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Dancers - Chapter 4 (Hidden and Found)
by menme
Chapter 4 (Hidden and Found)
"You haven't told me much, Greg."
"I thought I'd said a lot."
The man seated across from him was bald and a pen-nibbler. His voice was irritating, if not fingernails on a chalkboard then at least squeaky chalk." You've told me a wealth of detail about Dani, Greg -"
The office was shabby-chic, the green leather armchairs they both sat in worn enough to suggest they might pop a spring any second. Their water glasses rested on chipped Mexican tiles. " - I know she does her morning yoga in the nude and that she has a sister she speaks German to. Hell, Greg, I even know she never wears a bra." Little chuckle, meant to put him at ease. Like the shabby furnishings: my, aren't we on an intimate basis. No need for pretense between us, is there, Greg?
If the bastard called him Greg again he would get up and leave.
Outside, morning traffic sounded far away. Sun seeped through the windows. There had to be something else he could be doing on a nice day. He tried to remember why he'd stooped to consulting a shrink.
The windows bothered him. Something about them.
"What I don't know is how you feel. Your feelings about this Dani."
Feelings. God, the guy was trite. He sighed. "Feelings are a marketing ploy. They're given pretty names, wrapped up in a Hollywood movie and sold to suckers who want to express themselves." Baldie was frowning at him. "I'll never know what you feel, and you'll really never know what I feel. Thinking you have a word that sums it up - love, grief, happiness - just makes it more complicated." He shifted. His leg hurt. "Look, this isn't working out, Dr.- " (he had to check the nametag) "- Klein. I'm - uh - going to hit the road. Or at least pound it with my..." He rose and looked for his cane, which seemed to have disappeared.
"You really don't remember, do you?"
He stood very still. His leg throbbed.
"You can't leave here, Greg."
The windows. "What's that supposed to mean, you ass."
"Sit down. I'm going to explain this one more time -"
"No."
"Listen carefully. You've been here for months. It's called dissociation -"
"Are you insane?" He should have picked up on it, the barred windows, how could he have missed that, no shrink you consult privately wears a white coat and a nametag. It was some elaborate joke, Wilson most likely. Dammit, he'd make him pay. How had he got here? Memory not working, so Wilson had - what? - drugged him? Mr. Ethical?
Work it out later. Just leave. Two doors and he chose the left, it was closest, forget finding his cane, he could hobble fast if it weren't for the - stare - plastic sandals he was wearing, thin pants like scrubs, Wilson had gone all out -
The door was locked.
"Face it, you're not going anywhere," said Dr. Klein.
"I'm out of here. Tell Wilson `Ping! Game Over.' Tell him to watch his back." He rattled the door again then pounded his palm on it. "I'm leaving." The last a whisper, as if only for himself. Across the room the other door opened. More white coats, the men inside them big and tattooed. Someone had begun to yell, tortured, the sound inhuman.
When they had him on the floor (cane would have been handy, but he got a punch or two in), Dr. Klein straddled his chest and flourished a syringe. His face held pity. "Listen to me, Dr. House -" (why back to formal, his bruised mind wanted to scream, now that we're so intimate you're sitting on me) "- this is important. Dani doesn't exist. You made her up -"
"Nooo!"
"- you couldn't deal with your problems anymore, so you invented the perfect woman for yourself, one who stays loyal to you no matter what you do, and of course she does because she's only in your head - "
He bucked so hard he might have thrown them off, but the needle was already sliding into his arm, seeking a place among the punctures there from a hundred other times -
He woke.
She'd left the lamp on in the bathroom again and a slant of light fell on her face beside him in the bed. When he touched her cheek she hmmmed and drew closer, with the half-smile of someone who doesn't have to come fully awake to know who's beside her.
He couldn't get back to sleep.
Cutting back on the Vicodin this time was giving him truly amazing nightmares. Didn't take Freud coming back from the grave to tell him what that last one meant. That his subconscious still couldn't accept the fact that a woman like Dani Sieger would love him. Couldn't even say his conscious mind accepted it. It had seemed eager enough to assume the worst - eager and devastated - when he'd heard their voices at Gay-Org's, peered through the crack in the bedroom door and seen her gazing up at his rival with that expression of utter worship, her hands on Ponytail's arms, the soft murmur of their German. His stomach had clenched, something red and hot plowing across his chest, the loss so stunning it brought tears to his eyes, but at least it had meant an end to the uncertainty, he could crawl back to his hole, forget she ever happened. When he heard people coming down the hall, he'd flung himself through the nearest door to hide, wanting to kick himself when he realized he'd walked into a closet for chrissake, and had stood there smothered in coats, smelling someone's (Gay-Org's?) old sneakers, while a part of his soul died. Found his way to the kitchen fast and launched himself into a conversation so she would think he'd been there awhile.
