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“Ready to go?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Gerard put on a convincing enough smile so Frank could go onstage.
My Chemical Romance, a band with a small but slowly growing fan base from Belleville, is now playing at a small venue in Princeton. They had played there plenty of times before, but something in Gerard’s stomach was still unsettled, worse than any other time. He chalked it up to his usual nerves before a show, so he grabbed his flask (which he refilled an hour ago for this exact occasion) and took a swig.
As they started their set, Gerard could feel the alcohol running through his body, causing him to feel more alive onstage. His bandmates had told him multiple times to quit drinking, but he insisted that it helped him get over his stage fright. It made him forget his worries and gain enough energy to do what he did.
However, the stomachache Gerard initially had increased tenfold; the alcohol seemed to have made it worse. He decided to channel the pain into his voice and convey some emotion to the audience.
He went up to Frank (who was wriggling onstage, as usual) and hugged him from behind, using him as both a physical and emotional support. He could always pass it off to the audience as a homoerotic moment.
Frank leaned in for a bit, but then eventually shrugged him off. Gerard didn’t want to bother anyone else, so he clenched his stomach as he sang. He didn’t even remember what song he was singing.
Gerard could feel his head spinning. From his point of view, the crowd was moving in ways that should’ve been physically impossible.
“Gerard,” he could see Ray standing in front of him, but he was blurry and unfocused.
Everything seemed to turn white around him. The stage lights were too bright. He couldn’t hear Ray talking anymore.
Then, everything went black.
*****
“You gotta give me a good reason as to why I should take the case.”
Cuddy sighed. “He’s the lead singer of a band. They’re about to go on tour.”
“Then it’s probably drugs,” House replied, eager to end the conversation and go back to watching his soap opera. “You know how that scene is.”
“It’s not drugs. According to his friends, he quit months ago.”
“Everybody lies,” House stated for the millionth time in his life before entering his office.
A little bit later, he heard a knock on his door. The person who knocked then walked in without waiting for approval. The only reason why House tolerated it was because he just happened to be the one person House could never truly be mad at.
“Here to try to convince me?” House looked at the brown eyes that could make him do practically anything.
Wilson knew this. “Long-lasting abdominal pain, nausea, fatigue…”
“Sounds like alcoholism to me.”
Wilson paused and took one look at House. “Tox screen showed alcohol levels too low for him to be drunk.”
“Alright, alright, fine. I’ll take the case if it will make you happy.”
*****
“25-year-old male, seized mid-performance. Long-term symptoms include abdominal pain, nausea, fatigue, and muscle weakness. Differential diagnosis, everyone.”
“He’s an alcoholic,” Chase stated. “Tox screen showed some alcohol in his system.”
“Not enough alcohol to truly affect him,” House shot back.
“Could be a brain tumor,” Foreman offered.
“Excellent, we’ll get him an MRI of his head. Cameron?”
“It could be Addison’s.”
“Perfect. Take some blood and test his cortisol levels. Chase, get a family medical history to see if it’s genetic. I have to go watch The L Word.”
*****
Frank took in the white hospital room for the millionth time. He looked at Gerard lying there, his paleness causing him to blend in with the hospital bed and all of his surroundings. Frank never wanted to see him in this state, weak and surviving on the medicine being pumped into his body.
Gerard had been drinking behind Frank’s back. He had promised him he’d stop, even going as far as to break the remaining bottles on the curb they were at as a symbol of his breakup with the beverage. Yet it seems that Gerard had again chosen his vice over his friendships.
And this time, it nearly cost him his life.
Frank was taken out of his thoughts by the two doctors (evident by their white coats) who walked into the room at that moment.
One of them, a pretty brunette girl who introduced herself as Dr. Cameron, prepared to take Gerard’s blood. The other, a guy with neatly styled blond hair, approached them.
“I’m Dr. Chase. Are any of you guys his family?” the guy with the pretty hair asked.
Frank couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “Alright, buddy, drop the accent, my friend’s dying.”
“It’s my natural accent.”
“Yeah, sure. What’s a pretty Aussie doing in fucking New Jersey?”
“I’m family,” Mikey calmly stated, drawing the conversation away from Frank.
“Great,” Dr. Chase replied. “I’m gonna need a family medical history.”
