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The Writing on the Wall - Part Ten
by Evilida
Wilson opened the door to let his brother in. Roy had sounded agitated on the telephone and he was obviously still upset. His fists were clenched and his eyes were wild. Wilson knew from experience that when Roy was really angry, he was capable of violence. He remembered when a discussion about Roy's grades had gotten out of hand and Roy had pushed their father through a plate glass window. Then he had jumped on Mr. Wilson, who was still dazed and unable to defend himself, and had started to pound his head into the dirt, heedless of the broken glass. All three of them, Jimmy, Mikey and their mother, had not been able to drag him off his father. Finally, one of their neighbours had turned the hose on Roy. Roy had jumped up ready to transfer his rage to this new foe, but the neighbour had prudently retreated to his own home and called the police. Jimmy Wilson had always accepted that his brother had an explosive temper and that everyone had to be careful not to set him off. He had never blamed Roy for what he did when he wasn't in control, and he had never considered how frequently Roy got his way just because other people were afraid of sparking one of his fits of rage. Roy's uncontrollable temper had been very useful to him over the years, which perhaps explained why the anger management classes he had been forced to take in prison had not changed his behaviour at all.
Roy glared when he saw House. "What's he doing here?"
"House just came by to drop off some papers," Wilson said. "He'll be leaving soon."
House was going to contradict him, but he caught Wilson's warning glance and nodded his head. He noticed the low calm voice Wilson used to speak to his brother, and how careful Wilson was not to come too close or to touch him. Wilson handed his brother a beer and a bag of pretzels from the mini-fridge, always staying a full arm's length away. He tossed House a can of beer without even looking at him.
"Don't I get any pretzels?" House complained.
Roy paced the room, eyes darting into every corner of the room. When his glance fell on House, he frowned. Wilson immediately tried to distract his brother.
"Would you like a sandwich?" he asked Roy."I have some thin-sliced smoked turkey and some Swiss cheese. If you want something else, we can get it from room service."
"Turkey's fine," Roy said, turning toward his brother, "but not too much mayonnaise. You always put on too much mayonnaise and not enough mustard."
House would have mocked Wilson for his servile behaviour, but his relief at no longer being the focus of the ex-convict's attention was too great. Wilson was obviously more sensitive to Roy's aura of imperfectly suppressed rage, but House could feel it too. It was like being in the same room with an unpredictable wild animal.
Roy took the spot that House had vacated. He turned up the sound on the television and randomly began switching channels using the remote control.
"Where's the porn?" he asked.
"You have to go to the pay services menu," Wilson said. "I'll show you. Which one do you want?"
"Nah," Roy said. "It's creepy watching porn with other guys in the room. You got HBO?"
Wilson handed his brother his turkey sandwich and switched the t.v. to HBO, where Tony was arguing with Carmella. He waited a moment until Roy appeared to be engrossed in the Sopranos' conversation, and then grabbed House by the arm and dragged him into the bathroom. He left the door partly ajar, so that he could see Roy and spoke in an urgent whisper.
"You have to go," he said. "Roy's in a bad mood. Anything you say could set him off."
"I said I wasn't leaving," House said, "and I'm not."
"What are you going to do - protect me? I'm sure Roy is going to be really afraid of a man who walks with a cane. The prospect of being on the receiving end of a really cutting remark just terrifies him."
"You're afraid of him."
"Of course I'm afraid of him. When he's in this kind of mood, if you say the wrong thing, if you look him at him the wrong way, he blows up. You pride yourself on your lack of tact! I feel like I'm stuck between a match and a keg of dynamite."
"I won't say anything. I'll be quiet as a mouse."
"I saw him break a man's jaw for backing the wrong football team," Wilson warned. "He shoved my father through a plate glass window for grumbling about his report card. We're eight stories up. If he shoves you through a window..."
"He did break your arm, didn't he?"
"I said before, I had a concussion and I don't remember. It doesn't matter anyway."
"Of course it matters," House said. "You're like a trained dog. He's conditioned you to fear him and do whatever he wants."
"If you leave now, I promise you can come back and insult me as much as you like another time. You can call me a miniature poodle if you want."
Wilson, who had been keeping an eye on his brother, now looked at House directly. House refused to back down. Wilson shrugged his shoulders in a way that eloquently expressed his annoyance with his best friend and his helplessness when confronted by such obduracy.
"The Sopranos is over," he said. "I'd better get back to Roy. Stay here."
House would have followed Wilson, but a stern glance from the oncologist kept him in place. He watched through the door while Wilson cleared away Roy's plate and fetched him another beer. Roy wasn't pleased with HBO's next offering and was clicking through the channels again. Finally, Roy switched off the television and threw the remote control down. While Wilson was occupied, looking in the mini refrigerator for something else that Roy might like, House quietly stepped out of the bathroom.