He got up quietly so as not to wake her, unhooked the fireplace brush in the living room and laid it beside him on the sofa. The pills were still there, his emergency ration of two, in the tiny baggie taped up deep inside the bristles. His official bottle stood on the desk, but though she said she was leaving it up to him, he suspected she checked it every night. He knew Wilson had the mandate to watch him at work and he'd preempted the good doctor by announcing to all and sundry (the ducklings and Cuddy) that he was cutting back for Dani's sake and would appreciate their help. It meant they would keep him in their sights, which was the point. Misdirection. A basic ruse in magic. Keep your eyes on this bottle in my hand. Freed him up to partake of his hidden stashes as needed.
The two pills gleamed in the lamplight. Did he need them? He'd accepted Dani's explanations about Georg. He had to assume there was something wrong with the German, something no one could see that made her not prefer him. Maybe the guy had the world's worst case of back acne. Probably ate pickled garlic in bed. But there was more. A patient had died the week before, their diagnosis coming an hour too late, and within another hour his leg had just exploded, like molten lava coursing through his thigh. If his pain really was a conversion disorder, then not the way Wilson thought. He had actually been reducing before that, defying his own expectations, down to 60 mg daily from his (literal) high of 80, but that day he'd gone at his office stash so hard, like a rabid dog, that he'd had to call Dani and tell her he was working late because she would have seen it in his eyes. If he took these two now it would put him just over 80 a day for the past week, no ground gained at all.
He was putting them back in the baggie when the phone rang.
"Can I speak to Dani?"
He let his shock carry him. Why'd the guy have his number? "Well, good morning, Gay-Org. Wake up and smell your morning breath - it's 5 a.m. Maybe the crack of dawn is the climax of your day, all puns intended, but-"
"Just let me talk to her. It's important."
She was already at the bedroom door, yawning. "What is it?"
"The sound of jackboots in the morning. The perfect wake-up call."
She hadn't seen the fireplace brush and while she listened to Georg with her back to the room, her murmured replies in German sounding more and more upset, he got rid of the evidence, slipping the brush under the sofa and the pills between the cushions.
When she hung up she was crying. "Martha Renfro died of a heart attack last night," she told him.
He'd put that out of his mind. They sat in the kitchen and she lapsed into memories of her mentor while she cried quietly, anecdotes, one story standing out for him, some put-down of Georg that had been applauded by the whole ensemble and that made him think he might have liked the woman if he'd known her, and then they grew silent.
"Death bats last," he murmured. He realized it sounded crass, but she seemed to see in his eyes what he felt, that he was trying to help her through it. She crawled into his lap, his tiny dancer, as she did so often, and he held her, the small pressure of her bottom as always making his thigh hurt worse (and he would die before he ever let her know that).
When she went to shower, he retrieved the pills from the sofa, rolled them like jewels between his fingertips, and swallowed them both. To hell with Wilson's conversion disorder. La belle indifference.
****
It was always courting disaster to go shopping with a man, she knew, but she couldn't have known what would happen. Some things you can't foresee.
While she had tried on clothes Greg had parked himself on the bench beside the dressing room mirror and started a free consulting service: women not put off by his rude comments began to realize they were true and sought his opinion, occasionally of no help - ("Does this make me look fat?" "No, your body does") - but usually hitting the mark ("Why knee-length? You've got great legs - show them.") They stopped off at the perfume counter after he badgered the name of her scent out of her and told her he was buying her some, and when she turned back after wandering down the aisle, he was talking to a dark-haired woman in a tailored suit, someone from the hospital, she assumed, who liked to stand very close and who studied Greg's face like it was the menu at the best restaurant in town. As she approached, it hit her. This is it, she thought.
Then he was turning to her, his hand against her back. "Dani, I'd... like you to meet Stacy."
Simple, with his hand there to support her. "It's nice to finally meet you," she said. "I've heard so much about you."
The woman smiled. A warm, sophisticated smile that said major bitch. "It's nice to meet you too, Dani. I've never heard of you before."
Stay cool. "Oh, why should you have?" She nudged closer to Greg. "Unless the two of you are carrying on some steamy e-mail romance I don't know about."
He gave a fake sigh. "You caught us. We're texting."
"That would be for the quickies."
The woman was watching them, the way they interacted. Summing her up. The barely perceptible glance at her jeans and faded blouse. A lawyer, she remembered. She stood straighter.
And the conversation was an interrogation. She was in the witness stand. How long had she known the defendant Greg? State your occupation. At her "Professional dancer," the eyes went from stand-by bitch to full display mode. Greg said, "Not the euphemistic kind," at the same time she did and they smiled at each other. And when the attorney requested to move the trial to dinner one evening (his hand tightening on her back), she was able to state in all honesty that she had performances for the next two weeks.
