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Murphy's Law
by cryptictac
Disclaimer: David Shore =/= me. General Hospital isn't mine, either.
Notes: Written for livejournal's hw_fest, the prompt being House and Wilson are in the room when coma guy wakes up.
Murphy's Law: (n.) Any of certain humorous axioms stating that anything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong.
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The woman on the television screen was clutching her nine-month pregnant bulge and panting heavily, sweat beaded across her creamy white forehead; her make-up was impeccable despite the fact that she was in hard labour and perspiring profusely. Kneeling next to her was a dark, mysteriously handsome man who had a hand on her knee, looking positively perplexed whilst still managing to look exceptionally good-looking at the same time.
"Carly, I don't know how to deliver a baby," the man, known as Lorenzo, said. "I've never even witnessed a birth."*
"Well, what a coincidence," snapped Carly between contractions. "Neither have I. Okay? I was out cold when Michael was born. It was a caesarean."
Lorenzo paused dramatically. "I have no idea what to do for you."
Carly was beginning to climb into another contraction. "Well, you can--" She paused to let out a pained gasp, followed by a small grunt. "You can count me through the contractions and help the baby when he comes out. There's scissors. You can cut the umbilical cord when he--"
"Oh no!" Lorenzo exclaimed.
"Now, those are people who know what they're doing," House remarked cynically with his mouth full of food, gesturing to the television with his sandwich.
He was sitting on a chair beside the coma patient's bed; feet propped up on the edge of the mattress and crossed at the ankles. He had his lunch -- which was actually Wilson's -- open on his lap and a drink that he'd bought from the cafeteria perched on the bedside table behind him. It wasn't even lunch time -- General Hospital always started at 3PM in New Jersey and House had already eaten his lunch in the cafeteria when it actually was lunch time. That didn't stop House from stealing away into the privacy of the coma patient's room to catch his show, however. It also didn't stop him from snacking on Wilson's lunch, which House had swiped from out of the fridge in the morning before heading off to work. Wilson had recently moved back into his apartment, and House's fridge had returned to the familiar state of being filled with sandwiches and drink bottles that were anally labelled with post-it notes that bore Wilson's illegible writing; declarations of `Property of James Wilson: No tresspassing'. The post-it that had been on this particular sandwich was currently still attached to the wrapping, on the side that was resting on his lap.
"I don't suppose you ever took a birthing class," Lorenzo continued. The grave look of concern on his heavily Max Factored face was simply devastating.
"No, I took an infant care class," Carly replied breathlessly, "because I figured I would be in a hospital surrounded by doctors, numb from an epidural when I gave birth."
"So, you have no idea when to start pushing?"
Carly clutched harder at her swollen belly. "I think my body will tell me, right?" she replied in a wavering voice. "It's a natural process. I mean, women have been giving birth for millions of years without hospitals or painkillers--"
"Wow, that's impressive," House cut-in. "She's in hard labour and she's giving us a brief history of the evolution of child-bearing." He glanced to the coma patient as he swallowed his mouthful of food. "How much you want a bet that Carly begins to haemorrhage?"
The aspirator that the coma patient was hooked up to pumped yet another lungful of air into his chest.
"Alright," House replied, as though the coma patient had responded to him. "I'll see your dollar and raise you another dollar for a confession of self-pity and self-loathing from Carly, just to up the ante."
The coma patient breathed in and out again.
"Alright. You're on." House saluted his sandwich to him, sending a spray of crumbs over the patient's sheets. He turned his attention back to the television, taking another messy bite from the sandwich just as he heard the door slide open.
Wilson poked his head in. "Hey."
House glanced at him in mid-chew as his only means of acknowledging him before looking back to the television once more. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, Wilson watching the television.
"Why were you following me?" Carly whimpered before giving another unconvincing gasp of pain.
"After I left you in the park, Sonny came to see me, alright?" Lorenzo rebuked. He then took Carly's hand in a grandiose display of devotion, peering down into her eyes. "I told him that we'd met. He was furious. I was going to use that to turn him against you, but then I realised what that really meant; that he could probably hurt you."
