Chapter Text
If there’s one thing Wilson liked, it was routine.
He thrived on routine, he craved the structure, the normality, the predictability of it. Alarm at five am, shower at five thirty, blow-drying his hair for ten minutes and dress with the clothes carefully chosen the night before. The perfectly ironed shirt hanging from the door, his neatly folded trousers on the chair right next to his socks and tie. Brew coffee as he cooked his macadamia nut pancakes, then have breakfast in fifteen minutes sharp before heading out to work. Wilson would drive to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital every day, be in his office by seven and go through the day’s appointments.
That was his morning routine. Or, for better phrasing, what it used to be. Back to when he still had a home, back to when he still had a wife. His life had changed, and his routine had… adjusted. He still woke up at five o’clock, but he didn’t brew his coffee anymore. He didn’t cook pancakes. He drank his coffee at the hospital, he grabbed something from the vending machine when he was feeling like it. Most times, he waited till lunch to eat something. He wasn’t that hungry anyway. He still ironed his shirts, but he forgot to hang them and sometimes he found them wrinkled in the morning. He pretended not to care, even though he spent five minutes looking at his reflection in the mirror of his hotel room, eyes fixated on the small creese in the soft fabric of the shirt.
He still drove to work, he was still in his office by seven, and the rest of his routine was still saveable. His assistant would remind him of his daily appointments with quiet professionality, bringing him the charts and the paperwork for treatment approval. He would walk around the Oncology lounge, chatting a little with the patients’ families, updating them on any changes. On a good day, he mostly managed to bring good news, positive responses to chemo treatments, make the parents crack a smile. On a bad day, he would hold a grieving mother as she wept, he would listen to a heartbroken father as he thanked him for trying his best.
House had made fun of it multiple times, of how painfully likable Wilson was, to the point that people thanked him for telling them they were dying. Wilson would have preferred them to shout at him, to punch him – anything rather than be thanked. Why thank him? In medieval tales, people didn’t thank the Grim Reper when he knocked on the plague-riddens’ doors to claim their souls. He wasn’t Death itself, he was just an emissary. And yet, they hated him just as fervently.
What was Wilson, if not a Grim Reaper in a white lab coat? A bird of ill omen disguised as an angel, his outstretched hand offering a death sentence sugar-coated with foolish hope and kind smiles.
As absurd as it sounded, Wilson preferred to talk to the patients. They still thanked him, sometimes, but it was… different. Those were tired thanks, almost resigned. They weren’t thanking him for the diagnosis, they were thanking him for trying. To the families, he was the guy who brought the word “cancer” in their lives. To the patients, he was the guy fighting to get rid of it. Sometimes, he succeeded. Most times, he didn’t.
And every time, he pretended to believe that it wasn’t his fault.
Around ten am, he visited Paediatrics. Wilson wasn’t supposed to have favourite patients, but the kids were the ones he preferred to be around. They still couldn’t fully grasp the concept of death, they clung to the small, circumscribed reality they knew. Their favourite toys in the waiting room, their favourite juice from the cafeteria, their best friend during playtime. Some of them were too young to understand why their parents sometimes cried. Wilson usually spent a couple hours a day visiting them, talking to them, making sure they were alright. He would bring them new toys, ice-cream or his computer to watch a movie. It almost felt lighter, to see their childlike faces lit up whenever he stepped inside the room.
It almost felt like the weight of the whole world was crushing his chest, the first visit after losing one of them. The empty corner where Liam would always play with his wooden toy train. Four-year-old, stage four Hodgkin lymhoma, 95% survival rate. He’d once told Wilson that his dream was to travel the world by train, he loved how fast they went. The chair right under the window was gone. Ella would always sit there right after sunset, pointing at the stars. She knew a lot of them by heart. Wilson had gifted her a book for her ninth birthday, it had pictures of all the constellations, with detailed explanations of how to find them in the night sky and their mythical origin. She wanted to be an astronaut, her favourite movie was E.T. She died two weeks before her tenth birthday. Osteosarcoma, five-year survival rate of 70%. She’d lasted two years after her diagnosis. He still remembered how her little sister clung to her hand, how she wouldn’t let go. Wilson had given her the book and spent hours telling her about Ella’s favourite stars.
Whenever he lost a patient, House would always show up at his office door in the evening. Wilson never told him when it happened, but the diagnostician seemed to know anyway. He never mentioned it. Just stepped inside his office, strolling around like he owned the place, searched his briefcase and tossed Wilson his car keys.
On days like those, he never came home. He always ended up on House’s couch. The diagnostician would grab two beers and claim the TV remote, never once mentioning their day at work. They’d watch bad medical telenovelas, House throwing an easy comment here and there on how stupid the fake doctors were because “Come on, even an idiotic three years old could tell apart chlamydia and gonorrhoea.” Wilson would then argue that three years old likely didn’t have an extensive knowledge of sexually transmitted infections, and House would shrug and point out that he didn’t know any interesting three years old. Wilson would crack a smile, a small one, and pretend not to notice the way his friend’s shoulders would relax just a fraction.
His wives didn’t know how to deal with him in those moments, so they always gave him space.
And when they left, House came in. That was their routine.
Routine was also House storming into his office at least once a day, complaining about a patient, about clinical hours, about how dumb his employees were being and how stupid it was of them to question his methods to cure a patient – even when said methods where illegal at best, textbook medical malpractice and the reason for Cuddy’s high pressure.
Wilson yawned, stretching his arms above his head, blinking heavily as he glanced at the clock. It was almost ten, and House still hadn’t barged in to annoy him about his latest case. He’d vaguely heard of it from a nurse earlier that morning. A cop who had been shot and couldn’t stop laughing, exactly the kind of case his friend got off on. Wilson smiled to himself as he kept filling in his patients’ treatment files. At least he would hear a good story for lunch.
He sighed, then let his eyes fall back to the paper in front of him. He’d been filling permission after permission to approve a new photodynamic therapy treatment for a patient of his. Ralph, sixty-two-year-old man with melanoma. He was adamantly refusing chemo, and the tumour was too widely spread to be removed by surgery. Wilson had spent the past week arguing with the board to get approval for the new experimental treatment and, after days of endless meetings and loads of medical dossiers and statistical reports, he’d finally convinced them to give it a try.
The fact that he’d barely gotten a total of ten hours of sleep in three days was just a minor downside.