Another smile let her know she was outgunned.
"Oh, I meant Greg and I. We do need to catch up. Greg, I'll call you. Your number hasn't changed, I take it?"
After Stacy left he almost forgot the perfume on the counter behind him and then stumped off so fast (in the opposite direction from Stacy) she had to take a running step to catch up. He only seemed to come out of his thoughts when the aisle dead-ended at the back of the store. "The door's the other way," she told him. He seemed startled to see her there. His eyes wouldn't meet hers.
In the evening he barricaded himself with a beer in front of the TV. She put it off for half an hour before clicking the TV off. "I'd like to talk to you." He looked like he'd been expecting it. "I'd like you to say no when Stacy calls."
"We're at that stage now, are we? You tell me what you want and I do it. Also known as the mistress and slave stage. The ventriloquist, performing live tonight with her dummy."
She perched on the sofa beside him. "Just answer one question honestly." The question was so hard she felt unfirm inside, quaky because she didn't want to know the answer. "Why do you keep a photo of you and Stacy in your wallet?"
She had found the photo one day when he yelled from another room for her to check his lottery ticket as the numbers came up. The photo had been in a back compartment (hidden?), well-worn from much handling, two in-love faces in their prime smiling into the camera, heads touching softly. Younger, which was why she hadn't recognized Stacy at first in the department store. His smile as natural as the sun, full of confidence. A different person.
She had put it back quietly, but he'd seen something in her face when she returned (his antenna was just too good) and she pretended it was all about the condom that had also - surprisingly - been in his wallet, letting him swear up and down that it was a relic from his pre-her era he'd forgotten to toss, until he seemed almost flattered at her jealousy. Pretending to forgive him while all she could think of was the photo. To know that his ex was more prevalent in his head than she had ever suspected was devastating. In one moment Stacy had become not just a name, but a ghostly presence beside them, the question of how much he was still hung up on her popping up in the happiest moments. Was she in bed with them when they did it? When they watched Jay together late at night did he forget whose lap his head lay on, whose fingers stroked his hair?
She waited now for an answer. He was silent. "Do you take the photo out and look at it?"
"Yes."
"And why?"
A sigh. "Because it was the last time I was really happy."
"Oh, thank you," she managed to force out. "Thank you so much for sharing that with me."
"I didn't mean it like that. It has nothing to do with you or Stacy. I...look at my own face on it. And no, I'm not that big-headed. I'm looking at ...that person I was. Before the infarction."
It lay there between them for a moment, like a wall.
"So you're a different you now, but it's the one I'm with, Greg. You know I rarely demand anything of you -"
"She's not going to call anyway."
The phone rang.
The way they both jumped might have been funny any other time. "It's the hospital," he assured her. He went to pick it up and his narrowed eyes and quick glance away told her otherwise. When he took his murmured replies into the kitchen where she couldn't hear, she felt numb with shock. I'm here, she wanted to scream at him. I exist.
"So you're going out with her?" He'd come back in and put the phone away.
"Tomorrow night. It's dinner, for chrissake. We'll be eating. Knives and forks. No other tools will come into play, and I wish you'd stop this -"
She got up as he spoke, ignoring his look, and went to her apartment to make a few calls. When she returned, he was outside on the balcony that led off from the kitchen. The late February air took her breath away. She didn't know how he could stand there in his shirtsleeves.
"I just called Georg."
"Don't tell me, we're going to double-date."
"He's giving me a week off. I've got a cover who can dance my parts. I'm flying home to Pittsburgh to spend some time with Mom. You - go on out with Stacy. I just don't want to be here when you do."
His mouth fell open. "You're bolting." She shrugged. "You can't handle having finally met Stacy and so you're running away. Dani, that's just stupid."
His approval had come to mean so much that his real disapproval (not the flippant sarcastic kind) made her cringe. It was the photo, she wanted to tell him, but she knew it was more than that. Stacy - the idea of Stacy - made her feel inadequate: that they had shared a world together before she ever knew Greg existed, that Stacy fit him better, from an outside view at least - age, education and something she could only think of as worldliness, a sophisticated sheen that had left her feeling like a lump of clay in the department store. All-natural jeans girl, devoting her life to dance while they moved in other realms. She knew why he said That's stupid, and not You're stupid to her, always careful never to bring up the issue of brains, where she was no match for him. The closest they had come was a discussion of EQ, in which he had admitted hers was in the stratosphere, but claimed his was high too, something to do with seeing through people ("You do know that EQ doesn't stand for Ego Quotient, don't you?" she had asked him).
