Pesach

TITLE: Pesach
AUTHOR: PWCorgigirl
PAIRING: None. House/Wilson friendship.
RATING: G
WARNINGS: None, but refers to events in Histories and Autopsy.
SUMMARY: Wilson protects those he loves, but it takes a toll on him.
DISCLAIMER: Not my characters. Just letting them play in my yard.
NOTES: This story was written earlier this fall, and it refers to events in a previous fiction I wrote titled “Horse.” Both have their inspiration in that scene in Histories where Wilson tells House he has a brother who has been missing for years. This takes place on Passover, which derives its name from the Hebrew word Pesach, meaning "passing over" or "protection.”

Many thanks go to my friends at the Too Handsome for Paperwork forum for encouraging me to write and for reading it first.
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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Wilson stared at the page as it slowly emerged from his fax machine. The always analytical part of his brain noted the lack of any bright color in the photograph: the stark white of the sheet, the cold steel of the table, the peculiar fish-belly gray of the dead man’s face.

So much of what he did was interpreting shades of white and gray. The subtle gradations he could see so often meant the difference between life and death for his patients.

The right side of the man’s face was darker where blood had pooled after he’d died. He had lain dead either with his face turned to the right or lying on his right side. The thin, bearded face was slack and framed with dark hair.

Wilson leaned over the machine, half his weight supported on his fingertips, and studied the photo as it spooled out of the machine and dropped. Another followed it. Hands this time. Someone must have washed his hands and cleaned his nails. They were almost beautiful, like marble hands on a white sheet.

He looked closely, and saw, as he knew he would, a small V-shaped scar on the first knuckle of the left hand. His own hands shook as he picked up his cell phone and resumed the conversation interrupted by receiving the fax.

“It’s him. That’s Danny,” he said.

&&&
Wilson was always organized, even when he was running on autopilot. He added the faxes to a thick file on his desk and started, out of habit, to immediately replace it in the filing cabinet. For ten years, he’d done that every time he’d added to it. Now there was no need. The case was finally closed.

He looked at the worn index tab: Daniel Wilson. His brother, long missing, found dead in New Brunswick.

The Middlesex County medical examiner’s office told him Danny appeared to have died of exposure, a not unusual outcome for someone who’d lived on the streets for a decade with a drug habit.

Wilson had known it was Danny from the second he saw the face in the photo. When he’d seen him last, he wasn’t gaunt and bearded, and his hair wasn’t over his shoulders, but the Wilson eyebrows were unchanged, as was the fine slant of his nose.

Their mother had the same elegant nose. Jacob and Miriam Wilson left their physical stamp on all three of their sons, but nothing of their gentle character had been passed on to Danny. He was always angry and wild. The scar on his hand came from knocking out one of David’s baby teeth during a fight over a basketball in the driveway.

His parents did all they could to help Danny and grieved over his disappearance, but as the years passed, Wilson’s own sorrow was replaced with a shameful relief that Danny was gone. No more helping his father change the locks, no more searching pawnshops for his mother’s jewelry, no more reclaiming the family car from the police impound yard. He didn’t feel any more grief now, just an odd shift in his feelings once the initial shock had hit.

Wilson picked up the file and opened his briefcase. Inside was a telephone message slip, a reminder from his mother to bring the wine for Passover. He picked up the slip, and realized the date. It was tonight. With everything that happened since this morning, all thought of anything sacred had left him.

His parents were having the Seder tonight. David and Amy were bringing the kids. Joel had been practicing reciting the four questions every day after kindergarten for a month.

He dropped the slip. Sweat popped out at his hairline. He’d felt strange all day, ever since the first phone call from the medical examiner’s office this morning. And this was why. Not this, not on Passover. The traditional first question -- “Why is this night different from all other nights?” -- would forever take on a different meaning if he walked in and told his parents their middle son had finally been found.

He imagined the horror on their faces when he said the words: dead, a vagrant, a drug addict, autopsy required by law.

He sat down heavily in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. Whenever he was tired or tense, a painful tight spot formed there. It hurt fiercely. Once in a great while the pain would spread and he’d have an incapacitating migraine.

I can’t tell them tonight, he thought. I just can’t. And the pain sank a talon into the side of his head.

&&&
House came looking for him at lunchtime and found him lying on the floor of his darkened office with a damp towel over his eyes.

“Hangover?” House asked from the doorway.

