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David's Nana
by naughtybookworm
David's Nana
Outside the funeral home, they paused. Cuddy waited passively as Wilson knelt down to straighten David's little tie, button the jacket of his new suit. "Ready,?" he asked the boy.
Nodding, David offered his hand to House, his daddy, his protector. "Okay," he replied, and started to move forward.
House held the boy's hand firmly, but didn't move. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to," He reminded his son. "We can take a taxi back home." He caressed David's new haircut and straightened his glasses on his nose. "Wilson can take care of everything, and Cuddy can bring him home later."
He looked up at his dad, then his other dad, and the only woman who remained in his life now. The other adults nodded in agreement with House.
David didn't want to stay, but he felt bad about leaving after all that Daddy and Wilson had done for his mother, especially considering how they felt about her. Anyway, if he left, he would have wanted Wilson with him, because Wilson was good at what David needed right now. He needed Wilson's hugs and kisses to try and wash away the horrible black pit in his stomach that he hadn't been able to shake since they'd told him that his mother was dead.
Even though Daddy and Wilson had said otherwise over and over, David couldn't help feeling like this was all his fault. Mommy had always said that he would kill her one day with all the trouble he caused. And he proved her right by finally getting angry - RAGING angry - at her, by leaving her for good, and by finally allowing himself to have all the horrible angry thoughts and feelings that he had kept pent up all his life. And a week later, they told him she was dead. Hit by a bus. But David knew that it had been his thoughts that had killed Mommy. She had hated him all his life, and finally he let himself hate her back. He had wanted her to go away, had called her nasty names, and even said the f-word to her. Of course, those were just words he'd said in his dreams, in his own head, but that didn't matter, because he had still thought all those things. He had wished her dead, even, and now she was. David understood that you couldn't really wish a person dead, but still, the nasty, tarry guilt gripped him somewhere in his lower gut.
*
If it hadn't been for David, they would never have even known about his mother's death. But David had jumped out of the taxi cab to run back to their apartment, thinking that he could protect his daddy from HER somehow. Then Wilson had tried to get out of the taxi to catch him. The driver got suspicious, not that they were trying to get away without paying - Wilson had given him his wallet to get him to release the door locks. No, the man had thought there was something fishy going on to make a little kid jump out of his cab and run away from Wilson like that.
The cabbie came to their place immediately with all their luggage and Wilson's wallet. He had brought a police officer with him too, just in case there was some kind of trouble. After David's mother had gone away quietly, Wilson explained to the two men that David had been running TO House, not AWAY from Wilson. Then Wilson had paid the cabbie extra money, and they thought it was all over for good.
But the policeman turned up on their doorstep a week later asking to speak to Wilson alone. He had remembered the strange woman who was leaving the scene as he and the taxi driver were just approaching. When the vagrant-looking woman had been killed on his beat the day before, he thought that perhaps she was the same person. She'd had a tattered, outdated Arizona drivers' license that said her name was Maria Walsh. He'd then obtained a copy of her picture ID and gone back to 221B Baker Street in an attempt to try and find a next of kin.
Wilson had gone outside to speak to the officer, and had come back in looking weird.
"What was that all about?" House had demanded.
Wilson pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and dropped it on the coffee table. "My Social Security card fell out of my wallet the other day," he said stiffly.
House had looked at him oddly for a few minutes, but then pulled out the remote control and started the movie they were planning to watch together. "Shouldn't be carrying that around in your wallet, anyway," he groused. "Haven't you ever heard of identity theft?" When Wilson didn't respond, House upped the volume on the TV. "Popcorn's cold now," he complained. But his heart wasn't into it.
David had thought that movie night was ruined now because Wilson didn't feel like his usual warm fuzzy self for a few minutes. But then Daddy put his arm around Wilson and made him cuddle up. Then David slid down from the top of the careworn leather sofa, where only a skinny eight-year-old kid could drape himself and still feel comfortable, and plopped down in Wilson's lap. In a family heap, they melted together and Wilson started feeling normal to David again.
But later that night, David heard them fighting. It wasn't a regular fight, either. It was one of those fights where they whisper-yelled at each other in their bedroom with the door closed, and Wilson's clock-radio playing so that David couldn't make out their words, even during his pretend trips to the bathroom. They whisper-fought until David couldn't keep his eyes open another minute. And then the next morning, at breakfast, they were still in their bathrobes, instead of dressed for work. When he asked why, they just told him they'd decided to take a "dad's day off."
Then David cut right to the chase. "Why were you fighting last night?"
"We're not fighting, honey," Wilson told him, a little too automatically.
Daddy had given Wilson a look, but he decided to pay a lot of attention to his coffee right then.
David glared at them reproachfully. "You WERE, last night. I'm not a stupid kid," he reminded them.
They didn't respond at all. Wilson and Daddy had just looked at one another guiltily.
"It's about that policeman, isn't it?" David surmised. "Everything was fine until he came last night, and then Wilson was all weird, and then you were fighting way past one o'clock last night."
House sighed, and set his coffee mug down. "Come here, David," he said, beckoning with his cane-hand.
"Greg..." Wilson was speaking in his warning voice. "No, Greg, we agreed. This evening."
House looked over at Wilson as if he wanted to apologize for something, but what he did was turn in his chair so that David could face him. When David was standing in front of his dad, House looked up at Wilson again. Sighing, Wilson dragged a chair over so that he was sitting right next to House. Then House slid his hands around David's waist, interlacing his fingers behind his son's back.
Wilson sighed, and said, "Something's happened, David. To your mother."
David frowned. He was just getting used to the idea that he would never see her again, and now his own parents, the people who were supposed to be protecting him, were bringing her up. He wanted to pull away from House and just...just go to school, damn it, and forget that he'd heard anything at all the night before.
"I don't care," he bit out at them, and tried to pull away from House. But House held him firmly.
"That's okay, David. You don't have to care. You just need to know. And then we won't talk about it anymore, okay? Unless you want to."
David stopped pulling away then, and looked at both of his dads. This was what the fighting was about. Daddy wanted to tell him, and Wilson didn't. He even understood why. Wilson always wanted to make him feel better, and Daddy always wanted to protect him, but he also thought it was important to help David to be strong. Sometimes, though, growing stronger hurt.
"Okay," he said to a space on the wall behind them. He waited to see what would happen next.
House drew him closer and looked into David's eyes. "David," he whispered softly, "There was an accident yesterday with a bus . And...your mother...was killed."
David stared at his dad, uncomprehendingly. No one spoke for a minute.
Then David started to laugh, a bizarre, high-pitched, machine-gun-sounding laugh.
He felt as if he had split into two different Davids. One of them was standing off to one side, horrified, fascinated, and somehow also calm as he watched this other boy who looked like him laughing his head off about somebody being killed in a bus accident.
"Oh God," House said softly closing his eyes for a moment.
"David...David!" he shouted sharply
"David!" Wilson pounded on his shoulder.
The pounding made David stop laughing for a moment. "What? WHAT??? Hahaha...."
"David, no." Wilson was saying to him, his voice all tensed up. "Try to take some deep breaths. You're hysterical."
David held on to House's arms and took big gulps of air. He did begin to calm a little, but every now and then, he felt the urge to giggle. "She said...hahaha..." David was trying to tell them the joke. "She said...said I was going to send her to an early grave, HAHAHA... See? She's dead now. Ding-dong...hahaha....like the Wizard of Oz!"
His dad's bright blue eyes blazed. "David, NO. None of this is your fault," House said, his voice loud and insistent.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." David said, waving his right hand dismissively. "Doesn't matter. SHE thinks it's my fault. Now I get to feel bad about it forever." He shrugged. "Did she get run over? I hope she got run over. Hahahaha..."
Wilson and House looked at one another, their faces matching horror sketches. David could see that they didn't get it at all. "No...Daddy... no - it's just what she s-s-said." He gulped some air and tried to stop the giggles that wanted to erupt out of him. "...said 'You're going to make me so crazy I'll just walk right in front of a bus one day...' ...said...she said it would all be my fault one day ...see?" Then David started to guffaw crazily. And then he just fainted.