Wilson pressed the head of his hands into his eyes in the futile attempt to alleviate the incoming, long-postponed migraine thrumming at the back of his head. God, he needed another coffee.
He pushed himself up from his chair, groaning as his right knee popped at the motion. Wilson glanced again at the clock. It was a little past ten, and his morning was blissfully free from appointments. He ran a hand through his mussed hair, as if the motion could physically brush the exhaustion off his shoulders. The sleepless nights spent in his hotel room, staring at the white light of his computer as the hours passed by, still clung to him like a second skin. He’d been sluggish all morning, moving almost in slow motion, taking double the time it normally took him to fill in a chart.
He needed coffee, and then he needed a break.
Without a second though, his legs moving in autopilot, fuelled solely by his dire need for caffeine, Wilson made his way to the cafeteria. As he walked past Diagnostics, he found himself wishing House were there, playing with his stupidly large tennis ball, just to keep him company. But as he peeked inside, he found his friend’s office empty. Instead of the rhythmic thud against the thin office wall, a thick, heavy silence stretched across the corridor.
Once at the bar, he ordered a donut and a double espresso, gulping down the hot beverage as if drinking it all at once could magically make all the tiredness disappear. He thanked the cashier, took a bite of his donut and headed back to his office. As he leisurely strolled down the corridor, nibbling at his breakfast, Wilson couldn’t help but notice that House’s desk was practically untouched. It almost looked as if his friend hadn’t even stepped foot in the office, that morning. Or, if he had, not long enough to linger past the differentials. It was one of those cases in which he got sucked in, when nothing else existed. He had the feeling that he might not see House at all, that day. Wilson sighed, then walked past Diagnostics, dragging his feet heavily on the ground.
As he reached the doorknob of his office, he paused for a moment, allowing to briefly rest his forehead against the door. He sighed, wondering not for the first time that day where the hell was House. Cameron, Chase ad Foreman seemed to have disappeared, running test after test on the euphoric cop, and Cuddy was locked in her office for a meeting.
And Wilson, well. He really didn’t want to go back and do more paperwork.
He bolted the rest of the donut with a single bite, his hand sliding off the doorknob as he turned around and headed towards Paediatrics. His patients could use a little check-up, and he really could use a distraction.
“Dr. Wilson,” Keila, one of the nurses, kindly greeted him as soon as she saw him coming. “What a nice surprise seeing you here.”
Wilson let a warm smile easily slip on his face, but he didn’t slow down his pace. Usually, he would’ve stopped by to chat, but today wasn’t the case. Keila was a nice, perfectly fine woman, who had just recently divorced – as she had made sure to mention once or twice during their conversations. She had been flirting with Wilson for weeks, but after Grace he’d sworn to himself that he would stop trying to get together with every woman he came across just to avoid coming back to an empty home. Or empty hotel room, for the matter.
Grace was nice, but Wilson knew he’d reached a new low, even for him. Sleeping with a patient went against everything he stood for, and yet, he’d done it anyway. House hadn’t exactly been merciful as he’d meticulously described him all the ways in which he’d been an idiot. He believed the exact words had been “a pathetic excuse of a man who got off on neediness to overcome his abandonment issues”. He hadn’t replied. House had been right, after all. He’d transferred Grace to another oncologist that same day.
So, he ignored Keila’s pointed look as he crossed the room, shooting her an apologetic glance as he let the door swing shut behind him.
“Was the nurse flirting with you again?”
Wilson chuckled, slowly turning in the direction of the voice. “She was not flirting with me,” he automatically shot back, easing himself on the floor next to the little girl building a Lego set. “She was just being amicable.”
She gave him an unimpressed look. “You either believe that or you believe that you can trick me into believing that. In both cases, you’re not being particularly brilliant.”
Wilson’s lips broke into the first, genuine smile of the day, his eyes blowing wide open in a practiced expression of mocked offense. “April, you wound me. I thought you liked me. I was supposed to be your favourite doctor.”
April shrugged, her brown pigtail bouncing at the movement. She was an eleven-year-old patient, diagnosed by Wilson about a couple years ago with grade III intracranial ependymomas, an aggressive cancer of the central nervous system. She’d undergone surgical resection, but the tumour hadn’t disappeared. She’d been in and out the hospital, and she had just recently started a new round of radiation treatment.
Wilson, a general rule, always tried to stay optimistic, but the girl wasn’t responding to the treatments as well as he’d hoped. Her mother, Margaret, was only family she had left after her father had disappeared, around the time of her birth. Wilson liked Margeret well enough, she was a nice woman who clearly thought of her daughter as her whole world. She worked two jobs to pay for the treatment, and she wasn’t around as often as she’d liked, so Wilson tried to drop by and check on April as much as he could.
Wilson told himself he didn’t have a favourite patient, but, if he were to pick one, April would probably win the contest. She was smart, scarily so. She loved detective novels, her favourite character off all time was Sherlock Holmes and she wanted to become a marine biologist. She was fascinated by moulds, she loved pigeons and her favourite stuffed animal was an ugly puppet shaped like a deformed mouse. It looked like it came straight from Chernobyl, and she claimed it to be her best friend. He didn’t have a name, though. He was just The Ugly Puppet.
“You are my only doctor,” April easily replied, a cheeky grin betraying her attempt at a serious expression. “But you’re not that bad, I guess.”
Wilson snorted, adjusting his position to lean his back against the wall. “So, how are you feeling today? How’s the nausea?”
The girl shrugged again, her eyes drifting back to the Lego set in front of her. It was a small barrier reef, not the biggest one on the catalogue, but it was a pretty accurate replica, nonetheless. “Earlier this morning it was bad,” she answered honestly, almost shily, avoiding his gaze. “Mom stopped by right before breakfast, said she’d be here again tomorrow. She brought me this Lego.”
Wilson nodded, slowly taking in the little girl’s appearance. “It’s a really nice Lego,” he murmured, his voice light despite the concern pooling in his chest. April looked tired, the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that only sickness can cause. The kind of exhaustion that looks wrong on an eleven-year-old girl. She had dark purple eyebags, more prominent than the previous day, stretching across her cheekbones like shadows clawing at the afterglow. It was unfitting. Too disturbingly in contrast with the brightness of her eyes. She looked paler, too, under the fluorescent hospital lamps, highlighting the fatigue etched on her features. Wilson knew she was supposed to undergo another round of radiation in the afternoon. He also knew it probably wouldn’t do much.
