Dr. House is overcome by a suspicious feeling. He turns away from the running water and squints at the low cabinet in the bathroom, which seems, to the average viewer, innocent and silent.
He approaches, and tears it open.
“You asshole.”
Inside crouch a husband and wife, betrayed and infuriated at their discovery. The husband is an old colleague of House’s, from the early years when he and House were the driving force behind the advancement of a rather underfunded treatment–one aimed at a very rare and inevitably fatal disease that few others did much but inquire after priests about. They were both the sort of stubborn, anti-establishment, arrogant youngsters who would walk into the field with far too much to prove, and only fed off each other’s attitutes. Thankfully, they both matured, dispersed, and enjoyed successful careers after that, although they never really stayed in contact. That would have been some sort of sentimental acknowledgement of friendship. Instead, they chose to respect each other’s work from a distance.
“Get out of there–I want to cure you!”
Presently, this old colleage is dying. He and his wife have both been exposed to a terrible tropical infection–the final stage of which is so wholly undignified and painful as to warrant complete seclusion. Upon reaching the brain, the virus causes a carnival of misfirings, causing the suffering party to flail, kick, clench with an inhuman strength, while screams and terrible vulgarities escape their spasming mouths. Once this stage is reached, nothing can be done, and death usually occurrs within ten minutes’ time.
The old colleage and his wife have come to the hospital to be restrained and sedated, and to die in dignity.
Unfortunately, House learned of their presence, and has been hunting the entire hospital for them. Presently, the colleague shoots out of his hiding position, spreading his legs to shield his sobbing wife, and glares daggers–with a brave directness–into House’s eyes.
“Don’t interfere with this, House. My wife and I want to die in peace–without YOUR madman meddling.”
“Aren’t you listening? I can CURE you.”
“There is no CURE! Don’t you dare say that in front of my wife!”
“There is no cure on the market, but there is one in the final stages of development at this hospital. The results have been 100% positive, Dick… I can end this.”
“Even if what you’re saying is true, you wouldn’t be allowed to administer that drug on a-”
“But you know I will. I’ll find a way. Just come with me, please… I’m asking you to save your own life. And your wife’s.”
The wife is sobbing heavily at this point, her wails interspersed with phrases like, “Don’t listen to him” and “Just want to die in peace…” etc.
Dick stares back at his wife, his lips tight… wavering momentarily, but then seeming to cement himself in the present conclusion. He turns back to House sternly. “No.”
House throws an arm up, overwhelmed by his friend’s stupidity.
“My wife and I have known that this was coming for a long time. You cannot take this away from us now. Just let us go through with it.”
“But you can get BETTER!”
“Goodbye, House.”
Dick takes his wife’s hand and leads her out of the room, leaving House in a state of disappointed incredulity. He decides to take his bath, pondering the whole time how he could reverse this situation before it is too late.
He decides to introduce his old friend to the state of the research they abandoned so long ago. As House suspected, Dick finds it irresistible to at least take a look, which infuriates and further wounds his wife, who stands by with arms crossed and eyes resentfully puffy.
“This is incredible… I had no idea we had come so far,” Dick spills, fascinated. Dr. House is watching him with glimmering eyes, satisfied in his own cleverness. However, Dick’s wife feels a stray spasm in her arm, and begins to shriek, “It’s happening, it’s happening, oh no no..:” and is lead away by a compassionate nurse, to have her final wishes for restraints and sedation fulfilled. After his wife leaves the room, Dick’s renewed life and interest slowly droop and gray.
“I’m sorry, House… but I’ve been living with this inevitability too long, now. I have to join my wife.”
“Why? Just because you thought that’s how it had to be? You know how this virus is transmitted… She probably cheated on you. Why die for her?”
Wordlessly, Dick leaves, ignoring House’s insults. House watches him go, somewhat in shock–that he could not even convince a Human being to preserve their own life, given such an obvious choice.
In the final scene, the couple is seen from a distant height–each bound, strangely, to a pillar. From such a distance, their tiny, spasming motions are almost invisible, and the gagged silence is deafening. After several long moments, there is an eerie sense of stillness that transcends even this, and one wonders if they are both dead, or merely the wife, who was slightly further along. There is some strange hope that Dick will step free, having fulfilled his wife’s final wishes, and take the cure himself. But no… there is silence. Silence…
There is a painting hung on the wall just past the two. A shapeless collection of indigos on a black canvas. If one looks closer, closer… it almost seems to move, seems to shift, in some chilling approximation of a face. And it is singing.
The painting is singing a slow and mournful tune, as though- ensouled. And in a wild moment of childish delight, one begins to think that everything is alright–that Dick’s soul is now locked in this painting, and that he is therefore still existent, still THERE, still salvageable somehow. But no… That foolish notion is quickly overridden by the realization that this paining is merely the abstraction of Dick’s death, singing its own dirge.