When he regained consciousness, he was quiet and calm, but his dads were scared for him now, because they weren't sure what had just happened. They were certain that David wasn't going to school, though, so House got David undressed and back into his pajamas.
And Wilson got the little silver box with the padlock that House had put on it - the only thing in the apartment that was off-limits to David - and got out the bottle of Valium syrup that they had decided to keep on hand until they were sure that David was totally out of the woods. (David had known about the box even before he had needed the Valium, but he had no clue what else was in there. He'd fantasized that maybe House kept a gun, though, since his dad had never bothered to hide the porn beyond sticking it on a high shelf).
"I really wish you'd listened to me, Greg." Wilson finally said, after they dosed David, and locked the bottle back up with House's morphine stash.
House shook his head. "Whatever that was already in there," he told his partner. "Inside David. Hearing about her death just brought it out. I want all that crap OUT of my kid."
Wilson shook his own head. He could understand why House didn't want to leave well enough alone, but he really couldn't bear seeing HIS kid like this.
After he'd had a nap, around noon, when Wilson woke him for lunch, David was apprehensive and clingy. He managed to choke down a few bites, then just sat there on the floor at the coffee table in front of his sandwich.
"YOU said I'd never see her again," he said to Wilson accusingly.
"You don't have to."
But what about the funeral?" David was frowning now. "Isn't there going to be a funeral?"
"There doesn't have to be," House interrupted. "When people die without any money or family to have a funeral for them, the city takes care of it. They just cre-"
"Shut up." Wilson said firmly. "Just. Stop. Talking."
"Wilson-"
"He doesn't need to hear this."
David's face darkened and crumpled before them. "Don't fight... Don't fight, Wilson. Don't be mad at Daddy. Please," he begged tearfully.
Instantly, he found himself surrounded by both his dads. House had scooted over on the sofa so that he was right behind David, while Wilson got down on the floor next to him and put his arms around the now trembling boy. "Shhhh, honey...we won't fight, okay?" Wilson's hugs and gentle words, and Daddy's mere presence, helped the awful, jumpy feeling inside his body to fade away somewhat.
Later, by dinnertime, David was utterly composed. "I want to see her," he told them unceremoniously, when he came to the table. "Then it can really be over."
And even though they pretended later that they hadn't, David's dads whisper-fought for one more night before they both agreed to have a small funeral for David's mother, for their son's sake.
*
"I can do it," he told them. They all looked at each other uncertainly. David didn't like that - the way they looked at each other that excluded him, somehow. Like there were things about him that Daddy, Wilson, and Lisa had discussed behind his back. But there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it, so he just waited until they were ready to either go into the funeral place or take him back home. David kind of wished that they would decide to all go home together and leave his mother in her own funeral all by herself.
That didn't happen. Wilson took David's other hand and opened the door for Lisa. "Let's go then," he said.
Inside, there was a guest book outside the door of a little room, the last room on the hall. There was a small sign in a plastic holder that read: "Walsh." Wilson stopped them and made them all sign the little visitor book. House didn't bother to make any sarcastic comments. They would be the only "visitors," and they knew who they were already, and weren't planning to send thank-you cards to themselves. He knew that Wilson was stalling, trying to prepare David for what was going to happen.
While Cuddy and House were taking their turns, Wilson knelt down in front of the boy again. "David, this is the room where your mother's remains are," he said, pointing to the door.
David peered into Wilson's eyes. "I know," he whispered.
Wilson held the boy's shoulders. "From a distance, it will look pretty much like a person who is sleeping, except she won't be breathing," he told him. "...and...her coloring..." He gestured towards his own face, "won't be the same."
"Okay." Whispered again.
"You tell us if you want out, ok? You don't have to do this, David," House told him.
"I will."
As if by agreement, they each gave him kisses. Farewell kisses for this journey. Then Wilson squeezed the boy's hand a little, and led him inside.
There was soft pre-recorded organ music, and slightly dim lighting. The room was very small - they would be the only 'mourners.' There were only ten chairs. And at the front of the room, the casket.
Wilson had chosen a very inexpensive token container that would serve for the duration of the funeral. Afterwards, the body would be cremated, but they would not receive her ashes. The two men had finalized these plans after another couple days of whispered arguments that David never heard. There would be no ceremony; just a brief viewing of her in the simple blue dress that Cuddy had picked out, the cremation, and a death announcement in the paper, just in case there might be a friend somewhere.
But the room was empty, other than the body of the woman up at the front. The adults all paused just inside the door, so David did, too. He knew that they were afraid for him, afraid that this would hurt him worse than he'd already been hurt, so they were watching him, and letting him be the boss of how this was supposed to go.
"You okay, honey?" Wilson asked gently.
"Yeah," David said, but his voice was so faint that no one heard him. Releasing Wilson's hand, he walked forward, wanting to get this whole thing over with.
Wilson caught up to him quickly, and the others fell in behind them.
Wilson had offered to help David write something to say at his mother's wake, but David had declined, saying that he preferred to do it alone. Secretly, House was glad the boy had chosen to write his own words, speak his own piece. Wilson would have meant well, but probably put a damper on the boy's feelings in the interest of teaching him to 'be nice.'
He unfolded a little worry-worn piece of paper that contained just a few paragraphs in David's impeccably neat print, and plunged in right away. "You were a bad mother," he read, his normally sweet, fluty, soprano voice sounding flat and lifeless. "You hurt me a lot."
David paused and swallowed. House placed a hand on they boy's shoulder and gripped it gently, lending his son strength.
"I didn't want to do this funeral for you. I still don't, but that's because I'm very mad at you for all the mean things you did. M-maybe there was a reason for it, but I can't understand why. I learned that I wasn't a bad son, like you used to say. My new parents can take care of me without doing bad things and blaming it all on me. If only I understood WHY..." David stopped, and the word "why" seemed to bounce around the room. "W-W-WHY...." He looked down at his shoes, faltering, his voice weak, and breaking.
Wilson started to take David's hand, comfort him somehow, lead him out of this place, but House grabbed his partner's arm, shaking his head.
"Why," the little boy whispered. "Why, Mommy...? I don't understand WHY." There were more words on the page, but he gave up trying to read them. "You never listened to me before, so I don't guess you care what I have to say now, anyway." He folded the little piece of paper and stepped forward, pulling out of House's grasp, which his dad allowed. He stood on his toes and slipped the piece of paper in an opening between the gold tone buttons on the front of her dress.
"Dunno what happens after you die," he whispered. "But I hope you get another life, because this one must have really sucked for you."
Wilson shook his head. That was Greg House's son talking.
They watched as David walked to the first row of seats and sat down to wait for them. He looked exhausted. The adults all made a show of taking a look at his mother, and joined him.
"How do you feel, sweetheart?" Cuddy asked as she stroked his hair.
He shrugged. "I don't know."
"Wanna go home?" House asked him.
"Yeah."
*
Cuddy had prepared a meal for them, which she'd delivered when she came to the house to pick them up earlier. David wasn't hungry, but he sat at the table with them and picked at the pot roast until everyone else was done eating.
"Can I take off the suit now?" he asked Wilson.
"Yeah," House answered for his partner. "Go dress like a kid."
It was early - only about seven, but when David came out again, he was in his pajamas.
"Going to bed already?" Wilson asked. This wasn't a good sign, because David tended to isolate himself when he was trying to bury his emotions.
The boy shrugged.
Lisa came out of the kitchen then, and took charge. "You boys clean up. Come sit with me, David."
Obediently, they did her bidding.
Cuddy sat on the big leather sofa. "Come here, sweetheart." She patted the cushion next to her.
*
"What do you think they're talking about?" Wilson whispered to House.
House sat down at the space he'd cleared from the table and propped his head up on one elbow. "No idea."
Wilson glanced back to see the other man already loafing. "Hey, you're supposed to be helping me."
"That doesn't even work where Cuddy really IS my boss," House muttered.
Groaning, Wilson dropped the matter and started arranging the dishes in the sink. A moment later, he felt House behind him, and shortly thereafter, House all around him, holding him. He turned around in the circle of his lover's arms to return the hug.
"You okay, Jimmy?"