April remained silent for a moment. “Do you wanna help me build it?” she eventually asked, a careful edge in her voice. Wilson offered her a small smile, doing his best to conceal his worry, then wordlessly nodded as he picked up the instruction manual.
“What’s up with you today?” April suddenly asked, her attention seemingly focused on building an orange coral. Wilson could tell that she was listening, though. Observing, assessing. She reminded him a little of House, in moments like that.
“Just a long day,” he replied, grabbing a bunch of blue pieces to build what looked like a wave.
He’d long given up on lying to her. She was only eleven, but she was scarily good at picking up a lie. He guessed she was way too used at people sugar-coating bad news, always downplaying the seriousness of the situation. And, while Wilson had no intention of discussing the full gravity of her illness, he also had never found the guts to lie to her face about it. April asked how bad it was on a scale of one to ten, Wilson answered with a number. She never asked for more information, and Wilson always changed the subject. They both knew, though. They just pretended not to, an unspoken “I know you know, you know I know” sort of contract.
April hummed, picking up another orange piece. “It’s not even eleven, how can it be a long day already?”
Wilson breathed out a chuckle, the bricks he was assembling falling into place with a satisfying click. “Well, it’s been a long half-a-day on top of a long week.”
“That’s better,” she commented, selecting a flower with painstaking dedication. “Explains why your eyebags look almost as bad as mine.”
“Hey,” he gasped, his hand flying to his heart as he shot the girl a betrayed look. “That’s offensive, young lady. I shall revoke your Lego privileges.”
April gaped at him. “You wouldn’t dare.” Then, she smirked, her brown eyes glinting mischievously. “You’re too nice to do something like that. If I pouted for a minute, you would totally give in. If you managed to last a whole minute.”
Wilson arched a brow, not even trying to disguise his amusement. “You know, you sound dangerously close to a friend of mine. He’s not the nicest person to be around, you don’t wanna be like him.”
“It’s okay, I like Dr. House. He seems really cool.”
The oncologist’s hand stopped midway as he leaned to grab another Lego piece. “You know House?”
There was a reason why he didn’t want House to be around his patients, especially the young ones. He wasn’t the most tactful person in the hospital, and he seemed very fond of nicknames like “the baldies” and the “Gollum wannabes”.
“Yep,” April confirmed, cheerfully popping the p. “He came by a few weeks ago, I think he was looking for you. He called us Lex Luthor’s long lost children–”
Of course he did, Wilson thought grimly.
“–and asked if we knew where his favourite Boy Wonder oncologist was. He doesn’t strike me as someone with a lot of friends, and you’re nice enough to tolerate him, so I guessed he was talking about you.”
Wilson chocked out a laugh, snorting as he shook his head. “Yeah,” was all he said, a fond smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, he is… particular. But I can assure you, he can be kind. He’s a good person, even if he’d gladly commit multiple felonies rather than admitting it.”
April nodded, studying him seriously. “You like him,” she stated, matter-of-factly.
The oncologist sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, unfortunately for me, I do. He’s my best friend, but sometimes I really want to hit him with his cane.”
The girl chuckles, rummaging through the pile of Lego bricks. “I wish I had a best friend,” she added after a beat, her voice noticeably quieter.
Wilson swallowed the knot in his throat, doing his best to ignore the dull, persistent ache in his ribcage. “What about Serena? You told me about her, wasn’t she a friend of yours? You mentioned her pretty often.”
April’s eyes widened a little. “You remember?” she whispered, tilting her head to stare at him with a mixture of surprise and something akin to sadness. Nostalgia, perhaps.
He nodded, gently setting his unfinished Lego wave down. “Of course I remember,” he reassured her, the tightness in his chest easing a fraction as the little girl cracked the faintiest smile. “She was a classmate of yours, wasn’t she?”
April nodded, her eyes softening a little. “She was my friend, but was didn’t spend much time together beside school. I liked her, but I hadn’t known her for long. Didn’t really get the chance.” She paused, fidgeting with the pink plastic flower in her hand. “When I got sick, I started to skip school more frequently. We saw each other less and less, and a few months ago Mom told me she had moved to another city.”
Wilson bit the inside of his cheek, lowering his eyes to the ground. “Would you like to see her again? I could call her parents and ask them to bring her here,” he offered, gently picking up another blue brick.
He wasn’t that surprised when Aprile shook her head. “No, thank you Dr. Wilson. Maybe it’s better this way.”
But it’s not, he thought desperately, clenching his jaw to keep the words from spilling out. You still have time, you can still get to know her better.
Next to him, April laid down her finished coral, quickly beginning to build a new one.
Wouldn’t it be worse, though? The other voice in his head, the one that sounded suspiciously like House, interjected. To get to know someone, to get a best friend just to give a name at the thing you will soon lose?
Wilson swallowed, saliva burning like acid down his throat. “I’ve told you a million times, you can just call me James,” was what he settled for instead.
April glanced up from her coral, now bright lilac, a glint of relief twinkling in her eyes at the change of subject. “It’s weird if I call you James, you’re my doctor.”
It was Wilson’s turn to shrug. “I’m also your friend, if that’s okay with you.”
“Yes, but Dr. House is your friend too, and he doesn’t call you James.”
Well, he couldn’t really argue with that logic. “He calls me Wilson, yeah. We don’t usually call each other by our first names.”
“Why?”
“I’m not actually sure.” He grimaced a little, snorting at the thought. “I can’t really picture him as a Gregory. He’s just House. And to him, I’m just Wilson. It works, even if it’s a bit weird since we’ve been best friends for over a decade.”
April nodded slowly, picking another flower, yellow this time. “Can I call you just Wilson?”
The knot in stomach unclenched a little, morphing into something different. Still heavy, but softer. “Of course you can,” he murmured, the last pieces of his wave finally clicking together. “Hey, we’re a great team. We should do this more often.”
The girl grinned, proudly showing off her two finished corals. “I’m better.”
Wilson heaved out an exasperated sigh, but didn’t reply. She wasn’t wrong, after all. They kept assembling the Lego barrier reef for a while, Wilson telling April all the newest hospital gossip, the girl occasionally breathing out an excited “I knew it!”. She really did sound like House, sometimes.
Eventually, a nurse came by to bring the children lunch. Wilson glanced at his phone, his eyes widening as he read the time.
