Dr. Gregory House

Song: "The Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: a little vague House/Cuddy
Fandom: House
Warnings/Spoilers: None

( The Diary of Jane )

"A true friend stabs you in the front." - Oscar Wilde

Let's talk about the two people who have betrayed me the worst in my life. Stacy, and Wilson.

Stacy didn't stab me in the front. She stabbed me in the back. She's a lawyer, and beyond that a very smart woman. She knew that once I was incapacitated, as my health care proxy, she could do whatever she wanted. She knew that she wanted to do the surgery; that was why she apologized to me just before I passed out. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she snuck around behind my back and did it.

Yes, in doing the surgery, she saved my life. I'm well aware of that. But I'm not going to say that makes what she did okay. She saved my life but she betrayed my trust. That's not something I'm going to put up with from someone that I might have otherwise spent the rest of my life with. If she did that to me once, she could do it again.

Then we come to Wilson.

Wilson sold me out to Tritter. I don't care why he did it. Whether he thinks I need the help, or whether he did it to save his own ass. See, he acts like he's all high-minded, but he's just as human as I am. When Tritter really put the pressure on, he cracked to save himself, no matter what he says. He thinks that I didn't give a damn what happened to him. It's not that I didn't care. It's that there was nothing I could do about it except give in, and I wasn't about to give in.

Besides, I doubt Tritter really meant it when he wished me luck.

They both betrayed me. The difference is one did it to save me, and the other did it to save himself. That doesn't make one better than the other.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 313

A square peg in a round hole.

People like to say that I don't "fit in" at Princeton-Plainsboro. Which, what is this, the sixth-grade lunch table? It's not about fitting in. It's about doing my job. Seeing how many sick people I can terrify.

[locked]

They're wrong.

1) I never really fit in anywhere. It's not just because I hurt my leg that I'm a cranky bastard. In fact, the leg doesn't have all that much to do with it, unless your name is Stacy.

2) I fit in here better than anywhere else. Cuddy and I might argue for ninety-eight percent of the day, but she knows what she's doing, and she trusts me when it counts (for the most part). My team might consist of the pretty one, the spoiled rich kid and the car thief, but they are good little minions who do as they're told. And I have Wilson, who...well, let's just say I don't tell Jimmy how much I appreciate him. Wouldn't want it going to his head, after all.

I fit in at my hospital just fine. Now if stupid bastard cops would stop coming in and screwing that up, it'd be great, thanks.

[/locked]

I don't need to be liked. I don't need a fan club. And I don't need anyone to fix me and make it better. I am not a nice person. It doesn't matter if you like me, when I'm the person who can keep your eye from exploding.

Who cares if I fit in or not? Grow up.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 252

Song: "Save Yourself" by Stabbing Westward
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: House
Warnings/Spoilers: None

( Save Yourself )

What did you dream about last night?

House never remembers his dreams.

The recurring ones are all pretty much the same. He dreams of running another couple of miles through the park. He dreams of finally landing that ollie he never managed. He dreams of being able to walk through the hospital without being stared at and pitied by people who don't know better. He dreams of tearing through the streets on his motorcycle.

The motorcycle is as close as he'll get to normal. It's the speed, the fluidity, the freedom that he craves. It's as fast, as nimble, as free as he wishes he was. He loves riding that bike and at the same time he's almost taunting himself with what he'll never have.

Which is why he never puts much stock in his dreams. They're all temporary, no matter how good they feel, or how real they seem to be. He'll claim he doesn't know them, or that he doesn't dream, because they don't really matter. They all still piss him off, when he has to wake up to hellacious pain in a savage thigh, with the Vicodin having worn off, after he's supposedly been running with the bulls at Pamplona.

His dreams are never worth remembering, because inevitably, he has to wake up.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 209

Song: "Light Years Away" by MoZella
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: referenced House/Stacy
Fandom: House
Warnings/Spoilers: "Three Stories," if you're one of the people who hasn't seen it yet.

( Light Years Away )

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -Abraham Lincoln

Power isn't something that should be given to the stupid.

