Foreman was temporary department head, although right now the department essentially consisted of him and Chase. They were both operating under the assumption that House wasn’t going to die because he was the antichrist and therefore unkillable. Wilson wished he had that kind of faith, but he of all people knew how vulnerable House really was.

House himself was… well, he was really boring. For someone causing that amount of stress in that number of people, he was doing a hell of a lot of nothing. He breathed, he lay there, and he caused Wilson to take up anxiety-related insomnia as an involuntary pastime. If House had been awake, he’d probably be proud of himself for managing to bother that many people without even trying.

Over the past week, Wilson had found himself getting irritable and surly, as if trying to make up for the fact that House wasn’t there. Cuddy had probably noticed – in terms of the hospital, she was positively omniscient – but she hadn’t said anything.

On top of the fact that Wilson spent most of his waking hours stressing about whether House had reached vegetable status, it was lonely. House was always there to deflate him when he got into one of his panicked, worrying moods. He couldn’t help thinking that the whole situation would be so much easier if House were there to lighten the tension, which was obviously stupid because if he were there would be no tension to lighten.

Usually when House was away Wilson would flirt with the oncology nurses or hang out with his wife or whatever, but there was no wife and the other seemed wrong. Instead he stole House’s iPod from his desk drawer (lock picking was one of the skills you picked up when you were friends with House for a long time) and listened to the Stones while he ate lunch alone in his office. He didn’t bother taking breaks from work because he’d just end up wandering aimlessly, thinking about House. There had been one distinctly embarrassing scene when Chase had found him sitting on the roof, and had thought he was going to jump or something. Which had been, you know, kind of awkward.

The whole situation was giving Wilson an extreme case of deja vu. However, instead of Stacy going through packets of tissues in the hospital waiting room, Cameron was lurking around the room where House slept, attempting to gnaw off all her cuticles.

Cameron did delicate waif very well. She sat forlornly by House’s bedside, giving his unmoving form Bambi eyes and generally acting as stand-in for the wife House was probably never going to have. Not that kind of wife, anyway. 

Wilson didn’t dislike her, as such. The trouble was, Cameron reminded Wilson of himself. He had known exactly what House had meant when he returned from that date with Cameron and said she only liked him because he was broken. He had recognised an element of his own feelings there.

Although he didn’t love House because he was broken, he could admit that he loved that House would always need him. Even if his leg miraculously healed itself overnight, he’d still be completely fucked-up and Wilson would still be the only person who actually wanted to be around him. He was the only one willing to spend time hacking his way through those walls of fucked-upness.

Cameron was just too nice for it ever to work out between her and House. Stacy had always given as good as she got, but Cameron disliked confrontation. She didn’t understand that if House woke up and saw her hovering around his hospital bed he’d just mock her for worrying. He’d prefer for her and the other ducklings to be metaphorically dancing on his grave by fighting over his job or eating lunch off his bed in the tradition of all good coma patients.

That stood for Wilson as well, of course, but he was allowed to be worried about House. It was practically his job. He also knew that had their positions been reversed, House would probably get his kicks molding Wilson’s comatose body into bizarre shapes for the nurses to find, but he was pretty sure House would worry as well. House sucked at expressing any kind of human emotions.

Ordinarily, worrying about House – loving House – was just background noise. It was always there, but only surfaced properly when something like this happened. Loving House, to paraphrase a song Wilson was kind of embarrassed he even knew, was easy. Not because he was beautiful, like in the song, but because he never changed. If you were twisted enough to fall in love with House in the first place, you’d have to be stubborn as well and that meant that you’d end up clinging on until he fell apart completely or got better. And because he was incapable of changing, neither of those things was ever going to happen.

It wasn’t so bad. He’d more or less accepted that loving House was like some kind of rare yet incurable mental disorder, or a really exclusive cult that only allowed people to join after a series of horrible trials. He didn’t pine. It was okay.

Obviously, telling House had always been a completely ridiculous idea. It was just that it had always been a possibility. Hypothetically speaking, he could tell House any time and there was a small chance he’d reciprocate. Or at least not run (limp) screaming for the proverbial hills. But now House was unconscious and another possibility Wilson had to factor in was that House might never wake up. He hadn’t even let himself think about that properly because it was too horrible to contemplate. House had to wake up.

*      *      * 

Wilson could see Cameron’s outline through the glass of House’s hospital room wall. She was sitting beside his bed, pretending to read a magazine. She had, at some point, almost certainly held his hand and gazed soulfully down at him, willing him to wake up.

He pushed the door open. It was best to head her off before she began to press kisses to House’s fevered brow. Although if that happened he’d probably wake up from the coma out of sheer embarrassment.

Cameron looked up. Her hair was uncharacteristically limp and she looked tired. “Come on,” said Wilson with a well-practised look of concern. “You look like you could use some coffee.”