"Yeah... you?" Without waiting for an answer, Wilson touched his lips to House's, kissed him there, and buried his face in the side of his lover's neck..
"Yeah."
*
In the living room, David felt himself blushing a little. He couldn't see from where he and Lisa were sitting on the sofa, but he could tell that Daddy and Wilson were getting mushy again.
"They...kiss each other sometimes," he explained unnecessarily.
Cuddy smiled. "I know."
David shrugged.
"That's what people who love each other do, honey."
"I know."
Lisa smiled and gave him a kiss to make a point. Lisa was an 'on-the-lips' kisser, which David supposed was okay, as long it wasn't a squishy wet kiss, complete with the tongue stuff, like the kind Daddy and Wilson did when they thought he wasn't paying attention. Then she pulled him onto her lap and held him, stroking his back until he relaxed into her body. When he finally allowed his head to rest on her shoulder, Lisa started to talk.
"Did you know that I was trying to have a baby last year, David?"
David didn't know this, and he didn't know why Lisa was telling him, of all people. It sounded like a grown-up topic. "No."
"Well, I was."
"What happened? Did you change your mind?" he asked.
Lisa smiled and looked a little sad. "No, it just didn't work. You know... you know about where babies come from, right?"
David nodded, looking away from Cuddy shyly. "Yeah."
She couldn't help smiling at his reaction. "Well, it didn't work for me. I did all the right things, fertility treatments, sperm donors-"
"- What's that?"
Cuddy stopped herself - of course a child wouldn't understand all that. "Uh... just different ways to get pregnant."
"Oh." David frowned. "I thought there was only one way." Then he amended, "Well, different positions, I guess, but basically one way."
God, he sounded so like House, Cuddy thought. "No, if you don't want to use the regular way, or if it doesn't work out, there are other ways you can try."
David started to play with one of Lisa's hands. He had always wanted to do this with his mother, touch her hands, trace the lines inside, compare the size to his own, interlace their fingers. But Mommy had hated him, and wouldn't ever let him sit on her lap, in her arms like this. She had barely touched David most of the time, except to punish him. And here, he was, touching Lisa, and she barely thought anything at all of it; welcomed it, even.
"So the usual way didn't work out?"
"Well... I didn't actually try the usual way," Lisa told him.
David shook his head and gave her a "perplexed little owl" expression. "Why not?"
'Damn, I really walked into this one,' she thought. "Well, I wanted to have a baby without a husband. So I didn't do it the usual way."
"SHE didn't have a husband, Lisa -"
"-It's kind of complicated, David," she interrupted. "Anyway, I tried, and it never worked. Cost a lot of money, too. But it just never worked."
"I'm sorry it didn't work."
"That's okay, honey. Because sometimes things work out for the best, you know?"
David shrugged.
"...because sometimes, I get to be with you, and that's kind of what I think I really wanted - a child I could be with sometimes. I'm not sure I'm really ready to be a full-time mom. I'm so busy with the hospital." She let two fingers caress their way down his thin little cheek until they reached his chin and tipped it a bit so that he was looking into her eyes. "But I'm very lucky, because House and Wilson don't mind sharing you with me."
David felt calm now. He wasn't even sure when that had started, or why, but he felt lots better. Bold, even. He reached up to touch Lisa's nose. David secretly LOVED Cuddy's nose, the way it had that little bump, kind of like an eagle. He touched the bump, stroked it with one finger.
Cuddy knew exactly what that was all about. She smiled down at David. Her mother's wise counsel throughout her few brief bouts of adolescent angst was right. All during her adult life, there was always some guy who adored her nose.
Sighing, David rested his head on Lisa's chest, just below her throat. He let his eyes close, inhaled her faint natural scent along with the very light perfume she tended to wear now. 'This is what having a real mother was supposed to feel like,' he thought. "I think you'd be a good mom, Lisa," he said softly.
Smiling, she kissed the top of his head. "Thanks, honey. Maybe I'll wait a while before I try again, though."
"Maybe you should just try the regular way." He made a very Wilson-esque gesture with his left hand. "You know, have sex?"
Cuddy held back a laugh at this little boy advising her on such a matter. "I'll think about it. If I decide to try again."
David nodded, satisfied with her agreement. And he kind of liked the idea of being Lisa's practice kid, in the meantime.
He let himself be pulled back into Lisa's warm embrace. He'd hardly done anything all day but think about his mother's death, and prepare for the fifteen minute wake. Now that it was all over, he felt as if he'd ridden his bike all day, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
"I love you, David," Lisa told him then.
'Truly?' he wondered. He pulled back then, to look into her eyes. Nothing but simple sincerity. This was so easy. If only his mother had said those words to him, let him touch her, just once, said those words. Just once.
*
Six weeks later:
Arista Walsh stood outside the main door of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and took a few breaths to calm herself. The next hour or so of her life were going to be hard, no matter what kind of situation she found. She had begun to measure her life in this manner. How the next hour was going to be. And when that hour was over, she chalked it up into the easy or hard column in her mind. Then on to the next hour of her life. Sometimes, easy times, she could break her time down into larger chunks, like the next eight hours. Or the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. But most of the time these days, she was getting along by just dealing with one hour at a time.
The first thing she did was to find the ladies room to get a good look at herself. What would David's adoptive father see when he looked at her? She pulled out her makeup and pressed a little more concealer and foundation onto her right cheek. She thought of her face as a road after winter, when Public Works filled in all the cracks and potholes in the macadam with asphalt. David's new dad wouldn't know how she had looked before, she supposed, so perhaps he would overlook her tired eyes and sunken cheeks, or how her thick, dark brown hair had gone almost half gray over the past six years. The only thing that hadn't changed was her nose - and it wasn't anything special at all; just an ordinary, run-of the mill nose, perfectly balanced, just the right size and shape. And who the hell looked at noses when they weren't somehow out of the ordinary?
Arista washed her hands and packed up her makeup into her purse. Then she practiced looking 'normal' in the mirror mouthing, 'Hello, I've come to see you about David.' No... 'Hello, I understand that you've adopted David Walsh...' She sighed. Then she gritted her teeth and headed out into the corridor.
The man didn't look anything like a doctor. He was sitting in one of the fancier offices with glass walls, in the middle of some pretty uncomfortable-looking contemporary furniture. He was actually watching an old TV and twirling a cane around and around in his hand. Odd that a doctor was watching TV instead of working. She watched him from the corner for at least twenty minutes, hoping to determine whether he was a calm or angry person.
Two doctors or assistants in white coats came and left during the time she watched Dr. Gregory House. Two men. They seemed to be arguing, but not in an angry way. And Dr. House seemed to be mocking them as he explained something that he seemed to think should have been very obvious to them. Then the two men left with 'aha' expressions on their faces and headed quickly out the door and down to the elevators.
Gregory House was chuckling after his residents when he saw her. He had the odd thought that the woman reminded him a little of someone. He frowned a bit, then turned off his TV and started fiddling with an IPOD.
Arista bit her lip nervously and went to the door of the office. How was one supposed to request entry to an office with glass doors and walls? She felt silly knocking. He could see that she was right there. But she believed in good manners. So she knocked anyway.
Dr. House did not get up. He merely nodded and waited for her to get the point. She let herself into the office. He seemed rather unkempt in jeans and an oxford shirt over a red t-shirt - Arista was certain that this was not the way an internationally-known doctor should dress. But Dr. House's desk was impeccably neat and organized. 'An odd duck, perhaps,' she thought.
"Hello... are you Dr. House?" she asked.
Dr. House raised an eyebrow. "That's what my door says."
She pushed on. "I've come to talk to you about David Walsh."
House didn't say anything at first. But Arista could tell that he was sizing her up. What she didn't know was just how much information House could gather during one of his mental reconnoitering missions.
"David is my grandson," she told him.
House's shoulders dropped as he sighed wearily. "I know." He indicated a seat in front of his desk for her.
"You... know?" Arista sat down, holding her purse in her lap, in front of her body, like a shield.
"Eyes..." he told her. "And the nose. And you look old enough to be his grandmother." 'Or great-grandmother,' he thought, but didn't say. Wilson would have been proud.