“Shit, it’s almost lunchtime! I have an appointment in half an hour!”
“Mom says ‘shit’ is a bad word,” April reprimanded him, not looking bothered in the slightest.
“Your mom is a wise woman,” Wilson agreed, awkwardly stretching his legs as he stood up. “Well, I’d better be going. I’ll come by to check on you after the radiation round. I totally expect you to have finished the Lego by then.”
April seemed almost offended by the insinuation that there was a chance she might not be able to complete the task by the end of the afternoon. “Of course I will, I’m not slow like you.”
Wilson snorted a heartfelt laugh, shaking his head as he walked towards the door. “Very well then, I will personally ensure that your work is done efficiently. I will not be merciful.”
The girl shot him an unfazed glance, a single brow arching. “Deal. Bye, Wilson.” Then, she froze, her shoulders stiffening a fraction.
The oncologist frowned, not missing the slight uncertainty in the way she carried herself. “Is there something wrong?”
April fidgeted with a lace of her jumper, not really looking at him. “If Dr. House is your best friend and he calls you Wilson…” She bowed her head, her fingers twisting anxiously around the fabric, “does this mean that, if I call you Wilson, I’m your best friend, too?”
In that moment, Wilson was pretty sure that his heart swelled three sizes in his chest. “Yeah,” he replied, not having it in him point out how every single one of his coworkers called him Wilson. She just wanted someone to call her best friend. He could give her that. “Yeah, I can be your best friend, if you want me to be.”
April stayed quiet for a moment, pondering the idea, then gave him a slow nod. “Is it sad, if my best friend is the doctor who’s curing my cancer?”
And just like that, Wilson’s swelled heart shattered, a crack splitting it cleanly in half, right down the middle. “If it makes you feel any better, my other best friend is House. I’ve been offered free psychiatric consults from specialists who’ve met him.”
At that, April’s unsure expression instantly changed into an amused one, a bright chuckle escaping her lips before she could stop it. The weight pressing down on Wilson’s chest seemed to ease a little at the sound.
“See you later, April.”
“Later, Wilson.”
The oncologist flashed her one last grin before closing the door behind him, the ghost of that smile still hovering on his face as he left Paediatrics and walked to the elevator.
____________________
It was nine pm, well past dinnertime, and he still hadn’t seen House once.
He’d followed his usual routine. Paperwork after lunch, visit the patients to check on their chemo treatment. Constance, the quiet preschool teacher from room B7, was showing slow, but steady improvement in her recovery from breast cancer. Ernest, a lively ninety-year-old with a burning passion for golfing, had refused treatment for his fibrosarcoma and had flippantly informed Wilson that he intended to spend the rest of his life in a golf club in the Hawaii. Erica, the twenty-five-year-old med student right across the hall, had been declared free of any recurrence from her thyroid cancer and officially out of danger. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence, to have a patient actually making it through. The tumour had been caught early, and the prognosis had been pretty optimistic from the beginning, but Wilson wasn’t fooled by good prognosis. Not anymore.
Cases like Erica’s made it bearable. They gave him a reason to carry on, to show up at work every day. A reason not to give up. Cases like Erica’s reminded him that there was hope, but it wasn’t a strong enough one to overcome the grief. He remembered every single patient he’d ever lost. Most days, he couldn’t even remember if he’d locked his car or what he’d had for breakfast. He couldn’t remember a date to save his life – anniversaries, birthdays, he always wrote the important stuff down to make sure not to forget. Still, he remembered all their names. All their hopes and dreams, all their fears. He remembered some of them losing faith, some of them gaining it, most of them not caring at all. They were just angry. Having someone to put the blame on or to pray to at night didn’t change a thing.
Wilson kept things. Small objects, gifts, little trinkets that reminded him of them. He didn’t know why. He’d never intended to stop, and yet, he’d never dwelled on the why long enough to come up with an answer.
The little maze at the corner of his desk. Nancy Wells, cervical cancer, 70% survival rate. Died November 6, 1998, sixty-four-year-old. The wooden hand-carved bird on the shelf behind his chair. Bernie Jones, melanoma, 89% survival rate. October 10, 1999, he was fifty-two. The blue deep-sea diver, right next his awards. John Taylor, thyroid, 96% survival rate. Wilson still remembered the boy’s reassured smile after he’d promised him he would be fine. He was eight years old when he died.
Erica had beaten cancer, the same cancer that had killed John. And while Wilson was happy for her, relieved that her parents could hug their daughter and bring her back home, he still couldn’t shake the looming presence of death breathing down his neck.
He could recall why he’d chosen oncology as his specialty, back in med school. He wanted to save lives. He wanted to help the ones most in need, the ones whose hope had been torn to shreds. He wanted to make a difference, or so he’d told himself. If Wilson could still convince himself that he’d chosen to become an oncologist out of pure, unfiltered selflessness, out of his desire to help others, he still hadn’t come up with a well-crafted enough reason to why he’d stayed.
Because, no matter how hard he tried to deceive himself, he knew, deep down, that cases like Erica’s weren’t enough.
Wilson sighed, wearily running a hand over his sore eyes, squinting to shield himself from the bright light of the computer screen. The discharge form for Erica, diligently filled in, was silently staring at him from where he’d left it, abandoned on the desk among the neatly organized piles of paperwork. He let his shoulders drop for a moment, his eyes vacantly staring at his ink-stained fingertips, the sleeves of his once perfectly ironed shirt now irretrievably creased after having been rolled up to his elbows all afternoon.
He glanced at the clock for what must’ve been the fifth time in ten minutes. It was almost nine pm, and he hadn’t heard from House the whole day. Which wasn’t unusual per se, but it was still enough for him to be weirdly uneasy. After ten more minutes of inner conflict, he eventually decided to leave his paperwork for later, the umpteenth chart waiting to be filled in discarded along with his pen as he abruptly stood up. He needed to leave his office, even for half an hour.
Wilson had barely stepped foot outside his office, when he was intercepted by one of the nurses on duty. She was holding a file, wearing a thin, apologetic smile on her lips. Wilson was way too familiar with that particular expression meant. He let his eyes fall shut for a moment, squaring his shoulders as he gathered all the strength he had left to muster a fixed, sincere enough smile. The ache in his chest had returned, sharper than before, throbbing against his ribcage with every breath as he forced himself to look at the approaching nurse.
