menolly_au (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
menolly_au) wrote2012-07-04 08:15 am
menolly_au) wrote2012-07-04 08:15 am
Thirty Days of Solitary 8/30
Title: Thirty Days of Solitary 8/30
Characters: House with small bits of various others
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For everything up to and including Twenty Vicodins
Summary: House was sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement for his actions in Twenty Vicodins. This is the story of his time in solitary, and what was happening back at PPTH while he was there. Story will mainly focus on House, but there are segments featuring the rest of the cast. Starts just before the end of Twenty Vicodins.
A/N : Many, many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
damigella_314. Without her constant help and encouragement this story would be called 'Five Days of Solitary'.
Click for previous part
Day 8 Friday 14th October 2011
There's a cell extraction on his row today. House is dozing on his bed mid-afternoon, after exercise, when he hears the heavy footsteps of a group of guards and then their voices as they stop a few cells away from him. They bark out instructions to the inmate, telling him to cuff up and then lie on his bunk, hands behind his back. House can’t hear what the inmate says back, but the guards repeat the instructions a couple of times and then he hears a spraying sound, and one of the guards calls out ‘mace’.
There’s another spray, and then he hears someone coughing and the door of a cell opening. There's more shouting and House limps to the door of his cell, trying to see out the very small gaps around the cuff port and the food port. He can't see anything much but he hears the group walk along the row, away from him, there’s more coughing and a voice rising in protest, and the guards telling someone to shut up.
There's noise coming from the other cells around him now, men yelling, men banging on their doors and walls. House finds himself pounding on his door, making a noise, yelling something, adding to the chaos. When he realises what he's doing he stops, shocked, when did he become like these men? He goes back to his bunk, sits up against the cold wall at the end of the bed and stares at the door hoping the guards don’t come back. After a while the noise of the other inmates fades away and it’s quiet on the row again.
It's the second Friday of his stay in solitary, and the start of his second week here. Friday nights used to mean the weekend. When he was younger it meant two days and nights of partying, of drinking and drugs, and some casual sex. Crowds of people around him, voices raised in fun, not in anger or fear. The last few years Friday night have mostly meant a weekend by himself, alone in his apartment, catching up on his soaps, occasionally having Wilson around for video games and beer. While he was with Cuddy sometimes he’d spent the weekend with her, and Rachel. Mostly though it had just been one day of the weekend, or none – depending on where they were in their rocky relationship. After Cuddy, well there had been the hookers, meaningless sex, designed to be a distraction for him nothing more.
Now he's more alone than he's ever been before. There are thousands of men around him but his world is this cell, no bigger than a bathroom. There are no other people in his life now; there is nobody to talk to. He sees people only during his one hour of exercise, his every-three-days shower and the brief moments when he is given his painkillers, and the people he sees keep their interactions as impersonal as possible. He’s almost given up trying to engage them.
In the rest of the prison some of the guards are friendly with the inmates, they are happy to engage in conversation, to talk about sports, and women, or just to pass a few comments. There’s a sense that the guards don’t want to be here, any more than the inmates do. In solitary it's different, even the guards who were friendly to him in gen pop look through him now, their faces blank. He exists only as a source of trouble to them, someone they have to control, someone who can turn on them, and injure them. They watch him the way a snake handler watches a dangerous snake. To get too close is to be bitten. He’s sure that it’s something they’ve learned from experience, given the nature of some of the men they’ve had to deal with in here, but he never thought he’d miss passing a couple of words with Alvarez or some of the other friendlier guards. The last week before he ended up here he’d even been able to engage with Adams on a professional level, bouncing ideas off her as if she were one of his fellows. Now this sudden silence is very hard to take.
He gets off the bunk restlessly and limps down the narrow space between bunk and wall, turns around when he gets to the far wall and limps back. Turns around at the door and limps back along the space. He decides to count how many laps he can do before he either gets bored of doing it or his leg gives out. He needs a distraction.
