House: Wilson’s Heart
October 2nd 2008 21:55
Wilson sits at Amber’s bedside. The doctor treating her doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. House wants to move her to his hospital, but the doctor tells him he has no authority. “But her husband can,” House says, giving Wilson a look. “Right?”
Wilson looks down at Amber, then back. “Move her.”
House and Wilson ride with her on the ambulance. House is trying to diagnose her, and Wilson just keeps asking why she was on the bus. Why was he with her?
“I don’t know,” House finally answers. “I’m not hiding anything, I just don’t remember.”
Wilson is starting to shut down, but House yells at him to get him back. He’s going to need his help here. Amber’s monitor starts to go crazy and House grabs the defibrillator paddles. “Clear!”
“Wait!” Wilson suddenly snaps out of it. “Protective hypothermia.”
“You want to freeze her?” House argues that her heart stopped beating, but Wilson points out that her heart’s already damaged. If they bring her back now it’ll just kill her brain. He suggests they ice her down until House can figure out what’s wrong.
“This is not a solution,” he argues. “All you’re doing in pressing pause.”
Wilson won’t give in. “It gives you more time to find a diagnosis. House, this is Amber! Please.”
“Pull the saline solution.” House grabs the ides packs.
~*~*~
In the hospital, Everyone watches as Amber’s temperature is brought down to 90 and she’s hooked up to the heart/lung bypass machine. Chase calls out, “She’s stable.” The team gathers to try and figure out what’s wrong with Amber. House thinks her trauma must have stimulated a pre-existing heart condition. Kutner suggests an abnormality in her coronary arteries (ischemia). Thirteen argues that it “could be anything.” House just cuts back great, let’s treat her for that one!
Kutner reminds them that if there is something House remembers about it, they could narrow it down the same way they did with the bus crash…Taub doesn’t think that’s a very good idea. “He’s a mess, he needs to rest.”
They argue about how to run tests on a stopped heart, and finally House tells Foreman to run an angiogram. Anything should show up even on a stopped heart. He sends the rest of them to Amber’s house to search for whatever would make her heart race.
Once the others leave, Taub confronts House. What was he doing with Amber that night? Maybe having a few drinks together…He needs to know if there was anything medically relevant that House couldn’t share publicly.
House: I was not having an affair with her.
Taub: You can’t really say that if you can’t remember.
House: I lost four hours, not four months.
Taub: Maybe it was the first time.
Is there any chance he did any drugs? House can’t remember. Taub will run a tox screen just in case.
~*~*~
Thirteen and Kutner enter Amber and Wilson’s apartment. Kutner goes through Amber’s laptop and finds a video file of her and Wilson on the couch.
Wilson: I’ve never done this before!
Amber laughs and kisses him, climbing on his lap. Thirteen slaps the computer shut. Not relevant. As they continue to go through he apartment, Kutner notices Thirteen acting strangely.
Kutner: Are you okay?
Thirteen: We shouldn’t be treating her at all.
Treating someone who was a friend could cloud their judgment. But she didn’t even like Amber, remember?
~*~*~
House brings out the white board. tachycardia, toxins, HHI, cardio angiography…Drugs. He sits back and stares at it, rubbing his temples.
“Are you okay?” Amber suddenly asks, showing up in his office in a dream.
He tries to blow her off, talking about hallucinations, but she asks, “What did we do last night?”
She pours him a drink, “maybe she always had a thing for him…his mind, his blue eyes…” she climbs on his lap “So maybe they decide to meet one night at an out of the way bar. Does that sound familiar?” she asks. “Do I feel familiar? What do you feel?” Bringing her lips to his ear, Amber whispers, “Electricity.”
House jolts awake and rushes to ICU. He knows how he can unlock his memory. Electricity. By applying electrical impulses directly to the hypothalamus, he can evoke his detailed memories. House and Cuddy don’t think it’s a good idea.
Amber’s brain activity suddenly spikes. House says that random spikes are common, but House leans down to tell Amber that’s going to be okay, that he’s there.
