name, but John did.
“He got in trouble for drugs,” he said, and handed it back.
Blythe checked the sports pages for his name, finding a short item that he was expected to recover in time for spring training.
When the ticket stub for a political fundraiser showed up in the mail, she didn’t have to search far. She’d already heard about how the man was being treated for “flu-like symptoms” at a New Jersey hospital.
When someone mentioned the politician at a library meeting, Blythe nearly spoke up, but didn’t. “Pride goes before a fall,” her mother had told her time after time when she was a girl. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”
When Greg was little, she ignored her mother’s advice and instead she told him to take pride in what he did --even if she couldn’t bring herself to brag on his behalf.
But Greg didn’t seem happy when he answered the phone that weekend. He was quiet.
“You should be proud, honey,” she said.
“I am,” he mumbled, then said he had to get off the phone. He didn’t even bother making up an excuse.
“He’s had a tough week,” James said when Blythe called him on his cell phone. “We all have.”
“What happened? I thought Greg saved the senator.”
“He did,” James said. He was quiet for a moment. “It’s just ... office politics.” She could hear him pacing, then heard him take a deep breath and blow it out. “I’ll stop by and check in on him.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.” He paused. Blythe heard rustling in the background, and the sound of a door opening. “I want to see him myself anyway. Hell, who knows, maybe he can cheer me up.”
---------------
“What have you been telling my mother?”
House leaned down onto Wilson’s desk, the palm of his left hand placed over the papers that Wilson had been reading.
Wilson glanced up. “Nothing,” he said.
“Of course you have.”
“No, I haven’t.” Wilson yanked at the papers and they came loose as House lifted his hand. “I haven’t spoken to your mother for a couple of weeks.” He put them in a file, then swiveled his chair to the left to put them in a drawer. He paused with one hand on the handle, then turned to the right. He’d moved some of his files when he set up his office again after Vogler left. House had insisted that as long as he was making changes, he should rearrange his office.
“It’s boring in here,” House had said. “You need to spice up your life.”
“I’ve had enough spice lately,” Wilson had said, and put the fishing trophy back at its usual spot. He could still see the faint ring where it had sat for years, a darker spot surrounded by lighter wood where afternoon sun had lightened it.
“That’s stress, not spice,” House had said, and moved the trophy. “Never confuse the two.”
Now Wilson opened the bottom drawer on the right, and dropped the file into its place. “What’s wrong with your mother?”
House took a few steps away from the desk to look out the window. “She wants to come for a visit.”
“And that would be ... bad?”
“Sure,” House said. “If she comes, she’ll bring my father.”
Wilson leaned back in his chair. “You’ll have to see him sooner or later,” he said. “He’s your father.”
“I vote for later.”
House hadn’t even wanted to talk about his argument with John, what he’d said and what his father had said that night. After making a few veiled references to John’s choices in punishments, he’d refused to discuss anything about his father at all -- as if he could somehow wish the man out of his life by ignoring his existence.
It had nearly been a year since that night, and this was the first time House had mentioned him to Wilson.
“Have you spoken to him at all?”
House stepped back from the window and sat in the middle of Wilson’s couch. “Of course,” he said.
“And when I say talking, I’m referring to something more than asking him to put your mother on the line when he answers the phone.”
“Then I’d have to say ‘no,’” House said. He spun his cane between his thumb and index finger and watched as the handle rotated clockwise, then counter clockwise.
Wilson watched the motion for a moment, trying to figure out if he could find some way of assessing House’s mood by the speed of the cane’s movement -- if he could come up with some kind of turmoil-to-twirl ratio.
“When does she want to come up?” Wilson asked.
“She hasn’t set a date. I thought she’d been conspiring with you.”
“She hasn’t.”
“But she will.”
“But she hasn’t.”
“She will.”
Wilson sighed and shrugged. “Maybe.”
The cane stopped moving. House leaned back against the cushions and looked up at the ceiling. “And you’ll tell her everything. Like always.”
“Do you want me to not talk to your mother?”
House looked like he was going to say yes, then shook his head.
“Look, she calls and I talk to her, but usually all she asks about is you,” Wilson said. “And she’s your mother. If she wants to know something she’s going to figure it out.”
House looked over at him. “You tell your mother everything?”
Wilson sighed. “Of course not.”
“Like how you spent two nights on my couch last month?”
“That wasn’t important,” Wilson said. “I tell her the important things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as ...” Wilson wondered how the conversation had turned against him, and why House was avoiding his mother. “Have you told your mother that Stacy’s back?”
House stared up at the ceiling again.
“You haven’t, have you?”
“It’s not important.”
“Even you don’t believe that.”
“It’s coincidence, not fate or whatever else you may want to call it,” House said. “She’s only here because of her husband. Why would my mother care?”
Wilson didn’t say anything and House finally glanced at him. He leaned forward again, the cane beginning its motion once more.
“She’ll make a thing about it,” House said. “She’ll want to come up and see Stacy for herself, and make sure I’m not pining for her.”
“So you don’t want her to know,” Wilson said. “But if she finds out on her own, she’s going to be even more worried about why you didn’t tell her.”
“And she’ll come for a visit,” House said, “with him.”
Wilson sighed and leaned forward. He placed his elbows on his desk. “So the question is, how do you let your Mom know about Stacy without have her freak out to the point she decides to book a flight?”
House nodded. He tapped his cane on the floor, then looked up at Wilson. “I nominate you to tell her,” he said. “Got any ideas?”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-08 07:13 am (UTC)I really enjoy your take on Blythe House, it just builds on what we briefly saw of her in the series and the few remarks House has made about her. The construction and filling-out of her character is lovely, as is her relationship with Wilson. :)
Lovely stuff. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-08 09:56 am (UTC)