Ether, Wilson remembered her. She worked in Oncology, although she was often assigned down in Radiology. Why would she–
April.
Wilson’s heart dropped to his feet, a wave of guilt hitting him so hard it threatened to choke him. God, he’d forgotten about April’s round of radiation. He’d been so caught up with his routine check-ups, then Erica and the paperwork due for the next day, that he’d completely forgotten about April. He’d promised her he would visit. And he had forgotten.
He had forgotten.
“Dr. Wilson,” Ether warmly greeted him, straightening the glasses on her nose as she glanced at the file in her hand. “I have updates on a patient of yours, her name is–”
“April Sullivan,” Wilson finished for her, swallowing the words with some difficulty. He forced his expression not to falter, keeping his mouth from twitching as he carefully took the charts she was handing him. “I was just going to check on her.”
Liar, a voice traitorously whispered in his head.
“Thanks Ether, you’re a gem as always.”
The older woman brightened, easily matching his smile. “Not a problem at all. She’s a bit tired, poor thing, but she’s still awake. I’m sure she would love a visit, I was told that her mother won't be able to get here for another hour.”
Wilson gave her a distracted nod, flipping the folder open, quickly scanning the test results. He stared at the images, the numbers and the letters blurring together at the sides as his vision zeroed on the mass surrounding the brain tissue. It wasn’t shrinking. In fact, it appeared to be growing.
Wilson clenched his jaw, fighting the nausea as his eyes burned holes in the scans. He hadn’t noticed his fingers were trembling, not until Ether gently took the files from his hands, closing the dossier with quiet understanding.
“The CT scan showed no signs of improvement,” she explained, her voice soothingly calm as she studied his face. Wilson didn’t react. He just nodded, because he knew. They both knew what it meant. “I scheduled an MRI tomorrow, first thing in the morning. It should give us a more accurate estimate of the extent of the tumour. Perhaps it’s just a shadow.”
Wilson nodded again, pretending to believe her weak attempt at reassuring him. Ether’s eyes softened, her hand finding Wilson’s arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’ll leave the scans on your desk. You can visit her, while she’s still awake.”
“Thank you, Ether,” the oncologist murmured, offering the nurse a weary, grateful smile as he stepped aside to let her into his office. Not even ten seconds later, he was already pushing the elevator’s button leading to the Radiology floor.
You should tell her, the little voice in the back of his mind grunted. She deserves to know that she’s dying.
Wilson clenched his hands in fists, taking a deep, trembling breath as he strode down the corridor, the abandoned carts casting long, grim shadows against the floor under the fluorescent lights of the hospital.
How could he tell April? She would want to know. She probably already did, she would just test him to see if he had the guts to tell her the truth. But how could he? How could he tell an eleven-year-old girl that she would never live long enough to fulfil her dreams? That she would never see a barrier reef? When was the last time she’d walked barefoot on the shore, when was the last time she’d seen the ocean? How could Wilson tell her that she was going to leave her mother alone? That he could do nothing to help her?
She was dying before, anyway, the voice gruffly pointed out. Wilson didn’t question why the voice in his head sounded like House. He didn’t have time wonder whether it should worry him or not.
He paused in front of the Radiology’s room, slowly unclenching his fists, stretching his fingers as he willed his breath to even out. He had to look fine, he needed to pull himself together. She didn’t need a doctor telling her she was dying. She needed a friend to distract her from the ticking of the clock. Wilson could do that. He could be that.
It took him a minute, but he eventually managed to recompose himself. He caught his eyes in the reflection on the metallic door. The man looking back at him seemed tranquil enough, for someone barely holding himself together. Wilson straightened his tie with the back of his hand, then pushed the door open.
April was sitting on the bed, white sheets crumpled to the edge, her bright yellow socks being the only ounce of colour in the sickly blueish grey of the room. She was distractedly playing with The Ugly Puppet, murmuring things in his ear as she moved his head, making it bob back and forth in agreement to whatever the girl was telling him.
As soon as she acknowledged Wilson’s presence in the room, her eyes brightened instantly, a genuinely content grin spreading across her face, lighting up her tired expression.
“Wilson!” she exclaimed, bouncing on the bed as she sat on her knees, The Ugly Puppet forgotten by her side. “You came!”
At the enthusiasm in her voice, Wilson’s smile felt a bit more genuine as he crossed the distance. He grabbed a plastic chair on the way and sat right next to her bed. “Of course I came, how could I not visit my favourite patient?”
April’s smile dimmed. It was a small different, a little twitch at the corner of her mouth as her muscles relaxed, but Wilson still noticed.
“Hey,” he murmured, doing his best to keep his voice casual. “What’s wrong?”
The girl’s smile dropped at the question, her eyebrows tightly knitted together in a frown as she pursed her lips, carefully examining him. “You’re sad,” she stated, her eyes evenly meeting his, as if daring him to lie.
Wilson’s breath caught in his throat, his painfully pathetic attempt of a reassuring smile instantly turning into a grimace under her scrutinising gaze.
“Don’t lie to me Wilson,” April added, her voice lower, but not less steady.
The oncologist sighed, shifting uncomfortably on his plastic chair. “Yeah, I’m sad,” he admitted quietly, his hands twisting in his lap, fingers tightly tangled together. “Sometime this… this job, it makes me sad. But it’s okay, you don’t have to worry about it.”
April stayed silent for a moment, her brown eyes fixated on him with such intensity that Wilson wondered for a moment if she could see right into his brain, crack his head wide open from sheer willpower and read his thoughts like a book. Whatever she saw on his face, it didn’t seem to satisfy her, because she grabbed The Ugly Puppet and pulled him close to her, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she adjusted her pigtail. Then, she turned around and fluffed her pillow with a few vigorous pats of her hand, then lied with her back against it, slightly propped up, knees drawn to her chest, waiting.
Wilson swallowed, feeling like a germ under the microscope. “You finished the Lego,” he commented, pointing with his thumb at the completed barrier reef on the shelf.
April shot him an unimpressed look. “I told you I would,” she practically reminded him, clearly not falling for his – admittedly weak – attempt at changing the subject. “Why are you sad?”
“I told you, sometimes this job can be hard.”
“Mh.”
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. April was still fidgeting with The Ugly Puppet, Wilson’s mind running at impossible speed trying to find something to talk about that wasn’t related to cancer.