He was ranting now. "I can't believe you're being so irrational - so thickheaded. It's weak, it's childish-"
"Moronic, feminine, idiotic. I'll buy you a thesaurus so you can come up with some new ones."
It stopped him. "Okay, look." He seemed to struggle for a moment. "I've - been duly chastised. I'll call Stacy back and cancel."
She was already shaking her head. "I wanted to know you could do something for me you didn't want to do, like say no to her in the first place. Without me putting the thumbscrews on you. To just sacrifice something, Greg." Was it time to tell him? "I know you're lying about how much Vicodin you take." His face closed up. "Which wouldn't matter, the point being that you made the effort, but you could have told me it wasn't working. Rather than chow down on what I presume are hidden stashes. At the risk of sounding like Rodney Dangerfield, that - doesn't show much respect for me." She turned to leave.
"Dani." She looked back. Behind him sounds rose from the street below, people going about their business, their steps muffled by winter. For a moment she thought he wouldn't speak. "You make me happy."
It was the closest he had ever come - probably the closest he could get at that stage - to the three words. "You make me happy too," she replied. "And frustrated, and confused, and furious. Depending, I guess, on the constellation of the planets on a given day or, more likely, the constellation of your clinic patients." She shrugged. "You're hard to get along with, Greg. I - just need a break from that. So see you in a week."
And if she was running - her thoughts whirling as she sat in the airport the next morning - it was not just from the photo. It was from his hand at her back, the way it had fumbled with her blouse unconsciously while they stood before Stacy, his fist bunching the cloth there into a hard knot until she had feared the buttons in front would pop off. Because she had seen him upset in situations before. Angry, ill at ease.
But never nervous.
****
"Are you nuts?"
"You're as bad as Dani. It's dinner, not sex. As in eating. Tongues involved minimally."
"Stacy of all things! Serves you right that Dani left for a week. You - you -" He was stuttering again as he did so often with House, always shocked at how stupid someone so brilliant could be. House's office was cold, as was the burrito lunch he hadn't touched. If the guy wasn't eating, it was a sure sign he was more upset than he let on.
"You'd - just better watch yourself with Stacy tonight." House grimaced at him. "Maybe you don't realize what you've got in Dani. Pick anyone here -" Wilson made a show of gesturing back at the hall behind the glass. "Ask them what they think she sees in you. Did you know the staff's had a running bet ever since the Christmas party? Half the hospital thinks you pay her to be your girlfriend - and believe me, I didn't start that one. The other half figures she's into something so weird she can't find anyone else to do it with her."
"Cool. Any bets on what our specific perversion might be?"
"No. But if you'd give me a hint, I could start the rumor and really clean up."
"Oh, say whatever you like. I'll back you up."
Always the joker. "The point is, you don't give someone like that an excuse to pack it in."
House didn't seem to be listening, the quarter he was walking across the back of his knuckles evidently more interesting. Finally he said, "I'm seeing Stacy tonight. That's all there is to it. On Friday...I'm flying to Pittsburgh."
He saw the shadows in his friend's eyes. "Really?"
"Yeah, isn't it romantic?" He stopped walking the coin and turned away to gaze out the window. "I'm going after her."
****
The man at the door could only be described as rumpled. Grizzled, her first thought, yet the features behind the unshaven chin were clean in their intensity, the eyes reserved. "Mrs. Sieger?"
The cane would have told her. "You're Greg."
"I should have called, but - well, Dani's been doing this bolting thing lately. Didn't want to spook her."
"Dani's not here." She should have told him the truth, but she had a feeling he would have whistled back the taxi just pulling away and she wanted to get to know him. "Why don't you come in?"
In the kitchen she made him coffee, watched his intensity take in the house - and her - while he talked about the flight, how security always assumed he had a bomb in his cane or else why would they x-ray it and didn't being crippled count for anything anymore. "Sorry, I'm rambling."
She sat opposite him. "You know, you're different than I expected."
"I get that a lot."
"Actually, it's been - " she checked her watch - "ten minutes and I expected to have been insulted six different ways by now."
He smiled. "Ah, you've been talking to Kerstin."
Her other daughter had been highly unimpressed with her sister's boyfriend when she first met him, something to do with an ugly argument about whether her son needed the Ritalin she'd been prescribed for him.
"I believe `pig-headed' was the mildest term Kerstin used to describe you," she told him. "She and Dani were at each other's throats for a while."
"But she didn't give Kevin the Ritalin, did she?"
She laughed and shook her head. "You were obviously very persuasive."
In fact, the picture her older daughter had painted of Dani's boyfriend - of an embittered pill-popper congenitally incapable of deferring to anyone else's opinion on anything - was not the man who sat across from her. He was courteous, intent on all she had to say. They sat for almost an hour, while the sun poured through the window and he consumed more coffee than she drank in a week. He told her things she hadn't known about how he and Dani met, then muttered, "Oops," when she showed surprise.
