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Lesser Expectations
by Jayne Leitch
Rating: G for Gen
Spoilers: pretty much everything.
Disclaimer: not mine, no infringement intended. I just can't help wanting to play with such prettily messed-up characters.
Many many thanks to MaryKate and moonlash_cc for their beta services.
LESSER EXPECTATIONS by Jayne Leitch
The other administrative offices had been dark and empty for hours by the time Wilson left his own for the night. He'd long ago discovered the great catch-22 of being a department head: even though he had the power to assign all the undesirable shifts to the rest of the oncology staff, the sheer volume of administrative extras he had to deal with--in addition to his regular rounds and clinic hours--could keep him working well into his designated off-hours.
At first, the extra hours had been an occasional necessity. Over time, and as his responsibilities increased, the necessity became a pattern; pattern then became habit, habit became routine, routine became a schedule he felt he was expected to keep, and by then enough of his non-work life had gone down the drain that he didn't feel much impetus to change. It wasn't that he chose work over home, or didn't want to be at home; it was just that the nature of his work was almost always more important than home.
It wasn't a conscious choice one way or the other. Even when it wasn't just work that kept him out late, spending more and more time with people who needed him in ways his wife simply didn't, Wilson never *chose*.
Not in the beginning, anyway.
Wilson nodded to the nurses on station by the elevator, answered their jokes about his status as an honorary member of the night shift with a self-deprecating smile, and tossed a wave over his shoulder as the doors slid open and he turned to step inside.
To his mild surprise, the car already had an occupant--one who'd had a longer day than his, judging by her pale, pinched face and rumpled clothes. "Allison," he greeted her, settling himself tiredly against the back wall. "You're working late."
"Hi, Doctor Wilson." She gave him a wan smile, slumped in the corner as if the wall was the only thing keeping her on her feet. "Seems to be the night for it." With her voice low in the closed-in space of the car, she sounded as worn out as she looked.
The elevator started down again with a weightless beat and a whirring hum, and they stood together quietly for a moment before Wilson realized why he'd been surprised to see her still in the hospital. "Did House take on a new case today?" he asked, turning to face her. "He spent his entire shift in the clinic yesterday; I know he would've skipped out if there'd been something more interesting going on."
Allison stared straight ahead. "No. No new case."
Which should've meant that she'd spent the day going through House's mail and listening to Foreman complain about the pointlessness of their lives--not exactly activities that would put bluish shadows under her eyes or the exhausted set to her shoulders. "Days can seem pretty long when there's nothing to do," he commented carefully, following her lead and staring up at the digital display over the door.
The numbers blinked down to the ground level, and the elevator stopped. As the doors pulled themselves open, Allison finally answered, her tone edged with bitterness. "I'm used to it."
Wilson hung back as she pushed herself off the wall and stepped into the hall, clearly wanting to escape any further conversation. He watched her go, the fluorescent strip lights washing out the colours of her hair and winter coat, and wondered if there would be anyone for her to talk to on the far end of her drive home. And then all he could think about was the stretch of parking lot between him and his car, and the stretch of highway between the lot and his house, and the stretch of silence he was sure to find between the front door and his bedroom. He hurried after her. "Allison."
She stopped just before the outside door, and half-turned back to wait for him to catch up. As he drew up next to her he reached out, planted his left hand on the crash bar, but didn't push; instead, he looked down into Allison's tired face, offered a slight smile and said, "Do you want to go get a drink?"
* * * * *
They ended up in a booth at the back corner of a pub called Darsy's. There was a draught from a nearby sliding door that led to the snow-blanketed patio; the place was nearly empty and they could've moved, but instead they hunched over the table and drank faster than was good for either of them, taking large swallows of their drinks and pretending the warmth they felt came from the orange glow of a nearby hanging lamp.
"The problem with House," Allison said out of nowhere, her fingers playing on the handle of her second mug of mulled cider, "is that he expects too little of people."
Wilson considered this--and then considered her as she stared fixedly into her drink. "That diagnosis seems a little simplistic," he offered after a moment.
Her fingers flicked once more at the handle; then she wrapped her hands tightly around the mug. "Do you know why he hired me?"
He did, which was why he took his time swallowing his mouthful of beer before answering. "Your credentials were good. You came with strong recommendations, you presented well in the interview--"
"Of course I did." Allison huffed out a humourless chuckle, shaking her head and glancing up at him appraisingly. "You're a terrible liar."
He tilted his head in recognition. "So I've been told." Then, watching her sip at her cider and lick her lips, he added, "You know he wouldn't have hired you if he didn't expect you to be able to do the work. He just...includes his own set of standards among the hiring criteria."
"Such exacting standards they are, too," she said. Wilson detected a trace of insolence in her tone, and thought--despite his willingly adopted role as House's interpreter--that he understood it.
They went back to drinking quietly, Allison staring down at the knotholed tabletop, Wilson staring unobtrusively at her. The lone waitress still on duty emerged from the kitchen, pushing through the swinging doors behind the bar with a whump, and wandered over to them; Cameron ordered a refill, so Wilson ordered water, telling himself he'd do the gentlemanly thing and spare her the cab fare home.