“You’re not gonna talk about why you’re sad, are you?” the girl asked again, casting him a sideways glance. The curiosity still lingered, but it was softened by quiet acceptance.
Wilson’s mouth curled into an apologetic half-smile, shaking his head a little. “I’m sorry. You can ask me something else, though, and I’ll do my best to answer.”
April pondered the idea, cautiously toying with The Ugly Puppet’s tail. He could feel the weight of her brown eyes attentively scrutinizing him, carefully picking out the right question to ask.
“Why did you choose to become an oncologist, if it makes you so sad?”
Wilson didn’t answer immediately. He kept his head low, eyes pointedly glued to his loafers, absentmindedly rubbing the ink off his left thumb. He ought to have expected that, to be completely honest. April was curious, she wanted to know. The problem was, he wasn’t exactly sure he could provide a satisfying answer.
“I wanted to help people,” was what he eventually settled with, slowly raising his gaze to meet the girls’ eager eyes. “I became a doctor because I wanted to do good, to actually make a difference. And I…”
You wanted people to need you, the voice in the back of his head sweetly sing-sang. You don’t want to heal people. You want them to need you.
Wilson swallowed, forcing an artificial smile on as he turned to face April. “I thought that people who fought cancer needed the most help.”
You mean you thought they might need you more.
April nodded, her lips pursed in a tight line. “But it’s not a nice job. You’re always sad.”
“I’m…” Wilson frowned, what little confidence he had suddenly wavering under her sympathetic look. She wasn’t supposed to be the one asking him how he felt, it was supposed to be the other way around. He was supposed to help her. “I’m not always sad. Tired, maybe. You know, I’m not as young as I once was.”
The joke landed flat as April shot him an unconvinced glance. “You are. You think nobody notices, and maybe most people don’t. But I do. You have the same expression my mom has whenever she thinks I’m not watching.”
The oncologist nodded, not really sure what to say to that. He tried to stay true to his persona, the well-crafted image he’d built around himself. The ever positive, ever competent, never wavering Dr. James Wilson, Boy Wonder oncologist. He was the one his patients relied on, the one his employees always sought an opinion from, the one who was always supposed to have his shit put together. The steady, unshakable, flawless figure that reassured those around him, the one pillar never allowed to crack under pressure.
People weren’t supposed to see past that, they weren’t supposed to peek through the cracks. April wasn’t supposed to. House relentlessly tried, always pushing, always bending, always testing the limits. He knew Wilson was far from perfect, he knew that he was fuck up, too, in his own way. The diagnostician had witnessed the birth of a fracture, in that medical conference in New Orleans. The week when Sam had the divorce papers sent to him, not even bothering enough to tell him in person. The night when he’d been arrested for smashing an antique mirror because some idiot kept playing Billy Joel’s Leave a Tender Moment Alone on repeat. House had seen all that, had seem him crack under the pressure, had seen him lose control, and he’d found him interesting. He’d bailed him out and decided they were going to be best friends.
But even House didn’t know all of it, the full extent of his being thoroughly fucked up. Wilson let him get a glimpse, from time to time, offered him a first-row seat as he meticulously selected which cracks to reveal, which damage to uncover, to display for his personal entertainment. Wilson let House peek past his persona, past the curtain, just enough to keep him from getting bored. But House only ever saw the fractures, not the rotten wood underneath. He didn’t need to know how utterly pathetic, how horrible of a person he truly was.
Wilson clung to his persona, clawing at it with teeth and nails, because that was the only part of him that made sense, the only part he liked. The only useful one. Ironic, how the Wilson everybody knew wasn’t Wilson at all.
He wasn’t even a reflection, he was just the mirror. Passively morphing into anything and everything people needed him to be, shaping himself around it, yet never absorbing an identity of his own. He needed others to need him, because without that, he was nothing. A mirror without someone looking at it was nothing more than a shiny, yet cold surface. Lifeless, flat, desperately trying to emulate depth of the world around it, as it was unable to muster one of its own.
Wilson liked to believe he’d become an oncologist to help people, but what if he was just trying to fulfil his sick needs? What if he was just as much as an addict as House was, just without the pain to mitigate his actions? The diagnostician had told him that, laughing it off as if it was a particularly funny joke, as if the thought of Wilson being an Olympic-level pushover was somehow amusing. As if the lingering truth lying just beneath the statement wasn’t slowly driving him insane.
“Half the doctors who specialize in oncology turn into burn-out cases. But you– you eat neediness.”
He liked to believe that his greatest fear was disappointing people, letting down and hurting those he loved. He wanted to pretend that his worst nightmare was failing to help, failing to give his best, not being enough. He would have liked his greatest fear to be something selfless, something noble.
Instead, Wilson’s greatest fear was being alone.
It was selfish, it was egoistical, but it was true. He didn’t want to be alone.
Wilson liked to believe he’d become an oncologist to help people, but what if he was just being selfish? His patients needed him, they needed their doctor. Cancer patients didn’t leave, not if they had no other chance. What if the reason he couldn’t be happy for Erica’s getting better was because, that way, she wouldn’t need him anymore? What if he’d built a whole career out of his insane craving to be needed? House had said it himself. He was a parasite, feeding off other people’s pain, like a vampire sinking his fangs into his victim, quenching his thirst with their blood. Actually, if he recalled correctly, he’d used that exact metaphor.
“You’re a functioning vampire! Sure, you’re heroic, useful to society, but only because it feeds you.”
What if House was right?
What if every kind gesture, every outstretched hand, all the help he’d ever given, what if it was just his twisted way of feeling accomplished? What if his persona was just his conscience’s way of reminding him of what he would never be? What was left of him, then, if even his good deeds plunged their roots into his selfishness?
What if Wilson had become an oncologist because, deep down, he was nothing more than a horrible, despicable person?
Well, the voice, sounding dangerously close to his best friend’s, cruelly whispered in his ear, glad you finally figured it out.
“Wilson?”
Wilson blinked, April’s worried voice bringing him back in the Radiology’s recovery room.
“I’m fine,” he quickly reassured her, awkwardly patting her knee as he straightened his back on the chair, slapping a fixed smile on his face. “I get a bit sad sometimes, but I like this job. It’s worth the sadness.”
Liar.
April bit the inside of her cheek, clearly not convinced by the explanation, but eventually decided to drop the argument, much to Wilson’s relief.
“If you say so,” she muttered, withdrawing a little. “Can I ask you something else?”