House turned around and peered out across the twin balconies to see if Wilson was still around. It was an unnecessary action, though. He knew that Wilson would have long since gone to pick David up from day camp, because the woman who ran "Mom's Taxi Service" was on vacation for two weeks. Damn. He really needed Wilson in situations like this. Wilson was excellent at damage control before the fact.
House was not. He wanted to know exactly with whom he was dealing and what he was up against, all at once, and he didn't care if he pissed anyone off to get that information. He went into "defender mode" all too easily when it came to David.
"So where have you been all his life?" He asked bluntly.
Arista understood that with this man, one needed to tread very lightly. "We live in Arizona. Phoenix." She placed her purse neatly on the edge of House's desk. "We lost track of my daughter and David around six years ago. Maria left home with David. We... had a falling out, and that was the last time we saw either of them."
"Why are you here now?" House realized that he still gripped his IPOD in one hand, and slapped it into its docking station.
Arista looked down at her hands. Sighed. "I've been looking for my daughter for a long time. I hired an investigator. Every year I say I'm going to stop having him look for her, and every year I think, 'Maybe one more year.' And this year, finally, he came up with her obituary." She looked into House's unreadable blue eyes. "Survived by her son, David."
House cursed Wilson for having insisted that they give David's mother a decent burial, for David's sake. House had wanted to pretend they didn't know the bitch and let her be buried in a potter's field, or cremated, or whatever they do with Jane Does. Wilson had insisted, and House had agreed only because their son had been through enough trauma without adding a rift between his parents into the mix. Furthermore, David had wanted to see his mother's remains, had wanted to be sure that she really was gone for good. Neither of the men wanted David's final memory of his mother to have been in a morgue. Wilson had written the brief obituary, merely to make the process complete for David. Damn.
She raised an eyebrow at House. "It doesn't say that he was her son, but the investigator talked to the funeral director, who told him what he knew about Maria and David, including the names of the people who signed the guest book at her funeral." She looked up at House with David's sad eyes and added, "David Wilson House. I assumed that he was the same David and that he'd been adopted." Arista smiled weakly. "It was rather easy to find Dr. Gregory House in Princeton."
House let his hands slide down into his lap and kept his expression neutral, or as neutral as he thought he could. That damn guest book. Why didn't they take it with them? When the funeral home director had called and asked if they had wanted the book to be mailed to them, House had declined and told the man to just toss it. "What do you want with my son?" he asked quietly, placing just the slightest emphasis on the "my son" part.
Arista understood the man's reaction, even though he'd quite obviously toned it down to nearly neutral. He was afraid that she was there to take David away, back to his biological family.
"I just want to see him."
Dr. House shook his head. "What else?"
"Nothing else."
House didn't believe her. He considered calling Wilson and telling him to stay away from the hospital, to take David home instead and wait for him there. Of course, Wilson would bring their son straight to the hospital if he knew the reason. House even thought up a convincing lie to keep them away from PPTH - a viral meningitis outbreak would work.
"You've come two thousand miles just to see your long-lost grandson and nothing else?"
"I needed to know if he was alright."
"He's alright."
"I need to see...." Arista nearly shouted. Then she lowered her voice. "We've been looking for David for years. I would just like to see him... please."
House didn't want David to see his grandmother, with every fiber of his being. But the decision was taken from him when David bounced along the corridor, walking hand-in-hand with Wilson.
Arista turned to follow the direction of House's gaze, and spotted him easily. He was a skinny little boy, too skinny for any grandmother's comfort, with her own big green eyes and plain nose. A too-thin face ended in a slightly pointed chin. David's hair was identical to the way Arista remembered her daughter's at that age - thick and a rich, dark brown. He was dressed in khaki camp shorts, the kind that little boys the world over wore, with more pockets and hardware than anyone needs, red sneakers, and a yellow t-shirt that was emblazoned with the logo for some sort of music camp. There was a knapsack that was nearly as big as his entire torso on his back, and he carried a little purple lunch box. Her grandson.
Seeing that House had a visitor - a what? - Wilson did a double take before he began to steer David towards his own office.
David wouldn't come, though. His eyes were riveted on the woman sitting in one of the hard, uncomfortable chairs in front of House's desk. Wilson tugged on the boy's hand gently. "Come on, honey. Looks like Dad's got a patient."
David pulled away and pushed through the glass door.
"Hello, David." Arista Walsh's voice was barely above a whisper.
He opened his mouth. "I..."
Wilson looked to his lover, trying desperately to find clues in his eyes.
The woman's face was familiar to him. SO familiar. But he didn't remember exactly who she was or why he suddenly felt lighthearted. He was supposed to KNOW her, he realized, but there was just no name in his brain that went with the face.
"... you...remember me, David?" The woman asked him.
Her voice was different than he recalled, but it was the sound of her voice that did it, that made him remember. The rusty hinges of his earliest infancy moved, and suddenly a word was trying to squeeze out of his mouth.
"..nnnn...." David shook his head, the way he did when he was trying not to stutter.
Arista closed her eyes and lowered her head slightly. He would remember, her grandson would remember, and that would make matters quite a lot more complicated than they already were.
"...Nanaaa...." David whispered shakily. "You're ... Nana."
Arista nodded, sighing.
Silence hung in the room for nearly a minute.
'WTF?' Wilson telegraphed to House with his eyes.
House shrugged. "Arista Walsh... James Wilson... and you already know..." He didn't finish that sentence. "Mrs. Walsh is David's grandmother," he added unnecessarily.
"Nana..." David whispered again. And then their usually shy little boy walked right up to Arista, all the way up to stand about three inches from her. "Nana..." He discovered that he had nothing to say. Nothing at all. He tried to sit down in the other visitor chair, but his backpack was in the way. "Oh!" He removed it and set it and his lunchbox down on the floor.
Arista was getting a first up-close look at her grandson. She reached out automatically and touched his cheek. He was an attractive boy, even though he hadn't been especially so as an infant. Turning his head this way, and that, she saw what she had come to see. She took her hand away, almost recoiling, and lowered her head again.
Something was off, David sensed right away. His rusty old memories of Nana had been of a lovely woman, the only person who had ever shown him any love at all in the first two years of his life. She had always smiled at him, always touched him and held him when nobody else would. He remembered having felt more her baby than his mother's. It had been a shock when it turned out that Mommy had been able to take him away, and that his Nana hadn't been able to do anything to stop her.
"Mommy took me away..." David said quietly. "I kept wanting to go back home, but we just kept going to place after place." He looked up at his grandmother. "I think I kind of forgot about you after a while, Nana."
Arista gave him a stiff-necked little nod. "You were just a baby. I'm actually surprised that you remembered at all." She made no effort to touch David, or even to look directly at him.
David lowered his head. "Nana...did you know that... she died?"
"Yes." Arista nodded. She looked at him quickly, and then lowered her eyes again. "I've been watching for news about you and your mother since you left."
David nodded.
"I've been worried."
"Is that how come your hair is so gray now? You used to have different hair," David asked bluntly. "Daddy says I'll get gray hair if I don't stop worrying."
Arista chuckled. "I don't know, David." Then she changed the subject. "Your mother was so angry when she left us, and she really needed help taking care of you."
"Yeah..." David paused, as if he were weighing what he was about to say, then pressed his lips together a little. "She didn't do a very good job, Nana. I wish she had left me, too. You're the only person who took care of me..." Then he looked up at House. "Until my dad found me."
'Damn right,' House thought, feeling a little ache from his jealous-bone. What was he, chopped liver?
"I'm glad, David. You deserve a good life, honey. I want you to be happy."
"I'm happy sometimes," David told her. "But sometimes I feel sad, too."
Arista smiled slightly. "That's normal when someone you love dies."
David stared down at his lap and said nothing. He didn't want to tell his Nana about the horrible things that had happened to him after he and Mommy had left her. He didn't know where to begin, and he didn't want to talk about sad things. He didn't want to say that he had wanted to love his mother, but that he didn't. Nana looked like she didn't need to hear things like that right now.
He looked up at his "best-beloved" Daddy for help. House's expression was unreadable, though. And his Wilson was behind him.