It was only after their drinks had been freshened and the waitress had gone back into the kitchen that Allison took a deep breath and spoke. "He got a letter the other day. A man in Vermont with thyroid cancer--that's what he's been told, anyway. Medullary carcinoma, only there are a couple of discrepancies in the presentation..." She trailed off, raised her mug and took a sip, then added, "He wants a second opinion. I brought the letter to House today, but..."
"But he wouldn't take the case." Wilson wouldn't have either; thinking a second opinion would garner a different diagnosis just because the cancer wasn't behaving as expected clearly indicated that the patient was unwilling to accept the reality of his condition. Wilson found that kind of denial discouraging for physician and patient; House thought it was contemptible.
She nodded, her mouth twisted into a bitter frown. "He thinks I'm overidentifying. He thinks I can't be objective."
Wilson thought about the debates he'd been having with House since the neo-natal Echo 11 epidemic, about Cameron's tendency to over-empathize. "Can you?"
"I just--" Breaking off, she looked up at him for a second, then past him towards the sliding door and its view of the snow. "I want him to admit that there might be something to this case," she said finally. "I want him to trust me, dammit."
Wilson shrugged. "He won't trust you until you trust him."
"I *do* trust him."
"Then you should stop pitying him."
"What? I don't--"
Setting his glass down with a thud, Wilson gave her a look. "You give him Christmas presents, you try to talk about his feelings. You do his *mail*, for God's sake." He arched his eyebrows. "Do you think he wants people to look at him and see the limp and the cane?"
"No, of course not."
"Well, you're wrong." Wilson met her lost expression with a wry half-smile. "That's *exactly* what he wants people to see. He told me once that everyone should make their shortcomings the most noticeable part of their first impression, because it keeps people from thinking they were lied to later on. Yes, he hates that he's constantly mistaken for a patient at work, but that's because he knows the people who make that mistake think the limp and the cane define every other aspect of his existence. The thought never crosses their minds that he might be the brilliant diagnostician they've begged, borrowed and sat five hours in the waiting room to see." Leaning back against the bench, he raised his glass and added before drinking, "He hates pity. It pisses him off."
Allison stared at him, her own mug held motionless halfway to her mouth. "You make understanding him look so *easy*. How do you do it? Practise? Exposure? Did he take you aside one day and let you in on the secret logic of his mental processes?"
Wilson chuckled. "You'll figure him out." The number of times he'd said that to someone and meant it was much smaller than the number of times he'd said that to someone.
To her credit, Allison seemed less discouraged than impatient. "Will that be before or after I do something--trying to be nice--that makes him throw me off his team?"
"Well, there's your problem. You're trying to be nice." Wilson leaned forward, folding his arms on the table and gazing frankly at her. "You think he's the way he is because he's in pain and needs somebody to fix him. He doesn't."
She met his gaze for a moment--then, shifting her weight on her seat, she glanced away, her fingers starting to play again on the lip of her mug. "Isn't that what doctors are supposed to do?" she asked distantly. "Fix people?"
"Maybe." Wilson shrugged, but didn't pull back. "But that's not always what the people want."
* * * * *
Ultimately, the waitress had to kick them out. Wilson paid their tab--despite Allison's protestations--and they bundled up in their coats and scarves and gloves before venturing out into the dim, still, almost empty parking lot.
"I could call a cab, you know," Allison said as they tromped through the loose coating of snow that had accumulated on the pavement. "That was my plan for getting home tonight."
"It's no trouble." Digging through his pockets for his keys, Wilson put a foot wrong on a patch of ice and skidded; Allison caught his arm and pulled him back to balance, and they both chuckled as Wilson put his hand over hers and led her safely onto drier ground. "Thank you. Besides, you said you live nearby, and I--well, I don't have to be home yet."
As they drew up beside his car, Allison slowed to a stop; when he turned to face her, he found her watching him thoughtfully. "It seems like you never have to be home," she said, the straightforward words delivered in a precisely delicate tone. "You're always at the hospital, with a patient or Doctor House or just...at the hospital."
Wilson ducked his head, returning his hands to his pockets. Then, with a self-conscious smile, he looked up at her through his lashes and said, "You've noticed that, huh?"
"The entire staff's noticed." Still studying him as if trying to piece him together, she took a step closer. "Why do you do it? How can you always put your work before your homelife?"
Wilson raised his head, sighed a curling stream of breath into the cold night air, and shrugged. "Work needs me more than home does."
"And you go where you're needed," Allison mused. "I'd like to know where that is, sometimes." She said it with a smile, but its edges were brittle.
Wilson thought about the Christmas present House had yet to unwrap, the parents who'd been blindsided by the death of their baby, and the way Allison always took the short straw shifts when someone on the team had to work late. He smiled back, pulled one gloved hand out of his pocket, and reached out to touch her shoulder. "You're a good doctor, Allison," he said, and watched her cheeks flush under the light of a nearby streetlamp. "The problem is," he added after a second, enjoying the startled look she gave him, "you're a better human being."
She relaxed at that, and moved to brush a strand of hair out of her face. "Doctors aren't human beings?"
He wanted to kiss her. He realized he'd expected the evening to end that way from the moment he'd gotten into the elevator.
He wondered if it would've mattered who he'd found there. Or if all that would've mattered was whether that person needed him more than his dark house and sleeping wife did.
He dropped his hand from her shoulder, pulled out his keys, and turned to unlock his car. "Generally speaking," he answered, "not good ones."
End.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of Fox Television, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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