Just One Yesterday

House didn't wake up in the hospital bed he was expecting. There were no incessant beeps from medical machinery; there was no overpowering scent of flowers, but he never got that when he ended up in hospital; there was nobody holding his hand, their clammy grasp loose as they slept in the chair beside him.

Instead, he sat up in a small, uncomfortable bed with a lumpy mattress and an itchy blanket. Mildly perturbed, he looked up and took in his surroundings. It wasn't the white, sterile room he imagined – in fact, walls of books stretched out for miles around him, and a murky green carpet swept along the ground. It was like his subconscious had melded together both his old living space and his old working space.

He rose from the bed, walking smoothly over to one of the shelves closest to him. It was lined with medical textbooks, some he'd kept in his room at school all of those years previous, and some from his office at Princeton-Plainsboro – he moved to the next one, and they were the exact same reams of medical literature. They kept repeating, every shelf he viewed the exact same order, the exact same texts. Each arranged by name and speciality; just like they had been in the book store, in his room, in his office.

'Hello, Greg.'

The voice was like bells, the most pure and beautiful music his ears had ever been blessed with. It was irrefutable, impossible, and incredible. His head whipped around to where the voice had come from, and was taken aback instantly.

The centre of the room was no longer the murky green carpet it had been. Pure white was flooding from the centre of the room, seeping across the awful dorm carpet and transforming it into some unearthly material. It crept up the invisible walls, and eventually House was stood in the middle of nothingness, and ethereal glow around his every extremity. In front of him stood the most beautiful and impossible figure.

He couldn't mistake those eyes.

The woman stepped closer slowly, her movements so perfect and fluid that she was surely a ghost – it was an implausibility that she was made of flesh and bone. From her shoulders to the tips of her fingers, from her hips to the tips her toes, each step swept like ribbons in the wind, like smoke in the night, like poison through blood.

She approached him, smiling coyly with that syrup-like, Cupids bow mouth. House could only stare as she became three feet, two feet, one foot away. Soon, she was immediately before him, and she raised a ghostly hand to up to his cheek, stroking it gently. His eyes fluttered closed at her touch, and remained closed as her touch faded.

The hand came back, but in a harsh slap that stung him right up to his eyes. They shot open, ice blue in her eerie glow, and glared through the awe.

'How dare you,' his subconscious hissed, the green eyes closer than they had been in over twenty years. 'How dare you hurt her like that.'

House couldn't fathom an answer.

'The only thing she's ever done to you is exist,' the false woman seethed. 'And you rip her to pieces when she's at her most fragile. She's not pathetic, Greg. You are.'

Though he knew it was his own mind telling him this, rationalising the guilt he felt for his actions, he still pleaded with his eyes, silent in the wake of the memory of Sonia. He knew that this was just the form his brain had chosen that would seem most logical, but he pretended for the moment that she was real.

'I'm sorry,' he muttered to the apparition. 'But I can't.'

'Yes, you can. You did this to yourself,' she replied, her voice melting into softness. She stroked his face again and he flinched, bracing for another flash of pain. 'You've always wanted this, deep down. You can do this.'

House closed his eyes again. 'No.'

'Try.' The single word was whispered in his ear, and he shivered slightly at the cold of her skin against his. He held out his hands to touch her, but there was nothing but air. He opened his eyes, but she was gone.

Darkness was seeping in again, and his heart thudded heavily; it echoed through his whole chest, shaking his legs. The force threw him against the bookshelves and he looked around for the source of the thud. As he pushed himself off the shelves, another thud hit his chest, forcing him hard into the shelves again.

A groan escaped his lips, and he grunted as he pushed back once more. The room was swimming and he was feeling faint. His eyes were rolling slightly in his head and his limbs felt weightless – he couldn't move them.

His chest thudded once more, and everything descended into black.

-

The light seeped through the cracks of his eyes and, like being pulled from underwater, sound faded quickly back into focus.

'He's breathing,' said once voice.

'Got a pulse,' said another.

His chest felt heavy, and he clocked at least two hairline fractures on two separate ribs. Something had snapped in his right ankle – not a bone, but something equally as important – and the ache in his dislocated knee almost eclipsed the pain of his thigh. As his body slowly woke from the shock of the heart attack, everything began to build to an excruciating crescendo.

His chest was bruising from the compressions, and the fractures on his ribs ached more with every breath. Someone straightened his leg, a loud snap echoing through his head as his knee was relocated; his ankle – as his mind cleared, he realised the important thing was a tendon – seared with agony.

All of this, and he couldn't scream for the exhaustion.

His eyes were open only a crack, but the light grew no less blinding as he waited to pass out from the pain. Sound was intermittent, weaving in and out like tuning a radio, and his eyes slipped closed as he felt the darkness tug at him once again.

And then a small squeeze of his hand pulled him back to Earth periodically. A hand touched his cheek, and another smoothed at his hair. More hands than he could count slid under his immobile frame, lifting him from the ground slightly as a board was slipped beneath him.

The hand in his own stayed, loosening its grip but keeping its presence as he rose from the floor. As his free arm dangled in the air, his fingertips slipping across the cold linoleum, someone pushed it gently across his chest – his fingers twinged, and he feared one or two may have broken. Something was pushed next to his throbbing knee – hard, long – and then the movement started.

With each step of the congregation, he struggled to hold on. The conscious world was quickly slipping from his mental grasp but he wanted to hold on. He didn't want to go back to that place; the torturous memory invoked an ache so strong that all the Vicodin and bourbon in the world wouldn't help him to forget. She would be there, his subconscious' response to the girl who'd knocked his life onto an entirely new course just by existing.