House is paged and he brings Wilson with him.
The team tells them that the drug tests came back negative, but Kutner shows them a bottle of vitamins filled with prescription diet pills containing SSRI’s and amphetamines. House wants to manual test to see if Amber’s heart valves have calcified by opening her up. Wilson stomps off and the rest of the team heads out. House holds back Thirteen. Who found the pills? Kutner. She didn’t even go into the bathroom did she? When Thirteen starts to talk about the fact that “It’s Amber…” House tells her to get over her personal problems, if she’s going to be a good doctor, she’s going to have to forget all that and participate already.
~*~*~
Chase preps Amber for open heart surgery. Taub and Kutner are there to help. “Wait.” Suddenly, Chase stops them then they go to put the drops in Amber’s eyes. “Look at her eye.”
The whites of her eyes are yellow. Jaundiced . “Diet pills don’t kill the liver. Put her back in ICU”
~*~*~
The team assembles with Wilson and House. Thirteen thinks Hepatic and heart failure could be caused by antit-trypsinase deficiency. Taub, on the other hand, argues for Nocardia. House wonders aloud about his dream that Amber poured him a drink.
Wilson argues for cooling her down even more, and Taub is the one to finally tell him that despite the fact that Wilson loves her, cooling her down isn’t going to help. “Just making her colder and colder isn’t a cure, it’s not dealing with the reality.”
“Sherry means something,” House mutters. Wilson argues that Amber didn’t drink Sherry, and House argues that that’s the point. If she did drink it, it’d mean nothing. Kutner offers that there’s a Sherrie’s bar close by.
House jumps up. “Wilson’s right.” They need to make her colder. Fill her lungs with slurry. And where is he going? He’s going to take Wilson out for a drink.
~*~*~
At Sharrie’s bar, House enters with Wilson. The bartender recognizes him. “I assume you’re here for these.” He tosses House his keys. House asks if the bartender saw him with a blonde woman. He did. “I think she joined you after scotch number seven.”
House asked if she appeared sick. “She sneezed” but the bartender sees a lot of “drunk chicks” he didn’t have time to analyze “your girlfriend’s” snot. House glances back at Wilson and tells the bartender, “She’s not my girlfriend genius.”
“She was hot, you seemed into her and she bought you drinks. Last night she was your girlfriend.”
As House wonders about the sneezing, could be a sign of an infection, Wilson is still stuck on what the bartender said. “You seemed into her?”
“If he had a brain he wouldn’t be tending a bar,” House answers. “Sneezing is a new symptom. We have to assume a runny nose means an infection.” He walks off.
~*~*~
Thirteen and Kutner are removing Amber’s respirator and preparing her lungs to be filled with super-cooled fluid like House told them to do. He asks her what House talked to her about, and she answers, “He told me I was raised by wolves and that’s why I use the same hand for my fork and a knife.” She starts in on the procedure, and Kutner quickly stops her. “Whoa, not that one, the slurry tube.”
Right.
“I know this is different, but it’s not.” Kutner tells her. “Everyone dies.”
“She’s not dead.”
“You’re reacting this way because she might be. Soon.”
“Yeah I am,” Thirteen tells him defensively. “Why aren’t you?”
“I’m an Indian guy named Kutner. Ever wonder what happened to my parents?”
“Sorry.”
He tells her how they were shot at their store when he was just six. It took him a while, but he got over it. “So are you going to help me fill up her lungs or what?”
They start.
~*~*~
House finds Taub and Foreman looking at a video microscope. Thanks to the snot on the napkin, he guesses correctly that the liver showed infiltrates and minor inflammation. In other words, Hepatitis B. He turns to go tell Wilson, but Foreman says he’ll do it. House had a head injuring and a heart attack this morning, Foreman orders him to get some rest.
~*~*~
Forgoing the rest, House visits Amber in the ICU again. Suddenly Amber’s eyes open. “Hepatitis B is a lame diagnosis.”
Looks like House is having another dream. “I get less rest when I’m asleep.”