When the count is over one hundred he loses track and decides that next time he will use pen and paper to keep count. He sits back on the bunk and rubs at his leg, feeling the deep scar tissue there. The thigh muscle is complaining about the extra exercise. Too bad that the experimental drug had such bad side effects, for a brief few days he'd felt improvement, some hope for a future not ruled by his disability, and by pain and drugs. He remembers the fear he’d felt when he’d seen the dead rats, and the images of the tumours in his right leg. The pain he’d experienced during his bath tub operation and the hopelessness as he called number after number and no-one answered. Cuddy had been the last person he’d wanted to turn to, but sheer desperation had made him call that number.
He closes his eyes against the insistent thrumming of his thigh, his evening meds won’t come until after dinner, all he can do is lie here and wait for the pain to lessen.
Chi Park goes over the file again, frustrated. She loves her work here at PPTH, but this particular case is nagging at her, there's something wrong, something over and above what the file says. She takes it to her boss, Doctor Andrews who looks it over briefly and shrugs, saying it looks fine to him. Park continues to insist and eventually he suggests she take it to Foreman. When she expresses surprise that he would think the Dean of the hospital would be interested in a puzzling little case from neurology he explains to her that not only does Foreman have a background in Neurology but that he also did a fellowship in diagnostics before moving into administration. He used to work for House, Andrews says, as if it should be significant in some way.
She does finally take the case to Foreman, who seems surprisingly eager to help as he looks over the scans and her notes. He suggests a couple of avenues of investigation, some tests she could run. When he glances at his watch she takes that as a cue to pick up her file and her notes and start making her way towards the door of his large and impressive office. He tells her to keep on the case and to keep him in the loop as far as a diagnosis goes.
When she looks back he's sitting in his office chair staring at the wall opposite, he's clearly not really seeing the wall – she wonders what he is actually seeing.
Characters: House with small bits of various others
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For everything up to and including Twenty Vicodins
Summary: House was sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement for his actions in Twenty Vicodins. This is the story of his time in solitary, and what was happening back at PPTH while he was there. Story will mainly focus on House, but there are segments featuring the rest of the cast. Starts just before the end of Twenty Vicodins.
A/N : Many, many thanks to
damigella_314. Without her constant help and encouragement this story would be called 'Five Days of Solitary'. Click for previous part
Day 8 Friday 14th October 2011
There's a cell extraction on his row today. House is dozing on his bed mid-afternoon, after exercise, when he hears the heavy footsteps of a group of guards and then their voices as they stop a few cells away from him. They bark out instructions to the inmate, telling him to cuff up and then lie on his bunk, hands behind his back. House can’t hear what the inmate says back, but the guards repeat the instructions a couple of times and then he hears a spraying sound, and one of the guards calls out ‘mace’.
There’s another spray, and then he hears someone coughing and the door of a cell opening. There's more shouting and House limps to the door of his cell, trying to see out the very small gaps around the cuff port and the food port. He can't see anything much but he hears the group walk along the row, away from him, there’s more coughing and a voice rising in protest, and the guards telling someone to shut up.
There's noise coming from the other cells around him now, men yelling, men banging on their doors and walls. House finds himself pounding on his door, making a noise, yelling something, adding to the chaos. When he realises what he's doing he stops, shocked, when did he become like these men? He goes back to his bunk, sits up against the cold wall at the end of the bed and stares at the door hoping the guards don’t come back. After a while the noise of the other inmates fades away and it’s quiet on the row again.
It's the second Friday of his stay in solitary, and the start of his second week here. Friday nights used to mean the weekend. When he was younger it meant two days and nights of partying, of drinking and drugs, and some casual sex. Crowds of people around him, voices raised in fun, not in anger or fear. The last few years Friday night have mostly meant a weekend by himself, alone in his apartment, catching up on his soaps, occasionally having Wilson around for video games and beer. While he was with Cuddy sometimes he’d spent the weekend with her, and Rachel. Mostly though it had just been one day of the weekend, or none – depending on where they were in their rocky relationship. After Cuddy, well there had been the hookers, meaningless sex, designed to be a distraction for him nothing more.
Now he's more alone than he's ever been before. There are thousands of men around him but his world is this cell, no bigger than a bathroom. There are no other people in his life now; there is nobody to talk to. He sees people only during his one hour of exercise, his every-three-days shower and the brief moments when he is given his painkillers, and the people he sees keep their interactions as impersonal as possible. He’s almost given up trying to engage them.
