Title: Acheron
Author: Ellie
Rating: PG
Spoilers: "Informed Consent"
Summary: "She discovered the morphine six weeks after
beginning her fellowship."

****

She discovered the morphine six weeks after beginning her
fellowship. Answering his mail, she’d been rummaging in a
drawer for a highlighter when her hand brushed against the worn
leather case. When she’d pulled it out, she was shocked to find
two bottles and syringes inside. Hastily, she’d packed it back
away, put away the correspondence, and gone for coffee.

Sitting in the hospital’s dreary excuse for a café, in a patch of
warm sunshine, she allowed herself to wonder. What was it
doing in his desk, buried under paperclips and Matchbox cars?
She’d noticed that some days his leg bothered him more than
others, left him digging into his pocket for that rattling bottle with
greater frequency. But had it also left him digging deep into the
desk drawer?

The few times she’d seen him in t-shirts, no telltale marks
scarred his arms, but she knew he was smarter than that. So she
kept a quiet eye on the case, surreptitiously checking it every few
weeks, more often when he seemed in pain. Yet the levels
seemed to hold steady.

Then they’d had Barbara with advanced MS, and House had
seemed so sympathetic that she’d been suspicious. When the
patient had died overnight, he hadn’t seemed particularly
surprised by the news. Later, doing his dictations, she checked
in the drawer and understood. After that, she kept less
scrupulous tabs on the bottles, only noticing one other such
depletion, though new bottles appeared with fresh expiration
dates.

*

The night shift had moved through the locker room with echoing
voices and squeaking shoes, a spilled latte hastily discarded. The
process had reversed itself half an hour later, when the midshift
collected their belongings and departed. Jensen had given her an
inquisitive look, and Marquez had gone so far as to invite her to
join them for drinks, but she shook her head and remained on the
bench, staring at the dully gleaming tiles as if they held an
answer.

She wished she had nothing to do with this case. House had no
right to act like he was going to kill a perfectly treatable patient,
nor did he have the right to sedate a patient into cooperating
against their will. But if the patient had knowingly done the
same thing to others, would it be wrong to do it to him, to save
his life? Working for House had raised a plethora of moral
dilemmas that had caused her to evaluate her behavior as a
physician, but this was tangled, even for him.

And now the patient really was dying. No further mention of
Ezra’s wishes regarding treatment had been made. She
wondered if House would now honor the earlier request.
Glancing at her watch, she rose from the bench and slipped back
out into the hospital, moving like a shadow down the nearly
empty corridors.

When she reached the Diagnostics offices, the lights were off
and the blinds were drawn. She considered knocking on the
glass, then decided against it and went inside his office. It took a
moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and notice that he
had gone. But home or to honor Ezra’s request? Eight muffled
steps of heels on carpet and she was beside his desk, hand
sliding into the second drawer on the left and under the box of
pens to find the case of morphine.

Still there. Her hand rested on the leather, soft and tempting.
The case was easily tugged from underneath the miscellany of
the drawer, though not without a clatter than seemed loud in the
silence. The caramel colored calfskin could have passed for an
inelegant clutch, so easily did it fit into her hand, but it weighed
so heavily.

At eight she watched her grandmother die slowly, hearing her
father and uncle bicker while Nana spent the last month of her
life wishing for it to be over. At twenty-two, she’d been the one
making decisions for Drew as his mind failed him and
wondering where the line was between analgesic and overdose.

She knew where the line was now, and knew Ezra had no one at
his side to ask the questions she did. Crossing into the larger
office, she shrugged on a lab coat and dropped the morphine
case into the pocket.

Rounds were on the hour, and a glance at the clock showed it to
be ten after. Feeling like a character from a spy thriller, she did
her best to be inconspicuous as she traversed the corridors to
Ezra’s room. It was dim and quiet, and she merited only a vague
nod from the nurse at the station as she stepped inside.

His breathing was laborious, and she was unsure if the faint
gurgle was real or imagined. For a moment, her hand rested on
the chart at the foot of his bed, then she decided that current vitals
weren’t so important. The end result would be the same, no
matter what the numbers said now.

When she touched the IV line on his hand, he opened his eyes
and she felt frozen by his stare. She didn’t want his appreciation
or respect. Part of her didn’t think he deserved this much
sympathy from anyone, but a greater part of her felt that no one
deserved slow death by drowning.

She refused to look him in the eye as she prepared the injection.
Only as she slid the needle into the IV port did she meet his gaze
in the dim light. His eyes were wide but peaceful, and he nodded
just a little as she discarded the syringe. Without lingering to
witness the result of her work, she slipped out of the room.

As she turned the corner back towards the Diagnostics offices,
she heard the beeping of alarms and scurrying of feet. For just a
second, her steps faltered, almost turning back of their own
accord, before continuing on to the office.

*

She hadn’t known where else to go. She wasn’t ready to face
her colleagues yet, could barely stand the bright fall sunlight
streaming through the windows as if she weren’t the Grim
Reaper in a twinset. The muted primary colors and austere
silence of the chapel at least faded into the periphery.

Time fell away as she pondered her actions. Only in the light of
day did she begin to second-guess her ethics. She’d done what
he wanted, and had only hastened the inevitable. But she’d
provided solace to someone who’d flagrantly violated his
Hippocratic oath to do no harm, had indeed done harm and taken
a life herself. She wasn’t House, didn’t have a God complex,
only wanted to heal. Had she violated her own raison d’être by
following Ezra’s wishes?

The warm hand on her shoulder had been a surprise. That he’d
thought to look for her here was startling enough, but that he was
proud of her for taking a life left her reeling as he stepped away.
No, she thought, not proud she’d taken a life. Proud that she’d
done what he would have. That was never something she wanted
to be proud of. Her chin dropped to her chest as she studied her
worn cuticles and wondered, not for the first time, how to
reconcile her principles and her fellowship.

****
End
****