He argues that Hep B fits. Amber sits up and shows him her back.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because Hep B doesn’t fit.”
House wakes up in his office.
~*~*~
House walks into the ICU. “Turn her over.”
Taub and Foreman turn Amber over to find a bruise. Why is that significant?
“Look closer.”
They find a small red rash. How did he know that?
“Either I’m still asleep, or I’m starting to remember.”
The team all gather around to look at the rash. Wilson wonders how he saw the rash way down there. House doesn’t know, maybe she bent over. Taub thinks it could just be the flu. Kutner argues for the Dermatomyositis. House asks Thirteen to test the rash, but when she hesitates, he orders Taub to do it.
Thirteen: I can do it.
House: No apparently you can’t.
Thirteen walks out.
Taub carefully sticks the needle into the rash. NO pus. This means it’s vesicular.
Foreman suggests Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Wilson says she could have gotten a tick on a walk they took. He, Wilson, and House all argue over the course of the treatment. “We are not starting her heart until we’re 100% certain!” Wilson argues.
“We’re never 100% certain,” Foreman argues.
House is with Wilson on this, and Foreman can’t believe it. He (as in Wilson) “is wrong. You know he’s wrong! You can’t change your mind just because a family member starts crying. They’re always scared!”
“I said, run the blood cultures.” House leaves.
~*~*~
Thirteen is in the bathroom sitting alone in one of the stalls. She’s clearly upset. Suddenly a foot slides under from the other stall and nudges hers. Thirteen jumps.
House: Sorry, wide stance.
House sits in the stall next to her as Thirteen finally admits that she’s screwing up. Why? “I didn’t even like her,” she answers.
“Did you hate her?”
“Not enough to want her dead.”
“It’s not guilt, that just leaves fear,” House points out. A young woman dying, a young doctor…”That sound familiar?”
Thirteen gets up and opens the stall. House is standing right there. “Yeah, I am at risk for Huntington’s. I’ve dealt with it.”
“By not getting tested,” House cuts back. “Dealing with it by not dealing with it. It’s clearly working beautifully.”
She argues that he’s the champion of not dealing with his problems, and he tells her that that’s enough hand-holding already. She needs to get herself back together and go back to work. She glares at him. “You’re screwing up this case worse more than I am.”
Thirteen walks out and House hits the stall. He knows she’s right.
~*~*~
Cameron sits down to wait with Wilson…
House tries to sleep…
Thirteen stares at her own vial of blood…
Foreman stands next to Amber’s bed, checking his watch. He sighs and shows up in Cuddy’s office, handing over a file. She looks at him, confused.
Foreman: House is going to kill the patient.
~*~*~
Wilson walks in to find Cuddy and Foreman getting ready to restart Amber’s heart.
“No you’re not!” He starts pulling off the blankets. They need to cool her back down.
Foreman argues that they weren’t taking the safe approach. They need to know if the antibiotics are working. Wilson suddenly spots Amber’s EEG and calls “Amber?...Amber!” He looks back at Foreman. “Well done. We still don’t know what it is but you just let it spread to her brain!”
Wilson leaves.
~*~*~
Wilson and Cuddy argue in House’s office.
Wilson: This is exactly what I said would happen, it’s in her BRAIN now!
Cuddy: Brain involvement gives us a new symptom.
Wilson: That wouldn’t BE there if you hadn’t—
Cuddy: It’s were the disease was going, we needed to know that.
Wilson: This was not your decision to make!! You went behind MY back, you went behind House’s back!
House gets up from his chair and hobbles between them and across the room. “Inside voices.”
Cuddy tells Wilson that House wanted to warm up Amber, he just guilted him into changing his mind. Cuddy turns back to House. “Heart. Liver. Rash. And now her brain.”
“Autoimmune fits best.” He tells him her to warm Amber up. Wilson argues that if this is something else, the steroids could make Amber worse.
House doesn’t answer, and Cuddy turns to Wilson, and tells him gently, “He’s the attending, you’re the family. Go spend more time with the patient.”