“Migraine,” Wilson said.

“You got drugs for that?”

Wilson lifted the corner of the towel and fixed one eye on House. “No. But I figured you’d show up eventually.”

“See, I am good for something,” House said. He pulled his pain medication from his jacket pocket and shook the bottle. “You need a real ‘scrip or do you want to break federal law and share mine?”

“Sumatriptan,” Wilson said, dropping the corner back over his eye.

“Pills, shot or spray? And how’s your blood pressure?”

“Spray,” Wilson said. “And it’s usually 100 over 70.” It felt as if something big and angry was clawing its way through his skull. He hadn’t gotten up to get his own medication because the pain made him reel when he walked.

“Be right back,” House said.

I’ll tell them tomorrow, Wilson thought. Danny won’t be any more dead tomorrow than he is today, than he was yesterday. The ME he’d talked to estimated Danny had been dead a day before his body was found.

If he told them tomorrow, they could light a Yahrzeit candle for Danny on the last night of Passover without ruining the kids’ Seder. What was another day, after ten years, after all?

His left eye was pulsing with pain, and he lightly pressed the heel of his hand against it. He was starting to wonder if House was personally compounding the drugs by the time he finally felt the whoosh of air as his office door opened. He heard the soft shuffle of House’s feet on the carpet and the crackle of a paper bag bumping against House’s leg.

“Don’t get up,” House said. “I’ve got it figured out.”

Wilson took the towel off his face. House had pushed the desk chair around beside Wilson and lowered himself into it. He leaned over and handed Wilson the bag.

“Spray and a pack of tissues, with a side order of phenergan in case of puking, a garnish of ibuprofen and,” he pulled a can of Coke from his jacket pocket with a magician’s flourish, “caffeine.”

“I don’t always puke, but the forethought is appreciated,” Wilson said. He sat up slowly and carefully, popped the top on the soda and took the medication.

“The cafeteria is still refusing to stock Jolt,” House said. “So the Coke will have to do.”

“How narrow-minded of them,” Wilson said.

“What do you expect? They also turned down my idea for No-Doz tablets in the bubble gum machines,” House said. “The hospital would make a fortune off the residents alone.”

Wilson smiled, but it was wan and fleeting. He grabbed a loose cushion out of the seat of the armchair beside him and lay back down with it tucked under his head. He draped the towel over his eyes and was still.

He could hear House bouncing his cane on its rubber tip. It was one of House’s little mannerisms when he was thinking. When he had two strong legs, he’d paced. Now he fiddled with things in his hands.

“What’s on your mind?” Wilson finally asked.

“Cameron’s very diligent about keeping my daily calendar turned,” House said. “Passover starts tonight. Won’t your folks be expecting you?”

“They are. So?” Wilson said.

“So, you aren’t looking too good,” House said.

“I’ll be fine,” Wilson said. He wasn’t lying. He already felt slightly better, although he wasn’t discounting the placebo effect of just having someone take care of him for once. Maybe, he thought, if he just lay quietly for a while, he might be able to get up and do some work before heading to his parents’ house.

“Julie going to be there?”

“No, she’s visiting her parents,” Wilson said. “It’s her niece’s first Seder.”

Wilson heard the thump-thump begin again. Don’t say it, he thought. Don’t ask me if it’s the first year Joel’s old enough to ask the questions because you already know the answer. Don’t ask me if I told them Julie’s not coming, because you know the answer to that, too.

He lifted the towel. House was staring out the window.

“Can I come with?” He asked it as if it didn’t matter, but Wilson knew it did. House loved his mother’s cooking. It was, he said, the only thing that would make him climb that flight of stairs at their townhouse, though it wouldn’t keep him from grumbling and muttering curses as he did it.

“Sure,” Wilson said. “You’ve been there so often my parents think of you as an honorary Jew. But, remember, you don’t like kids.”

“For your mom’s roast lamb, I’ll tolerate them,” House said.

&&&
Miriam greeted them at the door, a dishtowel clutched in one hand and an apron tied around her waist.

“Jimmy, darling,” she said, and hugged him. House saw her glance past her son’s shoulder, saw the wisp of sadness that crossed her features when she realized Julie wasn’t there.

“Oh, how wonderful! You brought Greg!” she said.

“Uh, something about your lamb and how he’d hurt me if I didn’t,” Wilson said as they walked past his mother.