"Your friend Tritter dropped by my apartment today," Roy said to Wilson. "He was rummaging through my things."
"I know what that feels like," House said. "Some nasty little sneak thief was in my apartment not too long ago. Of course, he did more than rummage. He ransacked the place."
Roy ignored House. The diagnostician was of no importance to him. He continued to address Wilson.
"I don't know whether I'm angrier with you or with Tritter. Of course, without you I would never have met Tritter, so that put you on top. But then Tritter came to my own home and insulted me. I've been sitting here trying to decide which one of you deserves to be hurt the most."
"You've met Tritter?" Wilson asked.
"Of course, I've met him," Roy said. "He's been threatening me to get at you and House. I thought your boyfriend here might have figured that out. He's not as gullible as you are."
"I told him," House confirmed. "He didn't want to believe me. He wanted to help you anyway."
"Jimmy always wants to help," Roy said, "but he always makes everything worse. Anyway, Tritter offered me a deal. Get something on you and he'd make my parole violation disappear. Sounded like a good deal to me, especially since I didn't have any choice.
The problem is that you don't give away your secrets easily. I taught you that. When you were a kid I got you to admit you had a crush on Paula. Then I spent an entire summer teasing you about it. Do you remember that? It's a good lesson to learn. Anything you say can be used against you. Not just in court, in real life too.
Unfortunately, Tritter's timetable is just too tight. I know I can get you to tell me all your dirty little secrets - you can't hide anything from me. It would just take a bit of time though and Tritter's already getting impatient. Besides, I'm beginning to think he can't be trusted. I think he'd promise me anything just to get something that could be used to destroy you. "
"I assume that you're telling us this because you've decided to make a deal with us instead of Tritter," House said.
"Precisely," said Roy."I get you Tritter and you set me up in another state. Fifty thousand dollars each should do it. Don't say it's too much because I know you're both doctors and you can afford it."
The next morning House was having a spirited discussion with the manager of his bank branch. House had just finished explaining that the money in House's bank account did, in fact, belong to House, and that he could do whatever he wanted with it, up to and including making little paper airplanes from twenty dollar bills and sailing them off his office balcony, when Cameron knocked on his office door. House told the banker to have the money he had requested ready or he would transfer all his business to another bank and then hung up. He called for Cameron to enter.
"The patient's leaving," she said. "She's no longer vomiting and her electrolyte levels are back to normal. They're taking her back to Green Hill."
"Fine," said House.
"But we don't know what's wrong with her!"
"Correction, you don't know what's wrong with her. I do. She has cyclical vomiting syndrome. It's every bit as unpleasant as it sounds but not life-threatening."
"But if it is cyclical, wouldn't she have suffered more than one episode?"
"There is always a first time," House said, "and we don't know that it is her first episode. Foreman couldn't get a complete history from the patient, so he got all the information from her parents. She could have had earlier episodes that she didn't mention."
"CVS is a childhood illness," said Cameron.
"It's more frequent in children," House agreed," but there are cases of CVS in adults. It's associated with migraine and panic attacks. Leonora has a family history of migraines. Her stepmother told me that her Leonora's mother had migraines all her life."
"There's no proof though."
"The proof is that she doesn't have anything else wrong with her," House argued. "Talk to her; ask her if she's had other episodes in the past. Maybe she thought she had bouts of stomach flu or food poisoning."
Cameron still looked unconvinced.
"Tell her to start keeping a diary. Sometimes there's a trigger to the vomiting attacks. If there is a pattern, she might be able to spot the trigger and reduce the frequency of attacks."
"I don't think we've explored all the options," she said. "There are other possibilities."
"Are you annoyed because her diagnosis isn't dramatic enough for you?" he asked sarcastically. "Would subjecting Leonora to half a dozen painful tests and a couple of unnecessary surgeries make it more interesting? Would that prove to you I'm taking her seriously despite the fact she's as loony as a Canadian dollar?"
"I'll ask her about previous episodes." Cameron said in a small tight voice. She shut the door behind her.
Roy and James Wilson were having dinner in a restaurant off the freeway. James Wilson knew that his brother was wearing a wire, and that every word they said was being transmitted to Detective Tritter. It made him feel like an actor, as if an entire audience was listening to him order apple pie. He worried that his voice might sound artificial. Roy, in contrast, seemed to be enjoying himself. It made Wilson wonder how much of the brother he remembered had been performance and how much had been real.
"The pie here is really good," Roy said, "but you should have ordered the pecan."
"I like apple."
"Well, apple's kind of dull. Pecan's better. Anyway, we were talking about what you've been up to while I've been gone."