There's a reason I'm head of my department. I'm the smartest person in the room. I've been doing this longer than anyone else. Put anyone else in my shoes for a day and I guarantee you they'll wet themselves when the first differential turns out wrong and the patient starts internal hemorrhaging. My job cannot be done by a monkey with a bottle of Motrin.

Or, contrary to Cuddy's belief, by any of my subordinates. Cameron's too compassionate. She cares about people's feelings and their relationships and if anyone's fed their dog. She'd look for the answer that she wants to see, the one that makes the happy ending, not the one that there is. She'd tell everybody everything and she'd be hugging the patients. She's a good doctor but she can't step backward. Either she likes people too much, or she's on some wild ethical crusade of her own. She can't just do the job.

Chase is too self centered. He'd rather save his ass and his own job than the patient's. When he took those films wrong because he was too busy hitting on some nurse, he wouldn't admit it right away. Couldn't handle it like a man. Chase's greatest hits include ratting the department out to Vogler and continually fixing his hair. He doesn't understand that it's not all about him. That it doesn't matter how pretty you look if all your patients manage to die.

And Foreman? Don't make me laugh. He wants to argue over everything like I don't understand that I'm asking him to do something illegal. I know what I'm asking. He should know what illegal is, considering he has a criminal record. He has this holier-than-thou complex and he's spent time in jail. Talk about ironic. Cuddy puts him in charge of the department and he turns into this bureaucratic bitch. Plus apparently he also enjoys stabbing colleagues in the back for professional advancement.

Power makes the unprepared, stupid. And power should not be given to stupid people. Because then stupid things happen.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 351

Song: "Forgiveness" by Patty Griffin
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: House
Warnings/Spoilers: Generally for the whole recent Tritter episode arc

( Forgiveness )

Everyone else would tell you I get high. Or on a very rare occasion, high and drunk.

Sometimes I do.

Sometimes I find myself a stool in a bar, or a place on my couch, and I get blitzed out of my mind until I can't remember what the problem is. But the pills don't really make me high unless I take a lot of them.

Or if I take acid in the hospital shower and start seeing shit again.

Or if I manage to confiscate a joint from Wilson's desk.

But that's not what I really do all the time. More often than not, I go home, and I play my piano. It doesn't matter what. I can play pretty much anything. I just sit there and let my fingers drift over the keys. It's simple, clinical, devoid of human emotion. Either you hit the right note, or you don't. Nothing else to worry about. Nothing to think about. Just the music that's there with no one to tell me I'm not doing it right.

That's the only thing I can really run to, anymore. I don't have the pills. I'm not on acid. And I think Wilson's stopped rolling for his patients. So I just play the piano, and it works.

At this rate, the way my life is going, I'll be playing till my fingers bleed.

Muse: Dr. Gregory House
Fandom: House
Word Count: 229

To stop answering these stupid questions.

[private]

To make it through rehab and not die.

It's not a choice, anymore. A choice implies that I have some say in the matter. Cuddy and Wilson took that choice away from me. Tritter took that choice away from me. I'm going because it's only marginally more fun than trying not to drop the soap in prison.

They all look at me like I want to be an addict. As if I don't understand that I'm trashing my liver and probably a couple of other internal organs. I'm a doctor; I know what drug addiction does. Contrary to popular belief, I don't hate the morons of this world enough that I want to make a premature exit. It's much more fun to stay and torment them.

I'm an addict because I'm in pain. So much pain. If I don't take the drugs, I'll be in so much agony that I can't even move. The pills don't make me high, they make me neutral. If I get off the pills, then all I have left is the pain.

Are they going to put me on something else to take away the pain? I doubt it. They'll be worried I'll get addicted to that, too. So I'll just have the screaming pain of missing an entire chunk of my leg. After the joys of withdrawal symptoms like cold sweats, the fetal position, and dry heaving.

I don't know how I'm going to get through this.

[/private]

That good enough for you?