As Mikey busied himself answering Dr. Chase’s questions, Frank moved to hold Gerard’s hand so that he would be more comfortable.
“Scared of blood?” Dr. Cameron asked nicely.
“Needles,” Frank clarified.
“Just look at your friend instead,” Dr. Cameron told Gerard. Gerard did as told and stared at Frank with a guilty face.
“It’s okay, Gee,” Frank looked solemnly. “I’m not mad at you.”
“I promised you I’d get better,” Gerard said, looking down. “I’m trying, Frankie, I am. But I need it. Onstage. I can’t perform without it. Alcohol makes me great.”
“But you’re already great without that stuff.”
Gerard’s eyes widened in that very second. He then started gasping for breath.
“He’s running out of oxygen!” Dr. Cameron shouted as she pressed a button at the side of Gerard’s bed.
Dr. Chase immediately abandoned questioning Mikey and ran to Gerard’s bedside. A couple of nurses also ran in, and the team rushed to put him on an oxygen ventilator. Frank stepped away and rejoined the rest of the band in their place. They stared in horror as the medical staff determined that Gerard’s airways were too small and they had to cut a hole in his throat for the tube.
*****
“Our patient went into respiratory shock,” Cameron stated as she and Chase walked into House’s office.
“Chase, what did you do?” House asked, looking up from his soap opera.
“Nothing,” Chase responded, getting defensive. “I was just questioning the brother.”
“I guess we’ll have to add respiratory shock to the list of symptoms, then. And we rule out Addison’s. Addison’s doesn’t cause respiratory shock.”
“Test results showed that cortisol levels were normal anyway,” said Cameron.
“Let’s see what the MRI results say first. Make it a full-body one, by the way. I want to see this guy’s lungs. Oh, and Chase, go to this guy’s house.”
*****
“We’re gonna put Gerard under an MRI,” Foreman explained to the four guys who stood by the patient’s side. “It will allow us to see inside his brain and lungs to check for possible tumors.”
“What about his oxygen?” asked the patient’s brother, a guy with brown hair and glasses.
“We will accommodate his oxygen for the MRI,” Foreman responded.
The patient’s brother signed the consent form. One of the patient’s friends, a short man with orange-dyed hair, looked at the patient sadly. The other two were paying attention to Foreman.
“He’ll be alright,” Foreman told the friend. “We just need to find out what’s wrong with him.”
After the patient was transferred to the MRI machine (safely with no complications), Foreman and Cameron looked through his body.
“No brain tumors,” Foreman sighed.
“Nothing in the lungs either,” Cameron added.
*****
“Why would someone ever live in their parents’ basement?” Chase whispered to himself, scrunching his nose at the smell of the patient’s abode. “This guy literally has a degree,” he added, glancing at the wall and seeing the paper along with comic drawings.
He grabbed his bag and scooped up some empty glass bottles left on the nightstand, along with some pills that were halfway done.
*****
“MRI was clean,” Foreman stated.
“I found empty beer bottles and antidepressants,” Chase added.
“So it can’t be a tumor,” House replied, crossing TUMOR off the whiteboard. “And we’ve already established that there’s more to this than alcoholism.”
“Could the antidepressants have something to do with it?” Cameron asked.
“What if depression is a symptom?” House proposed.
“The guy’s 25, has an art degree, is in a band no one’s heard of, and lives with his parents,” Chase stated. “Of course he’s depressed.”
“It could be autoimmune,” Cameron stated.
“Excellent,” House replied. “Get another blood sample and run tests for every autoimmune disease. And get him on steroids.”
*****
The doctors had explained to them that they needed to take blood from Gerard again to test for autoimmune diseases. That meant they had to use needles again. Thankfully, Frank held Gerard’s hand through it.
On the one hand, Gerard didn’t want to have an autoimmune disease. Having to deal with that for the rest of his life would be a nightmare. Would he have to self-medicate on tour? In 100-degree weather? Injecting himself with a needle, his biggest fear other than death?
On the other hand, if it were autoimmune, then he wouldn’t be guilty of doing it to himself. He wished he had the guts to quit alcohol cold turkey. He wouldn’t be such a disappointment to Frank.
Frank.
Holding his hand.
So warm.
The hospital is super cold.
The doctors are super cold.
“You better hope it’s autoimmune,” said the Aussie doctor, “or else you’re just a filthy alcoholic.”
