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Cope and Deal
by nishatalitha
This was written before I ever saw the show. I'd only ever read fanfiction, wrote this and the people who read it said it was scarily accurate. I don't know about that, but I do know what being in chronic pain is like. This is personifying as anything, but I do see their point. You do what you can. You cope and deal.
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House sits in his office, watching people and idly throwing the ball against the office wall, making a soft thudding sound. Wilson will be here shortly with some excuse or another, because he's been here for the past few hours, with only a couple of short walkabouts, due to nervous tension from the pain. Sometimes it's too much to sit still for another minute without breaking something and sometimes it's too much to move without sharp pains flaring through his body.
He has never has much patience with the people who complain about small pains, about being sick for a week or a slight infection. He doesn't care if they're in more pain or are sicker than they've ever been before. He knows what pain is. He knows what it is like to wait for the next time to take painkillers, watching the clock impatiently as the pain increases with each minute as the last lot wears off.
He finds it hard to decide at those times whether he wants to be around people then or be by himself. He wants to be around people, much as he hates admitting it, even to himself, because they provide a distraction. If they're not being enough of a distraction by themselves, then he is deliberately provocative to create the distraction himself. The ducklings don't understand why he can be so cruel so easily.
But being by himself means that he doesn't have to hide the agony that is slowly winding tighter, waiting for the next trip release of vicodin, which doesn't really stop the pain but lessens it enough that he can focus and work through it. Sometimes, when he is alone, he will hold off taking the drugs for five minutes, ten minutes, maybe even fifteen longer than he really has to, to prove that he's not really dependent on them after all. No one knows what a triumph each of those minutes are, but he hugs them closely for the rest of the day.
I can get through this, he thinks.
The patients that get to him, not that he would admit it to anyone, not even Wilson, are the ones that are fellows sufferers in chronic pain. The ones who smile up at him and don't bother to mention the pain scale to him because when you're always in pain, it loses its relevance. The scale goes from one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest. Nurses use it for a reference point as to how bad it is. But when your day is good if it only gets to a seven, it really doesn't matter and you go on until you can't anymore.
They're the ones who are usually brought in by other people, who are worried about them, who ask about operations and referrals to the pain clinic. They're the ones who shrug and say that they still go to work/school/whatever, because otherwise they'd go insane with nothing else to concentrate on. He acts the same to these as he does to anyone else. But he understands what life is like for these people. He comes to work not only because he can't bear to give it up, but because without it, he doesn't know what he would do or how quickly he would sink into the depression of pain which suggests that it doesn't matter if he takes the drugs five, ten, fifteen minutes earlier, and if he does that, he may never come out of it.
The clock ticks. It's four thirty-five. He had a snack at twelve-thirty and took some then. It's been four hours and three minutes. He throws the soft ball against the wall and waits for another minute to tick over.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of Fox Television, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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