"I... take it I'm not interrupting anything important, then," Wilson remarked dryly, stepping into the room.
Without looking away from the television, House pointed at him as he declared around his mouthful of food, "That's blasphemy you speak."
Wilson halted closing the door as he glanced over his shoulder. "What is?" He shut the door the rest of the way with a dull thud and then turned around to look at House again. "Suggesting that General Hospital isn't important is blasphemy?"
House swallowed his food and pointed insistently at the door, eyes still trained on the television. "Be gone with your blasphemy."
"How about..." Wilson began. He walked further into the room and placed his hands defiantly on his hips. "...No?"
House shot him an annoyed look; he was trying to hear what was unfolding between Carly and Lorenzo and he didn't appreciate being distracted by Wilson. He then looked back to the television again. "Haven't you got some cancer patients to see that you do that caring thing with?"
Wilson cast House a reproving look in return. "I wouldn't be here if I had any patients to consult with right now. Unlike some people, I actually work and take breaks when I deserve them, not when it suits me."
"Don't lie," House retorted, eyes back on Wilson again. "You take unmitigated breaks all the time!"
"Not with coma patients, I don't."
"Right," House dryly intoned. "Which is totally not why you're here in coma guy's room right now."
Wilson pressed his lips into a thin line; that look he gave when he knew House was right and didn't want to admit to it. He then glanced at the coma patient and pointed at him. "You're getting crumbs all over him."
"Wow, that was a subtle change in topic," House deadpanned.
Wilson gestured to the patient. "Well, you are!"
"He's in a coma. Like he cares." Wait, why was he discussing this? He was trying to watch his show. House suddenly cast Wilson an annoyed look, exclaiming as he pointed with his sandwich to the television, "I'm trying to watch this. Either sit down and shut up, or get out."
Opening his mouth to retort to that, Wilson glanced at House and then evidently changed his mind with the way he snapped his mouth shut again. He walked around the other side of the bed and slumped down on the chair.
"Now, sit there quietly and be rejected," House chided as he lifted the sandwich back up to his mouth, his attention on the show again.
"Seven, eight, nine, ten," Lorenzo counted with Carly as he gripped her hand, while she battled through yet another contraction. "Breathe, breathe, breathe. And... relax." Carly settled back on the makeshift bed of blankets, panting. "Good, good. That's really good."
"You don't want me," Carly said, her bottom lip pouting out as though she was close to bursting into tears.
"You don't get to decide how I feel."
"You love Sophie," she replied, her voice cracking dramatically with despair. "You miss her."
"Why aren't you watching this crap in your office, anyway?" Wilson cut in.
House was taking another bite of his sandwich. He cast Wilson an annoyed look as he chewed a few times before replying, "Coma guy's good company."
He watched Wilson glance at the coma patient. "You know, it's rather sad that you seek company with a coma patient."
House swallowed his mouthful. He then looked at Wilson pointedly. "At least he shuts up when I tell him to."
"He's in a coma; the guy never talks. He hasn't talked in, what? Two? Three years?"
"You should take a lesson or two from him, then." Wilson cocked his head and squinted at him in that way he always did when he didn't understand what the hell House was on about. House ignored the look, though, and continued, "Besides, I made a bet with him."
That quirky look Wilson was giving him intensified. "You made a bet with the coma guy?"
"Yeah. I bet him a dollar that Carly--" House pointed to the television with his sandwich "--haemorrhages while giving birth to her kid."
"You bet him a dollar?"
"And then upped his bet with a bet of another dollar that Carly confesses self-loathing and self-pity to Lorenzo in the process."
"You bet him another dollar?"
House scowled at Wilson. "What, is there an echo in the room?"
Wilson ignored him. "Do you regularly make bets with the coma guy?"
