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Adverse Events
by Jane Carnall
Princeton Plains Teaching Hospital currently owned 43 slaves: janitors, secretaries, personal assistants, and three lab technicians who had gone overboard on their student loans.
Every three months a representative from the Office of Trade and Industry visited PPTH, toured slave quarters, interviewed three randomly-chosen slaves, and finished up by going through a checklist with the Dean of Medicine over every slave acquired or discharged from the PPTH since the OTI's last visit: four new, three left, and when the seventh checklist had been ticked Cuddy stood up. "I have an urgent appointment with - "
"One more," the OTI representative said cheerily. "Quite a coup for you! The asset James Evan Wilson."
Cuddy sat down again. "The what?" she stared at the representative. She had just spent over an hour with him. "Wait. Let me see your ID."
"What?"
"Oh, never mind," Cuddy said, and raised her voice. "Richard! Doctor House, in my office, now!"
"Doctor Cuddy, I really need to have your attention for this last checklist," the OTI representative said. "PPTH acquired him only one month ago."
"How did House get to the OTI? That looks like a real ID. Did he mug the real OTI representative?"
"Doctor Cuddy, I really need to run through the checklist for all the new assets, including James Evan Wilson."
The door swung open. House must have had the OTI interview timed, because he couldn't have got from the Diagnostics department or even the clinic in that time. He stood in the doorway leaning on his cane and smiling, showing his teeth.
"Are we talking about the asset PPTH leases from me?"
"Yes," the OTI representative said, with relief. "James Evan Wilson? Can you help me with this checklist, Doctor House?"
"I think I can," House said. "Wilson, asset 9973W1969028, enslaved for debt July 2008, released to labour productively 16th August 2008, leased by PPTH at a very reasonable rate, present owner Gregory House."
"Does he live in slave quarters here?"
"No, at my address. They've been inspected by the area OTI, who will also affirm that Wilson gets fed regularly, sleeps well, and that I only beat him when he richly deserves it. Here's the certificate. Sealed, signed, and stamped."
House hadn't stopped smiling. The OTI guy said with clear approval, "If only more slave owners took their responsibilities as seriously as you do, Doctor House."
"Thank you," House said, and beamed wider. "That's just the kind of guy I am. Where's this checklist?" He glanced over it. "I just answered section one, section two isn't relevant because he's privately owned, section three: he's non-practicing Jewish, I don't make him eat bacon, section four, yes, yes, and yes."
"Excellent. Sign here please."
House signed. The OTI guy beat a retreat.
"Well," House said. "Nice talking to you, Doctor Cuddy, gotta go..."
"If you leave this office before giving me an explanation, you're fired."
"If I'm fired, I'm taking my assets with me." House smirked. "And only one of them is circumcised."
Cuddy stared at him, mouth open. "How... how... how on Earth did this happen?
=HMD=HMD=HMD=
Sam and Bonnie and Julie got together once or twice a year to get drunk, eat Chinese food, and abuse James Wilson. This time, however, their breast-beating was altogether more contrite.
"If only we hadn't all complained when the alimony stopped."
"If only I hadn't reported him as a mortgage defaulter."
"If only he'd paid the fine when Hector bit that delivery guy."
"If only he hadn't got so obsessed with that Amber woman."
"If only she hadn't died! She'd have been a member of the ex-Mrs Wilson club by this time next year and we could play bridge."
"If only he'd paid attention to the collection agency letters."
But it was Bonnie who said what they were all thinking:
"If only we'd thought of buying him before House did!"
=HMD=HMD=HMD=
"Just because he got into a little debt?" Cuddy said, appalled.
"No." House was momentarily serious. "Because you let him take two months leave after Amber died. And you told me to leave him alone. And because he was already in a lot of debt. Alimony payments to Sam and Bonnie, mortgage payments to Julie, storage payments for his stuff, and hotel bills for a year. Plus he paid for Amber's funeral and he took on her apartment. And then he shut himself up and ignored letters, phone calls, citations, and debt collectors, until the OTI showed up and collected him for sale. So I bought him."
"How did you know he was for sale?"
"He rang me from the van before they confiscated his phone. After that I just had to find out where he was, how much they were asking for him, and get him back to work here as my lease before your two months of grief leave ran out."
"House, did you seriously imagine I wouldn't find out about this?"
"No, in fact I think I just demonstrated that I knew exactly when you'd find out about this."
"The hospital will take over Wilson's lease."
"The hell it will."
"That's a condition of your continued employment here."
"Wilson's my property. I bought him. You can't have him. I can put him to work at any hospital I want. I can make him work as a janitor if I want - "
"OTI would object to that," Cuddy said, having sat through too many meetings in which slaves had presented a case that they were being put to work for which they were over-qualified and they deserved a higher rate of return.
"Only if Wilson complains about it," House said. "He cooks for me, he cleans for me, he provides me with sexual satisfaction like you can only dream of, and he's mine."
"House," Cuddy said, suddenly seeing the point. "You were that desperate to keep him as your friend?"
House gave her a big-eyed blue look of complete alienation and hurt. Cuddy was very nearly immune to that by now. But not quite. House said flatly "You can have him as a department head so long as you keep paying a hundred and thirty thousand a year on the lease," turned round, and left the office.
=HMD=HMD=HMD=
Cuddy went to see Wilson. He was in his office. He looked shellshocked.