"My daughter did that?"
"No - I made it all up." They were both grinning. "No, really. Don't worry, Mom - she's still the little girl with the Barbie ballerina quilt upstairs."
"Now how did you know about that?"
He shrugged and smiled.
She showed him photos. He skimmed Dani's childhood, only showing interest in her teenage years when she began to look like the woman she would become. He stared a long time at pictures of her father, and then asked how he had died. A stroke, she informed him. At fifty-two.
"That's young. Diabetic?" She shook her head. "Not obese..." He studied the photos of her dead husband for minutes, paging back and forth, oblivious to her, and she caught a glimpse of the doctor in him, the fervency Dani was always talking about.
"The girls were crazy about him," she told him. "Kerstin had her own life by then but Dani was only fifteen and she took it hard. It was a bad time for her."
"So she got along well with him?"
It was a strange question, and when he glanced up he saw her frown. "Sorry," he said. "I - guess I was extrapolating from my own childhood."
"Not great?"
He turned another page as though she hadn't spoken.
When he finally closed the album he had been there an hour and a half, and she felt she'd known him for years - and that she didn't know him at all. She had a strong suspicion that people who'd really known him for years felt the same way.
"So -" He leaned back and twirled his cane, suddenly antsy. "When is Dani getting back?"
"I should have told you this. She's - um - not coming back." The shocked look on his face made her realize how it sounded. "I mean, not this week. She only stayed here a day and then she flew to Arizona to visit friends. Actually, she thought you might show up here and she wanted to be gone when you did."
His disappointment was so palpable she wanted to reach out and touch his arm. She watched in amazement as he took a small bottle from his pocket and dry-swallowed a pill the size of Delaware.
"Friends - or a friend?" he asked.
"A married couple she's known since college." The question surprised her. Dani had told her he was insecure that way but it hadn't fit the man across from her, with his easy slouch that still left him looking tall and the quiet voice that dominated her kitchen with every word. "You..." He looked up. She wasn't sure how to start. "You know, I don't think you need to worry about Dani - about what she feels for you." He was very still. "She's crazy about you. She talks about you all the time. We get so tired of hearing how wonderful you are, we have to tell her to shut up."
"I have to tell women that all the time."
"Your work, your wit. Your strength of character."
He raised one skeptical eyebrow, and glanced back over his shoulder as though wondering who she was talking about, but she could see he was drinking it up, like someone dying of thirst.
"You should have been here that time after Kerstin met you, when she was trying to convince Dani that she had no future with you -"
"Believe me, I would love to have been. I assume age played a large part in the discussion."
"It was part of it."
He was nodding. "That's why I've decided to be thirty when she gets back. Ought to solve everyone's problem with us."
"Actually -" She took a deep breath. "It was the disability. It was cruel of Kerstin but she wasn't pulling any punches." She felt as though she were diving off a cliff. His eyes were like sharp stones. "She was eager to point out all the things you will never do with Dani because of your leg. For instance - and I have to say, realistically - that you are never going to jet off to Cozumel with her for the beaches, like her boyfriend before last did." She tried to gauge how he was taking it, her voice soft. "That you're never going to run alongside a son teaching him to ride a bike." Suddenly she hated herself for having brought it up. "That you're never going to dance with her."
"Ah, define dancing."
She stopped herself from staring. "That's exactly what Dani said."
So they thought alike. She had a sudden image of the two of them together, her little girl whose head would just come to this man's chest, slowing to match his pace as they climbed steps outside some user-unfriendly building. Happy to wait for him. She couldn't remember whether Dani had described something like that. "She's very much in love with you," she told him. The sun scudding in and out of clouds beyond the window bathed the kitchen in changing hues and tinged his eyes light then dark. Completely unfathomable. "She was upset about this ex-girlfriend thing. Please don't break her heart."
"Me? Break her heart?" His chuckle was pained. "Okay, Mom. I won't."
****
When she saw him come around the corner she let out the breath she'd been holding. "James."
"Sorry I'm late."
She'd taken the back elevator as he'd told her. She'd never been as high as the fifth floor. She saw the nurse at the far end of the hall glance their way. "Does Greg suspect anything?" she asked him. He was shaking his head. "Did he see you leave your office?"
"Dani, I leave my office ten times a day. And you're still officially out of town till tomorrow. What's to suspect?"
"You know how he is. If you were acting funny at all - "
"Stop worrying." His hand on her arm was gentle. "Come on, there should be an empty room here." The hall was deserted. The nurse had turned away, busy with papers.