'Oh...' David began to think about what this situation might mean for him - having two parents who loved him, and now a grandmother who might want him back now that she'd found him. Maybe this was what was wrong. David took a mere half-minute to think about his own needs and spoke up right away.
"Nana... Did House tell you that he's my dad for real now?" He reached out, full of boyish sincerity and hopefulness. "I know you've been looking for me, but I have a new family now. I got adopted. I'm happy."
Arista's response was a blank stare.
"Daddy and Wilson take care of me now," he explained, indicating the two men with a wave. "I belong to them now because I got adopted."
When Arista still didn't respond, he tried to make his declaration a bit less harsh, saying, "I want to stay with them, but maybe we can visit each other... You know... Some kids visit their grandparents in the summer for a couple weeks..."
And now, Nana wasn't the same. He could feel that right away. She seemed about to cry, but not happy tears because she had found him. No, and she didn't seem exactly sad because of his mother, either. Whatever Nana was feeling, it was bad, but David couldn't figure out what kind of bad it was. He couldn't let this go on. His Nana had found him somehow, and he just couldn't allow this to go the wrong way.
"...Nana..." David cast about wildly in his head for something, anything to say to make this awful moment pass. "Nana ... I can play the piano, Nana."
The sad look didn't dissipate, but she did look interested again. Relieved a little, David perked up a bit himself. "I can show you. There's a piano in the auditorium. Wanna hear, Nana?" He was nearly begging now.
Wilson wanted two things now. One was to wrap his arms around his little boy and protect him from this pitiful scene. The other was to be totally alone with House, with House's long arms around him, protecting HIM from whatever awful crisis this was. "Maybe a little later, David..." he suggested quietly.
Arista smiled sadly and changed the subject, addressing his earlier suggestion. "David... we live pretty far away." She shook her head. "It's not likely that we'll get to see each other very often."
"We can!" David insisted. "We can take a plane. It's easy." He turned to House. "Isn't it easy, Daddy? We just came back from a plane trip a few weeks ago." Then he realized he didn't know where his grandmother had come from. "Where do you live?"
"In Arizona, honey. But...we're always so busy... especially your...grandfather..." Her voice had tapered down to a whisper.
House watched David's expression shift rapidly from enthusiasm to doom. Then the boy seemed to go inward for a moment.
"Pop-pop don't like me..." He murmured, speaking a phrase that must have been ingrained years ago, in baby talk. "That's why you don't want me to come. He'll be mean to us." He pulled back a bit. He turned his eyes up to meet his grandmother's once again. "It IS because of him, isn't it? ...The reason why you don't want to be friends."
Sighing, Arista clasped her purse-shield a little closer. "No, David, it's not that. Your grandfather is just not a very child-oriented person. He's funny with young children. It's not your fault." She stretched her lips into an obviously phony smile. "Maybe when you're older. He was much better when your mother was older." Then she explained to House and Wilson, "We got married when Maria was a little girl. But he was always a good provider, and he even adopted Maria so she'd have his name. But little children and Paul are like oil and water sometimes. Of course, once Maria was eleven or so, they got along just fine...well.... until the teen years set in, anyway. Then they stopped getting along again."
House had had enough of restraining himself for years to come. "So that gave them, oh... what? 2 years? Eighteen months of bliss?"
Arista had had years of dealing with a much more difficult man than House could even dream of being. She knew that the best course of action was to clam up and wait.
David didn't pay attention to his dad then. He was grasping desperately at straws. "We could talk on the phone sometimes, right?"
David's Nana nodded. "Give me your number, and I'll call you."
He grabbed at his backpack to find a scrap of paper, but Wilson was one step ahead. He'd gotten out his wallet and pulled out a school picture of David. "Use this," he said to his son as he handed the picture over.
"Oh, good idea..." David wrote their home phone number on the back of the portrait. He handed it to his grandmother.
Arista accepted the picture from David.
"You could keep it in your wallet," David suggested. "And when I get a new one, I could send it to you, and you'll know what I look like all the time."
Arista gave him her weak smile again. "Thank you."
But David waited expectantly until she realized that he wanted her to put the picture in her wallet right away. She obliged slowly, using the time to try to figure out a way to wrap this up.
"Honey... I have a plane to catch..."
'Lame...' House thought as his eyes met Wilson's. "David deserves to know why his grandmother is rejecting him." House said tersely to Arista Walsh.
"Oh! It isn't that. Of course I'm not rejecting David." Arista Walsh clasped one hand protectively to her throat. "It's just that... well, things are all settled, aren't they?"
David's face went dark, and he hung his head. "Daddy, stop it," he murmured.
House and Wilson read their boy well. He might cry now, or more likely, he would just visibly accept that his grandmother didn't want him either, and turn his pain inward. This would send David into a depression again. House wasn't having it. "No, David. You deserve to understand what this is all about." He stabbed his finger in the air at Arista. "You people have hurt this kid enough. Start talking."
"Shhh, Daddy." David was speaking just barely above a whisper. "Don't yell anymore. Please." He scooted back on his chair and drew his skinny legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knobby knees. Then he looked up at his grandmother again. "I'm really good at the piano, Nana. I'm good at school, too. And I don't get into trouble. I'm nice. People think I'm nice, really. I have three friends: Daddy, Wilson, and Lisa. They... they love me."
Wilson felt tears pricking behind his eyelids as he listened to his little boy begging his grandmother's acceptance. He glared at her, harder than House was even, willing her to give David something, anything, any little scrap of love. For God's sake.
Arista was unresponsive by now. She merely stared down at her open purse, looking totally lost.
"Nana, before you go, can you come down to the auditorium to hear me play something?"
David's Nana started to shake her head. "I ... I have a plane to catch..."
House had had enough. "Do you think you can bear to listen to your long-lost grandchild play a five-minute tune?" He shook his head.
She recoiled slightly. "Oh...of course."
David seemed like a tired little old man when he unfolded his thin frame and stood. "Okay..." He started to reach out to take his grandmother's hand to lead her down to the auditorium where Cuddy let him practice.
"Why don't you go warm up for a couple minutes, honey?" Wilson suggested. "We'll all come down in about five minutes, okay?" His plan was to get this heartless witch straight before she broke David's heart any more than she already had.
David was doing that thing with his jaw that he did when he was really upset and holding it in. "...I want... I want Nana to come NOW, Wilson."
Wilson knew that his son was afraid that Arista would just leave. That David wanted just one more chance to prove to her that he was worth something. He stood close and placed a hand on the back of the boy's neck, caressing him gently. "We'll all come down together in a few minutes, honey." He patted him between the shoulder blades. "Five minutes." He somehow managed to convey, in spite of his gentle encouragement, that there were no other options. David left.
David's two dads eyed one another over Arista's head.
'Screw making nice,' House's face declared.
'Fry the bitch,' Wilson's eyes replied.
"Why?" House asked bluntly. "He's a wonderful kid. Why are you doing this to him?"
Before she could muster an answer, Wilson added. "He really needs this connection with you, Mrs. Walsh. I think you'd be making a mistake to just leave it like this."
"I said I would call!"
Wilson crossed his arms. "But you won't, will you?" He shook his head. "He's an innocent little boy. Do you realize how much damage you're doing by waltzing in here after all these years, and then abandoning him?"
"Why did you come here at all, if you had no intention of having a relationship with David?" House was livid now. "Did you just come to soothe your guilty conscience, and to hell with how HE feels?"
"I... just ... I..." Arista seemed unable to get any words out. "I have to go." She rose and slipped her purse strap up on her shoulder.
House jumped up from his desk chair and grabbed his cane. "Oh no you don't." He gestured towards the door in the general direction of the auditorium. "You're going to attend a concert first."
Wilson tried to intervene. "Greg, you can't force... she's got a right to- "
"Yeah, everybody's got a right. His mother had a right to treat him like shit. Had a right to have him returned to his 'biological mother' after all she'd done. Had a right to abandon and starve him. What about HIS rights?" He glared directly at Arista now.
"You have the right to get up and walk away, and convince your GRANDSON that he's so worthless that even his NANA didn't want him; couldn't spend five minutes listening to him desperately trying to convince you that he's worthy of your sad-assed love. Wilson and I will pick up the pieces, and maybe when he's about forty years old, after thousands of dollars worth of therapy, he'll be okay. Is that what you're gonna do?"