"The OTI guy just visited," he told Cuddy.
"Wilson, why didn't you tell me you were having money problems?"
"I don't know," Wilson said, looking uncomfortable. "But it's too late now. Cuddy, the OTI guy - do I have to see him?"
"Not from now on, not unless your name gets drawn to be one of the three he interviews," Cuddy said, automatically. "Wilson - James - the hospital can take on your ownership, we can force a buy from House, you don't have to put up with this!"
"I'm all right," Wilson said. He still looked shellshocked. "Cuddy, you don't know what he did to me. I can't go through that again."
"House said you were having to provide him with ... " Cuddy's voice trailed off. She found herself looking Wilson over appraisingly, like she would any male slave trained for sexual services. She caught herself doing it and stopped, but not before she noticed that he'd lost weight, toned up, was dressed more attractively, but sitting uncomfortably at his desk, as if ... as if someone had...
"Not House!" Wilson said. "I'm used to House. I can deal with House. The OTI guy, Cuddy, he..."
"What?" Cuddy was suddenly concerned. "Tell me." Every detail. "I'll make sure he doesn't do it again."
"Three times, Cuddy!" Wilson's eyes were huge and brown and wounded in his pale face. "His mom, his brother, and his cat, they all died of three different kinds of cancer, and he wanted to tell me about each one." He buried his face in his hands. "Sometimes I really hate being an oncologist!"
=HMD=HMD=HMD=
Cameron found out. She left abolition leaflets on House's desk.
Cameron told Chase, who was supportive about the abolition campaign, and asked House privately if there was any chance he could borrow Wilson for an evening.
"He costs more than you could afford," House said.
Foreman found out. "People who are stupid about debt deserve to get sold," he said. But he started buying coffee and bearclaws for Wilson.
Taub found out. Wilson's sale had meant both Bonnie and Sam had received a lump sum in lieu of alimony, and Julie had got the rest of her mortgage paid off. Lewd rumours were circulating (mostly started by Chase) about Wilson's being loaned out to provide sexual satisfaction to dozens of women. Taub began eyeing House wistfully and wondering if Rachel would even notice if he became House's property.
Kutner and Thirteen both seemed too wrapped up in their own issues to care, though both of them were nice to Wilson when they encountered him.
"I wonder if they'd like it if you loaned me to them," Wilson suggested, eating a bearclaw in House's office.
House shrugged, taking the bearclaw away from Wilson, tearing it in half, giving half back, and munching on the rest. "Hate to break it to you, Doctor Panty-peeler, but they've both seemed quite resistant to your shop-soiled charms."
Wilson smirked. "But they could hardly refuse a loan from their boss, could they?"
=HMD=HMD=HMD=
House had thought for four weeks and two days that the phone call he made to Amber that got her to the bar, that got her killed in the bus accident, was going to always be the worst phone call ever.
Then Wilson phoned. He sounded barely coherent, and House thought he was drunk. Then a clear crisp voice came over the phone; "We apologise for this call: the asset will not be allowed to disturb you further."
When House went round to Wilson's flat, it had already been emptied. Wilson was in the hands of OTI.
It took House two weeks of smooth talking, aggressive persuasion, and high bidding, to get Wilson out of the OTI slave warehouse.
They delivered Wilson to him stripped naked and bound hand and foot, with a hood over his head. House had them drop Wilson on to his sofa, and showed them out of the door.
Wilson had been doped to the eyeballs. While House was getting the hood off, he heard Wilson crying: when the hood was peeled back from Wilson's eyes Wilson sobbed and flopped forward against House, rubbing his face against House's shoulder, crying and mouthing House's vintage and irreplacable t-shirt. House tried to push him off, partly so he could get the manacles off Wilson's wrists and ankles, partly to save the t-shirt, and failed. Wilson was wobbly and cuddly and trying to push himself into House's arms: after a couple of minutes, House decided just to be a bastard right now and enjoy cuddling Wilson.
House was used to being a bastard. He'd never before got a cuddly Wilson for it.
=HMD=HMD=HMD=
Wilson had thought for four weeks and one day that the worst wake-up ever would be the morning he woke up after Amber died and realised he had lost both House and Amber: he could not look at House without thinking of Amber, he could not think of Amber without thinking of how he had lost her.
Then he woke up in an OTI detainment centre and realised, once he was through screaming, that being woken up by someone with a blackjack that doubled as a dildo was even worse. Soon after that, he stopped being able to think at all.
When he woke up in the van, naked, chained up, and hooded, he assumed he had been sold. When he saw House, he assumed House had done some kind of scam and he'd have to go back when it was found out.
When he woke up again, on the sofa with his arms and legs unchained, and House explained that he was Wilson's legal owner, and Wilson was going back to work in six days, he found himself almost unable to react.
"It's fine," House said, eyeing him almost uneasily. "You stay here, registered to me, you go to PPTH and do your work, when your salary pays off your debt I can free you, it'll take two or three years."
Wilson stared straight ahead. "I'm your slave."
"Yes," House agreed.
"Your property. You're going to have me work for you, do housework for you, cook your meals, look after you, go to Monster Trucks with you, perform sexual favours for you?" He glanced at House.
House was looking at him with the same uneasy attention.
Wilson smirked. "So: no change?"
-End-
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of 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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