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"So wake up, please. I'm out here waiting. Please save my little life just one more time,
because here's the deal, I promise to save yours... lets be why we love this stupid life too much to die.
Kitty, what do you say? Here's what happens next: let's make each other weak."
- Munmun by Jesse Andrews.
James Wilson kept most of the gifts that his patients gave him in his office.
There’s one, though, that he kept at home. A little plastic elephant. It belonged to one of his earlier patients. A woman with throat cancer named Olivia - she was always a combative patient. When she was alive, she blamed Wilson for everything that went wrong.
She was sick and dying and angry that no one could stop it. Eventually her cancer progressed; she became too shaky to write, too sick to speak. Before she died, she gave him the elephant. He had never known what it meant; forgiveness, perhaps, or a final taunt. Wilson didn't know. And now he didn't care.
The plastic toy watched him as he poured more scotch into a glass and loosened his tie further. He knocked back a shot and picked up the orange pill bottle just to hear it rattle. Easy doctor’s trick; not only could he provide for his addict friend, he could also provide for himself with a bit of careful maneuvering.
He dropped down into a chair in the warm light of his apartment, swishing the glass around in his hand.
Wilson was good at the whole “people thing,” as House liked to put it. So good at it, in fact, that when he knew what he wanted to do, he had everything squared away within the week. No one suspected a thing.
It was all very simple. James Wilson didn’t want to die. Nobody wants to die. And make no mistake, he’d seen enough people choose death over the years to know that some people did die with their own consent: James Wilson is an oncologist, for fuck’s sake.
But over his career he’s learned the simple truth that people don't choose death because they want it; they choose death when (and only when) it's better than the alternative.
So no, James Wilson doesn't want to die. He has to. That's all this is. The misery languishing in his chest has metastasized to his brain, and he’s tired. It's all very, very simple.
So Wilson pours half the bottle of pills into his palm while the world spins and he thinks about the way that all things must end.
Leave a message after the tone. Beep. Hey House. Sorry about this, I'm… there’s a much better note on the kitchen counter in my house - it's worded well and all of that, it says all the nice things, and, you know, I'm sure you've read it by now. You never use your fucking answering machine so you're probably listening to this a full year later. This is just… I'm just- you were right about me. I just want you to know that you were right about me, about me needing needy people so I can fix them up and feel better about myself. It's just so much easier to think about them, you know? Thinking about me is- it's wrong. It's all wrong. I can't stand to do it very much. It was a good run, I think. Ah, fuck. Who am I kidding? Everything’s a fucking nightmare. Figured I'd be honest with you for the first time in my life, eh? I'm a little drunk right now and won't be for a little bit longer and so I guess, I guess this ones on you. Final final bottle of whiskey. Here’s to us, House. Here’s to us. Beep.
House is debating popping another vicodin when the phone rings.
He turns to look at it, dispassionate, sitting on the floor with his cane a few inches away. The pill bottle is on the couch, and that feels too far away. His phone, however, is closer. It's sitting right on the side table. The closer one deserves his attention.
Simple deduction. No wonder he’s so good at his job, with wits like that. House reaches over and picks up his phone. Cuddy. He checks the time. Three o’clock in the morning.
“Okay,” He said, flipping the phone around in his hand and setting it between his shoulder and chin. “What is it? If you're trying to get me to come for clinic duty this late at night, you should walk yourself up to the psych ward.
Failing that, you've got a case for me. What kind of person contracts a mystery illness at three in the morning? Viruses can't possibly be awake this late, so give them antibiotics and antifungals for god’s sake.”
“You need to come in. It's an emergency.” House raised an eyebrow.
“Is it an emergency or does somebody’s tummy hurt and you don't have enough staffers?”
“ House ,” Cuddy snapped.
“ Cuddy ,” House replied, mimicking her voice. For a moment, she was silent.
“It's Wilson,” Cuddy said at last. House scoffed.
“Okay. What does he want?”
“He overdosed,” she said. House paused. The little fizzing wires and neurological pathways in his head went still for a moment, only a moment, before going into retrograde. The static cleared and the whole system rebooted.
“Is he stable?” House asked in the exact same tone of voice as before, leaning forward and away from the pills. They went briefly neglected.
“He’s in the ICU,” Cuddy replied gravely. House’s grip on his phone tightened.
The words in the ICU ping ponged back and forth along the dome of his skull. House had asked is he stable; Cuddy’s reply meant that he wasn't.