And when she left the room afterwards she was so unfocused, her head buzzing with thoughts, that she took the main elevator by mistake, a habit from a hundred lunches with Greg. The doors opened on third and there he stood. His mouth fell open. She wanted to sink into the floor, push the fire alarm, anything not to have to talk to him until she was ready. The doors started to close and he stopped them with his cane and stepped in.
He caned the button for the second floor without glancing at her. His mouth was a hard line. "Just in case you were looking for me," he said, "I'm never higher than third." His presence as always was overwhelming. A week away, she thought, and he can do this to you. The bell pinged and when she hesitated he turned in the open door, expecting her to follow. "Come on, we can talk in my office."
He could only assume she was there to see him. She would have to play along. "Which is so very private."
"I can lock the doors." He finally looked straight at her. "Where did you think we would talk here anyway? An operating room? You're the one crawling back a day early." If you only knew. She tried to brush past him without a word, but he couldn't let it drop. "Arizona too hot for you?" Please stop. She kept walking. "Couldn't stand having sand in your crotch anymore?"
As they entered his office his gaze lingered for half a second on her blouse, her chest, an odd x-ray glance, and then he was turning away. She felt like a deer in headlamps. She could still feel other hands there on her breasts. Things were moving too fast. He finished locking the doors and flopped into his chair. "See? No one will bother us. Look suitably upset and they'll think you're a patient. No, wait - you already do."
She sat across from him. "Can you stop making jokes for one minute?"
His face became serious. "Okay." He took his watch off and placed it where he could see the minute hand. "Go."
She took a mental breath. Another joke and I will leave, she thought. "I didn't come here to talk to you at all."
"No," he said quietly. "You came here because you're pregnant and needed an exam."
She stared. "What?"
"You have conducting gel on your blouse, Dani. You've had an ultrasound." He was shrugging, but she could see fear in his eyes. "It happens. The IUD can move around, become unreliable. Or maybe you were just lying about having one."
She was shaking her head. "I came here to see Wilson."
"Oh no!" he cried theatrically. "Wilson's the father!"
"Dammit, would you stop it - I'm not pregnant." He had cornered her into the truth and now she would have to tell it. "I've found a lump in my breast," she informed him. "I wanted Wilson to look at it."
His shock filled the office, a hollow silence, as though the air around them had gone to sleep. The bustle from the hall grew distant. His eyes when they finally broke from hers glanced about the room, seeking anything else: folders cluttering his desk, the blank TV screen. Finally he spoke. "Were you - um - planning to tell me about this at all? It's not like I'm a doctor or anything."
She had known it would be that way and yet it still hurt. With a word he had managed to make it about himself. Insulted that she hadn't consulted him first. She felt choked inside. He could be so giving, so locked on her, not only in bed where his passion still astonished her after six months, but in little things that became so intense it was as though they were melting into each other - only to turn it all around with some crappy comment that served his ego. His neediness, when he was the one she needed. It was the reason she hadn't wanted to tell him. She had known - from the moment she'd felt the lump at Bill and Tanya's, calling her mom and hearing that Greg had been there, arranging to fly back early - through it all she had known what it would mean if she were truly sick. That he would make her his case - already was in fact - a referendum on his abilities, when what she needed was for him to take her in his arms. Whatever fear might be tearing her up inside was no concern to him, all the degradation she knew would follow if it really was cancer. None of it would matter to him. She had already had a taste, up on the fifth floor, of what it would be like - the humiliation she had just gone through of having to strip her shirt off and stand there while Wilson kneaded her breasts and told her to lie down for the ultrasound, wondering if it was panic that had made her stupid enough to call her boyfriend's best friend for an exam rather than a stranger. Wilson had been so professional, calming her, explaining how the ultrasound worked, that her respect for him had gone up immensely. Imagining Greg in the same situation left her almost nauseous.
"I found the lump two days ago in Arizona," she told him. If he could be that way, so could she. "When was I supposed to tell you - before or after our big fight about Stacy?"
"Oh, to hell with Stacy." He seemed to mean it. "What did Wilson say?"
She could imagine the frown on his face turning reproachful if she didn't come up with the exact words. She tried to remember. Aside from Wilson's assurances that there were twenty things it could be that weren't cancer, she had been too worried to listen.
"He - um - said it was discrete. That it was hard, but that he could move it around."
"I assume Wilson told you that's a good sign. If he didn't, my opinion of the caring doctor would have to be revised."
"He said he couldn't tell anything. He wants to do some fine thing with a needle."
"Fine needle aspiration."
"I'm supposed to come back in the afternoon when he has time."
