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WIP: stabbed!Wilson, Part 2
Wilson's lips moved, and House heard a faint wheezing sound that might or might not have been an attempt to speak. More bloody spittle appeared on Wilson's lips, and House felt panic clench his insides. Where the fuck was that team? He raised his head and opened his mouth to yell for Brenda again when she appeared in the doorway, out of breath and eyes wide.
"Team's on the way," she said. "What the hell happened?"
House ignored her question. Wilson's eyes had slipped shut, after all, and his breathing was becoming more irregular, coming in gasps rather than breaths, each gasp bringing up more blood. House realized that if he waited any longer, the team, when it finally arrived, would be too late. He swallowed at the thought of what he would have to do.
"Get a trache kit!" he snapped at Brenda. She stood frozen for a split-second, only to start moving twice as quickly, hurrying to one of the cupboards and starting to pull out medical equipment.
"Shouldn't a trauma surgeon be doing this?" she asked, but didn't stop her search as she spoke. House loved her a little for that.
"Do you see one around anywhere?" he asked sharply, noting with increasing panic the way Wilson's lips were starting to turn blue underneath the thin film of blood. He tried to press down even harder on the jacket, but it wasn't doing much good. The jacket was too bulky. "Gauzes," he said. "We need gauzes."
There was the sound of something particularly heavy being flung aside, and then Brenda appeared in his field of vision, dropping to her knees beside him, gauzes and the trache kit in her gloved hands. House tensely waited for her to prepare the compresses before he met her eyes. "On three," he said and started counting. When he'd reached three, he pulled away the jacket, and Brenda quickly applied pressure with the gauze.
House tried not to let himself be distracted by the way it immediately turned a bright red. Instead, he grabbed the trache kit and tore it open. Gloves, swabs, forceps, iodine, scalpel, hook, tube. The gloves were one size too small, and his hands were trembling the slightest bit so that he almost dropped the second one, but he caught himself the last second.
"Move," he told Brenda, and she shuffled out of the way as far as possible. House raised the scalpel and froze. "Fuck!" His stomach did another backflip. "Get his fucking tie out of the way!"
He heard Brenda's breath hitch beside him, and she quickly shifted her hands to get one free. House's finger itched to reach out and simply tear the tie away himself, but he didn't have any more sterile gloves nearby. Finally, Brenda had loosened the tie enough to give him access to the sternal notch, and House wasted no more time.
When his scalpel was hovering over the disinfected skin, House felt a wave of calmness rush through him. He knew he could do this. He'd done it before. This was easy. No big deal.
His hands were steady when he applied the first three incisions, and he barely noticed as the door flew open and the emergency team barged in. He dimly heard Brenda yell "Trache!" beside him, but didn't pay it any attention. Hook, cut, and finally, tube. House guided it in very carefully, and then looked up. "Bag!"
At his order, the emergency team began moving. One of the medics dropped down to his knees on Wilson's other side and began to bag him, and House pulled his hands back and quickly moved out of the way.
When the concentration of doing the tracheostomy had broken, his heart rate had sped up again, and his fingers slipped a couple of times before he managed to strip off the gloves. He found his cane and picked it up, and by the time House had gotten his feet under himself and stood up, the team had already strapped Wilson to the gurney. One medic was bagging, one was squeezing in a saline bag and the other two were busy trying to minimize the blood loss.
House didn't even try to keep up with them as they rushed out the door. The muscles in his thigh were cramping, punishing him for not paying attention when he'd been kneeling on the floor next to Wilson, and House reached out to steady himself against the wall, keeping his head lowered. After a moment, he realized he was trembling all over, and forced himself to take a couple of deep breaths.
"You okay?" asked a voice at his elbow. House raised his head and turned around, leaning his back against the wall. Brenda was watching him with an inquiring expression on her face.
House swallowed. "Yes," he said, and even to himself his voice sounded a bit hoarse. "I'm fine." He looked past her and felt his throat close up as he saw the mess of soaked cotton swabs, gloves, sterile packaging and the crumpled-up blood-stained jacket lying on the floor. Wilson's tie was lying in the middle of it all, its former blue and grey stripes now of a reddish-brown hue.
Abruptly, House pushed himself off the wall. "Notify Cuddy," he told Brenda. "Let her know what happened. And call Brown. He'll have to take Wilson's patients." He started towards the door when he remembered something else. "Call the police," he said. "And get rid of the patients. They'll want to close down the clinic."
He didn't wait for her to acknowledge what he'd said but left the exam room, digging his pill bottle from his pocket and swallowing a Vicodin as he went. His fingers were trembling and he dropped the cap, but he didn't stop to pick it up, continuing down the corridor in direction of the ER as quickly as he could.