Arista sighed. That was exactly what she was going to do...now. But somehow she didn't believe that Gregory House was going to allow it, no matter what his boyfriend/lover/husband/whatever said or did. She shrugged. She had no idea that her shrug was identical to David's - more right-shouldered than left. "I ... suppose I'm going to a concert."
*
David knew he was off. He wouldn't be able to play anywhere near as well as he usually could. He didn't feel like playing, anyway. But Nana was here, and he had to show her. He couldn't screw this up. She had to know he was good at music. Good at something. Good FOR something. He did a few scales, and missed two notes. Jeez, he was really sucking today. He was going to ruin everything in spite of himself.
"Concentrate," he said tightly through his teeth. "Just concentrate." David knew how to force himself to do whatever it took to make this work. He'd had plenty of practice with his mother. If he could force himself to stop stuttering, then he could play a couple tunes on the piano, for crap's sake. "Just DO it," the mean voice in his head that sounded like his mother seethed.
Again, David played his scales. He had no idea which song he would play, which one would be the very best thing he could offer. He wished his Dad could choose for him. And he didn't have any music, so he had to rely on memory, which kind of went right out the window when he was nervous or upset. At least the scales were better. Yes, he didn't miss, and he wasn't banging at the keys the way he did sometimes when he was upset. This was an improvement.
The rear doors of the auditorium opened.
David was pretty sure that it would just be Daddy and Wilson, coming to tell him that Nana had gone, but all three of them filed into the empty auditorium. Wilson, then Nana, and Daddy bringing up the rear. David looked down at the piano keys. Nana looked like a prisoner without shackles. He could tell that the only reason she came to hear him play was that Daddy and Wilson were making her.
They were finding seats in the middle of the auditorium, the place that House and David had determined was the "sweet spot" of the room. Without looking up from the piano keys, he projected, "You don't have to listen, Nana." He turned his head to look directly at her then. "You can go catch your plane."
Arista hesitated, feeling the two men on either side of her stiffen. "No...No David, you go ahead and play. I-I want to hear you."
Shrugging miserably, David did a couple more scales. Then he let his hands roam aimlessly over the keys, playing little snatches of songs.
The moment he'd said he could play, she feared this. Arista was frozen in her seat, watching her grandson rambling around on the keyboard. He was eight years old, and had all the makings of a virtuoso. The way he played, like he owned the piano, owned every note. As if he had no doubt that, once he decided he needed it, the right note would just be there for him. He didn't have to figure out what he was doing, because he knew; down to the core of his heart, he knew exactly what he was doing with the instrument.
The one best thing that music did for David was to help him remove himself from his troubles and his pain. It began to happen slowly, but somehow, as usual, that portal in his mind, where the music came blasting through like air conditioning on a hot day, opened. And then David didn't give a rat's rectum about anything but interacting with the music. He forgot about Nana for a moment. He let the music take him and soothe him.
Arista was both fascinated and horrified as she watched the little boy, her grandson, rambling somewhat aimlessly through a few songs then settling on one in particular. She had sung it to him countless times when he was an infant, and he remembered. The child remembered! David had barely been two years old when Maria had taken him, yet he remembered the soft, romantic lullaby she'd sung to him nearly every time she'd put him to bed.
"I know that song..." Wilson murmured to House. "What's it called?"
House was deep in thought, tugging absently on his lower lip with one hand as he watched their son. "'Owl and the Pussycat,'" he informed his lover.
Wilson couldn't help grinning. 'Pussycat' was his most secret nickname for House.
"Oh, don't you start," House said repressively. He wasn't really trying to squelch Wilson so much as he was gauging David's mood. And his grandmother's. Arista was paler than ever, her eyes squeezed shut, her white-knuckled hands gripping her purse like a lifeline.
The music stopped abruptly.
David simply sat on the bench. His dads watched him in profile as he let his hands slip down into his lap.
Arista rose. "That was lovely, David." She told him in a tight, shaky voice. "Thank you."
He turned his head to look at her, but said nothing at first. David had half-hoped that Nana might be so proud of him that she'd say that she'd made a mistake, and that they could be friends, after all. But he could tell that Nana was just saying polite words. He knew now that he'd been wrong, so he just waited for all of this to be over. He wanted to go home and be alone in his room for a good long time. He felt stupid and ashamed of himself for believing that his grandmother might want him, for believing that he could prove that he was good enough.
If he could just understand what this was all about, maybe he could accept this, and not feel so miserable. "Why?" he whispered softly. Then a bit louder. "Nana, WHY? Why did Mommy hate me? How come Pop-pop hated me so much?" He banged the piano keys with one small fist and spoke through gritted teeth. "How come you don't want me, either? You used to like me! Did I do something really awful when I was little?" By now, David was shouting. "What's wrong with me?"
Arista squeezed past Wilson's knees, and he let her, because surely, he thought, surely she was going to talk to David and try to comfort him and help him to understand that none of this was his fault. But she faked him out, but good, and bolted for the door, far faster than either man expected her to be able to run.
Wilson glanced over to see House, still sitting in the same position, hand on his lower lip still. But House's eyes were screwed shut as if he were wincing on David's behalf.
"Nothing!" Wilson quickly replied. "Nothing's wrong with you, David. Something's wrong with them. This isn't your fault, honey." He looked at House, silently requesting backup.
House didn't jump in with any grand declarations, though. He simply asked, "You wanna go home?"
David nodded miserably.
"Come on, then." House stood up and walked to the right aisle to wait for his son. Wilson followed, wordlessly. "You have anything pressing, Wilson?" He asked as he pulled out his cell phone.
Wilson looked at his watch. "Yeah, I'm about half an hour late for a new patient. I'll be an hour at the least." He shrugged apologetically.
House started talking, apparently to one of his team. "I'm going home. If you absolutely need me to bail you out of anything, call this line. Family emergency. Bye." He put the phone back into his pocket and automatically held out his left hand, which Wilson took, observing their usual public greeting. "See you at home."
Wilson could see straight through his lover's seemingly businesslike attitude, though. He could feel the almost imperceptible trembling of his hand that meant that House was FURIOUS, and working really hard to hold it in, for David's sake. He could see the muted blaze in House's eyes that made them look unusually dark. He knew, too, that House's leg might give them both hell tonight, because, even though House would never admit it, there was a certain amount of his pain that was psychosomatic. Wilson didn't want to go back to his office. He wanted to be with his family, to help them get through this. But he couldn't blow off his patient, who was already being kept waiting.
"I'm sorry, hon-"
"Not here," House said tersely. By then, David had made his way to them, and House placed a hand on his son's shoulder to steer him out of the auditorium.
"Wait..." Wilson knelt down in front of their boy. "Come here." He held out his arms.
But David wouldn't come. He grabbed hold of House's belt and buried his face in the man's side. Withdrawal...
"Oh David..." Wilson whispered. He felt completely helpless, had no idea how else to comfort a child after a blow like this one. Sighing, he rose and placed a hand on the crown of David's head.
"I'll be done in an hour. I'll come home then, okay?"
House nodded. David kept his face buried in his dad's side.
*
David had run straight to his room the minute that House had unlocked the door to their apartment.
House got himself a beer and sat down on the sofa in front of the blank TV set and waited. David always needed to withdraw initially, whenever he was hurt. Either the boy would come out in the next few minutes, after he'd had some time to regroup, or he'd hole up in his room until he fell asleep. Holing up in his room would mean that things were pretty bad, that David's pain was overwhelming and that he couldn't work his way out of it. If David came out on his own, things were considerably better. Either way, House knew not to interfere until he could diagnose the magnitude of things.
David perched primly on the side of his bed. He couldn't move: he felt frozen inside. 'Breathe,' he told himself. Whenever he was very upset, House would remind him to breathe slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. In through his nose, out through his mouth. In...out.
Curse Nana for reminding him that he wasn't any good. He had begun to believe that he was good enough to be loved by Daddy and Wilson and Lisa. David slammed one little fist into the mattress.