He stood up so abruptly she started. She watched as he hobbled out across his terrace, hurdled the partition and banged his cane on Wilson's glass. She could hear nothing of their conversation, but she could follow its course in Wilson's face when he stepped out: surprise that Greg had run into her, defense of their sneaking around. Wilson had patients in his office, an older couple and a teenage girl, who leaned toward the glass to stare. She tried to ignore Greg's gestures, which seemed so manic without the force of his voice to accompany them, a mime acting out browbeating. She concentrated on the objects in his office, all so functional. You are not a thing, she told herself, not the granite mortar-and-pestle there on the sideboard she knew he used to grind pills, not the medical volumes shelved haphazardly. Some decision had been reached; he was turning back toward his office, and she suddenly couldn't stand it anymore. She stood and left.
The elevator was just closing and as she slipped in she saw Greg blow out of the office like a tornado looking for her; Wilson, who had gone back through his own office, was almost running down the hall to stop her. The stairs would have been quicker but it was a kind of panic that drove her, every thought except Greg's frowning face flushed from her mind. When the elevator opened at the bottom, Wilson stood there.
"You must be out of breath," she said.
"You know, for a second he was ready to sprint down the stairs after you himself. As if he'd literally forgotten he couldn't. Yelled at me to go instead." They stood in the busy lobby, buffeted by crowds. "Dani, what's wrong?"
"I - just can't be a case of his. And I'm fast becoming one." She sighed. "I'd rather just go somewhere else to get this checked, okay?"
He watched her for a long moment. "You're strong," he told her. "Somewhere in there you're stronger than he is. Let him go through his usual routine on this. You can take it. And it's the only way he can handle it. Please come back up with me."
Far off an announcement pinged over the PA system, something important in incomprehensible static, and she found herself trying to decipher it as though it could tell her what to do.
"Come on." Wilson was already pushing the elevator button and she realized she had decided. "We'll rein him in together, I promise."
He stood outside in the cold, leaning on the low terrace wall. When he saw her returning with Wilson, he stepped back in.
"Stop bolting!"
His voice was so loud even Wilson seemed shocked. Half the hospital must have heard. You have to let him do this. She steeled herself for the onslaught, but his next words were gentler.
"It's not like you, Dani, this running away all the time. Don't ever bolt again."
She looked straight at him. "I won't."
"We're doing the biopsy now." He was already in the other room, gathering what he needed. Wilson joined him and shut the door but she could hear their argument, Wilson reminding him that it wasn't just another case, that it was a serious matter for her.
"Oh, and I thought I'd get at least a comedy sketch for the next Christmas party out of it," she heard Greg say.
"I just mean, there's no room for your tremendous ego in this. She's scared -"
"And the quicker we can find out it's nothing, the better for her. Get rid of your patient. We're doing the FNA now."
Then they were back on fifth, the same room with its humming ultrasound, and she was topless again on the table, exposed in a way that made her want to cringe, a slab of lean meat, only it was Greg who held the ultrasound probe, his quick "Which side?" directed at Wilson instead of her. She could feel Greg go still as the image came up on the screen. He murmured, "That's large," his voice odd as though he'd burned his tongue. Wilson came into view on the other side, with the longest needle she had ever seen.
"Don't I get an anesthetic?" She sounded scared even to herself.
"It would just mean another needle," said Wilson. "This is quick and painless, Dani.
"I used to hyperventilate when I got shots as a kid."
"Just relax." Wilson turned to concentrate on the screen, the needle hovering near her chest.
Greg still hadn't looked at her.
They spoke over her (ignore me, she thought, I'm just a body).
"Looks lucent." (Greg). "Lipid cyst maybe."
"Pretty solid for that."
"Spiculated. There." Greg pointed to the screen. She heard him swallow. Please look at me.
"Saw that earlier. Could just be distortion. Or calcification."
"You're thinking fat necrosis? We're not in gaga land. She has about as much fat on her as my cane does. Eccymoses?" His rapid glance at her breast avoided her eyes.
_"No dimpling, no retraction."
"Induration?"
"None that I could feel."
"Any trauma lately?" With a start she realized Greg was talking to her.
"Other than running into you in the elevator?" she asked. For a moment they were all silent.
"You've told me about falling while dancing, when someone misses a hold."
"There was a bad one a few months ago. I fell flat on my chest."
The look they exchanged across her told her nothing, then Wilson was bending to insert the needle, Greg moving the probe to guide him.
"Closer to the axilla."
"If you get gel in there, you'll have artifacts."
"I'm not one of your fellows."