There was no possible way that she was calling him to get Wilson’s condition under control. If he was critical right now and wouldn't make it, House’s commute made sure he wouldn't get there in time to do a damn thing about it.
That left the idea that Cuddy was calling him because Wilson didn't have any next of kin, or calling him so that he could say goodbye by the time he managed to get there, which was- No. House was not going to think about it.
“He must have been dosed with something,” House said, latching onto the idea of a puzzle. “Where was he before this? If we can figure out-”
“He was in his apartment, House,” Cuddy said quietly. “He downed a bottle of whiskey and half a bottle of benzos. The EMT’s noticed a set of closed letters on the counter.” House didn't say anything for a moment. Logically, House had known that. Of course he had known that. It was obvious. It just hadn't registered, not really.
It wasn't about the severity of the situation. If James Wilson had been crushed under a pile of rubble, that made sense. It was horrible, but it made sense. Some structural instability caused the building to falter and from there gravity did its best work. Simple.
If he’d been hit by a car, that would have been easy to understand; irresponsible drivers were fairly common. Inertia. The simplicity of cause and effect. That was the lens through which House analyzed the world.
But Wilson hadn't been crushed by debris or fucked over on the highway. He had tried to kill himself. The cause and effect for that situation was concealed and inscrutable.
Suddenly, House wasn't even thinking about cause and effect at all.
He was thinking about how Wilson had been kind of out of it, the day before yesterday - but yesterday he seemed normal, except that his tie was inside out, and he hadn't fixed it for a few hours because House thought it would be funny for some poor schmuck to hear their terminal diagnosis from an idiot who couldn't even put on a tie right.
Except maybe that had been a symptom. Maybe there had been symptoms, a constellation of slight changes and differentials that would have tipped House off that something had been going on. Sure, knowing why Wilson tried to kill himself would be impossible until he woke up ( if he woke up) but there must have been signs .
Usually House was able to recognize the uselessness of what-ifs. This time he couldn't seem to stop himself.
“House?” Cuddy said.
“He put on his tie wrong,” House mumbled.
“What?” Cuddy said. House blinked. Right.
“I'll be there in a minute,” he said, and then hung up. House struggled to his feet mechanically and limped to the phone on a shelf behind his couch. He listened to the last message Wilson had sent him at least three times in complete silence before leaving his apartment and driving to the hospital.
When James Wilson was doing his residency, he once heard a doctor say that every experience was, in some way or another, a learning opportunity. Despite how cheesy and corny the phrase it was, Wilson liked to take his positivity where he could get it, and had by and large found the phrase to hold true.
So: the first thing James Wilson learned after waking up from a minimally conscious state was that hydromorphone was a hell of a drug.
The world was floaty and spinny and though Wilson was distantly aware of how big a deal it was that he was alive, he also wanted to think about literally anything else.
He didn't have enough energy to reach over and figure out the exact drug cocktail he’d been given intravenously, so instead he counted the lights on the ceiling, a task which took all of his brain power.
Eventually a nurse noticed that he was awake, and he was subjected to a barrage of consciousness tests by a neurologist: Dr. Foreman. Just his luck.
“Don't you have other things to be doing?” Wilson managed through a shredded throat, and Foreman just looked at him like he was crazy.
“If House thinks I'm neglecting your care he’ll strangle me to death with his bare hands. Now go back to sleep, you did a number on your liver.” Just as brusque as expected. Wilson laid back down and let the medications do their work.
When he woke up a second time, he was very tired but a tad bit more sober. Wilson rolled over to try and get his bearings just to come face to face with House’s knees. He briefly glanced up before his gaze slid to the side table. Huh. Wilson squinted.
“Are those 500s?” he croaked, blinking at the orange pill bottle.
“Wilson,” House said.
“You're usually on 600. Did Cuddy prescribe those? Because-”
“Wilson.”
“-you've been on the same dose for a long time, but if you're trying to wean it down-
“Wilson.”
“-you should be going down by 50 milligrams, not by-”
“Would you shut up about the goddamn pills!” House shouted in his usually gravelly voice, but with the volume jacked up to eleven. Wilson blinked.
“Has anybody told you that you sound like you smoke six packs a day? It's actually kind of sexy.” House didn't even bother responding to that, just glaring with the intensity of a thousand suns.
Wilson sighed and rolled onto his back. He didn't focus his eyes, letting them go foggy for a moment.