"Well, now, that would be unethical of me, wouldn't it?" House snorted sarcastically. Hearing Carly give a pained squeal on the television, House shot Wilson another irritated look. "Do you mind shutting up? I'm trying to watch this."
Wilson was still evidently ignoring him. "I think the idea of ethics pains you as much as a hernia would."
"Shut up, or I'll give you a hernia!"
Wilson snapped his mouth shut and looked at House in annoyance before they both looked back to the television.
"There's no confusing you with anyone," Lorenzo said to Carly, now squeezing her hand and staring down at her in adoration. "You are truly unique. You are stubborn and relentless--"
"God, that sounds like someone I know," House heard Wilson mutter.
"--and though you may not admit it, you are full of hope, Carly--"
"Oh, my god!" Carly exclaimed dramatically.
"For yourself and for this child, you passed this hope onto me and now I can't give it up."
Carly was starting to cry tears without managing to make her inch-thick coated mascara run down her cheeks. "Oh, do you realise your first mistake is thinking I'm a nice person?" she gasped. She gave a pained wince as another contraction began to seize her. "I'm not. I'm not a nice person. I'm-I'm--"
"There ya go," House declared, pointing his sandwich at the television. "Coma guy owes me a buck."
"Wait a minute," Wilson interrupted. House glanced at him and saw Wilson pointing at the sandwich he was eating. "That's my sandwich."
House shrugged indifferently, sandwich angled towards his mouth again. "Yeah? So?"
"That's my sandwich."
"Well, it was," House replied slowly. He paused to take a messy bite as Wilson looked on in exasperation, and then continued as a bit of lettuce flopped out at the corner of his lip, "It's mine now."
"I labelled that!"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we've had this conversation before," House said, a piece of watercress falling out of his mouth and landing on his shirt. He glanced down at it and flicked it off with his finger.
"You stole my lunch!"
House swallowed his mouthful as he looked back up to Wilson and then snorted. "That's very second grade of you, Jimmy. Gonna run to Principal Cuddy and tell on me?"
"Is there any part of `Property of James Wilson, Do Not Touch' that you don't understand?"
House shrugged. "Finders keepers."
"Finders keepers?"
House poised the sandwich towards his mouth for another bite. "I found it. Therefore, I kept it."
"You didn't find it!" Wilson exclaimed. "You stole it!"
"Borrowed it."
"How can you borrow a sandwich that you have every intention of eating?"
"Okay. I claimed it."
Wilson gave him a reproving look. "You stole it."
House waved his hand dismissively. "Semantics."
Wilson blinked and then shook his head quickly as though he was thoroughly confused. "Where's the semantics in you stealing my food?"
"It was there in front of me when I looked in the fridge," House explained simply. "I saw, I claimed, and now," he gestured to the almost-finished sandwich, "I'm eating."
"You know, just because I moved back in, that doesn't give you the instant right to go on freeloading off me all the time."
"I give you free room and board; what more do you want?"
Wilson looked stung. He recovered quickly, though, and replied defensively, "I do your dishes, even when it's your turn to do them. Mainly because you never do them." He started ticking his fingers. "I cook you food. I even sometimes wash your clothes that you leave lying in the bathroom--"
"God, you're scarily beginning to sound like my mom," House replied, rolling his eyes.
"--I let you hog the tv remote--"
"Yeah, well, it's my television. I can hog it as much as I want."
"--I even vacuum for you--"
House pointed at Wilson accusingly with his sandwich. "That's because you're anal."
"--and all you can do as thanks for how much I put up with is freeload all my food from the fridge!"
"Sheesh, Jimmy," House replied with feigned hurt. "You're beginning to make me sound ungrateful."
"That's because you are!" Wilson exploded.
House blinked at him, slightly taken aback. Composing himself quickly, House replied, "I see. So, me letting you stay free of charge in my apartment is me being ungrateful."
"I--" Wilson began, looking exasperated. He gestured wildly with his hands. "I... I--"
"You, what?"
