[ Usual disclaimer goes here – House and all associated characters belong to Fox, not me – I just write ‘cause I’m a fan.
Other notes:
Thanks to TelegramSam for supplying the original plot bunny, and my apologies if it grew into an unexpected hare!
This is nowhere near the intensity and power of Sy’s “Intervention,” and in this case, drugs win out over sheer will power. Plus semi-consciousness means less snark, which is reeeally hard to write well. So this is work-in-progress… I’ll update again if/when good dialog comes to me. I’m not entirely happy yet with the characterizations….
Full disclosure: my medical research consisted of plugging a word into WebMD’s search engine and remembering my own experiences with anesthesia. Specific questions at the end, if someone’s got the medical savvy to take ‘em on – any/all medical advice welcomed! Likewise, general comments / criticisms welcomed…. ]
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Rated PG-13 for language and adult themes…
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Menagerie
He was swimming.
No. He hadn’t been in the water in… years. Ages. Lifetimes.
But he was floating.
His body felt light.
There was something wrong with this. Something felt… unbalanced. Wrong. What was it? He tried to ignore it, drift away on a warm current, but it nagged at him.
“Dr. House? Are you awake?”
He realized his eyes were open. Had been open forever, it seemed, he just hadn’t noticed. Vision filled with soft bright light. Time creaked to a start.
Focus. A silhouette resolved into a shape, the shape into head and shoulders, a face – eyes, nose, mouth. Concerned expression. A smile when she realized he was registering something.
Nurse. She was a nurse.
That meant… What did that mean? Why was thinking such hard work? Should have been just like breathing – steady – in, out. Like walking – one foot, the other – left, right… right? Bright light in his eyes. Something missing?
Nurse. This was a hospital bed. Sound? His brain identified what he’d been hearing for the past little bit of forever – the beep of a heart monitor. His? He heard it change, speed up slightly. Now, what did that mean…?
Shit. Something was wrong. He tried to tell himself something was very wrong, but the rest of him wasn’t listening, just wanted to relax, drift away. Like the song. Gimme the beat, boys…
But a beat wouldn’t do *him* any good any more, would it?
He tried to hold that thought – there was something important attached to it – but it drifted away too.
Eventually, after a little more forever, so did he.
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When awareness crept back the second time, clarity came with it. The heart rate monitor beeped quietly, steadily. A thick metal taste in his mouth told him anesthesia was still wearing off, but wouldn’t take much longer. A difference in sounds told him he was out of recovery and in a room. He took a deep breath and heard his heart slow down momentarily.
There was an IV in his left hand. Moving his head was an effort. Not worth the effort – he couldn’t make out the printing on the bag – it was facing the wrong way, and he wasn’t focusing very well.
C’mon, brain, work.
Last memories – his office, sudden searing pain, nausea. Standing up… bad idea – sudden change in blood pressure. Impact. A short but detailed study of the office carpet. Then nothing.
Damn. That meant someone had seen it… or had found him. Cameron. Cameron had been there? Chase? What had happened…?
Ah. The brain clicked on. He’d had several days of indigestion that he’d blamed on a steady diet of the hospital cafeteria liberally mixed with Vicodin. There had been no interesting cases this week, and he knew his consumption was up. He generally ignored the side effects of the drug for the relief it brought. But there were risks associated with that. And probabilities.
He was good at doing the math. Apparently his number had come up.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head from the IV bag to the door. Wilson leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking amused. Smug sonofabitch wasn’t the one lying in the damn hospital bed.
“Appendix?” Iron filings in his vocal chords.
“Ruptured. Peritonitis.”
“Shit.” Still rusty.
Wilson stood up straight and stepped in, smile edging toward a smirk. “You have an admirer.” He nodded toward the effects closet and the shelves opposite the bed. “Is your eighty-two-year-old girlfriend back?”
Focus. “Get it outta here. Now.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I think he’s kinda cute.” Wilson picked up the chocolate brown teddy bear from the shelf where it sat, held it out, admiring it. There was a cheerful red bow tied around its neck.
“No note, huh? Whoever she is, she’s got good taste.”
He paused to consider the words that had just come out of his mouth. “In toys, if not in choice of invalid.”
“Throw it away. Burn it. Give it to your wife.” He tensed, tried to push off against the bed. Got absolutely nowhere – muscles like overcooked spaghetti. Fuck. “I will drag myself across the floor and shred it with my bare hands.” Wilson set the bear back down on the shelf, and turned to House.
