Work Text:
Blind Spot
It's not until weeks after the accident, when they're finally sure Wilson's sight isn't coming back, that the other shoe drops. Not that Wilson can see it, of course, what with him being blind and it being a metaphor, but he can certainly hear it.
" -- with House," Cuddy says, and Wilson blinks. Since it happened -- since he woke up in the ICU -- he's found that his ears seem to have joined in the conspiracy against his brain, dropping words and parts of sentences onto the floor. Sometimes he wonders if anyone's actually said anything, or if he's just talking to himself. Making noise, a reassurance that he's still really here, that he hasn't disappeared into the darkness too. Cuddy clears her throat and he realizes she's waiting for an answer.
"I'm sorry?" he says helplessly.
"No, I'm sorry," Cuddy quickly responds, and that's another thing. Everyone keeps apologizing, even for things beyond their control. Like Terry Gilmour, his ophthalmologist, who yesterday had said he was sorry that it was raining. Wilson knew it was raining -- he could hear the drops pattering on the window glass and smell the faint ozone. What he didn't know was why Gilmour was making amends for something the sky was doing.
"I was asking if you knew what arrangements House has made," Cuddy says, "since he's not telling me."
Wilson winces at the bright bloom of pain in the back of his skull. He's still getting headaches, especially when he's frustrated by the lack of visual cues as to what the hell people are talking about.
"I don't understand," Wilson says. "What arrangements?"
"That's what I want to know," Cuddy counters, and Wilson has the sudden feeling of being caught in some kind of Abbott and Costello "Who's on first" routine. "His arrangements -- "
And then some more words drop out, washed away in an aural tsunami of white noise, drifting out to sea, and when he picks up the frequency again, Cuddy's obviously finishing up whatever was drowned out.
" -- to his apartment. To take you home."
Wilson starts to shake his head, then stops. It doesn't feel right to give non-verbal responses when he can't see the same from others.
"I don't know," he says slowly. "I haven't seen -- I mean, I haven't heard from House. Since the accident."
The silence goes on so long that for a moment he thinks she's left the room. He hasn't heard her leave, though. No rush of fabric, no abrupt click of high heels on the smooth-polished floor.
"Cuddy?"
"That son of a bitch," she snarls, and then she does leave, her perfume swirling up in a swift-moving air current that puffs against Wilson's nostrils.
In his dreams he can see.
"Everyone expected you to take me in," Wilson says.
"I know."
At the hospital, Wilson had sensed peoples' anger at House. It was everywhere -- in their tone of voice, in the way they grasped Wilson's hand just a little too hard, just a little too long, in what they didn't say, at least not in front of him. They said it behind him, as if by losing his sight Wilson had also gone deaf.
"I'm good, but I'm not that good," House continues. "I mean, do I look like Annie Sullivan?"
Wilson squints, and for a moment House does look startlingly like Anne Bancroft -- not the cool temptress of The Graduate, but the young, intense miracle worker of 1962. Anne smiles at him and re-adjusts her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose.
"Okay, that's really creepy," Wilson says. "And for what it's worth, I never expected you to take me in."
"Why not?" Bancroft's lips thin, stubble sprouts on her cheeks, the sunglasses disappear. "Why not?" House says.
"Well, it didn't work out so well the first time, did it? Or the second? And I really could have done without the public humiliation in front of your poker buddies the third."
"I didn't force you to sleep with Cancer Chick," House replies, unruffled. "Besides, you'd think you would have learned by then."
"Learned what?"
"Braille."
"What kind of answer is that?"
House shrugs. "It's your dream."
House buys him a cane.
At least, that's what they tell him. For all Wilson knows, it could be from anybody. House isn't there when they give it to him -- he's never there, although every now and then Wilson catches the faintest scent of aftershave that makes him think House has just left, and if he could only turn his head quickly enough he'd see him.
If he could see, that is.
The cane is graphite, a flexible folding rod with a solid heft that makes him think of his golf clubs. They tell him it's white, and he asks if it has flames painted around the shaft.
He watches as his words float towards the ceiling in the silence that follows. In his mind, they look like tiny black birds.
"No," Chase says at last. "But it does have an internal spring, so the cane doesn't break when you -- " He stops, apparently just realizing how the rest of his sentence is going to sound.