“Would you believe me if I told you this was an accident?” he asked, a bit desperate.
“No.”
“Okay. Better question. Would the psychiatrist believe me if I told her it was an accident?”
“Not a chance.” Wilson sighed.
“I never wanted this to happen.”
“I know. It doesn't take a genius to find out that most people who try to commit suicide don't expect to wake up.” Wilson winced. House rolled his eyes.
“Are you kidding me? You down an entire bottle of benzos and enough whiskey to kill a horse and you wince at the word suicide?”
“It's not that big of a deal,” Wilson argued weakly. House laughed, sounding hysterical.
“Not a big deal? You think this is not a big deal ? Okay, lets recap: you were in a coma for a fucking week. You were in a minimally conscious state for four days. You went into V Fib twice, and you're lucky as hell that you don't have cirrhosis that’d have you dead in a year.
Thankfully your liver failure can probably be reversed, but the extent of brain damage is yet to be determined. And that's not a big deal? You think that isn't a big deal? God, Wilson, what the hell is wrong with you? You're supposed to be the emotionally intelligent one who knows what he’s doing-”
“Well maybe I don't want to be that anymore,” Wilson snapped, sitting up abruptly. “Maybe I'm not well adjusted and happy. Maybe I can't be that. Maybe I'm pissed off and lonely and scared and maybe I'm sick and fucking tired of pretending to be anything else!” Wilson’s throat constricted and he choked, leaning forward and coughing into his arm.
House’s eyes flicked to his vitals and found them satisfactory. When Wilson was done hacking up a lung, he was handed a little plastic cup of water and knocked it back like a shot.
He set it on the side table and ran a hand over his face, letting his shoulders drop. “I'm tired, House,” he said quietly. “Most of my patients are two steps from death's door and I'm the only one that many of them have to lean on, everybody I know is just as if not more off their fucking rocker than I am, I'm lonely as hell and I can't stay in a relationship to save my life. I'm tired. I don't want to do this anymore.” House leaned on his cane for a while and was silent.
“Tough shit,” he said at last. “When you get out of the psych wing, pack your bags.” Wilson frowned.
“What?”
“Remember what happened after Julie kicked you out?”
“Is reminding me of my ex-wives and failed marriages some sort of therapy technique I'm not aware of, or are you making things worse on purpose?” House ignored him.
“You came to live with me. See, I listened to your voicemail,” House said, “Actually, I've listened to your voicemail about five times by now.
You said I was right about you being desperate to take care of someone needy. Fine. When the shrinks let you go, move in with me. I'm always miserable and needy. I'm the perfect candidate.
You get to live out your fantasies by having someone to fawn over, and in the meantime, I keep you from sticking a butter knife into your femoral artery. Match made in heaven.”
It felt like there was a balloon expanding in Wilson’s chest, but not in a bad way. He laughed shakily and wiped his eyes.
“You'll be up to your elbows in rehab pamphlets,” he warned.
“And you'll still keep enabling me,” House replied. “Better keep your scrip pad in a lockbox.”
“I'll be annoying,” Wilson pointed out. House rolled his eyes.
“Oh no, you'll make me fantastic food for no reason. The horror.” Wilson studied him.
“You're not gonna sit here and tell me I have everything to live for?” House snorted.
“No thanks. I'll let the shrink do that.” House glanced behind him. “Speaking of shrinks, Cuddy can't know I'm here. She thought it’d be best if the psychiatrist got to you before I did… thought I'd say stupid shit that would impede your recovery.” He snorted. “Come on, does that sound like me?”
“Yes,” Wilson said, exasperated. He paused and stared at his hands. “But thank you.”
“No problem, cadet,” House replied, opening the door. Wilson sighed.
“And I'll take you up on the offer. My rent is past due anyway. It's not like I was betting on my landlord missing me.” He expected House to make a final comment over his shoulder and walk out. Instead, House paused, one foot out the door, and turned to look at him.
“We would have,” House said. “You know we would have missed you, right?” Wilson pursed his lips.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. House just stared at him for a moment.
“We’ll figure this out, James,” House said at last.
“And if we don't?” Wilson asked, something uncharacteristically brittle in his voice. “What if it doesn't matter? God, House, what if there’s nothing left for me?”
“Then we’ll deal with it. Either way, I'm not going anywhere.” House said, like it was simple.
And maybe, when he said it like that, it was.