Work Text:
Voices outside leaked in through the glass walls. Muffled, along with the rapid footsteps of people excited to leave; most were heading home for the night. Even those with night shifts were leaving for a break, joining the happy many. House glared at them from his desk. He didn’t get to go home, so why should anyone else? If he were the dean of medicine at PPTH, instead of wearing obnoxiously low tops, he would force everyone to stay until he left, just to spite all of them. …Now he understood why Wilson often compared him to Garfield.
But even Garfeild gets to sleep and eat all day! House hadn’t slept in two days, and his last meal consisted of dirty coffee from the end of the pot, two shots of whatever he could find in the nurses’ lockers, and about five Vicodin. The current case he and his team had was stumping them all and driving them all to the absolute edge. House had even consulted Cuddy herself, a feat even she was surprised by. In the end, their patient was dying of kidney failure, a collapsed lung, and practically bleeding out from all the blood tests they had done and redone and reredone. Even if she got cured in the end, she’d never survive the medical bills. House had considered sparing her of this horrible fate multiple times now, but no one had taken to the idea. Neither had he, really. He took these cases to distract himself from the pain (and something else that he would never admit), but sometimes they got to a point when they caused more pain than if he had taken a sledgehammer to his leg.
House sighed and slammed his head down on his desk. His red and grey tennis ball lay discarded on the carpet, along with six or seven other toys that failed to help his neurons fire in the right direction. He ran his mind over the symptoms for the umteenth time. Admitted with a seizure, temperature of 102, Ictal bradycardia, and a first-degree burn on her left leg. Given an IV of Ativan, Tylenol for the burn and the fever, and then a sedative when she wouldn’t lie still for the tox screen… House’s head throbbed at the information, wishing it would somehow miraculously materialise into a nice, big fat answer.
It didn’t.
He tried again.
Amidst his gruelling and assiduous puzzling, a figure outside the glass door went against the current of employees leaving. Its single knock on the glass door startled House. Looking up, he saw Wilson stepping through the door and towards him. House brought his head back down; he had already yelled at every one of his teammates more times than he had phalanges over this case, and didn’t need Wilson’s inevitable reprimand over his actions, who now sat comfortably in the chair across from House’s desk. He lifted one leg over the other.
House was about to add him to the list of people he had yelled at in the past 72 hours, but as he jerked his head up, the clatter of a plate landing in front of him stopped House in his tracks. He looked down at the plate and saw it was holding a Reuben sandwich and a bag of nondescript chips, the latter an embarrassing excuse to cut back money for the hospital, which was seemingly unaware of the checks going out to its employees. Upon further investigation, the sandwich was dry with no pickles, the only way he would eat it. House glanced back up at Wilson across from him in shocked confusion.
Wilson had his own plate of food he was shovelling into his mouth. “You missed today’s lunch date, so I knew you hadn’t eaten,” he remarked casually through a mouth full of lettuce. “That, and I saw Cameron storming out of your office a little earlier, so I knew you were in a bad mood.” He swallowed. “Still haven’t figured out the case, huh?”
House slowly picked up the sandwich as if it might detonate on contact. ‘Her kidneys started failing since I last called you for a consult.” He lifted the sandwich to his mouth.
Wilson took another bite of his salad; from the ferver he was eating in, he clearly had skipped lunch, too. “And you’ve gone to her house and everything?”
“Yeah. I sent Chase back to her work cubicle to look around again. Take samples of the drawer contents, chair fabric, whatever he could find.”
Wilson hummed pensively in response. House took a bite of the sandwich and chewed, angry he still hadn’t solved this case. The repetitive motion of eating did help null the vexation, though. House was grateful for Wilson’s thoughtful action, even though he would never say it. Instead, he reached over to grab Wilson’s fork midair to steal a bite of his food. The oncologist didn’t even blink.
After a few not joyful, but arguably tolerable moments from a sulking House, Wilson finished his salad and stood up. House watched him leave with his empty cafeteria plate and fork, annoyed that, after Wilson would leave, he would have to go back to curing his patient.
“Well, good luck on the case. I’ll have to tell you about the neighbour of my hotel room’s crazy night tomorrow,” Wilson mentioned, opening the glass door. “I’ll give you a hint: correction fluid.”
House watched Wilson walk away, and slowly, it began to click. Yes, correction fluid… The case was suddenly clear as day in his mind. The desk supplies!! House jumped up and hobbled as fast as he could out of his office, whipping out his iPhone.
“Chase, bring me her office supplies!” he yelled, off to save his patient.