“On top of the ruptured appendix and peritonitis, you also had a nasty reaction to the anesthesia. You are going nowhere fast, pal.” He took a look at the chart hanging on the end of the bed, and checked the IV. Then he grabbed the TV remote from the shelf and put it on the tray table beside the bed.
“We don’t want you back on the Vicodin just yet, so there’s a drip along with the antibiotics.” He pulled a cable from the maze of tubing, thumbed the button, and settled it next to House’s left hand. “Press the button as needed. I’ll check back in a bit.”
“Bring a shotgun with you.”
Somewhere in the middle of thinking about how to get the damn fuzzy thing out of his room, he drifted away again.
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Cameron caught him in the hall. “How is he?”
“Awake, for now. And cranky. Is the teddy bear from you?”
Her eyes went wide, incredulous. “Teddy bear??? Someone gave *House* a teddy bear???”
“Yep. And he can’t get out of bed yet to mutilate it.” He grinned at her. “This might be too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“If you’re willing to suffer the consequences later,” she said wryly. “No thanks.”
She took a long look through the glass, through the half-turned blinds, then turned back to Wilson.
They shared a wordless moment of sympathy, both knowing they cared far more than was healthy for a man who was far less than healthy. It was a lot easier being a doctor, when you could do something to help and heal, than it was being a friend, when you could do nothing but be there.
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He was still off-balance when he woke the next time. He drifted in and out for awhile, lulled by the heart monitor and the murmur of the TV. There was part of him that was fighting, raging, because he should have been fighting harder, but he couldn’t get himself to listen, to muster energy to do anything except breathe and lie there.
Pain finally registered. He’d felt off-balance since he’d woken up… because he *didn’t* feel pain in his leg. Novel sensation. Seductive. And he didn’t have relief from clinic hours riding on whether he took a hit or not. God, relief was so rare…
It was the awakening after that when he made the connection. He was doped on the pain meds for the leg and the surgery, but there was something else mixed with it too – sedative…? Had to be. Push a button, fall asleep. *Bastard.*
He’d have to ride it out after all. And he didn’t even have a bet to win this time, dammit.
He shifted in the bed to set the happy button aside, and felt something soft tickle his neck and shoulder. What…?
He reached up with his right hand and lifted something bright red to where he could focus on it.
Someone was going to die for this.
Elmo? For Christ’s sake, Elmo???
He propped himself up on one elbow, aimed as best he could, and threw Elmo at the teddy bear. The bear went sprawling backwards on the shelf, and Elmo fell to the floor. House flopped back against the bed, breathing hard, suddenly weak all over. Cold sweat popped out. Something in his abdomen screamed at him.
His elevated heart rate triggered the arrival of a nurse a few seconds later – she checked his vitals, fussed with tubing and pillows and blankets and was he comfortable and did he need anything else? He snarled something.
It dawned on him as he drifted away that she’d somehow managed to shoot him up again while he was swearing at her….
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This time it was the Energizer bunny. The bloody-be-damned-to-hell-and-back-again Energizer fucking bunny.
He knew his staff wouldn’t dare pull something like this – he’d put them through every single circle of Dante’s hell. Twice. Three times. And he’d thought his reputation throughout the hospital was heavy enough that the nurses wouldn’t dare anything either.
Wilson was already high on the payback list for the tranq in the IV… would he figure things couldn’t get any worse anyway…? Cuddy wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, although she might convert just to piss him off.
He seethed, and raged, and slept, exhausted from seething and raging. Woke to curse the incredible miraculous human machine that was failing him. Again. He boosted the TV’s volume and tried to distract himself before he sank into black and bitter self-loathing.
The afternoon soaps were good for awhile. Suzy had another guy tripping over his tongue for her. Tracy wasn’t sure about the father. Becker fell off the wagon again.
Oprah. Montel. Dr. Phil. Geraldo. Whoever. Morons. Bozos.
The soaps ran into the talk which morphed into the evening news – somehow he lost several hours.
He was almost too tired to look, in case it meant he’d have to get pissed off again. He knew he couldn’t afford the energy drain after surgery and an infection and a reaction.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.
Someone had started a goddamn menagerie. Elmo and the bear and the bunny were sitting together on the shelf, one big happy family, and had now joined company with, of all things, a yellow rubber duckie.