"Okay...okay-" he whispered to himself. "Everything's okay. Everything's FINE." He still had a place to live. Still had plenty of food and clothes to wear, and somebody to take care of him. "I'll be fine." Daddy and Wilson didn't know any more about him than he knew himself. Nana hadn't said what her reasons were, so for now, they didn't have any reason not to keep him. Not as long as he kept being a good kid. Not as long as they didn't know any more about him. Not as long as he was good at music, and smart and cute. He could keep pretending that he was a regular boy, and they would keep loving him. Perhaps one day Daddy and Wilson would find out why Mommy and Nana and Pop-pop didn't want him; maybe they might feel the same way. But maybe by then he'd be old enough to take care of himself.
He got up and looked at his reflection in the mirror that was attached to the inside of his bedroom door. Avoiding looking into his own eyes, he scrubbed at his face to remove the few tears he'd allowed to fall. David took off his shoes and placed them neatly in his closet, then peeled off the camp T-shirt that he wore over a plain white one.
House was pleased when his son joined him on the sofa half an hour after he'd retreated to his room. "Hey." He handed David the remote; a patent "House" appeasement gesture.
David pressed the "on" button and scooted back until his feet lost contact with the floor, and his back was resting against the sofa. He started flipping channels.
House tentatively placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "David-"
David shrugged his dad's hand away. "I'm okay." He didn't want to be touched. If Daddy touched him now, he knew he would splinter into a million pieces, and cry forever.
"Okay." House propped his feet on the coffee table and watched the channels fly by.
*
The rest of the afternoon was horrid; Wilson couldn't keep his mind on his patient at all. He kept mentally 'checking out,' as he wondered how his guys were doing, how David was feeling. Whether House was being gentle and sensitive enough, or if both his fragile-hearted loves were skillfully ignoring what had just come to pass.
Wilson was even later than he'd expected to be; one of his long-term patients chose to have a serious crisis. He sent a quick text message to House on his way to the ER. 'WIL B L8R. HOW R U 2?'
House texted him back, 'OK. COME HOME WHEN U CN.'
Wilson finally made it home after 9PM. He hated missing the evening with his guys, especially this evening, when he was needed at home. Well, technically not HOME, since Wilson still had the apartment, and he still technically slept there a couple days each week. But more often than not, Wilson went to House's place nearly every day, even if only for a short time, because that felt like home.
He adored coming home to them, adored having a lover and a child to come home to. House usually waited up for him on the sofa, where he watched TV and dozed. If Wilson was very late, House would go to bed, but he'd make sure to sleep on Wilson's side, or to sprawl lawlessly across the whole bed so that Wilson would have to wake him. Wilson knew this meant that House WANTED to be awakened, even though he usually grumbled half-heartedly about it.
Tonight, they were both snoring on the sofa. House was sitting in the right corner, with his legs propped on the coffee table. David was in his lap - well, he was sitting on House's left thigh, with his skinny knees drawn up so that his feet were flat on the sofa cushion. Even as he dozed, House supported the boy's upper body in his arms. If there hadn't been the awful crap with David's grandmother earlier, Wilson would have merely sat there for a while and enjoyed the endearing sight of them. But knowing what he did now, he only felt pangs of sadness deep in his gut.
"Greg," Wilson whispered, touching his lover's bicep. "Hey, wake up."
House took a deeper breath and opened his eyes. Wilson loved watching House wake up when he wasn't in pain, especially when they were alone in bed. There was a sweetness that would disappear after a minute or two. House would give Wilson a little smile and reach out to stroke his face, or say something just...just nice. Then all his defenses would kick in, and it would be nice, still, but not nearly as sweet.
"Jimmy..."
"Hey..." Wilson held out his arms. "Let me take him." As House transferred their boy into the other man's arms, he gave him a little peck on the lips. Wilson's sad smile brought him to full alertness.
"What's up?" House asked him.
Wilson shook his head. "Bedroom. Let me tuck him in first."
By the time Wilson joined him five minutes later, House had lain out fresh pajama pants for his lover (Translation: "I want you here tonight."), and had changed into his own nightclothes. Still in his suit, sans tie, Wilson sat on the bed and pulled a little white envelope out of his inside jacket pocket.
"What's this?" House turned the envelope over and opened it. He recognized the school picture of David - the one he'd given his grandmother. There was another picture, too, of David's Nana and a man.
*
Lisa Cuddy had come to Wilson's office late that afternoon after he'd finally sent his new patient down to radiology to get new films done. Wilson had planned to wait around and read the films himself before heading home.
"Wilson, did you or House drop these?" She held out the two photos. "They were at the nurses' station in the clinic. Nobody seemed to know where they came from. One is of David."
Wilson felt the pit of his stomach sink. That horrible witch. She'd probably just thrown it away the minute she was out of their sight. He took the pictures - definitely the same one of David; their phone number was on the back. The other was a rather older studio photo of a much-younger Arista Walsh...standing behind a man. Probably her husband, the infamous 'Pop-pop' whom David dreaded. He looked stern, in spite of the smile on his face. And he was holding an alto saxophone.
"David's grandparents," Wilson explained.
"No shit, Sherlock," Cuddy commented. "Anyone can see where he gets those sweet little ears of his." She waved casually, and left Wilson's office.
Wilson glanced down at the picture of David's grandparents. Arista's hair completely covered her ears. Oh god.
*
"Jesus Christ..." House whispered as he stared at the image of David's grandfather.
Wilson watched as his lover's brilliant brain went into overdrive.
"Makes sense..." House murmured. "...didn't get along until she was eleven, then didn't get along again during her teen years." He shook his head. "He sexually abused his teenaged stepdaughter and got her pregnant. No wonder David's mother was so fucked up. That would make anyone want to do drugs. Then the drug habit forced her into prostitution - it's been statistically shown that a large percentage of prostitutes were sexually abused girls. Who develop drug habits that drive them further and further into prostitution."
"That poor girl," Wilson muttered. "That cop showed me her driver's license; she was only 24 years old."
House shook his head. "Damn..."
"I'm thinking that the grandmother had a suspicion, but wasn't absolutely sure," Wilson said as he stared down at the man in the photo with David's ears. "And when she saw David, she freaked."
House scoffed. "Right, like that could go on in her home without her knowledge, on some level. Do you think Maria Walsh's behavior was NORMAL while she was living with her parents, having sex-possibly raped-by her stepfather? Carrying her incest baby to term? Looking at him every day?" He shoved the pictures back into the envelope, grabbed his cane, and rose from the bed. "D'you think David's ears were any different when he was an infant?"
"What are you...?" Wilson followed him out to the living room.
"The box," House demanded with a nod towards the silver box where the morphine and the Xanax were locked away.
Wilson got it down silently and pulled his key ring out of his pocket to unlock the strongbox.
*
David felt guilty. He was a problem-boy again. Everything was all fine again, and then Nana had to show up and ruin things, right in the middle of one of Daddy's cases. And Daddy had to drive him home instead of doing his job. David wondered if Lisa would be mad about it; if Daddy would be in trouble now for leaving the hospital yesterday.
He turned in his seat to watch his dad, gauge his mood and figure out if he, David, could fix things. Daddy must have felt the radar from his eyes, because he turned to glance at David then. When they came to a traffic light, he turned to look at David again. Reaching over his head, House grabbed the end of David's seatbelt and clicked it into the latch.
"Sorry," David whispered. "Guess I forgot." He could feel the nasty, whispery voice starting up in the back of his mind again, and clenched his teeth to hold it at bay. "I'm sorry."
House just placed his hand on top of David's head and held it there for a moment. Then the light changed, and he needed both hands to drive again.
It wasn't long before David realized that Daddy was not heading towards his music camp at all. That was a little scary. What if this was the last straw, and now that Daddy knew how much his family hated him, maybe Daddy was having second thoughts? No. Stupid. Probably, Daddy was just thinking. He liked to drive, or do other things when he was thinking.
"Daddy?"
House glanced over at his son again. "Yeah?"
David hesitated for a moment. "Daddy, what are you thinking about?"
House didn't miss a beat. "I'm thinking about your 'family of origin.'"
David knew what that meant. He'd heard Daddy and Wilson say 'family of origin' before, when they were talking about David's past. He sighed.