At the edge of the blade between awake and passed out, his mind broke through the decades of blockages he'd creating, and House had a bursting, dazzling moment of pure and sublime clarity. The simplicity of the moment shocked his very core, and his heart thudded dangerously in warning at the flood of feeling.

He was a father.

-

'Greg...'

The ghostly whisper shocked him awake, his hand flinching away from the ice cold skin on his palm. The sharp intake of breath made his ribs ache and he smacked his lips, gulping for more oxygen even though he knew it hurt. His mouth was bone dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth and rubbing against the soft flesh like sandpaper.

'Ugh,' he groaned, working his jaw slightly.

Someone made a noise next to him, a slow and deep breath that was the tell-tale sign of waking up. There was the creak of a chair as the person moved, and a groan symbolised them stretching from an awkward sleep.

House kept his eyes closed, vaguely aware that the light of the room would have bad side-effects on his already painful head. He moved his fingers and toes slightly to check they still worked, and grimaced a little at the pain in his knee and ankle. His involuntary movement provoked a response from the sleeper, and his hand was gripped by the same icy touch.

'Dad?' came the whisper. 'James, he's awake.'

James? House turned his head ever so slightly towards the voice, recalling it from somewhere but his memory was a little foggy. It was female, he recognised, but he couldn't quite place it. Then there were footsteps, distant at first but then they were close until they stopped, and House felt a weight at the bottom of his bed.

'House?'

He recognised that voice. Slowly and carefully, he opened his eyes, closing them quickly with a groan as the fluorescent hospital light hit his retina’s like a shard of glass. The hold on his hand tightened and the weight changed, moving closer to him.

'House?'

'Water,' House replied hoarsely, tugging his hand away from the grip – it maintained its grasp, and he didn't have the energy to resist.

There was a fumble of plastic against wood, and he heard liquid hit the bottom of the cup. Soon enough, there was a hand behind his head and the cup was at his lips, and he was sat up slightly as the water was tipped gently into his mouth. The water was soothing and sweet, drenching his throat and sending cold right down to his stomach. He sighed in relief as the cup was drained, and his head was let slowly back down onto the soft pillow. He tried opening his eyes again, squinting against the harsh glare.

'Dad?' came a timid whisper.

House sighed. 'You still here?'

Silence. Of course she was still there – she wanted her father.

'House.'

He was sick of hearing his name now, even more so now that the tone in the voice that kept repeating it had changed. House's vision unblurred as his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he fixed his gaze upon his best friend. Wilson looked at him with disapproval, his eyes occasionally flicking to his side with an expression of worry mingled with curiosity.

House's interest peaked, and he set his face in the look he often gave Wilson when he was interested in his puzzles. Wilson noticed the stare and narrowed his eyes, avoiding the gaze momentarily – so slight that most would have missed it, but not House.

Setting it aside for further reading, House turned his head slowly to whoever was holding his hand. She wouldn't meet his eyes, staring at her own lap with her red-rimmed eyes and stretched out sleeves that she kept tugging at. But she kept hold of his hand like a lifeline, as if he was the only thing she had left. And House gave in to imaginary demands.

'I'm sorry.'

Jess' head rose slowly and she looked directly at him – her eyes hit him like they did every time. In her own way, she was as beautiful as her mother had been; he hadn't blemished her too much. His nose suited the cheekbones, which sat just nice on his oval face. She was so similar to her and so different – so similar to him and so different, too.

''S'okay,' she mumbled – he didn't believe her.

House knew Wilson was watching the scene, and wanted him to go away. Something in his head was telling him that Jess should be away from the man; it was stupid and irrational, but House struggled to fight it. It intensified when Wilson rose from the foot of the bed and walked over to the girl, putting his hand on her shoulder and asking her if she was okay. She flashed him a small smile and House's fists clenched slightly.

'Could you give us a minute.' House asked his best friend, a little gruffly.

Wilson looked over, curious and confused, and even a little hurt. 'Uh, sure.' He squeezed Jess' shoulder in a gesture of comfort and then walked away, his hand lingering ever so slightly before he finally left the room. House watched him go, his eyes narrow and something in him furious.

He just couldn't decipher why. His mouth moved before his mind, and he uttered the words before he thought about them.

'He's too old for you.'

House watched her eyes become shifty and she shuffled in her seat, clearly flustered. She tripped over her words as she muttered, 'Uh, I dunno what you mean.'

'Wilson,' House clarified, knowing she knew but doing it anyway. 'James. He's too old for you.'

'Dad...'

'Stop calling me that, I'm not your dad,' House argued.

Jess clenched her teeth and let go of his hand, sighing deeply as a look of frustration eclipsed the worry on her features. 'Well, you're damn sure acting like it.'

She pushed herself out of her seat, having already learned that staying in his sober and conscious company for extended periods of time could have negative effects on the mental state. House admitted to himself that he was slightly impressed – it took most people many years to build up a tolerance to him. Even Wilson had dealt with the onslaught of abuse for a few months before realising there was an escape route.

Jess was strong, and House felt his chest swell a little with a pride he'd never experienced before. There was an element of jealousy which he was struggling to destroy – he envied the way she was able to access and face up to her own pain, instead of running away from it and hiding behind a wall of drugs.

And she was okay with it. It was completely natural to her, accepting that something caused her to hurt. She allowed herself to cry, to shout, to give her heart up to things still knowing that it could end up broken. She didn't shy away from love – she'd come to him, not knowing if he'd accept her or not. She took risks with her own self, not just with other people or for the sake of an answer. She was still innocent, still naïve. She saw the world as black, white and gray, unafriad of the unknown and accepting that change could happen.

House didn't want to accept it, but he was proud of what he'd helped create, even if his part in it had been so ultimately small.