"I... No! Well, yes! No!" Wilson gave another bewildered gesture. "I don't know!"
"You don't know," House echoed in a deadpan voice.
"Well, I-I-I," Wilson stammered, "I don't appreciate you eating my food!"
"I don't blame you," House replied matter-of-factly, poising the last mouthful of the sandwich towards his mouth. "I wouldn't appreciate you eating my food, either."
Wilson looked at House with incredulity. "Then why do you eat mine?"
House shrugged as he popped the last piece in his mouth. He brushed the crumbs from his hands and remarked around his mouthful as he carelessly tossed the wrapping the sandwich came in onto the bed, "Because I can."
Ignoring Wilson's baffled expression, House heard Carly exclaiming on the television, "Oh, am I bleeding a lot?"
"You're bleeding," Lorenzo replied, peering between her legs. "I don't know if it's too much."
"Coma guy owes me another buck," House remarked, reaching behind him for his drink. "She's gonna haemorrhage."
"You eat my food because you can," Wilson replied; he was still looking at House with incredulity. "I fail to understand that logic."
"You fail to understand the logic of shutting up," House shot back, looking at him.
Wilson pointed at him accusingly. "You fail to understand the logic of not eating food that's not yours."
"There's logic in not eating food that's in my fridge? There's no logic in that, Jimmy. That's illogical."
"It's my food!"
"It's my fridge!"
Wilson held his hands up as though he was surrendering, and then said, "Fine. If you can make a bet with the coma patient--" he jabbed his thumb in the direction of the patient "--then you can make a bet with me."
"A bet?" House scoffed. "What for?"
"That you can go a month without eating my food."
"A month," House replied, arching his brow. "You're planning on hanging around my place for a month?"
Wilson looked startled for a moment. "You never said there was a time limit to me moving back in."
"I know I didn't."
"Well, why did you bring it up?"
House took a sip of his drink and then licked his lips. "Because with how pissy you are with me eating your damn food I get the impression you wouldn't want to hang around for a month."
"Would I be saying that I want the bet to go for a month if I had any intention of moving out?"
House couldn't help himself; a brief smile crossed his lips. As much as he didn't want to admit it, it was good having Wilson stay in his place. The company was good, regardless as to how much they got on each other's nerves. He quickly suppressed the smile and took another sip of his drink. "Fine."
"Fine, what?"
"Fine. I'll make a bet with you."
Wilson looked surprised; he obviously hadn't expected House to agree to that. "Well, uh... Okay. I--"
"One thing, though," House interrupted. "I get to pick what we bet with."
Wilson looked instantly wary. "Okay..." he said slowly, narrowing his eyes.
House slurped on his drink again. "Coma guy."
Wilson darted his eyes down to the coma patient with a confused expression on his face. "What about him?"
"We bet with the coma guy," House explained. "If he wakes up, I don't eat your food for a month."
Snorting loudly in disbelief, Wilson exclaimed, "That's not a legit bet!"
"Why not?"
"Because... because..." Wilson was gesturing wildly again, this time at the coma patient. "Because he's been in a coma for three years!"
"Yeah? So?"
"So?! He won't be waking up any time soon!"
"Exactly. Which means you instantly lose the bet and I can continue to eat your food."
Wilson scowled. "The coma guy waking up is about as likely as me kissing you."
House cocked his head thoughtfully. "Hmm. Okay. If he wakes up you have to kiss me, too."
"What?! Why?!"
"Because..." House began slowly, pointing to the patient with his drink, "you just said yourself the chances of him waking up are as likely as you kissing me. It's another bet I've already won."
"Nope," Wilson replied defiantly, his face flushed with embarrassment as he shook his head. "No deal."
House shrugged indifferently. "Okay. No deal, then," he replied as he lifted his drink to his lips again. "And I get to continue eating your food."
"That's not fair."
"See, now you're just being a spoilsport."
He watched Wilson open and close his mouth a few times in bafflement before House turned his attention back to the television. "I meant money, House," Wilson finally replied. "Betting with money. Not with the coma patient."