The needle went in and out three times. She hadn't expected that, that it would take multiple tries, and she tensed, not even breathing, all the worry of the past few days crashing down on her, Greg's eyes still intent on the screen, lost in thought (why won't you look at me) while his hand, the one not holding the probe, lifted from where he had leaned it on the table edge (do you know what you're doing) to touch her other breast, stroking the back of one finger along the soft skin below the nipple, back and forth, in a way that anyone would have called fondling. Sexual and yet not. She realized it was entirely unconscious. A wave of something she couldn't name washed through her - not the thrill that would catch her heart any other time he touched her like that. She felt calm inside. He was soothing her, giving her strength, without even being aware of wanting to. Telling her she was still herself to him. It didn't matter that he couldn't meet her eyes at the same time. They were connected, there where his finger caressed her skin, telling her it would be all right.
****
For some reason he'd thought of the little black girl. Sexual organs, incisions.
Dani had been scared (oh that look when they met at the elevator, his own face probably just as dopy) and he had almost blown it. The shock of her words, so simple, lump and breast, letting him know with one hard glance that it was something she could get through without him, had kept him from thinking straight, trying to chase her down like an idiot when she ran being just one highlight of how insane the fear of losing her made him, literally shaking inside imagining her terminal, when he should have been thinking of all the things that would seem confusing to her, explaining, comforting. Leaving it to Wilson instead. Right up to the moment when they saw on the screen what looked like spiculation, the worst sign, mastectomy suddenly a real probability- and her body there on the table, her presence, had crashed back in on him. The little black girl with the clitoredectomy had seemed to walk in the door. He'd seen enough mastectomies to know the scar wasn't bad, nothing to beat his, but he suddenly knew how it would feel to her, as he had never imagined how it must be for a woman before, the loss like a mutilation of the soul, as though some sexual capacity were to be cut away and he had wanted to yell, No, no, you will never be less beautiful, never less a woman. Instead he had found himself feeling her up. Happened before he even knew he was doing it, just a desire he hadn't been aware of, the desire to let her know that she would still be a woman for him, no matter what. His finger on her breast as deeply sexual and yet undemanding as the two or three times she had reached across below a restaurant table and run a finger along his cock, feeling it harden, the same simple gesture, not trying to be lewd, just saying Here we are, we're connected. Wilson had noticed what he was doing and turned a shade of red more like purple, a look of shocked disgust on his face, clearly not getting it - what did the guy think, that he was going to jump Dani's bones right there on the table? - but it suddenly hadn't mattered. The slides were fixed, Wilson - still half red - had gone off to call in favors at the pathology lab and get a rush job on them, and he had been alone with her as she sat up on the edge of the table with her feet dangling, not putting on her blouse, just clutching it in a ball on her lap. He had put his arms close around her, getting gel all over his shirt front, while her legs went around him and she rested her head on his chest.
The elevator reached the floor of his apartment and he stepped out.
She'd gone home to wait. Wilson, returning with the results in record time, had recommended he call her, but he'd insisted on going home to tell her personally.
She had heard the elevator; she was sitting on her sofa, knees drawn up the way she did when she was upset.
"It's not cancer," he told her.
A long sigh. "Okay."
"It's most likely fat necrosis. Basically scar tissue. A trauma to the breast can make fat cells die and harden. In your case it had to have been every one you have to make a lump like that. You can have it removed, but it'll probably go away on its own." He watched her. "It's still unusual for a woman your size and I want you to get tested for certain blood conditions."
"Okay."
Then she was in his arms and everything went away. The stupid fucked-up world silent for a while.
Much later he pulled back. "Answer me a question, Dani. Why did you run?"
That little pause, always considering what she said before she said it. "I - just couldn't be your patient. The way you turn a patient into a ...thing. A body to be repaired."
"That wouldn't have happened with you."
"We'll never know now."
He kissed her. "Am I really that awful?" he murmured.
"Not to me. Usually."
"Great."
"To your patients, yes."
"And before?"
She understood what he meant. "A panic reaction? Stacy - well, you lived with her for five years. Slept with her again less than a year ago. I guess it was the same sort of panic reaction that made me run out of your office."
"Stacy's not a tumor."
"Okay, she's a lump. Who knows if she's malignant or not?"
"I'm a doctor. She's not."
She was studying him. "And how was dinner?"
"Boring. I was in bed early. And don't give me that look - you know what I mean."
What he didn't say was that Stacy had wanted to make it a regular thing and that he had agreed - for reasons obscure even to himself - to meet her for dinner again in two weeks. That information he would share on a need-to-know basis and Dani didn't need to know.
All he knew was that something inside him had grown up that morning while she lay, tensed and hardly breathing, on the table and the needle went in, his mind suddenly grasping what everyone in existence had told him for years, that he really was awful, that he treated people like dirt in an open wound. And that he could change if he wanted to.
****
End of Chapter 4
(Those of you with medical training and laughing right now at the mistakes in this - I ask your forgiveness)
(Chp. 5 "Grownups" here mid-Jan).
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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 NBC/Universal, 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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