East Coast Gazette

So apparently, 30 Rock is the comedy show that I didn’t know I loved because I wasn’t watching it. It’s like how I didn’t know I loved How I Met Your Mother because I hadn’t been watching it and therefore could know nothing about how Barney truly is the most awesome thing that ever did awesome. But no, ya’ll, seriously. 30 Rock is cracking my shit up: I’m almost horrified by the enormous chemistry between Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin (WHY DID NOBODY MEMO ME THAT HE COULD BE FUNNY?) and how uncontrived and still funny it is. It’s lighthearted, it’s fun, and if you click on that link I gave at the top, it’s online streaming from the internets to you — give it a try. Seriously, it’ll be a nice distraction from when failure of your final exams is imminent.

And now, more House fic!

Fixer, pt 2/?

*

On Tuesday, Wilson was honor-bound to give the interns a lecture on the many challenges and exciting changes in modern cancer treatment. And since Wilson had that beleaguered, dashing I Petition For Cancer Kid Playrooms look going, there were always an abundance of stupid med students of either gender present to stare at him in open sexual longing. House made it a point to attend each time and sit in the front row; it was the best vantage point in the auditorium for smirking meanly.

“I’d like to apologize preemptively,” Wilson said to the crowd, pulling off his white doctor’s coat. “The redoubtable Dr. Gregory House is in attendance.”

A murmur went up through the crowd, and Wilson gave House a warning look. House wondered when Wilson had turned into his mother, and also if the entertainment value of getting to his feet to wave at the class and bow was worth the hassle of getting to his feet.

“So you’ll have to forgive any outbursts he might have, ignore the inappropriate comments, and prepare to be insulted,” Wilson finished as he took off his lab coat, rolled up his sleeves, voice unaccountably fond. “That said—let’s get started.”

Wilson had three stand-by lectures he offered to the unwashed masses that passed through the hospital: Most Of You Won’t Become Oncologists, But It’s A Noble Calling; Medicine, Like My Marriages, Cannot Live On Romance Alone, Eventually, There Will Be Complications; and House’s personal favorite, Let Me Talk Endlessly About Death, Because Mine Is An Essentially Inefficacious Field Of Medicine And Nothing Is As Fun As Trying To Dodge The Inevitable.

“My name is James Wilson. I’m head of oncology at Princeton-Plainsboro,” Wilson said, leaning against the podium to survey the crowd. House had cased them on sight: collectively entering puberty, all over-eager, none of them with an ounce of common sense or rational fear—but the worst was the row of straight-A students he was sitting near, and House had a vivid image of how bad a hit it’d be the first time they fucked up.

“In September, I’ll have been at the hospital for 15 years—so if you see me around and have any questions, feel free to ask. We’re a resource to you,” Wilson added, and House gagged elaborately—earning him a glare from the blond thing sitting next to him. Wilson ignored him and went on:

“Now, I know most of you won’t be going into oncology—but…” which was about the part that House tuned out and decided to start the psychological warfare.

In the past, Wilson had capitulated beautifully under Plan Stare Meaningfully At Wilson’s Crotch and Plan Blow Him Kisses From The Front Row, but House was an innovator, so he searched around his pockets until he found a receipt. He was nearly done creating an arsenal of tiny wads of paper to throw at Wilson’s crotch when there was a sudden break in Wilson’s droning. He looked up to see the blond thing glaring, and before House could confide, “I have a nervous disorder,” Wilson said:

“I have a friend. Another doctor at the hospital.” Laughing, Wilson admitted, “We met at a Doctors Without Borders conference about the same time I got hired onto the Princeton-Plainsboro staff.”

House shuddered at the sudden rush of estrogen in the room.

“Now before you guys all get too impressed,” Wilson warned, grinning, “I never ended up going—although I’m still open to the possibility—and he was there to steal food from the reception; his own conference on how we’re all going to die in a global pandemic was downstairs.”