In the rest of the prison some of the guards are friendly with the inmates, they are happy to engage in conversation, to talk about sports, and women, or just to pass a few comments. There’s a sense that the guards don’t want to be here, any more than the inmates do. In solitary it's different, even the guards who were friendly to him in gen pop look through him now, their faces blank. He exists only as a source of trouble to them, someone they have to control, someone who can turn on them, and injure them. They watch him the way a snake handler watches a dangerous snake. To get too close is to be bitten. He’s sure that it’s something they’ve learned from experience, given the nature of some of the men they’ve had to deal with in here, but he never thought he’d miss passing a couple of words with Alvarez or some of the other friendlier guards. The last week before he ended up here he’d even been able to engage with Adams on a professional level, bouncing ideas off her as if she were one of his fellows. Now this sudden silence is very hard to take.
He gets off the bunk restlessly and limps down the narrow space between bunk and wall, turns around when he gets to the far wall and limps back. Turns around at the door and limps back along the space. He decides to count how many laps he can do before he either gets bored of doing it or his leg gives out. He needs a distraction.
When the count is over one hundred he loses track and decides that next time he will use pen and paper to keep count. He sits back on the bunk and rubs at his leg, feeling the deep scar tissue there. The thigh muscle is complaining about the extra exercise. Too bad that the experimental drug had such bad side effects, for a brief few days he'd felt improvement, some hope for a future not ruled by his disability, and by pain and drugs. He remembers the fear he’d felt when he’d seen the dead rats, and the images of the tumours in his right leg. The pain he’d experienced during his bath tub operation and the hopelessness as he called number after number and no-one answered. Cuddy had been the last person he’d wanted to turn to, but sheer desperation had made him call that number.
He closes his eyes against the insistent thrumming of his thigh, his evening meds won’t come until after dinner, all he can do is lie here and wait for the pain to lessen.
Chi Park goes over the file again, frustrated. She loves her work here at PPTH, but this particular case is nagging at her, there's something wrong, something over and above what the file says. She takes it to her boss, Doctor Andrews who looks it over briefly and shrugs, saying it looks fine to him. Park continues to insist and eventually he suggests she take it to Foreman. When she expresses surprise that he would think the Dean of the hospital would be interested in a puzzling little case from neurology he explains to her that not only does Foreman have a background in Neurology but that he also did a fellowship in diagnostics before moving into administration. He used to work for House, Andrews says, as if it should be significant in some way.
She does finally take the case to Foreman, who seems surprisingly eager to help as he looks over the scans and her notes. He suggests a couple of avenues of investigation, some tests she could run. When he glances at his watch she takes that as a cue to pick up her file and her notes and start making her way towards the door of his large and impressive office. He tells her to keep on the case and to keep him in the loop as far as a diagnosis goes.
When she looks back he's sitting in his office chair staring at the wall opposite, he's clearly not really seeing the wall – she wonders what he is actually seeing.
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I'm enjoying your look into this forgotten time period in House's life.
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Glad you're enjoying the story :) I think it's a shame this time period was forgotten so quickly by the show (except when it was convenient to shoe horn it back in at the end).
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And I'll say this: I LOVE it. I'd thought it would be too painful for me. But the way you are writing it, it has pathos but there's no overly done pulling of heartstrings, etc. It's actually very quiet (appropriate for solitary confinement, I guess!)
The chapter before this was, though, heartbreaking to me. The images of both House and Wilson trying not to think about each other were very affecting. And very realistic, I think. Your snapshot of Wilson with Sarah on his chest, proud that he managed to not think of House for five minutes feels exactly right.
And I agree with everyone else that solitary would be extremely tough for House. Even if he doesn't "like" many people, he does seem intrigued by human behavior and interaction, and his mind needs that kind of stimulation.
OK, I'll stop babbling. Really great job with this!
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Thank you for persisting with this despite your misgivings, I'm glad you're enjoying it :)
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The second part answers the question why Foreman thinks it might be a good idea to put Park in House's team; it gives us a glimpse into the qualities that a future team member needs: curiosity and indefatigability.
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I figured that Foreman must have had some idea that Park could do the job - why bring House out of jail and then not give him what he needs to work effectively?
Thanks for reading and commenting :)