A beat. Then, Wilson gave her a short, careful nod.
“How sick am I?”
He sighed, his eyes drifting to the Lego set on the small table near the bed. “April–”
“Don’t lie,” she whispered, the echo of a plea staining her words.
Wilson’s hand left her knee and feel on his lap, his shoulders dropping under the weight of the day.
“One to ten.”
“Seven,” the oncologist murmured, the number burning in his throat as he spoke.
April nodded, her head falling back on the pillow behind her. “How long?”
“I…” Wilson swallowed, forcing himself to remember how to do that, how to break the news. He’d done it a million times, to the point where House made fun of his Cancer Voice, the kind, gentle, overly empathetic tone with which he delivered the estimated time of death. He found that he couldn’t do that now. Perhaps it was different, saying it to a friend.
“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “Could be another month. Maybe more, maybe a little less. I can’t be sure, we need the MRI to confirm how fast it’s growing.”
April nodded mechanically, her lively, bright eyes dimming each passing second under the cold lights of the room. “Did you tell my mom?”
Wilson shook his head, ignoring the pain gnawing at him, the way each breath felt like stab. “Not yet,” he replied, “I’ll tell her as soon as she comes here.”
The girl didn’t look at him, didn’t answer, didn’t seem to have acknowledged him at all. She just kept staring ahead, her gaze lost somewhere on the white wall in front of the bed. “I don’t want to leave her,” she whispered, fear bleeding in her voice for the first time that evening. “I don’t want her to be alone.”
Wilson didn’t say that she wouldn’t be, because that would be a lie. Margaret was going to lose her only family. April was going to leave her mom alone. Both were as true as they were unfair. Instead, he shifted closer with the chair, not saying a word.
“This is why you’re sad, right? Because I’m gonna die.”
He wanted to cry, to scream, to stand up and throw the chair against the wall, smashing the cheap plastic into a million pieces. Because it wasn’t fair. Because April was only eleven, because she wasn’t supposed to die, because she wasn’t supposed to wonder whether her mom would be left alone. She was supposed to dream, to make plans for her future, she was supposed to see the Great Barrier Reef someday. Instead, she was lying in a hospital bed, with a tumour the size of a fist growing in her brain.
“I don’t want to make my mom sad,” April begged, her voice cracking at the end of the sentence, her usually sharp, bright tone drowned by silent grief.
Wilson wanted to be angry at the world, at himself, perhaps, but he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he leaned slightly forward, the mattress dipping sideways as he propped his elbows on the edge.
April didn’t need to be told that everything would be alright, because she hated lies. She needed to know that her mom would be fine, but Wilson couldn’t give that to her, either. What he could do, was to make sure she could have a moment to herself, to break with nobody watching, to shatter without being afraid of how loud the crash would be.
“Do you want a hug?” he offered, wordlessly allowing her to fall apart without her mom having to witness. She shook her head. Then, almost timidly, April reached out her hand towards him. Wilson took it, squeezing it tight.
They stayed like that for a few minutes, the girl’s quiet sniffles muffled by the pillow. Wilson didn’t move, didn’t dare pull his hand away. Then, a sniffle turned into a full, heart-wrenching sob, the grip on his hand tightening spasmodically as April’s small body curled onto itself, her arms wrapping like an octopus around Wilson’s hand.
And Wilson sat there, ignoring the way his hand began to hurt, ignoring the tears stinging his eyes, and watched powerless as April finally broke, collapsed under the weight of the life that was inexorably slipping through her fingers.
Wilson sat there, his legs growing numb from the lack of movement, another crack carving his heart open as April whispered a terrified “I don’t want to die” into her pillow, squeezing The Ugly Puppet to her chest as if he could smite the cancer and save her. Succeed, where Wilson had failed.
He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. He didn’t really care. It’s not like he had anywhere else to be.
Eventually, April’s weeping slowed down, her sobs no longer wrecking her body. Her breathing pattern evened out, the grip on his hand growing slack, finally giving in to an exhausted sleep.
Wilson gently disentangled his hand from where it was buried in April’s arms, adjusting The Ugly Puppet, which was dangerously close to falling off the bed. He watched over her sleeping form, her tear-stricken cheeks, her eyebrows still knitted together into a small frown. Careful not to wake her up, he gently pulled the blanket over her legs, tucking the edges under the mattress. Then, he left Radiology, distantly wondering how his heart could still manage to beat while feeling this heavy.
He needed to see House. He needed a distraction.
Wilson entered his office without sparing a glance at the paperwork still waiting for him, at April’s scans, left on the desk earlier that evening. He grabbed his coat, stuffing all the papers in his briefcase, then headed out as quick as he’d come. He was in desperate need of a beer with his friend.
“Dr. Wilson, you’re still here?” a surprised voice called him from behind his back.
He turned around, finding himself face to face with Ether. The nurse smiled warmly at him, pointing at the briefcase with her chin.
“Finally going home, I take.”
Wilson managed to craft a tired smile, wincing at how his neck cracked as he nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ll grab a beer with House. It’s been sort of a long day.”
Something in Ether’s expression shifted, a look he couldn’t quite place causing her to frown as she glanced in the direction of the Diagnostics Department. “Good luck with that, he’s been stuck on that chair for hours now. I don’t think he’ll leave until they will find out what’s wrong with Dr. Foreman.”
Wilson stiffened, his heart dropping at his feet. “What?” he croaked out, clearing his throat with an awkward coff as he tried to regain some control over his voice. “What happened to Foreman?”
Ether’s eyes widened, her mouth shaped like an O as she let out a small “Haven’t you heard?”
He shook his head, a newfound sense of dread pooling in his stomach.
“He was infected by whatever their patient had. He’s downstairs, quarantined. He doesn’t seem to be doing so well.”
Wilson’s blood ran cold. That’s why he hadn’t seen House all day, why he hadn’t seen any of his team members. Foreman was ill, House was likely going crazy, torturing himself to find an answer.
And Wilson hadn’t been there. He’d been in his office instead, sulking over paperwork.
He forcibly swallowed the bile in his throat, his mouth tasting like acid. “Thank you, Ether. I– I’ll go talk to him. Have a good evening,” he quickly added, not even waiting for the woman to reply. Instead, he all but sprinted towards his friend’s office.