"That's boring."
"It's logical."
"Yeah, and logical is boring. Bet with the coma patient, or no deal."
Wilson gave an exasperated sigh and when House glanced to him he saw that Wilson was staring at the ceiling as though silently asking some invisible force to have mercy on him. "Okay, fine," Wilson replied flatly, looking back to House. "We bet with the coma patient's highly unlikely chance of ever waking up and on the off-chance he does wake up, you stay away from my food for a month."
House was surprised, though he masked it. "And," he added, pointing at Wilson with his drink, "you have to kiss me."
Wilson's face flushed red again. "Why do you want me to kiss you?"
House snorted. "I don't. I'm just betting on something wild with the safe knowledge that it'll never actually happen."
He watched Wilson clench his jaw and then turn his attention to the television. Smiling briefly with triumph, House sat back in his chair, uncrossing his ankles and crossing them the other way as he watched another scene on the show play out on the television.
He became engrossed in the show, so much so that he didn't notice Wilson looking at the coma guy's life support monitor every few seconds. Not until he suddenly heard Wilson say in a mortified voice as he studied the patient's brain wave monitor, "House, you should be careful what you wish for."
"Hmm?" he replied, looking towards Wilson as he slurped the last of his drink down. Seeing his friend staring at the monitor, House turned his eyes towards it and a moment later dropped his feet from the bed and instantly stood up, a bewildered look on his face.
The brain waves were monitoring normal patterns, stats fluctuating slightly, and House and Wilson stared down at him as the coma patient stirred. His eyes began to crack open.
"I don't believe this," Wilson said. House couldn't tell if he sounded awed or horrified.
"Believe it," House replied, just as stunned as Wilson sounded.
They then instantly set into action: Wilson fished a penlight from his pocket and began to check the patient's pupil response while House slammed his empty drink bottle on the bedside table and began to check his vitals. The nurse on duty was summoned in a moment later and after the aspirator was extracted carefully from the coma patient's throat and another check over was given to his cardio-pulmonary responses, House snatched up the lunch wrapper still on the bed, and swiped his drink bottle up and tossed it in the bin by the bed. He and Wilson then stood back towards the door and watched a team of nurses take over with talking to the patient, who responded to them in a croaky voice.
"Well," House remarked a little distantly as he leaned on his cane, "I guess I won't be eating your food for a month, then."
"Huh," Wilson replied, placing his hands on his hips. There was a pause as another doctor bustled in and began to ask the patient a series of perfunctory questions to test his cognitive responses; the doctor was obviously a neurologist. "You know what this means, too, don't you?" Wilson added, glancing at House.
House turned his eyes towards Wilson. "What?"
Wilson pursed his lips. "I have to..." He cleared his throat and glanced at House's mouth.
Oh, shit. He'd forgotten about that in the sudden excitement that had just occurred. House quickly looked away, feeling the back of his neck crawling with either humiliation or horror -- he wasn't sure which it was.
"Oh. Right." House shifted on the spot and inwardly kicked himself for ever mentioning that stupid part of the bet. "You know, you don't have to stick to your end of the bargain," he attempted, looking back to Wilson.
"If I don't, who's to say you'll stick to the end of yours?"
House tried to brush his discomfort off with a snort as he fully faced Wilson. "Who's to say I'll stick to my end of the bargain, anyway?"
Rolling his eyes, Wilson sighed as he, too, faced House. "Unfortunately, you have a point."
Glancing down to the lunch wrapper in his hand, House hooked his cane over his forearm and peeled the post-it off. He looked back up to Wilson, smiled and then slapped the post-it on Wilson's forehead. "Well, next time you make a sandwich, don't put so much watercress on it. I don't like how it tastes with the pastrami."
With that, he reached up and stuffed the wrapper into Wilson's breast pocket, tucking it behind his pens and then faced towards the door. He was out of the room before Wilson could say anything in response.
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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 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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