"I'm thinking that probably something very unpleasant was going on in that family, David. Something that started long before you were ever born," House finally said.
David was surprised. He had been sure that whatever made his mother so angry, whatever made his grandfather hate him, and his Nana not want him anymore was all his fault, somehow. He was sure that the problem was all him, David. Problem boy. "Like what, Daddy?"
House shrugged. "I don't know, buddy. But I'm sure of one thing: none of this is your fault. You're eight years old. There isn't anything an eight-year-old can do that is so horrible that his whole family would react to him the way yours has to you." He shook his head in disgust. "No, there isn't a damn thing wrong with you, David. If they're angry about something that has to do with you, it's something THEY did. They're just taking it out on you."
David looked down at his lap. He didn't really understand how that worked, this thing that Daddy was talking about. "How do you know? Kids can do bad things, too. Sometimes, on the news, they tell about how a kid did something really bad." He clenched his hands into fists. He hadn't meant to say anything that might make his dad start thinking that he might really be 'no good,' but now he couldn't stop himself. "What if I hurt somebody, or even killed them, and just don't remember because I was too little- "
"DAVID!" House had grabbed his arm and squeezed it firmly. "Just shut up a minute, okay?" Then House pulled into a parking space alongside the road, and turned in his seat to look at his son.
"I know because your grandmother hasn't seen you since you were two. At two, you barely have the hand-eye coordination to drink your milk out of a cup, let alone do damage to someone else."
Okay, that made sense. David looked up at House, into his deep blue eyes. "Okay."
House turned back around and stared through the windshield at nothing for a moment. "I don't like to talk about my family..." He said softly. "... my own family of origin."
David sometimes wondered about his dad's family. There had been two phone calls from House's mother during the months that David had lived with him. But the calls were short and sweet, and Daddy only seemed to be answering yes or no questions for the most part. David had wanted to know everything about House, because he loved him, but he'd somehow sensed that it wouldn't be wise to ask questions about his parents.
"I was a lot like you when I was a kid, David," House said, smiling slightly.
"Really?" David was now intrigued enough to put his Nana problem aside.
House nodded. "Yeah. I liked to learn things. I read all the time. I loved music."
"You still do," David pointed out.
"Yeah, well...my dad didn't think it was very cool. He wanted a different kind of son."
"What kind?"
"Uh... the kind that plays football... and loves guns... and goes hunting and..." He wasn't sure that David would understand.
"...and likes girls?"
Geez, he really walked into that one. "Actually, I do like girls. But I like Wilson, too." He shook his head. "My dad doesn't even know about that yet. Anyway...he's a real tough guy...and he spent a lot of time trying to make me as tough as he thought I should be."
David removed his seatbelt and sat sideways, drawing his legs up underneath him as he sifted through the information that Daddy was sharing. House's dad didn't like him because he wasn't a 'tough guy.' David thought that his dad was plenty tough. Tough and brave and strong. He felt safer with House than with anyone else he knew.
"He hated that I loved music and knowledge instead of guns and footballs. So he punished me. A lot."
Punished? House's dad punished him? Oh... David felt anger welling up inside him. It was easier to be angry on his dad's behalf, rather than on his own. "Did he... hit you?"
House pressed his lips together. He didn't want to go where this was going, wished he hadn't started this conversation. But he needed his son to understand, to put his own abuse into perspective, so he plowed on. "Yeah. And other stuff... but that's not important, other than the fact that it happened. He used to punish me for every little thing I did that he thought was wrong, and the punishments were harsh and unnecessary."
David looked down. He wanted to ask, wanted to know what had happened to his daddy, but he could tell that House really didn't want to give details. So he didn't ask. "Okay."
"The real reason for all the punishment, in my case, was that my dad was a harsh, cruel man. He'd been raised by cruel people, so he didn't know how to be any other way. Then he joined the military, and he thought he could manage his family the military way - all orders and obedience." House grimaced. "But then I came along. He wanted me to be tough, like him. But I wasn't. I never was. I guess I wasn't exactly Marines material."
David shrugged. He was feeling pissed off about someone not liking HIS daddy. "I'm glad you're not Marines material. You prolly woulda turned me in to the cops."
House chuckled. "Anyway, I wasn't the kind of son he wanted, and we spent the whole time I was growing up in his house butting heads. I tried to do the things he wanted, but I hated it - hated guns and hunting and going around acting tough and trying to be spit-and-polish all the time. And he let me have my books and my music, but he put me down every chance he could because of them." He wondered if David was fully understanding what he was trying to convey. "Imagine if Wilson didn't like you because you're so good at music, and he kinda sucks at it..."
David wanted Daddy to unsay those words, even if they were just "for instance." "Wilson likes it when I do music," he told House. "It doesn't matter that he isn't good at it."
"Right, but suppose Wilson and I insisted on making you forget music and grow up to be a doctor, because we're doctors, even if you really don't want to."
"If you and Wilson really wanted me to, maybe I would try really hard..." David started to say, but he knew it wouldn't work. "I guess not."
"Yeah, you might be able to do it, but you'd hate yourself. You wouldn't be David."
"No."
House looked down at his son then, to make his point. "And suppose, because you decided to be yourself, Wilson and I punished you and made fun of you?"
David allowed his head to drop sideways until his temple was resting on the 'vette's bucket seat. "I can't make the music go away."
"What do you think a family like mine should have done?"
David thought a few minutes. He didn't know how to solve a problem like this. "How come he didn't just like you the way you were? Your dad should just get over it."
House nodded. "Good answer, David." He patted his son's bony knee. "So...if there's something your family has a problem with about you - they should just grow up and get over it. I came into the world with a curious mind and an aptitude for music. I had no control over that." He gripped the gear shift with one hand gently. "It was my dad's problem that he couldn't accept me for who I was. Not mine."
"That's the reason you helped me, isn't it, Daddy?" David asked suddenly. It all made sense. "You helped me because you know what it's like."
Lowering his head, House looked down at his hand on the gearshift, which David had grasped. "I...used to imagine that someone would come and take me away," he admitted. "Someone who understood me, and liked the kind of kid I was."
They sat silently for a few more minutes. Then House started up the engine again and pulled out into traffic.
"Anyways..." David said several minutes later as they headed towards his day camp. "Anyways, you got Wilson now...and me. And WE love you," he declared fiercely.
House smiled. David loved his dad's most genuine smiles, the ones that made his face dimple in spite of the semi-beard he grew. "Yeah..." House replied. "I'm lucky to have my new family." He glanced over at his son hopefully.
David was surprised that, in spite of all his efforts to control himself over the past 24 hours, tears spilled down his thin cheeks. He didn't want to be crying, but he suddenly couldn't stop himself, even if someone had been holding a gun to his dad's head.
House smiled a little. "You wanna go to camp today?"
"No," David sobbed. "I wanna stay with you, Daddy."
House revved the 'vette's engine. "Okay."
*
Epilogue:
Curiosity about the forbidden silver box got the better of David, eventually. Months later, he waited one night until he heard Daddy and Wilson making love in their bedroom. They would be so distracted with one another, David thought, that he could probably parade several zebras through the house without calling attention to himself. He stole Wilson's keys from his jacket and silently carried a chair over to the bookshelf.
He was disappointed that the only contents of the strongbox were medicines. 'Morphine.' Morphine was for pain, David knew, and sometimes Daddy's leg hurt worse than other times. So no big mystery there. And half a bottle of the Xanax that he hadn't taken in ages. No gun. An envelope. He almost didn't look inside. But he did, and saw the pictures. THE picture, the very one he had given Nana - it still had the phone number in his own handwriting on the back. And one of Nana and Pop-pop.
He didn't know how his picture had been returned, but he knew why it was hidden away. Nana had given the picture back because she wanted them to know that she didn't want to see him ever again. Daddy and Wilson hadn't wanted him to feel hurt any more, so they hid it. But why would Nana want him to have her picture, if she didn't want to know him anymore? He puzzled over that for a moment or two before he shrugged it off, put everything away, and went back to bed.
It wasn't until several years later that David recalled that the man in the photo had been holding a saxophone.
FIN
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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 NBC/Universal, 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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