He found House sitting on his chair, juggling his tennis ball with his cane. It hit him all of a sudden, how tired his friend looked. His shirt missing a button, his hair ruffled, his piercing blue eyes tainted with exhaustion and circled by dark, angry bags.
“Nice of you to finally show up,” House nonchalantly commented, not tearing his gaze from his ball.
“I’m sorry about Foreman,” Wilson blurted out, choking on the guilt. “I’ve been busy all day and I just now heard about–”
He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. He didn’t have the right to make excuses for himself, and House didn’t want to hear his apologies. He bit his tongue, squaring his shoulders as he tried again, keeping his voice just the right amount of worried.
“How is he?”
House glanced up, just enough to get a quick look at him, only to return his undivided attention to the ball balanced on his cane.
“Still dying,” came the clipped reply.
“Well, you almost mastered another skill, though. That’s good,” Wilson joked, his weak attempt at lighting up the atmosphere earning a glare from House. Before the diagnostician could bite out a retort, the door was pushed open, the muffled sound immediately followed by Chase and Cameron’s hurried footsteps.
“Foreman’s biopsy result,” Chase said without preamble. “Non-specific signs of inflammation.”
House stared at him for a long moment, the gears turning in brain as he absorbed the information. “That’s it?”
“We also swabbed for staph,” the younger doctor added, sounding just as frustrated as House looked. “Negative. He’s not even a carrier.”
The man sighed, glancing at the ceiling before dropping the ball in his lap. Wilson bit the inside of his chewed the inside of his cheek in thought, studying his friend’s movements. He was worried. That wasn’t just frustration, he was actually concerned about Foreman. Not that he would ever admit it aloud, nor would he confirm Wilson’s deduction. The diagnostician would probably carve another hole in his good leg rather than openly admitting he cared for someone.
“Well, at least Foreman was wrong, too.”
Wilson sighed at the deflection. House was worried, and he was angry at himself, too. Because he couldn’t come up with a solution, because he couldn’t find a way to fix the problem. Again, not that he would ever admit such idiocy.
“Yeah, there’s that,” Wilson chimed in, pursing his lips as let his eyes fall on the whiteboard, the symptoms messily scribbled in House’s unmistakable handwriting.
Cameron brought her hands on her hips. “Can I go to Joe’s apartment now?” she inquired, her expression sat in a mixture of impatience and something harder, determinate.
“No,” House replied immediately, his sharp gaze cutting short any hint of a retort that might have been forming on Cameron’s lips. “Go back to the lab. Start testing all the samples that Foreman collected.”
“For what?” Chase interrupted, clearly not following.
“Everything,” House snapped as he stood up, the ball bouncing to the ground. “Bacteria, toxins, fungus, anything that likes to feast on brain.”
“That’s thousands of–” Chase started, frowning at Cameron, who looked just as perplexed.
“Better hurry,” the diagnostician curtly interrupted, his posture stiff as he gripped the edge of the desk. “Cameron, suit up. You’re gonna monitor Foreman. He’s on to hand contractures, he’ll be in Anton’s blindness soon.” He paused for a moment, swallowing as he briefly broke eye contact with his employees.
“Run hourly checks,” he added, his voice a little quieter. “Because when he does go blind, he won’t be able to tell us.”
Blind? Wilson numbly wondered, his eyes shifting his eyes from House to the younger doctors. What the hell had he missed?
You wouldn’t know, would you? You weren’t there.
“We’ll use the date to construct a timeline, so we can see how far behind Joe he is.” House’s voice brought him back into the office. He tilted his head just enough to get a glimpse of Chase and Cameron awkwardly standing next to him, looking a bit lost.
House pressed his lips in a tight line, pointedly raising his brows in the door’s direction. “Why are you still here?”
Without a word, the two doctors turned around and left, Chase’s pace slightly hurried as he walked past Cameron.
Alone in the office, Wilson finally allowed his shoulders to drop, staring at his friend’s nape as the older doctor turned his back on him.
“You’re being cautious,” he observed carefully, following House’s slow movements, his blue eyes lost in the distance somewhere outside the window. “You’re being… common.”
House didn’t reply. He kept his gaze glued to the night sky, the pearl-coloured curtains glistening as they caught the light of a streetlamp.
Wilson sighed. “When you don’t give a crap–”
“How many of your guys have caught a cancer from their patient?” House sneered, turning around to face him, eyes hard as they landed on the oncologist. “Let me know when that happens. Then we can have this conversation.”
Wilson sighed, his throat burning with the unspoken “I’m sorry” that he knew House would hate.
“It’s just another case, huh?” he said instead, softer.
“Gee, I bet you can even have unprotected sex with your cancer patients without catching a damn thing,” the other doctor carried on, his voice dropping colder and colder by the second. Wilson shrunk a little, shame still coiling in his stomach.
“Boy, I wish I had your job.”
Wilson froze, the words dying in his throat as he watched House shooting one last, scornful look before turning around once again, back at ignoring him. And Wilson didn’t move. He kept standing there, wishing the burning behind his eyes would go away, wishing his skin would stop prickling, that his chest would stop hurting. He lowered his gaze, the corner of his mouth twitching as he, too, turned around, his feet unnaturally heavy as he stepped out of Diagnostics.
Wilson had just closed the door behind him, when he heard the dull thud of House’s cane slamming against the desk. He glanced at his briefcase, soul heavy, then again at his own office.
“Boy, I wish I had your job.”
House was right. Of course he was right. His job wasn’t the problem, it never had been.
Wilson was.
He thought of April, who had just cried herself to sleep because she was going to die. He thought of Foreman, who had contracted an unknown disease that was rapidly killing him. He thought of House, who pretended not to care, yet was slowly wearing himself out trying to solve his case.
And then there was Wilson, complaining about paperwork, sulking about a job that had never directly hurt him or those he cared about. A job that hadn’t been forced upon him, which he had willingly chosen to feed his own sick saviour complex.
House was right. He often was. And, despite the harsh bastard he so devotedly pretended to interpret, the cruel, sharp armour of indifference he kept so close to his chest, Wilson knew that House was a better person than he was.
House actually cared. He might not say it, but he always acted on it. Wilson wasn’t a good person. That was just his persona.
He didn’t deserve to rest, he still had work to do. Who was he to complain?
Wilson took off his coat, pushing the door of his office open with his shoulder. He called the cafeteria to order another coffee, then sat the briefcase on the desk, flipping the strap open.
He had a long night ahead of him.