“You’re lucky you have him,” said the female doctor, also with an Aussie accent, “because no one else could ever love you like that.”
“I don’t love him,” Frank replied to her in an Aussie accent. “I just stick around out of pity. If he dies, we could always get a new sober lead singer.”
“I only tolerate him because he’s my brother,” Mikey added. Everyone seemed to be speaking in an Aussie accent now.
“He’s a grown man and he still mooches off of us,” Gerard’s mother said, appearing out of nowhere along with Gerard’s father.
“It’s time he got himself a real job,” Gerard’s father added.
“Yeah, Gerard,” Frank looked at him, eyes starting to glow red. “You’re worthless.”
“Worthless. Worthless. Worthless.” Everybody in the room started chanting, eyes glowing red.
“You’re coming with me, Gerard,” said a deep voice, now in an American accent, glowing red eyes overpowering his vision.
“No, I’m not,” Gerard mumbled, scared.
“Oh, yes, you are,” said the same deep voice. “Gerard. Gerard. Gerard.”
“Gerard!” Frank exclaimed.
Gerard blinked. The doctors were gone already. The band was staring at him, no glowing red eyes on any of them.
“I think he just hallucinated,” Ray stated.
“NURSE!” Frank hollered.
*****
When Wilson entered House’s office, he expected him to be doing anything but what he was actually doing. He didn’t expect House to get invested enough in this patient’s life to be reviewing his band’s body of work, yet there he was, listening to My Chemical Romance’s first and only album.
“Why did they choose such a long album name?” House wondered out loud. “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. How presumptuous. It’s not even that good. I’m barely on the second track and I already want it to end.”
“Mind if I join you on your suffering?” Wilson asked.
“Nah, having your ears bleed is for everyone.”
As he said this, the song switched. If House hadn’t been overwhelmed by the screaming, he would’ve poked fun at the vampire-themed lyrics.
“This guy needs to work on his vocal technique,” House muttered to himself.
But then he strained his ear.
He noticed something.
The singer sounded like he was in pain, like he had a toothache.
The album was released a while ago, and he didn’t seem to complain about a toothache to anybody at the hospital, so it was reasonable to assume he got it fixed at the dentist.
“I gotta go.”
*****
“Our patient suffered a hallucination,” Chase stated.
“And he tested negative for every autoimmune disease,” Cameron added.
“It’s not autoimmune,” House pondered out loud, “there’s no fever, so it can’t be an infection, which leaves us with environmental.”
“But there was nothing-” Chase started.
“Cameron,” House interrupted, “how were the vitamin B12 levels?”
“Low,” Cameron replied.
*****
“Have you been to the dentist at any time these last 6 months?”
Gerard turned to look at the intruder, an older-looking man with a cane.
“I’m Dr. House. Answer my question.”
“Yeah,” Gerard replied shyly.
“Did they perform surgery on you?” Dr. House asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then they probably gave you nitrous oxide to sedate you. Laughing gas.”
Gerard quietly processed what the doctor had just told him. “How did-”
“Get ready to sue,” the mean-looking doctor interrupted, “because they gave you excess nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide poisoning can cause all of your symptoms, including depression and psychosis. It even explains the seizure you had.”
“Just from that one dentist appointment?” Frank questioned.
“You can also get it from certain produce,” Dr. House responded.
“So I’ll be fine?” Gerard asked.
“Yup,” Dr. House replied. “We just need to pump you full of vitamin B12.”
For the first time in a good while, Gerard felt relieved and overjoyed. He wasn’t going to die. What he had wasn’t his fault. He had an awesome brother and amazing friends.
*****
When Gerard was well enough to leave the hospital, he was excited to play shows again. He especially wanted to make it up to the crowd there in Princeton for getting a seizure mid-performance.
“Frank,” he said. “I promise to truly remain sober this time.”
“How do you know you will keep your promise?” Frank didn’t turn to look at him as he walked out the front doors of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
“I made it these last couple of days,” Gerard shrugged. “Plus, I don’t want to give anyone another health scare.”
“You promise to take care of yourself, then?” Mikey asked.
“I’ll try my best,” Gerard answered.
“Good,” Ray interjected. “We need our singer.”
Gerard laughed. “Okay. I get it.”