"Yes," said Wilson.
"The last time I saw you, you had just divorced Michelle and married Bonnie."
"That's right. Bonnie and I got married, and then we got divorced."
Wilson found it uncomfortable to talk about his personal life with Tritter listening, even though he'd gone over the situation with Roy and House and they'd all agreed on what he was going to say. He found it difficult to picture himself telling all these intimate details of his life to Roy. Why would he confide all these secrets to another person? Why would anyone? The role of confessor just didn't seem to fit him. Roy made expansive gestures, indicating that Wilson should elaborate and provide more details.
"Yes, I was unfaithful to her, and we divorced," Wilson said.
The waitress came with two pieces of pie and two cups of coffee. Wilson smiled warmly at her, welcoming the interruption, and she wished she'd given him a bigger slice of pie. Then Wilson spotted House at the restaurant door. He hadn't known House was coming; they hadn't arranged it, but Wilson was happy to see him. He stood up and waved him over. House sat next to Wilson and regarded the two pieces of pie. After a second's thought he grabbed the pecan pie and a fork and took a bite before Roy could protest.
"Another pecan pie and another coffee, please," Wilson ordered, taking a bite of apple.
The waitress left.
"What were you two talking about?" House asked.
"My infidelity."
"To Michelle, Bonnie or Julie?"
"Bonnie. I wasn't unfaithful to Julie."
"What about that nurse?"
"Having dinner together is not being unfaithful. It's eating. Everybody eats."
"You were all dressed up. You were wearing a tie that brings out the colour of your eyes."
House batted his eyes to demonstrate. Wilson would have laughed, but he was afraid of choking on his pie. Roy frowned. He was supposed to be in charge of this conversation.
"I always wear a tie to work. Just because you dress like a slob all the time."
The waitress returned with Roy's pie and coffee. Wilson gave her another smile, but Roy just glowered at her.
"Wilson's quite the ladies' man, aren't you Wilson?" House prompted, returning Wilson to the prepared script.
Wilson nodded, and then remembered that Tritter couldn't hear a nod.
"Yes, I am," he said emphatically. "I have had many affairs with my co-workers at the hospital."
"Nurse Billings." House said.
"Who?" mouthed Wilson. He couldn't remember a Nurse Billings.
"Anaesthesiology," House mouthed back. Now, Wilson remembered her. A drunken kiss under the mistletoe; he was separated from Bonnie and Nurse Billings was trying to make her boyfriend jealous.
"Naomi from the gift shop."
Wilson frowned, because he actually had had a brief affair with Naomi and he had thought, until that moment, that nobody knew about it.
"And, of course, Cuddy."
Wilson was going to protest that he had never slept with Lisa Cuddy, but realized in time that he was supposed to be a heartless womanizer.
"Lisa Cuddy, your boss!" said Roy, pretending to be surprised.
"That's how I got my job," Wilson said, improvising wildly. "I slept my way to the top. I have incriminating photos of Lisa Cuddy which I keep in a very safe place."
House wasn't sure he liked this detail. Would Tritter believe it? He hit Wilson's leg with his cane to warn him to keep to the script.
"Wilson's also slept with lots of his female patients, haven't you Wilson?"
"I'm admitting nothing," said Wilson.
Wilson had practiced this line over and over again. He sounded like a man who had to plenty to admit to but was too shrewd to say anything in front of witnesses. Wilson looked at House, hoping desperately that he would not mention Grace. He didn't need to worry. House wasn't going to mention her in front of Roy and Tritter.
"I don't believe it," Roy said. "When I knew you, you were too scared to talk to girls. Now suddenly you're this seducer."
"I have letters," Wilson said. "Steamy letters and photos too. You'd be surprised at the photos. He's seen them."
"I've seen them," House confirmed, "Hot stuff."
"Isn't it a bit risky, keeping them in your hotel room? What about the housekeeping staff finding them?"
"That's why I don't keep them in my hotel room. They're in my storage locker. House saw them when I took him out to borrow some of my furniture."
"After all my furniture was destroyed by some moronic criminal," House said, looking straight at Roy. "The storage facility is out near the waste treatment plant."
Wilson relaxed. He had delivered all his lines successfully. He called the waitress over to settle up the bill.
"I've got to go. I want to check up on Hector before the kennel closes."
House and Roy both glared at him. Concern for an ex-wife's pet wasn't in character for a heartless womanizer.
"The woman who owns the kennel has the hots for me," Wilson said, recovering nicely.
He nimbly stepped away from the table in case House decided to hit him with his cane again. He thought he'd done quite well despite his nervousness. He could have been an actor, if he weren't already an oncologist.
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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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