-- when you run into things.
"So what you're really saying is that this is a pogo stick," Wilson says, and even though it's not that funny the room breaks into relieved laughter.
Wilson holds the cane in both hands. He'd like to twirl it, but he's afraid he'd hit something.
Part of the hospital's settlement is a small furnished apartment two blocks away from his office.
Okay, his former office.
Everyone tells him he can't go back to living in the hotel, and so the apartment is where he goes after he's discharged. He knows that for a while afterwards, people call House's number, expecting to find him there. He wonders what House says to them, then decides he doesn't really want to know.
Wilson's brother uses all his vacation time and then some, leaving Mara and the twins to move in for a few weeks.
"Braille is the key," Jon says, and Wilson supposes that's true for someone who still has his sight. He imagines Braille as Morse code for the blind, only instead of dots and dashes there are only dots, raised in inscrutable patterns beneath his clumsy fingers. Deprived of visual stimuli, his brain persists in making quirky, odd connections -- the dots representing the two "d"s in "Cuddy," for instance. Two above and one below, arranged in an unforgiving right angle, they remind Wilson of the Hebrew letter yod. The five dots of the "y" are like a letter "u" turned on its side -- a kaf.
Other names bring purely symbolic images -- the combined "s" and "e" of Chase's last name curve up and out like a spray of water, "Foreman" is a jittering, complicated fox-trot, "Cameron" starts out simply with a few horizontal dots but quickly grows more thorny and ends up curling back in on itself. House's name stops and starts, bunching up in a tense loop until it leaps free at the end.
Wilson's own name takes shape under his fingertips -- clusters and rods, he imagines bacilli and cocci under a microscope lens.
Still, it's not like it's a different language, although he could definitely argue that blindness is another country, one with different customs, different ways of doing things. Different ways of walking, of cooking, even different ways of spending money, folding bills as if marking cards. Different ways of counting -- bus stops and traffic lights, curbs and crosswalks, boundaries of a world marked by physical parameters.
Still, he's coping. Another part of the settlement is continued employment, and Cuddy has carved out a consultant's position, sandwiched precariously between Oncology and Diagnostics. He doesn't have to see patients; in this way he's become something like House. The thought amuses him as he walks carefully to work every morning, tapping his cane, probing for traps. Sometimes it's his rehab therapist accompanying him, sometimes his brother, but it's still terrifying until he gets used to the bustling rush of traffic and noise that seems to assail him from every direction. He soldiers grimly on; he's working, contributing, learning Braille, managing, coping. He can do this.
He's still thinking this right up until the moment he steps in front of the Princeton Airporter shuttle van.
"Are you trying to kill yourself? Because if you are, I can think of quicker ways than throwing yourself under the wheels of a glorified taxi service."
"House?" Wilson's back in the hospital -- the rough sheets and sharp antiseptic aroma are dead giveaways. His right arm is immobilized, but that's all that seems to be wrong with him. Aside from the darkness, of course.
"You're an idiot," House snaps, and then he's gone. Wilson can hear him, stumping off down the hall, the cane providing a muffled counterpoint. House's aftershave lingers behind.
"House?" Wilson says again, but the room is empty.
"Her name's Trini," the handler says. "Trini, meet Dr. Wilson." A cold, wet nose pushes itself into Wilson's left hand.
"Did Dr. House put you up to this?" Wilson asks weakly. "I don't need a dog."
"Now, Dr. Wilson," the young guy chides. "I think you and Trini will get along just fine. After all -- " The service dog continues to nudge at Wilson's hand, and he finds himself cautiously rubbing at a large, coarse-furred head. " -- many of our clients discover a greater quality of life and freedom in caring for the animal companion who can give so much back to them."
"You sound like a commercial," Wilson mumbles. The handler laughs. Trini pants. Wilson traces one thumb along a canine brow ridge, tries to remember how he got here.
After that, strange things start happening. One day it's a CD, slotted sideways into his mailbox at work, unaccompanied by a note or card. He takes it back to his office, peels off the plastic shrink-wrap and loads it into the player and presses random shuffle. The soft notes and smooth blues of "Georgia On My Mind" fill the office.
It's Cameron who tells him, in a strongly disapproving tone, that someone has sent him The Very Best of Ray Charles.