Sophie, Wilson’s three-year-niece, crashed into Wilson’s legs and clung to him. She grinned up at House, who always thought the little girl’s white-blonde hair and dark brown eyes were at odds with each other. Her little sister, Rebecca, who had, at 18 months old, just mastered fast toddling, came around the corner. She stumbled to a halt at the sight of the men, let out a scream of fear and fell onto her diapered behind.

Miriam scooped her up and settled her on her hip. “It’s a madhouse,” she said. “I hope you brought lots of wine.”

The Seder was a madhouse, too. Joel, serious and intent, recited loudly. Sophie spit out the bitter herbs. Rebecca flung food and babbled. Joel and Sophie scrambled to get to the door, each trying to be the one who opened it for Elijah’s possible entrance, and ran through the house like maniacs, searching through the hidden matzoh.

And all through it, Wilson’s parents beamed at their grandchildren, David and Amy chased after their offspring and cajoled them into passable behavior, and tradition was observed.

James barely touched the wine and poked at his food. The green flecks of herbs on the lamb were suddenly disgusting. “Rosemary for remembrance,” his mother always said as she brought the lamb to the table. Who else quoted Shakespeare at their Seder? Who else was having a Seder like this one? The pain in his head worsened with every minute.

House saved him any embarrassment by picking bits off his plate and eating them when no one was looking. The meal was winding down, with Jacob taking the older children off to watch television while David and Amy put a howling Rebecca into the bath, when House got up from the table to get another drink.

“We’ll have coffee and dessert when I get things cleared here,” Miriam said. She leaned over James to pick up his plate, and noticed his pallor.

“Are you alright, sweetheart? You don’t look well.”

“Touch of a headache,” he said. “I took something for it already.”

Miriam lightly brushed his bangs back. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said softly.

He looked up, into brown eyes exactly like his own. And tomorrow I have to break your heart, he thought.

“I am, too, Mom,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

She headed into the kitchen. “Greg, get out of that cake. No decent person eats standing up,” she shouted. He heard the low rumble of House’s laughter.

The room was too hot. The thought of cake, the rich flourless chocolate almond torte she always made for Seder, turned his stomach.

House saw him jerk open the sliding door to the balcony and followed him outside.

&&&
“Don’t let Sophie out. She climbs like a monkey,” Jacob called, and House quickly slid the door shut, keeping Sophie safely inside and causing her to set up a wail of protest. Her pursuing grandfather picked her up and carried her away, back to the television.

Wilson, standing at the balcony railing, glanced at him. House had a tall tumbler of ice cubes and clear liquid in his free hand.

“Vodka?”

“Ice water,” House said. He set it down on the round table between the chairs and moved to the railing. “I’m driving, remember?”

Wilson shrugged. He was feeling more nauseated by the second.

“Stress is a major trigger of migraines,” House said, his voice taking on the conversational tone he used when digging information out of patients. “You, for instance, get them when you have a really sudden stress, something a lot worse than usual, because your usual would be pretty stressful for most people.”

Wilson turned his head and looked at House. Why did I think I could hide this from you, he asked himself. House saw everything.

“Want to talk about it?” House asked.

Wilson closed his eyes. “Not really,” he said.

“When I moved your chair, I couldn’t help but notice a file on top of the stuff in your briefcase,” House said. “Which was open, by the way, so I wasn’t being a snoop.” He paused for a few seconds, and Wilson gripped the cold iron of the balcony railing.

“What did you find out about your brother?” House asked. His tone of voice stayed light and even, as if talking about this like it was a set of symptoms would be easier.

Wilson looked out across the backyards. Golden squares of light fell from windows onto the lawns that were showing the first faint touch of spring green. It had been a cold, wet spring. Too cold and wet to be sleeping behind a dumpster. His first clear memory was of an infant Danny, dressed in a blue blanket sleeper and lying in the crib in the room they’d shared. He couldn’t say “brother” yet and had called him “bunny” for the longest time. Their mother letting him reach through the bars of the crib to stroke the baby’s soft hair. Bunny. My bunny.

The view was making him dizzy, but he was afraid to move for fear of setting off a fit of vomiting. He had a feeling House would stubbornly stand there all night, leaning on his cane, until he got an answer. House knew something was up for half the day, on the drive over, and all through the meal. He had waited for him to finally say something.

“He’s dead,” Wilson said at last. “He was found dead early this morning in New Brunswick. Of exposure.”