*Ten* times through the fires of the Inferno. Flayed in inch-wide strips and skinned alive with scalpels. Air bubbles injected subcutaneously. Splinters made from tongue depressors driven under finger- and toenails. Catheters and enemas.
He flopped his head back and stared at the ceiling. No good – he could still feel them watching him.
He grabbed the nurse call button, pressed it, held it down.
“I want those out of here,” he said hoarsely, when someone appeared. She smiled in response and disappeared.
When he was certain they were ignoring the call button, he took the heart monitor off his left index finger and tossed over the bed railing.
The nurse who showed up this time took one look at him, nodded to herself, and walked away.
*Finally*.
He held the call button down for a solid five minutes.
Good.
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House’s eyes were closed when Wilson stopped in the doorway late that evening.
“House?” No response. He studied his friend.
And wondered, again, again, again, why he bothered.
Because he knew no one else would? Because he was a sucker for a hard-luck case or a lost cause?
Because he couldn’t do anything else but be here.
He wondered if House would ever solve the puzzle of himself.
He glanced over to see if the zoo had added any more exhibits. Doubtful. There weren’t many who’d brave the revenge. He’d gotten a full report, and an earful more, from the nurses.
He had to walk closer to figure out what he was looking at.
Then he dove back toward the door, covering his mouth to smother the burst of laughter that would’ve awakened his patient.
The bear was lying flat on its stomach, and the bright pink Energizer bunny was lying face-down on top of it, hips aligned.
Elmo was sitting back against the wall, legs spread, and the rubber duckie… the rubber duckie was sitting between Elmo’s legs, tipped forward with its bill deep in Elmo’s crotch.
The animals were gone the next morning. Wilson didn’t ask, and House said nothing.
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He was making his rounds on Friday of the following week, stopping in all the usual places. It was impossible *not* to have favorites, though he tried hard to spread equal attention all around.
“Hi, Emily!”
She was five and a half years old. Was supposed to start kindergarden this year, had landed in the hospital instead, on aggressive chemo. A strawberry-blonde angel, she’d stolen his heart the first day she’d come in, sick, weak, drained, but willing to trust him. Even when he’d told her that her medicine would make her feel even more sick for awhile, but would eventually cure her.
He rarely felt worthy of their trust.
“Dr. Wilson! Come see my teddy bear! The nurses said Santa Claus made a special trip early to bring us some presents! Isn’t he cute?”
The little girl was practically bouncing out of her bed.
“He *is* cute – I like the bow. Have you given him a name yet?”
“Yeah! His name’s Buster!”
She hugged the critter tightly, a big smile on her face, a gap in the smile where she’d lost a front tooth her second week in the hospital.
He smiled back at her. “That’s a great name, Emily.”
His step was lighter as he wandered through the children’s ward.
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Medical questions ---
Q: Would an emergency appendectomy patient be on oxygen immediately following surgery? For how long?
Q: Catheter for an emergency operation like this?
Q: IV / liquid diet for awhile, before returning to solids? How long?
Q: For peritonitis following ruptured appendix, what kind of recovery time? How long in the hospital? Followed by how long recovering at home? What kind of restrictions?
Q: Is it possible to have more than one medication funneled through one IV? In this case, antibiotics, pain medication, and sedative…
Q: In a case like House’s, where he’s had emergency surgery and therefore probably (?) come off regular medication (Vicodin), is it reasonable to keep him off it for a bit, and if so, to substitute something else like morphine? I didn’t name anything specific, but I originally had that in mind….
Very cute! I was thinking of attacking this plotbunny myself but I'm glad to see you've adopted it.
However, didn't House say he already had had an appendectomy? I'm thinking "Sports Medicine." Man, I wish that transcript was up so I could check.
| QUOTE |
| A short but detailed study of the office carpet |
And...love! Hee!
Also loved House abusing the call button and subsequently taking the monitor off.
*LOL* at the stuffed animals put in compromising positions. A college roommate and I did that to our other roommate's stuffed animals once.
PipTook
1) ROTFLOL at the stuffed animals. I'm glad someone took in this bunny. But yes, someone needs to take a picture -- with House's own camera phone, if nothing else. Plus Sister Augustine gave Chase the 411 on which nurse owns a camera phone ;) Send someone down to the gift shop to get a disposable camera, if need be. tee hee at the Becker reference. I liked the line about the carpet too.
OK, some medical stuff.
