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WIP: stabbed!Wilson; Part 6
I've decided to give the parts backwards countdown titles. Just in case you're wondering what the weird time stamp is doing above the chapter.
- 9 hours
"Dr. House?"
At the tentative voice, House raised his head that had been resting on the handle of his cane and looked up. The door of the trauma room had opened a little, and a young guy with way too much and way too blond hair was poking his head in. House didn't recognize him.
"What?" he asked.
The guy pushed into the room, and the reason House didn't know him became obvious as the police uniform was revealed. House suppressed a sigh and looked back at the floor. "Been wondering when you guys would show up," he said.
"Ah, yes," the police officer said, and in his tone House could almost hear the insecure side-glance he was throwing at Wilson, the exam table and the congregation of medical equipment in the middle of the room. "We thought it would be easiest to clear the clinic first."
"What do you need?" House asked. He wasn't feeling like giving the kid a hard time, but the idea of exchanging chit-chat and niceties didn't really appeal to him either at the moment. He just wanted to be left alone.
"I'm Officer Ferrel," the cop said quickly, apparently not keen on drawing this out longer than necessary either. "I'm here to take your statement." He paused, apparently not sure whether to sit down or ask House to step outside with him. House leaned back in his chair, making it clear that he wasn't planning on getting up. Ferrel relaxed a little.
"The clinic was rather busy today," House said without preamble. "I'd been working down there for maybe an hour when -" He broke off and looked up at the cop. "What was his name again?"
Ferrel looked confused for a moment; then he consulted his notebook. "Bates," he said. "That's the name he gave the triage nurse."
"Bates. Right." House looked away again, a small, bitter-tasting smile tugging at his lips. "Bates was maybe the tenth patient I saw that day. He complained of dysuria. His labs suggested a simple UTI, but for reasons unknown to me, Mr. Bates was convinced that he was suffering from testicular cancer."
House heard the rustling of the notebook's pages, and then Ferrel spoke up. "Did he have any reasonable motives for his self-diagnosis?"
House shook his head. "No. He spouted a lot of bullshit about some homoeopathic quack magazine he'd read." House shifted a bit on his chair and raised his cane to place it across his knees, twirling it back and forth. "When I didn't manage to get rid of him, I called Dr. Wilson for a consult."
"You called the head of oncology for a consult even though you were convinced that your patient did not have cancer?"
At that, House looked up once more to shoot the cop a glare. "Yes, I did," he said. "Thought about paging the janitor, but somehow, Wilson seemed to be more qualified."
Ferrel held his gaze, and House had to give it to him that even though he was young enough for some of that wavy hair to be remains of baby curls, he wasn't easy to intimidate. It took more than a few seconds to make him avert his eyes and look down to fiddle with his notebook.
House settled back himself and continued. "Wilson explained to Bates that dysuria is not a sign of testicular cancer and that he should get the hell out of there, but he didn't get any farther than I had. When it became obvious that we wouldn't get rid of him the nice way, I told him to leave."
"And that was when he became violent," Ferrel said. It was more of a statement than a question. House nodded anyway.
"I think he was going for me, and Wilson got in his way," he said. "I'm not sure. He was one quick son of a bitch."
"Do you know where he got the knife from?"
House shook his head. He'd been puzzling over this himself, but the only conclusion he'd been able to come up with was that Bates had it hidden somewhere underneath his clothing. If so, he must have had practice. Nobody drew a knife this quickly if he didn't know exactly what he was doing. "I didn't give him a full-body exam," House said. "He could have hidden it almost anywhere."
Ferrel nodded and scribbled in his notebook some more. "And after that, he left?"
"Ran away." House picked up his cane and began to bounce it on the tiled floor, watching it go up and down. "Did any of the clinic patients see him leaving?"
"A couple, yes." Ferrel frowned some more at his notebook before he raised his head. "Well, I guess that's it for now," he said. "Thank you, Dr. House. If we need to find you later on... ?"
"I'll be here," House said. Ferrel nodded, and House could tell that he was preparing to give the I'm sorry this happened speech. He hadn't proven a completely useless moron like most cops did, though, so House didn't say anything but only got up to limp over to the exam table, demonstratively turning his back to Ferrel.
"Well, thank you again," House heard from behind him after a moment's silence, and then there was the click-clack of the trauma room doors opening and closing again.
Almost hesitantly, House stepped up to the exam table and rested his palms on the railing. He frowned at the readout on the monitors.
The readings were okay, considering. Pulse a bit high, BP and sats a bit low. So far, the dopamine was doing its job of keeping Wilson stable, though. They'd had a bit of a scare after the plasmaphoresis, when for a few agonizingly long moments it had seemed as if Wilson's BP wasn't going to pick up again. It had stabilized without much outside help after a few minutes, though.
Still, House wasn't going to allow himself a false sense of security. As soon as Wilson's pressure had settled on one-ten systolic, he'd gone over to the crash cart and had pocketed a pre-filled epi syringe. It never hurt to be prepared.
House found it almost unsettling how hard it was to tear his eyes away from the monitors and actually look at Wilson. It took a lot of his willpower to do so.
House gripped the railing a little harder. This wasn't right. Not only was Wilson too pale, the dark hair in his forehead a too stark contrast to his skin, but his face was too still. No slight flaring of the nostrils the way House knew they did when Wilson was asleep, not even a slight quiver of the lips. No reasons for those things to be there, because the ventilator was doing the breathing via the trache. House knew that; still, his instincts screamed at the sight of Wilson looking so... lifeless.
House reached out with one hand, but stopped short before brushing the hair out of Wilson's eyes. He curled his fingers to a fist; then he drew back. He shouldn't be doing this. It wasn't what he did.
He lowered his hand and remained standing there, his fingers gripping the railing tightly and his thoughts chasing their own tails.