“You haven’t told them,” House said. It wasn’t a question.

“Huh. Not yet. He was a homeless junkie,” Wilson said, his voice thick with despair and anger. “I couldn’t tell them today. I . . . I can’t ruin this for them. Did you see them looking at Joel and the girls? They’re so happy. They deserve to be happy. It’s like Danny’s this awful burden that they occasionally get to forget about carrying.”

House watched Wilson as he held the railing, his knuckles white, his gaze resolutely fixed on some spot far away as he swallowed hard.

“They aren’t carrying it alone,” House said. “When you tell them, then you all get to put it down.”

At the edge of his vision, Wilson saw House lift a hand from his cane. Only in the most extreme circumstances would House ever make the first move to touch someone. He had never been a physically demonstrative person, and even less so since his crippling illness. Wilson couldn’t count the number of times, near the end, when Stacy said he’d shrugged out of an embrace or turned his face away from her.

“He won’t let anyone touch him,” she said sadly, one day shortly before she left him. Would things have gone any differently, Wilson wondered, if he’d blurted out the truth that day: “You betrayed him. He doesn’t trust you.” But he couldn’t say it. He buried it inside with a thousand other things he wished he’d said.

Wilson thought that tentative gesture, House’s hand reaching out, would leave him completely unstrung with grief.

“Tomorrow,” Wilson said, barely able to squeeze out the word, and at that moment, his stomach at last rebelled. He dropped his head over the railing and heaved. When there was nothing left to come up, he spit to clear his mouth and realized House had hold of the back of his shirt, steadying him.

“I’m okay,” Wilson said and scrubbed his face with his sleeve. House tugged him in the direction of one of the porch chairs, and he sat down.

“You’re okay, but the Fedderstein’s dog house took a direct hit,” House said as he looked over the railing. “And the dog, too, it looks like, unless he’s got some weird growth on his back now.”

“I’ll go down and apologize,” Wilson said.

“You’ll do no such thing,” House said. “They’re not home. They’ll never know it was you, and besides, I hate that stupid dog. Someone should have puked on him years ago.”

“Right,” Wilson said with a short laugh. “I’ll just tell my folks you did it.”

House grinned. “No way. Your parents love me. They’ll never believe it.”

“My parents have no taste. They love everyone,” Wilson said and rubbed his eyes. He was so tired now, but he felt infinitely better. This was better – to say this first with House, to judge how much it hurt to say the words, and then tell his parents in the morning.

House handed Wilson the glass of water he’d brought out with him. “Drink this so you’ll have something to throw up on the way home,” he said. “Dry heaves are just too nasty.”

&&&
He let Wilson out at his own darkened house and watched from the curb until the light in the hallway came on.

There was a message on the answering machine when House got home. He punched the Play button. “Thanks, for everything,” Wilson said, his voice sounding slightly dozy from a second dose of medication. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, let you know how it goes.”

The old carriage clock on the mantle softly chimed midnight. There was a candle in a tall pewter candlestick on either side of the clock. House had inherited all three items from his late grandmother. He had only a few hazy memories of her, and these three small antiques he’d carried around and displayed for years.

Mementoes are so often more durable and more pleasant than memories. They could be displayed on a mantle piece, remarked on by visitors, handed down to others. But not so with memories. Especially not the ones Wilson had.

He could understand why Wilson didn’t want to make any more terrible memories for his parents. He remembered Wilson talking about Andie and how brave she was in dealing with her approaching death. He had doubted her courage, thought it only a symptom of her illness. He was wrong. He had underestimated what children can bear for their parents.

He wasn’t ordinarily given to sentimental gestures, but tonight he was coasting on hydrocodone and wine. That he could drive while slightly buzzed without Wilson noticing stood testament to how far gone they’d both been by the end of the evening.

House pulled a match from the box on the mantle, struck it and lit one of the candles. They’d stood there for years without ever being lit, part of Stacy’s decorating plan. The dusty wick sparked and made the flame sputter, but the dust quickly burned off and the flame caught.

“For Daniel,” he whispered.

Why do we light candles for the dead, House wondered. It seemed as foolish as living all these years with unlit candles. Didn’t it make better sense to give light to the living, to those finding their way out of darkness?

He picked up the second candle and lit it from the first. The wicks, when they touched, sent up a tiny shower of sparks as bright as the tail of a shooting star.

“And for James,” he said.

The End