That device House pulls off his finger is a pulse oximeter, called a "pulse ox" by members of the Secret Medical Club. He probably would not have one on constantly unless he was in the ICU.
Now, questions:
Q: Would an emergency appendectomy patient be on oxygen immediately following surgery? For how long?
Yes, but they would wean him off it pretty quickly unless there were complications. His anesthesia complications might have bought him a little more time on the oxygen.
Q: Catheter for an emergency operation like this?
Yes, but removed once House was pretty consistently awake and could handle conventional arrangements.
Q: IV / liquid diet for awhile, before returning to solids? How long?
Probably a dextrose IV ("sugar water") for a while, maybe for 12-24 post-op, while the rest of his gut woke up. Maybe a little longer if he was having those complications. Then a meal or two on liquids to see how he tolerated it, and then back to solids.
Q: For peritonitis following ruptured appendix, what kind of recovery time? How long in the hospital? Followed by how long recovering at home? What kind of restrictions?
Can't answer the first one but Google probably could. I would estimate 3-6 weeks at home (just guesstimating here) with restrictions on lifting. Walking's going to be even more of a bitch than usual for House.
Q: Is it possible to have more than one medication funneled through one IV? In this case, antibiotics, pain medication, and sedative…
Yes, if they're all compatible. The sedation was probably given every few hours in as-needed doses.
Q: In a case like House’s, where he’s had emergency surgery and therefore probably (?) come off regular medication (Vicodin), is it reasonable to keep him off it for a bit, and if so, to substitute something else like morphine? I didn’t name anything specific, but I originally had that in mind….
Yes, because he can't take the Vicodin orally. I chose morphine for my own medical fic :) A morphine drip would be a good choice both to keep withdrawal syndrome at bay and to relieve both his chronic pain and the pain from his surgery.
And -- sorry to spoil the cute ending -- but NO WAY would stuffed animals from one patient's room be taken to another patient's room, especially from a general surgical patient's room to little cancer patients with no immune systems. Remember "Maternity"? ;) I could see them turning up as trophies somewhere, though.
hth,
auditrix, RN
Thanks for the comments, all! This one's been percolating for awhile -- still not done, but I had to get it out of my system....
I was being deliberately ambiguous about where the toys were coming from... I think I know who, but I have to figure out how to work in a few more hints...
I wrestled with a scene or two involving colleagues and cameras, but couldn't bear to have the poor bastard lose so much dignity. Was thinking about another (sympathetic) Wilson/Cameron exchange about having pix on the computer at home that will never see the light of day... need to think more on that one.
Umm... I know I've heard the name Becker somewhere before... what did I unintentionally refer to? :smiling perplexed: :)
Missed the appendix ref in "Sports Medicine" -- drat! Have to check that again....
Drat again on the ultimate home of the critters -- I don't know if it came across or not, but I was thinking that *House* was the anonymous Santa Claus (knowing he didn't have anything communicable)... drat!
Back to the keyboard -- thanks again, all!
Peace,
-- Cathy
P.S.
| QUOTE |
| More than one person can adopt a bunny, you know. We can have a BUNNYFIGHT! tongue.gif |
Does yours have "big pointy teeth!!!" ? :D ;)
| QUOTE (cathyNH @ Mar 11 2005, 08:55 AM) |
| Q: For peritonitis following ruptured appendix, what kind of recovery time? How long in the hospital? Followed by how long recovering at home? What kind of restrictions? |
Even after a ruptured appendix, you'd probably only be hospitalized for 2 or 3 days. With complications, maybe 5 or 6. The recovery time as a whole wouldn't be that long. You'd probably be back to work in about a week or just over. You probably wouldn't like stairs very much but I don't think you'd have many restrictions other than don't be stupid & lift anything too heavy.
Funny stuff. LOL The Case of the Mysterious Stuffies... LOL
I just caught some actual 'plot bunnies' in action around my apartment, this morning... and I did get pictures. *g* ;)
I think most doctors would make *terrible* patients, but, House above all... LOL
Ahhh... the dread 'Black Beast of Caer Bannog...' "It's only a rabbit..." LOL "Look at the *bones, Man! Look at the *bones*!" LOL
Hugs,
Sanlin
Energizer Bunny! That's me!
LOL!
Loved the fic, very nice, and I don't care about the medical validity of it! I know nothing about anything so it's all good! *is now wanting more*
More please!