House tried to figure out some way to be righteously angry about Wilson airing their dirty laundry given the fact that he’d told the maggots about his and Wilson’s Gentleman’s Agreement the last time he’d been bullied into a lecture.

“He stole from the Doctors Without Borders meeting?” someone in the crowd asked, sounding horrified and just high-pitched enough to be self-righteous.

Nobody looked at House—which was by turns comforting and a little insulting, since it cemented Cuddy’s theory that nobody really thought Wilson and House were friends; to be fair, sometimes House didn’t even think he and Wilson were friends.

“Well, if you call eating the club sandwiches and egg salad stealing, then yes,” Wilson agreed, wry. He crossed his arms over his chest. “But the point of the story—beyond the fact that being a doctor doesn’t preclude you from being morally corrupt—”

There were titters throughout the crowd, because none of them had to steal oxycotin back from a morally corrupt friend yet. House imagined it’d be less funny through the filter of 20-odd years.

“—is that this friend of mine likes to tell me, as frequently as possible, that oncology is inefficient and strictly for people with bleeding hearts,” Wilson concluded, still smiling through his students’ shock and giving House a sideways look—a private joke, and House slouched down further in his seat because there was always something unsettling about the implied intimacy in a shared glance. “If you really think about this, he has a point.

“Oncology is a medicine of management,” Wilson continued, voice firm, the same soothing lull that had people thanking him for their death sentences. “We’re doing better every day, and chemotherapy, radiation, and advancements in medication have brought us a long way from the old days where a diagnosis of cancer was an immediate death sentence—but the reality is that our ingrained fear of cancer is rational, it’s reasonable.”

Wilson gave them all a comforting smile, and House wondered if, with the correct technology, could he somehow see the physical form of Wilson’s ingenious emotional manipulation, floating through the air from his benevolent smile to his captive audience.

Wilson tugged at his tie, his smile going lopsided. “My friend, for all that he’s an ethical black hole—” House threw one of his paper balls, just on principal, and missed by a mile “—is an excellent doctor, in many ways, unparalleled in his field of specialty.”

The interns looked betrayed, and House felt somewhat compelled to draw them a chart showing the coefficient of correlation between “nice doctor” and “good doctor” as the zero sum it was—but he figured eventually they’d haul Birch in here to talk about pediatrics and the little monsters could figure that one out on their own.

“The weird thing is,” Wilson was saying, “I hand people death sentences every day—I’ve told more people they were dying kindly than my friend has cured patients with his particular brand of tough love—but they thank me for it. They tell me thank you.

“Medicine is, ultimately, about healing the sick—but it’s also about bringing comfort to the dying.” Wilson gave all of them a look. “Don’t forget that.”

Later, House cut in front of Wilson in the lunch line, fixing him with a thoughtful stare. “You said nice things about me,” he said, accusing.

“Well,” Wilson prevaricated, shoving House along toward the register, “you didn’t interrupt, mostly.”

“Something’s not adding up here,” House told him, reaching for a pudding cup.

Wilson rolled his eyes. “I’m allowed to give you a compliment. Not everything’s a puzzle, House.”

“No, not everything,” House agreed. Most thing was boring, average, unremarkable.

But House thought about Wilson, and the Wilson in Emma’s photographs, with laugh lines and worry lines and House in his periphery; Wilson had always been a puzzle, and all the more fascinating because he was so well hidden beneath the illusion of a whole.

*

He taped the photographs up on the lightboard in his office: 29 in all, black and white and some of them blurry. The hospital was quiet, lonely, the night shift making their rounds and voices murmuring in the distance like ghosts at tea, and House sat in his chair and frowned. He had known Emma would be a formidable enemy when she’d fought him tooth and nail every step of the way, and when she’d failed to break down into hopeless sobs even once through the entire ordeal. Women, when they were dangerous, were extremely dangerous, House knew, and Emma had seen something House had missed, hadn’t noticed, didn’t pay attention to.

*