She leaves and Wilson just shakes his head at his friend. “You can’t do this.”
“It’s not a good argument,” House answers regretfully. “It’s not an argument at all. I’m sorry.”
Wilson kicks a chair and leaves.
~*~*~
Wilson approaches House’s desk again. “Cuddy’s right. I was afraid to do anything. I thought if everything just stopped it’d be okay.”
House tells him that it’s going to be. Taub started treatment.
“Not everything,” Wilson interrupts. “What if there is still something else stuck inside your head?”
House realizes what his friend is trying to say and asks, “You think I should risk my life to save Ambers?”
Wilson thinks, then nods slowly.
House lets out a mirthless laugh, then nods.
~*~*~
House’s head is bolted into a stereotactic frame as Chase carefully inserts the electrode into a hole above his ear. Chase nodes to Wilson. “Give him three volts.”
With a rush of electrical impulses, House is taken into his mind and back to Sharrie’s Bar. He can’t hear anything. “Everything’s in black and white.” Wilson asks if Amber’s there, and House tells him that as long as he’s risking his life anyway, they might as well turn up the voltage. Chase doesn’t know if that’s such a good idea, but Wilson turns up the electricity.
Back in his now colorful memory, House watches the bartender takes his keys. He tells him that if he’s going to take his keys, he needs a phone call. The bartender hands over the phone and House dials.
Wilson shows up in the bar his scrubs. “Who are you calling?”
House tells him he was “dialing Wilson”, but Wilson reminds him that he was on call that night.
Suddenly it hits them both. “Amber was home.”
In House’s memory, Amber walks into the bar. “I said to find Wilson,” House tells her. She tells him that he was working, so she was willing to suffer on his behalf. Wilson asks if she seemed sick. Not yet.
He orders her a drink, and when she tries to get him to leave, he just tells her to drink her drink or he’ll drink it for her. She downs the drink. Okay, time to go. He orders her another one. Amber sneezes and House tells Wilson and Chase.
Wilson: What color is it?
House: Looks like snot.
Seems just like a cold. Nothing else? No.
House gets up and tells Amber to go home. He’ll take the bus. He starts to hobble out and the bartender reminds them that “someone’s gotta pay for this.” Amber turns back to the bar as House gets on the bus.
“You forgot something.” Amber shows up on the bus, handing him his cane.
She just doesn’t give up does she? “No, I’m an idiot that way.”
“Are you doing this for me, or for Wilson?” House asks, taking his cane.
“For Wilson.”
“Well then it’s even more impressive.” He mock solutes her. She sneezes again and asks for a Kleenex. He tells her he has a sleeve, and she tells him she’s getting the flu. That’s it?
House watches Amber take out a bottle of medicine. “Don’t do it.” Amber swallows the pills.
“It’s not the flu,” House tells them. “It’s what she did for it.”
House says that she has amantadine poisoning, and Wilson continues that the crash destroyed her kidneys and her body can’t filter the drugs. He’s hopeful that dialysis will work, but notices House’s silence.
“What’s wrong?”
House tells him that dialysis doesn’t clear amantadine out of the blood. “There’s nothing we can do.” House turns to Wilson sitting on the bus behind Amber. “I’m so sorry.
He watches as the garbage truck’s headlights race towards the bus and—Suddenly House starts to seize.
~*~*~
Foreman tells House’s team that he had a seizure. He’s in a coma. "We won't know if there's any cognitive impairment until he's out of the coma." He tells him that he was right about Amber though.
~*~*~
Meanwhile, Chase and a surgical team try to shock Amber’s heart, but fail. Wilson watches, then tells Cuddy they should call the time of death. Cuddy tells him that she’s not dead yet . They could still wake her up.
“Wake her up?” Wilson struggles with his emotions. “Just to tell her that she’s—that she’s—” Wilson can’t take it anymore. He buries his face in his hands and Cuddy gently places a hand on his shoulder.
Wilson swings around and pulls her into a hug.
“You are waking her up,” Cuddy comforts, still holding him. “So you can both say goodbye to each other. She would want it.”