Another night, the doorbell comes as a surprise -- he's not expecting anyone, but it rings again, and so he slips on his glasses and heads for the door, Trini at his side.
It's the pizza delivery guy, who's got a small supreme pizza with Wilson's name on it and won't take no for an answer.
"There's something else here, Doc." The delivery guy fumbles for the something else -- Wilson can hear the rustle of the insulated delivery bag. "Oh, sorry." Gently guides Wilson's free hand to another box, warm with retained heat.
"Chicken wings," the kid says. "He said they were for the dog. Don't worry, they're not spicy. And they're boneless."
"But -- " Wilson begins, and the delivery guy cuts him off.
"It's paid for," he says. "Tip included." He consults a piece of paper; Wilson can hear it crinkle. "From a secret admirer," he reads.
Wilson considers the possibility, very briefly, that the pizza might be poisoned or spiked with Ex-Lax. He ends up eating the whole thing.
Trini gets two wings. He doesn't want to have to clean up dog vomit, which he would only ever find when he stepped in it.
She snarfs them down with gusto and then has chicken breath all night.
Trini lets him know there's something there before he sits down, inserting her bulk between the backs of his legs and his office chair.
"What now?" Wilson mumbles, and "Good girl," as he gives her an ear-scratch with one hand while with his other he gauges the dimensions of the package left in his seat. "Good girl, Trini, thank you."
It's something direct from a store, he thinks, as he sets it on the desk and eases himself into his chair. Thin plastic packaging, factory-sealed ends. He could call someone to come tell him what it is, but what if it's something disgusting? No need to involve anyone else -- he hauls out his phone, snaps a picture, and waits the moment it takes for the app to locate the item in its database.
"Oreo ... cookies," the app says.
Wilson sits back in his chair.
"Huh," he says. He eats a cookie while he thinks about many things.
In the end, he realizes he's been expecting the voice.
"Have you no sense of shame, sir?" House says. Wilson pictures him berating an unrepentant Senator McCarthy in a jerky, black-and-white newsreel, but finds all he can come up with is an image of House whacking the Wisconsin politician with his cane.
"What are you talking about?" Wilson tilts his face into the sunlight; it's the first really warm spring day in Princeton and he's determined to make the most of it here on this park bench.
"This whole blind thing, so you can use a dog as a chick magnet," House says, and Wilson has to smile a little.
It's ridiculously, undeniably true. Not that he'd ever had a problem getting a date when he could see, but now that he has Trini, women are falling into his bed, and sometimes Wilson even falls on top of them.
"Trini," Wilson commands, and he can feel the dog lift her head, warm off of his feet, sense her eyes on him. "Trini, find chicks. Bring chicks here."
Trini huffs softly but doesn't move.
"Here, let me try," House says, his legs shifting just enough to let Wilson know he's leaning forward. "Trini," he says. "Find Anne! Wo ist Anne Frank?"
"House!"
"It's in her blood!" House protests. "She's a German Shep-- "
"No," Wilson says. "Absolutely not."
House sits back. "You're no fun anymore," he grumbles.
"Like you'd know," Wilson says, and then doesn't say anything, surprised at himself.
"I said I was sorry," House says.
"No, you didn't."
"I'm as sorry as I'll ever be."
Wilson isn't sure what he's supposed to say to this. Yes, I know? I'm sorry too? Those seem like safe bets, but what comes out of his mouth is something different.
"I thought you were going to make me go through this alone."
He waits, listening for the telltale rustle, the lifting of unseen weight, the absence of mass occupying space that will tell him House has gone. But House doesn't go.
The faintest brush of a hand on Wilson's shoulder. Trini sits in the sun and pants.
"Yeah, well," House says, "who else is going to provide you with a lifetime supply of polarized Ray-Bans?"
Wilson looks away, even though there's no way House can see what's in his eyes through the no-name shades he's wearing now.
"Fiat lux," he murmurs. Maybe someday.
"What?" House says.
Wilson shakes his head, but he's smiling. "Come on," he says. "Let's go back. I've got the new issue of Playboy from the NLS."
"Don't tell me -- "
Wilson smirks. "Play your cards right and I'll let you feel up Miss April in Braille."
House laughs out loud, and Wilson grins as he stands up.
"Trini," he says crisply. "Home."
~ fin