Muse: Dr. Gregory House
Fandom: House
Word Count: 256

Song: "Son's Gonna Rise" by Citizen Cope
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: House
Warnings/Spoilers: "Merry Little Christmas" and January episode spoilers

( Son's Gonna Rise )

Poof. You just got sucked into a Christmas Carol and are playing the role of Scrooge. One or all of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future come to visit you.

Ooooh. Wait, is this where I'm supposed to have some sort of epiphany and start weeping about what a bad person I've been all of my life?

As if.

Knowing me, the only thing I'd get visited by would be Stacy. Memories of how we used to have really good times when she got drunk on the spiked eggnog. Then she started insulting Wilson's hair. It was pretty damn funny, actually. It would be funnier if I could look back on it right now without wanting to kill both of them with my hands.

That was Christmas a decade ago. Today I don't really care. Exchange a couple of presents, throw up some lights, get a little bit drunk and avoid fruitcake. I sit around my living room and annoy Wilson for a few hours while he hides from his newest ex-wife.

Except I don't think I'll be doing that this year. I'm not thrilled about hanging out with a guy that just ratted me out to the cops. Not very festive.

Christmas future? I don't know, I think I'll just get wasted and hallucinate something about some really cute female elves. I should see my mom, but I don't want her to see me like this. Telling her I'm jailbait isn't good holiday dinner conversation. Besides, she's already at my aunt's.

That merry enough for you?

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 227

Greg House knows that he should be thankful that he's alive. He knows, medically, that if Stacy hadn't consented to the surgery to remove some of the dead muscle in his leg, and had left him in the chemically induced coma, he would have died. He saw the white light. He had the out-of-body experience. He knows how close he came to death. It's in his logical brain that his ex-girlfriend saved his life.

His fingers trace the scars, more than a decade old. Jagged, hard lines he could figure out with his eyes closed.

He'd wanted to die. Maybe it didn't make sense: a brilliant doctor with a devoted girlfriend, wanting to die. But the suffering he went through was another matter entirely. So, too, was the psychological realization that said brilliant doctor hadn't been able to figure out his own medical crisis. That he hadn't been able to save himself. There was the feeling of doubt and the ohgodthefuckingpain and all he wanted was the end.

Instead, he woke up crippled, and worse than that, betrayed.

She'd apologized just before Cuddy had put him into the coma. That meant that Stacy had known what she was going to do. Of course she'd known; she was a lawyer. Maybe just a constitutional lawyer, but she knew she was his health care proxy and she had been around him long enough to understand the legal issues of hospital care. She had known that as soon as he was under, as soon as he could stop arguing with her, she was going to do the surgery. She was going to cripple him. She was going to go against his wishes, fuck everything that they had together.

Maybe it had been worth it to her, to save his life.

Or maybe she's just a manipulative woman who can't handle crises. He saw the way she couldn't deal with Mark after he found himself in a wheelchair. How he became an afterthought, to her. Maybe she saw it happening all over again. Maybe she realized how badly she had screwed up, and saw what she had lost. It doesn't matter to House if she found God. He'll never trust her again. He will always hate her till his dying day, even though he knows that he owes her his life.

He'll never forgive her.

He can still feel where the missing muscle is supposed to be.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Word Count: 403

Song: "9 Crimes" by Damien Rice
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: House
Warnings/Spoilers: "Meaning" and early season 3

( 9 Crimes )

If you don’t risk anything, you risk more. -- Erica Jong

Life is a risk.

Sure, you can live in a little protective bubble all your life, but that doesn't mean that the bubble won't someday burst or you won't run out of oxygen and suffocate to death. You can take all the vitamin supplements you want, that doesn't mean one of them won't be tainted with nandrolone. Eat all the fruits and vegetables you want, that doesn't mean there won't be a recall on more tainted spinach.

Life, living, is a risk.

We're all dying. Some faster than others, some before their time, but we're all going to die. Just because you don't do something today doesn't mean you won't be hit by a bus tomorrow, or hit by a drunk driver, or that your heart won't just suddenly give out. Every day you might die. It's not the biggest chance in the world, but it is a chance. So stop living in fear of everything, and realize that you can't protect yourself from much of anything.