~*~*~
Chase nods to Wilson, and leaves him with Amber. Wilson stands there for a long moment, his back to her as he tries to stop his tears.
Finally he approaches the bed. Amber slowly opens her eyes.
“Hey!”
“Hey.”
He tells her that she’s in the hospital. Does she remember what happened?
“I got hit by a bus…I shouldn’t have gotten on the bus.”
He tells her it’s not her fault, and she asks how bad it was. He tells her. When he gets to her liver failure, Amber starts to realize why he’ so upset. “I’m dying.”
“I’m here.” Wilson cups her face, leaning his forehead against hers.
~*~*~
“We should say goodbye,” Thirteen suddenly interrupts the silence among the team.
“She didn’t even like us,” Taub argues, but Kutner quickly replies, “We liked her.”
Taub: Did we?
Foreman: We do now.
Taub: What do we say?
Kutner: We don’t need to say anything.
The team joins Wilson at Amber’s bedside one at a time. Thirteen gives her a hug.
~*~*~
Wilson and Amber are alone. He holds her in the ICU bed.
Amber: I’m tired. I think it’s time to go to sleep.
Wilson: Just a little longer.
Amber: I’m always going to watch out for you okay.
Wilson: I don’t think I can do it.
He holds onto her tighter and Amber whispers, “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” he answers, fighting back tears. “Why is it okay with you? Why aren’t you angry?”
“That’s not the last feeling I want to experience,” she answers.
Wilson pulls back to look at her, then kisses her and reaches over to turn off the machines.
Amber stares at him a second longer, then her eyes slowly close shut. Wilson holds her as he cries.
~*~*~
Meawhile, House is still in a coma.
He wakes up in his head again to find Amber sitting next to him on a very white bus.
House: You’re dead.
Amber: Everybody dies.
House: Am I dead?
Amber: Not yet.
House: I should be.
Amber: Why?
House: Because life shouldn’t be random. This lonely misanthropic drug addict should die in bus crashes. And young do-gooders in love who get dragged out of their apartment in the middle of the night should walk away clean.
They continue to sit on the bus, surrounded by white light. He in his hospital gown, she looking back to normal.
Amber: Self pity isn’t like you.
House: Yeah well, I’m branching out from self-loathing and self-destruction. *pause* Wilson is gonna hate me.
Amber: You kind of deserve it.
He stares at the floor. “He’s my best friend.”
“I know. What now?”
“I stay here with you.”
“Get off the bus.”
House shakes his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” he lets out a curt laugh, then admits, “Because it doesn’t hurt here…And I—“ In a rare moment, House let’s his guard down and admits, “I don’t want to be in pain, I don’t want to be miserable…And I don’t want him to hate me.”
“Well,” Amber tells him. “You can’t always get what you want.”
House looks at her. Finally he nods and get up and walks off the bus.
~*~*~
House wakes up in the hospital.
Cuddy: Hey, I’m here. Blink if you can hear me.
House blinks, and Cuddy lets out a relieved breath. He tries to talk, but she stops him. “Just rest.”
Thirteen prints off her results. “Huntington’s….pos ”. Taub stands in his bedroom and crawls back into bed with his sleeping wife, hugging her. Kutner watches TV, eating cereal. Cameron and Chase join Foreman in a booth.
Wilson stares at House from across the room. Cuddy is asleep, curled up in the chair next to House’s bed. House notices Wilson.
Their eyes meet. They say nothing.
Wilson leaves.
~*~*~
Wilson enters his empty apartment and heads into the empty bedroom. He slides onto the bedspread, still fully dressed.
He notices a note sticking out from under the pillow and pulls it out. It’s from Amber: “Sorry I’m not here. Went to pick up House.—A”
Wilson holds the note up to his heart.
~*~*~
Cuddy’s still asleep, her hand in House’s. House stares at nothing, wide awake but deep in thought.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX
Such a sad episode, but still really good. Poor House. As if he didn’t already hate himself enough.
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