I take risks to save my patients' lives. Yes, sometimes the ideas are controversial. Yes, sometimes they could die on the operating table. But if I don't do what I have to do, they're going to die anyway, and chances are they'll suffer more from whatever they've got than if I screw up on the operating table. The difference is if you refuse treatment, you die for sure. So why not let me take a risk, bolt you to an operating table, and see if I can manage to save your life? If you wanted to die, you shouldn't even be at the damn hospital anyway. You came to me. Now let me do my job.

Some people say I take too many risks. To those idiots, I say that if you don't risk anything, you gain nothing.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 305

Song: "One Day" by Trading Yesterday
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: House
Author's Note: I wish this could've been longer, but House is a cranky bastard when it comes to this topic, so it's rather brief.

( One Day )

Song: "All of This Past" by Sarah Bettens
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Fandom: House
Author's Note: Spoilers for last night's episode.

( All of This Past )

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. -- David T. Wolf

House can basically predict the way any case is going to go, more or less, when it comes to what goes on in the diagnostics conference room. At some point, Chase will become confused. At some point, Foreman will wage a protest on the grounds that either he's wrong or it's a racial thing. At some point, Cameron will make some impassioned plea for mercy or the greater good.

(He wonders when she'll figure out he's starting to tune her out by now.)

The cases and the treatments and the diagnoses always change, but the personalities in the room don't. They're good doctors; he wouldn't have hired them if they weren't. The day that Cameron stops being a good doctor and starts being merely a poster child for peace, love and harmony, he'll fire her in a heartbeat. They balance each other well, ambition and compassion, ego and id. He just knows the way they react after so long dealing with them.

(But they don't know him. They seem to think that he was born this way, a cynic and a bastard. Maybe he's never been a bleeding heart, but the one thing they forget? He was where they are, once, a young doctor starting out under a department head, trying to learn the ropes. He made the cognizant decision to save lives, or at least attempt to. He was where they are now, young and idealistic, even if he was a bit of a cynic all the same.)

He knows that they'll get older and crankier and the well practiced dynamic will start to fall apart. He's seeing it happen already. Chase has ratted out the team to Vogler. Foreman has stolen Cameron's article, more or less, as if House cares which came first. Cameron has helped a man die. House says very little about any of these, interjecting only where he needs to, because it doesn't shock him like it does them. He saw it coming. It's a coming of age.

(He knows that they'll lose that idealism someday. A few months, or a few years. After they lose enough patients or get their little hearts broken. They'll be looking through his eyes. And he doesn't know whether to give a damn about that, or simply move on.)

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 380

Song: "Apologize" by One Republic
Character: Dr. Greg House
Rating: PG
Pairing: referenced House/Stacy
Fandom: House
Author's Note: Spoilers for "The Honeymoon" and "Failure to Communicate." This references the way I wish "Failure To Communicate" had turned out, so it is AU.

( Apologize )

Communication.

No one communicates anymore. At least, to Greg House, nobody's said anything worth hearing in a long damn time. They never do. In this age of WebMD, everyone thinks they know what they have, yet they need him to fix it. They all think they have some rare and exotic syndrome when in reality they just have a head cold, and he has to sit through twenty minutes of blubbering to tell them to get some NyQuil and go home.

If they're so sure about what they have, maybe they ought to try going to medical school and treating themselves. After all, his job in the clinic could probably be done by a monkey with a bottle of Motrin, as he's already pointed out, yet Cuddy insists he be there.

There are the ones who think they know it all. The hypochondriacs who think they have everything. The occasional ones who don't speak English. Then there are the truly crazy ones who try to circumsize themselves or confuse strawberry preserves with spermicidal jelly. And of course, the ones who lie because either they have to, or they think they have to.

And medical textbooks wonder why doctors cut their patients off before they even finish their second sentence. House thinks life would be a lot easier if everyone would just learn to shut up and do what he says. Unfortunately, they're also not smart enough to listen to him.

Muse: Dr. Greg House
Fandom: House
Words: 239